Chaos & Light — At West End Gallery
It partook … of eternity … there is a coherence in things, a stability; something, she meant, is immune from change, and shines out (she glanced at the window with its ripple of reflected lights) in the face of the flowing, the fleeting, the spectral, like a ruby; so that again tonight she had the feeling she had had once today, already, of peace, of rest. Of such moments, she thought, the thing is made that endures.
― To the Lighthouse
I am running a little behind this morning. I thought I’d share a post, slightly reedited, from a several years back about the painting above, Chaos & Light, that is currently hanging as part of my solo show at the West End Gallery. This painting has held been held in high regard in my heart since it was painted, mainly because I think it well represents a major them in my work, that we exist between worlds of chaos and order, light and darkness, the earthly and the ethereal. Between time and the timeless.
We are teetering at this moment from descending into a level of chaos that would throw the balance on which our lives depend out of order. Ad I write chaos is sometimes a virus that evades all our natural defenses. I thought this was an apt read for today, the Monday before an election that definitely represents the struggles to hold back chaos, an election that may bear grave consequences for this country and the rest of the world.
I am also enclosing a song at the bottom from Marc Ribot’s 2019 album, Songs of Resistance 1942-2018. It is his version of the old hymnal Ain’t Gonna Let Them Turn Us Around, that became one of the anthems of the civil rights movement. Sung here by Steve Earle, it’s a good song to keep in mind during our march away from chaos and towards the light.
[ From 2022]
Chaos has been a theme in my work in recent times, showing itself in the random slashing brushstrokes that make up the skies in many of my works. You see such a sky in the painting above, Chaos & Light. It is above and around us all the time and we try to find some sense of order, some means of tolerating it, in the lives we live beneath it.
This theme of chaos is most likely a result of my perception of the times in which we live. I say perception because maybe chaos as a state of being is based more on one’s tolerance and resistance to it. Maybe chaos is the natural state, and we have internal mechanisms that keep it at bay, that keep it barricaded away, unseen, from that part of us that allows us to live and even thrive in some orderly fashion in this world.
The broken irregular rhythms of chaos go unheard and unseen as we attempt to live our lives, simply and naturally.
Sometimes, however, chaos, like a virus, gets past those internal barricades. Chaos becomes apparent, visible and heard. Its rhythms disrupt, infect, our own internal rhytms. Life then becomes more and more filled with chaos. Finding order and simplicity becomes more and more difficult.
Maybe that is the purpose of art, to serve both as a vaccine and a curative to hold chaos outside our selves.
I don’t know.
I know that it makes some small degree of sense to me. I sometimes feel like chaos has infected me, that it runs rampant through my system and my own rhythms have been replaced by those that seem unnatural to me.
But then a dose of art, simple paint on a surface or the sound of a simple tune or the arrangement of words in a book or even the image of light breaking over the horizon in the morning, restores me for at least a short time.
I am sure this sounds crazy to some. That’s okay. Those folks who think this most likely have kept chaos away their whole lives and can’t even begin to understand the plight of those infected by chaos.
This holding off of chaos is what I see in this painting. In many of my paintings, actually. Does it translate as art? I think it does but that’s not for me to say. However, as a soothing balm in troubled and chaotic times, it serves the purpose.
Maybe that is one of the purposes of art? Maybe.
Reminder: This coming Saturday, November 7, I will be giving my annual Gallery Talk at the West End Gallery. It begins at 11 AM and finishes up with a free drawing for one of my paintings. Or maybe two. Who knows? It’s usually a good time. I encourage you to stop in for an hour on Saturday.
It is, as always, free and open to all. We suggest you get there early to get a insure you get a seat since seating is limited. Doors open at 10:30 AM.