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Archive for the ‘Early Paintings’ Category

Strange Victory

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, tagged , , on March 14, 2012| 2 Comments »

 

I woke up very early this morning with many things running through my mind.  All sorts of thoughts and  imagery crowded my thoughts and I found myself thinking of this painting above, Strange Victory.  It was painted many years ago and this is the only image I have of it, a bit more washed out than the original so it doesn’t quite catch the subtlety of the snowfield.  It has long been a favorite of mine as well as of my wife who calls it the Dr. Zhivago painting.  It is perhaps the piece I regret letting go most of all but at least I know where it is and know that it is well cared for with its current owner.

I particularly like the barren feel of the snowy plain and the way the sky dominates and sets the emotional tone of the piece, its red tones set against the cold setting in a way that makes the moment seem large as the figure trudges slowly forward.  The rifle slung over his shoulder with the gun  barrel down gives it an ominous sense, as though this figure was returning from battle or returning empty-handed from a hunt for sustenance.  The moment just seems to loom large in this piece.

The title came after the painting was complete and was based on a favorite poem from Sara Teasdale, the great and tragic American poet.  It is short and elegant, filled with the grand emotional swing of going from the depths of despair to an elation in finding someone familiar who has somehow survived where others have not.  To find this simple discovery as something to rejoice of in the face of  what seems to be total loss.  Just a powerful statement of existence.

So, while I am up much earlier than I normally would be, I find myself thinking of this painting and these words.  There are worse things…

 

Strange Victory

To this, to this, after my hope was lost,

To this strange victory;

To find you with the living, not the dead,

To find you glad of me;

To find you wounded even less than I,

Moving as I across the stricken plain;

After the battle to have found your voice

Lifted above the slain.

—Sara Teasdale

 

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Early Piece, Early Voice

Posted in Biographical, Early Paintings, Influences, Technique/History, tagged on January 5, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I think I’ve mentioned here that there is some of my early work where my documentation is a bit sketchy.  There is a handful of pieces of which I have no images, which bothers me a bit now.  The rest of the work from that time is from iffy slides, photos and simple photocopies where the work was small enough to fit on a copier bed.  I was trying to organize some of these old images recently and came across one of those photocopies.

It was the piece shown here. This was a 7″ by 9″ image on paper.   I’m still trying to locate it’s title which is a bit embarassing for me, mainly because this painting rekindles so many memories when I see it.  I remember distinctly how this piece came about.  I had been looking at a framing magazine ( this was a time when I was still uncertain of how I would present my work and hadn’t settled on my own framing which I’ve used for about 14 years now) and came across an ad featuring a painting that caught my eye.

I don’t remember who painted that particular painting but it didn’t really matter.  The painting itself did nothing for me.  I wasn’t crazy about the color or tone of the image.  I wasn’t interested in its texture of atmosphere or all of the detail that painter had used in the fields and trees.  But the composition screamed out at me and in my mind I was immediately transforming the composition into my own work, with my own simple forms and lines.  We’re talking a matter of seconds here.

It was like the composition was merely a sculptural armature, a framework underneath, that served as a foundation but could be transformed on its surface.  While I used the armature of that painting in the magazine, it would be hard to see the similarities between my piece and that original image.  That tranformation and how quickly it happened in my mind always remains in my memory, permanently attached to this painting.  I felt like I was really finding my own voice in that moment, where I could synthesize influences in a very distinct  individual manner. 

I wish I could see this piece again in person, to see if it holds that same feeling for me.  To see how the person who owns it now sees it and to let them know how strongly it remains in my own memory.

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A New Mantra

Posted in Early Paintings, Painting, Personal Mythology, tagged on December 10, 2011| 4 Comments »

I came across this painting from 2001 just this morning, one that had slipped off my radar some time ago.  It wasn’t in the studio for long and sold very quickly so I didn’t get to ponder over it for an extended period.  It is titled A New Mantra and  is 31″ high by 51″ wide on mounted paper.  I do remember painting this piece and how it hit every goal I had for it from the first moment I started on it.  It came so  easily that it felt as though it truly fell out of me, with not  a bit of struggle at any point.  I also remember just being exremely pleased with how this showed in its final state.  It was large and airy yet it had a real up close presence.  To me, it was how it must feel to have the secrets of the universe whispered mysteriously in your ear. 

It just felt powerful, whiich is probably why I was so surprised at seeing it again this morning.  How had it slipped out of my mind when it immediately rekindled such strong feelings upon seeing it again? 

I don’t know that there is any real explanation.  I think there are other pieces out there that will do the same for me, especially some work from the earlier years when my photo-documentation wasn’t as thorough.  I can think of one painting that I have often used as an example in an account of how some work flows easily while others are a stuggle from the first brushstroke.  This piece was done after a month of working on a series of paintings that resulted in a commissioned piece.  One morning I went into the studio about 5 AM and this large painting just fell out.  It was about 40″ square and I remember how the paintings of the past month had served as rehearsals for this very moment in time.  Every movement was really from muscle memory, moving without prompting and the conscious thought process was hushed and in the background.  Two hours later and it was done.

I would tell people who asked how long it took to paint a piece that this painting didn’t take 2 hours to paint.  It took over a month.  It couldn’t have happened without those other pieces building up to it.

To my dismay, that is a piece for which I can’t find an image.  But I will keep looking and hopefully, if I find one, I will feel as I did about once again finding A New Mantra.

 

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Hogback Heaven

Posted in Early Paintings, Music, Video, tagged , on October 21, 2011| 3 Comments »

Looking through some old work, most of which was done early on while I was still forming my technique and style and before I showed my work publicly, I came across this oddity that I noted as Hogback Heaven.  It’s a goofy little scene of a rough hewn home and yard somewhere out on a back country road, the kind of place that I often passed years ago in my treks on the backroads around my home area.  All that is missing here from my memories of those places are a barking hound and a toddler in a sagging diaper playing in the gravel of the driveway. 

Whenever I come across this piece, I have to smile.  I don’t know if it’s the subject or the crazy electric feel of the cobalt blue sky and hills and the red neon outlines of the house and ground.  I’m still trying to figure out where that color came from.  Maybe it’s a smile of embarassment that this little painting is hovering in my past.  But there’s something in it that makes me not want to destroy it. 

I wanted to set this post to some fitting music and in my search came across this other sort of oddity.  Called Yiddish Hillbillies, it’s a vintage 40’s era cartoon that has had the soundtrack replaced ( in a very clever and coordinated way) with a song from Mickey Katz.  Katz was a comedian who specialized in Jewish humor, with Yiddish-tinged song parodies of contemporary songs of the time being his specialty.  Think Borscht Riders in the Sky or Sixteen Tons (of Latkes).  While much of the Yiddish-tinged wording goes over my head I do enjoy the klezmer feel here.  A note on Mickey Katz:  His son is actor Joel Grey which makes him the grandfather of actress Jennifer Grey.

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Origin

Posted in Early Paintings, tagged on September 19, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I was asked recently when the Red Chair that is sometimes used in my paintings first appeared.  I really wasn’t sure how and when it found its way into my vocabulary of images so I decided to look back in my files.  The very first images of the Red Chair that I can find so far appeared in early 2002 in a group of very small pieces.  The three above were all just over an inch, maybe an inch and a half square in size.   Just a few little guys that seemed to strike a chord with me.

I don’t know why they showed up at that time.  We, as a nation , were in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and I know my work was affected by the collective psychology of that time. It was hard to have it not affect something that often reflects one’s feelings.  Perhaps, it was an unconscious symbolization of the chair  to represent what I felt had been lost from that turbulent time.  I can’t honestly say for sure.

The middle piece above was an early hint at the dark blue work that defined that year for my work, which also featured the Red Chair in several pieces.   These pieces were framed and sold separately although I think this group would have made any interesting little trytych.  I really like the way they all relate to one another, how they convey smoothly from one to another the emotion of each. 

It’s a small beginning for something that has gained such importance and meaning  in my personal visual vocabulary.  Maybe I should consider them as acorns that grew…

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Anomalies

Posted in Early Paintings on September 16, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I’m always surprised at how observant people are about my work, how they will be attracted to details or pieces that were one-of-a-kinds and hold onto that image long after it has been pushed into the far recesses of my mind.  It’s sort of like making an offhand remark and forgetting it but the person who heard it holds every word clearly in their memory.  I know I’ve had that sensation where I remember every detail of a moment or conversation that the other person has long forgotten. 

I had such a conversation this past weekend at the gallery talk  in Alexandria when I was approached by a couple who talked about a small piece from several years before that had a row of telephone poles along a road descending to a far horizon.  I have done only two or three of those paintings over the many years so I was somewhat surprised to hear their admiration for this small group of work, one that I have thought about resurrecting now and again but just never seem to get to. 

 I do so few that I couldn’t even remember the last one I had painted and decided to go looking for this anomaly.  Giving a quick scan through my images from the past several years I found nothing.  I knew they were small pieces so they might require more detail and more time to inspect the files.  This could take a while. 

Scanning through, I was surprised at some of the paintings and how distinctly different from my typical work they were.  The piece above, Time Flows, is such an example.  It is unlike anything I have done before or since.  I remember the texture on this piece as being very extreme, with deep pits that would catch and hold the pigment.  Painted for my 2007 show at the West End gallery,  it drew a lot of attention and was acquired quickly by a longtime collector so it didn’t stay around long enough for me to really live with so that it might become part of my regular painting vocabulary. 

 It simply came and went.

I always stop and look at this painting when I come across an image of  it, both with a bit of admiration and with wonder because it seems to have come from somewhere in myself I don’t remember or recognize.  It is a pure anomaly, one that I can never recreate.  And maybe that’s the way it shold be and remain.

Now, to find those telephone poles…

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Before…

Posted in Biographical, Early Paintings, tagged , on September 11, 2011| 6 Comments »

Back home, safe and sound.  Sweet.

First, many,many thanks to everyone who came out to the Gallery Talk  at the Principle Gallery yesterday.  You were a great group and made my time in front  of you  very easy and enjoyable.  I hope I was able to pass on somethings you might not have known or answered whatever questions there may have existed.  If not, let me know and I’ll try to rectify that. 

I could talk much more about yesterday’s talk  and how much I appreciate those who attended but I guess I should at least way in on the obvious part of this date.  It’s, of course, the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks .  I’m sure there’s not a soul out there who hasn’t been made to remember this fact by the almost constant coverage by the media over the last several days. 

In yesterday’s talk, I tried to avoid mentioning this, wanting to provide some sort of diversion, but somehow ended up talking about it anyway.  I think it came about when I was trying to explain how much the support and energy that I received from these folks over the years had transformed my life.  It reminded me very much of a feeling I felt on September 10 in 2001, the day before the attack.

It was a spectacular late summer day with hints of autumn in the air, a pure blue sky and a sun that was softly warm but not harsh.  Purely pleasant.  I remember walking around my pond that day.  I was at the point in my year when I was done with shows that I was going to do for the year.  Both had been wildly successful, beyond what I ever expected, and  I finally had a bit of time to relax and really think about this as I strolled around the pond.  I thought about how different my life was now, in 2001, than it was ten years before.  I had felt myself  a lost soul at that time, living a purposeless life with little prospect of doing much with it.  But over the years, art had come into my life and everything was different.  I found a form of expression, began to see clearer those things that were there in my life that had always been there and were core to my existence but I had somehow overlooked as I stumbled around in prior years. 

I found myself and a reason for living.  As I stopped by the pond with that clear sky above, it all struck me on that day, that September 10.  I felt myself the most fortunate man in the universe that day.  My life felt as complete and satisfying as I could imagine and I was filled with an overwhelming sense of appreciation for my good fortune.  I had trouble believing it was my life I was indeed living.

Of course, within 24 hours that feeling disappeared in the smoke and devastation of the events of that day.  It’s taken ten sometimes awful years to somewhat approach that feeling again and yesterday, as I felt the warmth of that group,  I talked about this feeling and my appreciation for them for allowing me to regain that feeling.  I don’t know that I made it clear but one doesn’t always speak easily about matters of grace.

The painting at the top was painted on that day and reflects very much the fullness and contentment I felt for my life at that point.  It is filled with that sense of peace and grace I hinted at above.  It came to be titled Before…  

There was a strange twist to this painting.  I always number my paintings so that I can more easily record and track them over time.  The serial number for that painting was 99-911.  I did nothing to make it fit this way, and in fact didn’t even recognize this number’s relationship to the date until some time later.  Just an eerie coincidence.

It  is a painting that I deeply regret ever letting go and though I know that the folks who now possess it have their own deep feelings for this piece, they will never know how much it still  lives with me, how much it reminds me that day, that September 10th when life seemed as good it could be and how rare and fleeting that moment can be.

Thanks again to everyone from yesterday.  Have a good and peaceful day.

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The Creeper

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, Music, Video, tagged , on August 21, 2011| 1 Comment »

I came across a song yesterday, an old surf guitar instrumental from the Ventures called The Creeper, that reminded me of this painting of mine of the same title.  I had written about this painting before here a couple of years back but had not mentioned how it was one of the paintings that I regret selling.  This was part of the Exiles series that I painted in the mid 90’s, mostly grieving figures painted with segmented features. 

 It was the first real series I had painted and was the basis for my first solo show.  I think I only sold three of those pieces and regret having taken any of them from that group of work.  I think because those pieces were so much the product of a specific emotional state at a certain time, I will not be able to capture that exact feel again.  I have periodically painted figures in that style over the years since and  while they have certain charms, they lack the impact of these earlier pieces.

These few pieces are gone but at least I have images to take a look at when their memories start to creep in, much like that fellow above.

Here’s the song that reminded me of this painting, The Creeper from the Ventures.  This piece is very reminiscent of Wipeout ( with maybe a little Peter Gunn thrown in) but is really distinguished by some super organ work  from the great Leon Russell in an early appearance in 1964.  Give a listen– it’ll rev up your Sunday.

 

 

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Bradford County

Posted in Biographical, Early Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , , on August 15, 2011| 3 Comments »

I was going through a pile of old work, mostly rougher  stuff from when I first started painting that had small glimpses of promise but lacked real spark or cohesiveness in the way they came together, when I came across this piece from 1994.  It’s about 12″ by 16″ on rough Arches watercolor paper and has the words Bradford County written in pencil at the  bottom corner of the paper. 

It’s a piece that I always found attractive but seeing it really brought me to a stop.  I so recognized that time when it was painted and could now see several potential directions where my work might have headed other than the one it eventually followed. 

This piece was very much in a more traditional watercolor style, with no treatment of the paper and the colors pure.  The colors had not yet come around to the palette that I later adopted.  For instance, the sky is a single uncomplicated shade of blue.  There are no other colors, not even other blues in it.  I had yet to make the move to more complex colors even though there is a hint of it in the foreground and the hills.

It also is a depiction of a real place, as denoted by the Bradford County.  Growing up, we lived on Wilawana Road just a few short miles from the NY/PA border and if you followed the road into PA you found yourself in Bradford County.  That part of the border is at the base of steep hills and is filled with rural valleys that I spent many hours exploring.  This scene was purely based on that place even though it is not any one location there.  I had not yet made the leap into creating my own landscape, forming the felt space rather than real space of Ralph Fasanella that I had mentioned in an earlier post.

To me, this is a time capsule that takes me back to the time when I painted it.  It suggests potentials that seem a million miles away from where I finally landed at the present.  It shows the possibility of staying strictly as a traditonal watercolorist or painting solely as painter of reality.  A depicter of the what is with the proper colors and forms.  I wonder how my work might look today, how it might differ,  if I had followed any of those other possible routes for the work? 

 I suppose many of us can look back at certain points in our lives and see times much like the one captured for me in this simple painting, times when we are at a junction in our lives and must decide which path to follow.  I’m sure some of us would look at such a time with a certain level of regret but for me, I am happy with my decisions made at and after the point of this painting so for me this is a warm memory, a reminder of the path I was about to follow.

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Guenther Hears the Boogaloo Softly

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, Video, tagged on June 17, 2011| 3 Comments »

I came across this little piece that I had painted long ago, before I ever showed my work to anyone.  It’s a small little thing, barely 2″ by 3″ in size, but it’s a painting that I consider one of my favorites.  It’s not because of anything in the painting itself, although I do like the way it works visually.  Actually, it’s because I see an entire narrative in this piece and it always comes back as soon as I see it, even after many years.

I call this Guenther Hears the Boogaloo Softly.  The story I see here is a German soldier on patrol in the second World War, in a wintry forest,  perhaps in the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge.  He is separated from his group and as he is alone in the forest he suddenly hears a sound from deep in the woods, echoing softly through the frozen trees.  It is a piano and it is like nothing he has heard before.  It has a loping bassline that churns and pops and over it is a tap dance of notes that bounce and roll on the rhythm.  It’s American boogie woogie.  Somewhere unseen in the forest a piano is rolling out boogie woogie.

Guenther is transfixed and holds his breath to better hear the music that enchants him. A siren’s song.  He loses all thought of his mission and his duty.  He is engrossed by the music. 

I don’t go any further with this scenario in my mind.  There are obvious directions the story could take.  Guenther might allow the music to transfix him to the point he doesn’t hear the American patrol coming upon him.  Or he might throw down his weapon and flee.  But most likely, he would return to his patrol and  if he were lucky enough to survive the war, the memory of that music would haunt him for years, sending him on a search to recapture the sound of that moment in the forest.

I see it simply as a being about the transformative power of music and art, about how they unify humans despite our differences.  When we hear or see something, we don’t do so as a German or an American, as a democrat or a republican, as a Christian or a Muslim.  We react as a human to our individual perceptions.  Sometimes we cannot shake these other labels we carry with us but there are moments when our reaction is pure.  Which is what I see in this little bit of paint and paper, in Guenther’s reaction to the piano. 

Such a little bit of paint yet such a lot to say…

Here’s a little taste from one of the kings of boogie woogie from the 30’s and 40’s, Albert Ammons.

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