I have a square cardboard box in one of the rooms of my studio. It’s not much to look at it and it certainly doesn’t have any significance attached to its exterior appearance. But for me it’s a treasure chest, my secret bounty. You see, this rather plain box holds hundreds of small pieces from my earliest forays in paint from twenty some years ago.
They are not significant to anyone other than me. If you were to look in it you might not feel anything more than you would from looking at the old buttons, matchbooks and other tiny souvenirs of times past in someone else’s dresser drawers.
Many are clumsy attempts and most are deeply flawed in some way. But for me, they hold so much more deep meaning than is apparent from a first look. They are my artifacts, my history, my ponderings, my inner thoughts and my memory.
They are me.
There’s always a special feeling when I delve into them, like that feeling of looking at old family photos and vividly remembering moments that seem to have happened eons ago. I sometimes marvel at the brightness of my youth at that point and sometimes frown at the foolishness of it. I see where I thought I was going and can compare it to where I finally landed. There are ideas there that are dismal failures that make me smile now and make me wonder if I should have pursued them further.
And there are some that make me happier now than when they were done. Time has added a completeness to them that was lacking then.
And there are pieces like the untitled one above from back in 1994 that make me just stop and wonder where they came from. They seem like lost memories. I know I made this piece up in my mind but can’t remember why. I have skimmed over it a hundred times and never given it more than a shrug. But today I find myself looking intently at it as though it holds something for me that I can’t just pull out of it.
There’s a frustration in that but since I know that it is mine, I don’t really mind. I will have it for years to come and can question it again and again. Maybe my mind will release the secret or at least form a substitute reality at some point, one that brings me closure of some kind.
Who knows?
Today’s Sunday Morning music deals a bit with some of the same feelings. Well, I think it does. It’s Hello In There from John Prine. Visiting my father in the nursing home has been hard, not just for the visits with him which still leave me shaken a little after each visit, but for the sight of the other older folks in even deeper states of dementia as they sit in their chairs in the hallways and dining rooms. There is a lonely blankness in their eyes that is heart-breaking. You wish you could reach into them and pull their old self out in the open if only for a moment. But all you can do is say hello and hope they hear the words and the feeling in it.
Anyway, this is a great old song from John Prine. I hope you’ll give it a listen and have a great Sunday.
I’ve been looking at my Exiles series quite a bit lately. From the mid 1990’s, it’s a highly personal series of faces and figures that kind of act as a landing spot for me to place my rawest emotions during trying times. The piece shown here is titled Martyr and remains an enigma to me, mainly because I have never had thoughts of martyrdom for myself. But I have been looking at this quite a bit because of a recent request that I revisit this painting at some point in the future.
I chose the image above from the Exiles series for this post because it just seemed to fit so well. They were painted in pure emotion so whenever I am dealing with hard emotional things, I tend to go to this group of paintings for some reflection.
I’m always intrigued by the paintings of Reginald Marsh, who painted scenes depicting the urban world of New York City throughout the early part of the 20th century until his death in 1954. His paintings always seemed densely packed with figures and constant movement, all rendered with easily recognizable line work and colors that were strong yet had a soft transparency. Striking.
But it was great fun and over the few visits there I had many memories that burned indelibly into my memory bank. My parents, and my aunt and uncle who sometimes were with us, would, after a while stop at one of the bars that opened to the boardwalk to have a cold one and I would wander alone. It was a wonderland of colorful attractions and games, their facades faded by time and sun. I have sharp memories of standing at one bar’s doorway and watching a singer all dressed in cowboy regalia standing on the bar with his electric guitar singing out country songs in the middle of the afternoon. I sometimes wonder if it might have been country troubador Jerry Jeff Walker who had come out of Brooklyn.
I remember seeing the crowds down on the beach and suddenly seeing everyone there pointing out to the water and yelling. Looking out, I saw two legs bobbing straight out of the water, almost comically so. The lifeguards rushed out and dragged the body in. Dead and, now that I think about it, had probably been so for a while.
“Hold on!” he exclaimed in a thick accent that sounded Greek and a little angry to a terrified nine year old. He started chastising me.
This is an early Red Tree painting from back in 2001 that is titled Challenger that lives with me now here in the studio. It’s one of a small group of pieces that made the rounds through the galleries over the years yet never found a home. I call them orphans. This particular orphan spent a much longer time in the galleries than most, only coming back to me a couple of years ago. It drew interest a number of times yet never made that final connection.
Each man has his own way of being himself and of saying it so ultimately that he can’t be denied.
I’ve been going to Alexandria, VA, a lovely and historic town that hugs the Potomac River just a few miles below Washington DC, for a long time, often several times a year. Outside of my link with the Principle Gallery and the relationships that have grown from that, I never thought I had a connection of any sort with that area.

Well, it’s all out of my hands and hanging in the gallery now. I’m talking about my show of new work, Part of the Pattern, opening tonight at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA.
Part of the Pattern , which opens tomorrow, June 3, is my 17th solo show at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA. It’s been a great run since that first show back in 2000 that introduced the Red Tree into my body of work. I’m not even sure that I had a body of work at that point.