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Archive for the ‘Influences’ Category

Elvis Presley Blues

Posted in Biographical, Favorite Things, Influences, Television, Video, tagged , on January 8, 2009| 1 Comment »

Today is the birthday of Elvis Presley.Early Elvis

I’m not going to wax rhapsodic about the man or what he has meant to so many people.  Everyone knows the facts:

Elvis was and is big.

For me, it’s memories of going with my sister and cousin to the movies to see his films.  I was 5 or 6 years old but even then, Elvis’ charisma was unavoidable even in those sometimes awful films.

I remember sitting in front of the TV with my dad in’68 when Elvis made his comeback special.  We both sat mesmerized as we watched,  which struck me because my dad was not one to show much obvious interest in a lot of things.  It was an amazing thing to watch.  Elvis had the air of absolute desperation around him, as if everything in the world hung on  him pleasing us and gaining our love and approval.

 It seemed to be, to quote an Elvis hit, now or never.

It was a mythic performance, obvious to even a 9 year old.

But like many mythic beings, intermingled with greatness there was the aura of tragedy and sadness.  That’s how I think of Elvis.  A simple man elevated to myth and burdened with a talent and charisma with which few are equipped to handle.

Here’s another Gillian Welch song, Elvis Presley Blues,  which kind of sums up that feeling.

Happy birthday, E…

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Exiles: The Creeper

Posted in Influences, Painting, tagged , , , on January 6, 2009| 1 Comment »

The CreeperThe Creeper is another of the Exiles series although he is an anomaly in the series.  He does not mirror the sense of loss or suffering of the other pieces.  He is not the mournful exile.

He is the menace of dark dreams. He is always there, looming halfway in the bedroom window.  

But, while he is a little scary, there is a bit of whimsy in his appearance.  He is more cartoonish than the others.  When I look at this face I am constantly reminded of the movie parodies from the beloved  Mad magazine of my youth, with their Mad Magazine Godfather Parodyoversized, caricatured faces.  This softens the whole feel of the piece for me and makes him less terrifying.

Now, whether someone without that same frame of reference will see him in the same way is another question.  Without that reference, maybe he is as creepy as his name.

For me, The Creeper  always brings back the memory of a young friend who loved this painting and truly identified with everything about it.  He saw the humor but felt the darkness of it as well.  He was a vibrant, whirlwind of energy  who knew well about the personal demons so depicted in this painting.  He was a tortured personality and took his own life several years ago.  For him, The Creeper was all too real.

This one’s for you, Scott…

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Blackwood

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, Video, tagged , , , , on January 3, 2009| 4 Comments »

dblackwood7-captain-ned-bishop-home-in-wesleyvilleI just wanted to say a few words about another influence on my work, this time from Canadian printmaker David Blackwood.  I first stumbled on his work several years ago when I came across a documentary on him called, fittingly, Blackwood.  It was nominated for an Oscar as best documentary when it came out in the mid-70’s and brilliantly depicts his technique and how his art and the personal mythology of his home are intertwined.

David Blackwood Man Warning Two BoysMuch of his work deals with Newfoundland and Labrador and its hardy inhabitants.  There are whalers and Mummers, lost parties adrift on the ice, colorful kites flying over a frozen starkness and houses being dragged across ice.  It is fascinating work and beautifully done.  He has created his own visual vocabulary that resonates in his pieces.

This meager description of his work doesn’t do it justice and I encourage those interested to do a bit of researchBlackwood Daybreak The Labrador Sea and discover this treasure for themselves. He has a beautiful website that I will add as a link and there is a beautiful book, David Blackwood: Master  Printmaker that I highly recommend, with a foreword from Annie Proulx, whose own The Shipping News owes much to the mythology that Blackwood’s work depicts.

Really great stuff.  I always enjoy pulling out his book and absorbing the great compositions and sense of place he creates in his work.  Always inspiring…

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End of the Year- Not the End of Days

Posted in Influences, tagged on December 31, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Caught In TimeLast day of yet another year…

I don’t want to drone on about this past year.  There are enough blogs out there doing that today and tomorrow, citing personal triumphs and failures.  Putting up their personal top ten lists of things like movies and music.  But even the most jaded and contrarian of us can’t deny it was a remarkable year in many ways, both good and bad.  

The rise of Obama and the return of the disenfranchised voter.  The virtual collapse of the world economy.   These first couple of things are so big that they seem to dwarf all other events, mainly because they signify a much different future in 2009 with wildly different expectations than those we brought with us as we entered this past  year.  2008 was a game-changer.

2008 will be the year that will be remembered in historical terms  but 2009 is really the more important year because that is when our reaction to the events of the past year start to take shape.  And how one reacts to the hardships that rise before them defines them, shows their true character and potential.  

To me, that is truly exciting.  It is an opportunity to be better and to do better.  A time to discover strengths that we thought we lacked.  A time to find and nourish a future we hadn’t even considered before this time.

Okay, it is scary.  So what?  The world is changing before our eyes and change is always filled with fear.  But if  we look at this as an opportunity perhaps those fears will recede and we will move into the future with eyes wide open and see everything available to us. 

And overcome and be better for it.

So, to 2009, I say, “Bring it on.”

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Exiles: Blue Guitar

Posted in Early Paintings, Influences, Painting, tagged , , , on December 30, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Blue GuitarI wanted to show yet another of the paintings from the Exiles series, a piece titled Exiles: Blue Guitar.  This was larger than the other paintings in the series and was the most intricate in design.  It was the only piece to show a full body, more or less.  The crimson sheets beneath the figure are certainly not typical of my work.  Even the blue guitar was an anomaly.  I think these things, in themselves, make this a distinctive painting and one that is perhaps the one piece I most regret letting go.

I remember painting this piece back in ’96 with great clarity.  The face was based on a portrait of the composer Sibelius  taken by the great photographer Karsh.  I had seen the photo at an exhibit of Karsh portraits at the MFA in Boston (where there is, coincidentally, an exhibit celebrating Karsh currently on display ) and was immediately taken with the face.  The face expressed bliss, but not joy.  A painful bliss, perhaps an ecstasy tempered by the knowledge that the world is an imperfect one and that this moment of grace is a fleeting one, soon to be gone.Sibelius by Karsh  It was exactly the expression I saw for my guitarist and one that I wanted the whole piece to convey.

This was the centerpiece of my first exhibit and remains vividly in my memory.  I hope that whoever possesses this piece appreciates all that it represents and gives this sad, blissful guitarist a bit of attention now and then.

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Setting a Course

Posted in Influences, Painting, Technique/History, tagged on December 29, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Waiting on the SunThis is the part of my year where I step back and take a good look at the past year, how my work developed over the year and what I felt really came across and expressed what I wanted in the paintings that I executed.  It’s also the time when I start to set my course for the upcoming year.  I start to think about possible tweaks in my work.  I try to decide what aspects of my work were exposed this past year and how I can increase the strengths and minimize the weaknesses that emerged.

I think about possible new projects.  For instance, I want to do a large detailed canvas, something much larger than I normally paint, that I will work on for the better part of the year and will document its progress on this blog.  I think there will a continuation of the Archaeology series, on a smaller basis than this past year.  I also look at work from past years to see points where my work has changed and try to determine if it might be interesting to revisit that earlier style armed with a more evolved vision and technique.Dark Gives Way

The pieces shown here are a good example of a style that I may well examine once more.  They are painted in a different way than I typically paint and, as a result, have a different look.  I only did them for a short while but I always find my eye being attracted to them whenever I look back at past work.  I see that style now and see things that would be exciting to revisit  with some new ideas.

So in the next few days I will continue to look back on the path I’ve traveled and maybe go back for a short while and find inspiration and a spark that will ignite into a new fire for the new year.Just Passing Through

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The Revelator

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, Video, tagged , on December 28, 2008| 1 Comment »

The RevelatorI find that whatever is playing in the studio, music or film, at the time I’m painting has a great influence over my work.  Songs or movies that have great dramatic impact for me often manifest themselves in my work, with me picking up their tone and rhythm and trying to lay it down in paint.

This is a great example of this trait.  It’s a painting from a few years back titled The Revelator and even takes it’s name from the song that influenced it, (Time’s) The Revelator from Gillian Welch.  This was a much played song in my studio at the time and I felt that it had emotional weight that mirrored what I was trying to get across in my work.  Wistful but warm.  Accepting of the fact that time eventually reveals what is true and what is important.

Good stuff…

Here’s the song performed by Gillian Welch.  Enjoy.

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Exiles: Cain

Posted in Biographical, Early Paintings, Influences, tagged , , , on December 27, 2008| 1 Comment »

CainI thought I’d take a moment and show this painting, Cain, another from the Exiles series that I’ve discussed in past posts.  This is a smallish piece and one of my favorites, one with which  I will never part.

He is based, somewhat, on the biblical story of the original exile, one sent from his homeland to create a new world for himself, never to return.  It is also based on the novel Demian by Hermann Hesse, a book that meant much to me when I went through a trying time years ago.  Actually, it seems a lifetime ago.

In Demian, Hesse uses the mark of Cain as a symbol for those seeking the truth in themselves.  He also discusses the dual nature of man, an idea which has had a very formative aspect in my growth as a painter.  The idea of opposing forces, light and dark,  being contained in one element, one being, always struck a chord in me.  It made sense of the struggles that I observed in myself and many others.

He also made a statement that resonated like a gigantic bell tolling for me.

Whoever wants to be born, must first destroy a world.

Without going into detail, that small sentence was a revelation.  It changed my world forever.

I realize this is a fragmented explanation of this painting and the book that influenced it.  I merely wanted to illustrate what personal meaning some pieces can have for an artist as well the serendipitous nature of moments when art and one’s real life converge.

Maybe I will elaborate in the future.  Maybe not…

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Exiles

Posted in Biographical, Early Paintings, Influences, tagged , , on December 22, 2008| 5 Comments »

A Prayer For Light  This past week I mentioned a series of paintings that I had finished in the mid 90’s called Exiles.  This series was the basis for my first solo show and remains a very prominent and personal group of work for me.  I had started showing my work publicly for the first time at the West End Gallery in Corning in February.  It was a huge first step for me.  A few months later, my mom, who lived in Florida, was diagnosed with lung cancer.  

This, in itself, was not unexpected. She had been a smoker since she 13 or 14 years old, often smoking 2-3 packs a day.  She smoked Camels.  No filters here.  Many of my childhood memories are tinged with white clouds of cigarette smoke, something that seems horrible and unthinkable now but those were different times with different sensibilities.  

A Prayer For ReliefHer struggle with her cancer was fairly short and tortuous, lasting about five months.  Her cancer had moved into her lymph system and became systemic, invading her breasts and bones.  It ended in early November of 1995.  She was 63 years old.

The feelings of helplessness and hopelessness that came from this were manifested in the faces I began to paint.  They mirrored the extreme pain we watched her endure and could do nothing to alleviate.  They were the only way that I could express the myriad feelings of that time and to this day fill me with emotion.

That is, in short, how this series came about and why I still show the work on my website.  My work has evolved over the years but  this work remains perhaps the closest to me.

exile14-smallexile15-small
exile16-small

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Where Does the Red Flute Live?

Posted in Early Paintings, Influences, tagged , on December 19, 2008| 1 Comment »

Red FluteThis is an older painting from the mid 90’s that I call Red Flute.  It was one of the last Exiles pieces and one that always pleases me very much when I come across it in my files.  I wonder, when I look at a piece such as this, how the person who has this painting in their home or office views it.  Do they stop and look at it at all or has it melded with all the other artifacts in their life, a background to their existence?  Have they created their own myth of  the red flute and its meaning?

I often wonder what part, if any, the paintings play in the lives of those who acquire them.  I hear stories such as the one from Kada Gallery owner Kathy DeAngelo who told me about her son who lives in California and has a small piece of mine.  When he and his mate leave home for any period of time they take the piece with them for fear it might be stolen.

A young lady several years ago told me that she owned a painting of mine that traveled with her and while she had been living in Brazil she had specifically told the lady who cleaned her apartment to never touch the piece.  She said the housekeeper would veer around the part of the wall where the painting hung.

I am fortunate to hear such stories and it’s gratifying to know that your work can live on as a part of other people’s lives.  It’s one of those motivators on those days when the whole act of painting seems foreign and very abstract, when you stop in mid-stroke wondering, “Why am I doing this?” 

And I’ve had a few of those…

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