I was thinking about what song to use for this week’s Sunday morning musical interlude and the song I chose brought to mind an old painting of mine, one that lives with me still. It from the early Exiles series from around 1995 and is called The Deacon’s New Tie.
Finished near the end of the series, it is a bit lighter and more whimsical than the other pieces in the earlier post. Outside of going out for an exhibit many years ago, the Deacon has been a constant companion here in the studio.
There’s really no back story to the Deacon. He sort of just emerged from the surface. I had no preconception of what he would be when I started. I remember clearly starting this piece on a blank sheet and making a nose. Slowly, the face formed and when his eyes with their hangdog look came around I knew he was different than my other Exiles characters.
The funny thing about the Deacon is that several months after the piece was done and include in the Exiles show, I came across an article in the newspaper about a 95 year-old man in central Florida who had won a case where he was trying to be forced from the land on which he had lived for nearly 70 years. There was a picture of a bald old man sitting on his veranda, a slight smile on his lips. There was something slightly familiar in that face, something that caused me take a second look. There it was: he was the spitting image of my deacon.
Then, reading the article, it stated that he was a longtime member of a local church and was known to friends and neighbors as the Deacon. Coincidence or maybe just a certain look reserved for those Deacon-like characters.
As you may have already surmised from the title, this week’s song is Deacon Blues from Steely Dan, a group that I often think people have let slip away in the collective memory. I was a fan and know that I often forget them until I stumble across their music by chance. Luckily, there’s a local restaurant where we’ve dined for many years and we can’t remember a single visit where a Steely Dan song hasn’t played on their sound system at some point during the meal. The owner must be a Steely Dan fan but I think many people would be surprised at the huge success, both critical and commercial, that this band achieved in the 1970’s. Solid then and now.
Anyway, this is one of their hits from back in 1977, Deacon Blues. Give a listen and have great Sunday.
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.
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 was looking at some older paintings in the studios, my orphans as I call them. But some are not orphans, not without a home. Some are just here because they are my own and have some sort of special meaning for me. Such is the case with the piece above, Endless Time. It’s a piece that I consider a link to my earliest works, a reminder of the inner forces that drove me into the work I now do.
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.
One of the things in my paintings that is often commented on and asked about is the Red Chair. Sometimes hanging in a tree, sometimes alone on a hilltop or in a field or sometimes on its side on winding path, it is one of those recurring images that I use as a symbol. It has come to represent ancestry and memory as well as acting for a symbolic stand-in (or sit-in) for humanity’s place in the landscape.
Redtree Times 