Redtree Times

Don’t Fence Me In (194)

I am amused to see from my window here how busily a man has divided and staked off his domain. God must smile at his puny fences running hither and thither everywhere over the land.

–Henry David Thoreau, Journal, Feb. 20, 1842

As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter; and our wine will burn our mouth. Only that good profits which we can taste with all doors open, and which serves all men.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men (1850)

I couldn’t resist going with the tag team of Thoreau and Emerson — an undefeated team, by the way– this morning for this post on an early painting from 1994 called Don’t Fence Me In.

The first passage above from Thoreau might have served perfectly well on its own but I thought the added spice in Emerson’s words made a statement that is applicable now as it was 176 years ago. Namely, that the greed and hoarding of the few that is shaping society and dividing the haves from the have-nots will be our downfall. That the only good that should come with great wealth is that it is used to serve and better all men.

I would imagine the people in the Red Hats would call that communism or socialism or some other word that they have not the foggiest idea of what it really means. Just a buzzword used to attack things they don’t or won’t understand.

Sorry for the short detour. Let me talk for a moment about the painting. It was painted in 1994 when I was still adapting the wet process that I had developed that best suited how I think. I was also at that time looking at a lot of Georgia O’Keeffe work which I greatly admired. I was especially taken with her work that often showed trees bisecting the painting’s surface, often with an animal skull, such as the piece shown here. Sometimes there was just a skull hovering over a desert landscape. The colors were clear and strong while her compositions were simple yet not uncomplicated, evoking a deep response.

Strong color and complicated simplicity were those things I greatly desired in my own work, so I made several attempts with her work in mind. One was the piece shown here. It certainly was not up to O’Keeffe’s mature work and didn’t reach the level of color intensity that I wanted.  I was still not yet to a point where I understood how to harness color for its greatest effect. I was still grasping in the dark.

But, overall, this piece still works for me, even today. It has clarity and an implied message in its strands of barbed wire with the bottom one broken and going to the ground. Much as O’Keeffe’s skull with its regal antlers speaks of the temporary nature of all things, this says to me that the boundaries and fences that we build to divide us are not natural and will eventually succumb to the weight of time.

As I said, even though it is not a great piece, it is one that still works for me. It gives me a degree of satisfaction each time I pull it out in that it accomplished what I wanted from it at the time. It was an indicator to me that I might have an ability to translate deeper feeling in simple terms.

And that was what I really desired. Still is.

Actually, this is all a subterfuge to play a song that might be the polar opposite of yesterday’s song from Måneskin, I Wanna Be Your Slave. Though I am a fan of that song, I thought perhaps something a bit more calming might be in order this morning.  The song is, of course, the Cole Porter classic Don’t Fence Me In. How could it be anything else? I had tons of choices because, like most Cole Porter tunes, everybody and their brother has covered it. But I settled on the Ella Fitzgerald version. You can never go wrong with Ella.

This is a line from a different song but I still have to say it– git along, little dogies…