Today there is none of that other stuff here– I won’t even utter the “P” word here this morning. As promised, today is about art and music.
This morning I want to link a song and a painting and the piece shown above immediately came to mind. It’s a 20″ by 10″ canvas titled Voyager Blue that is included in my current show, Contact, at the West End Gallery. It has a definite narrative to it, with the small almost indistinguishable figure at the horizon serving as The Seeker, which is often the character that figures portray when they appear in my work. The Seeker constantly searches for meaning, for purpose and for answers in this life.
The song I thought I would attach to this painting is the great folk classic The Midnight Special. This song, whose lyrics first appeared in 1905, is about a prisoner who longs for his freedom and symbolizes it in the form of The Midnight Special, a night train that would carry them away from the despair of their imprisonment. There was an actual Midnight Special train that ran between Chicago and St. Louis but the one depicted in this song is considered to be more likely a train on the Missouri Pacific line, the Houstonian, that ran between Houston and New Orleans, departing just before midnight.
But maybe it simply refers to the night train that is nearest to the prisoner singing for his freedom.
This song has been recorded many, many times over the past century by artists from Leadbelly to ABBA but today I chose a version from the Queen of American folk music, Odetta. It has a nice bluesy sway to it and seems like a good song to push off from on this Sunday morning.
Have a great day. I hope the Midnight Special shines her ever-loving light on you.
First thing this morning, many thanks to everyone who came out to the West End Gallery on Friday night for the opening of my show there. I am most appreciative for anyone who takes the time on a hot Friday summer evening to come into the gallery. It was great seeing old and new friends as well as seeing how they reacted to the work, which was hung beautifully by Lin and Jesse. They did a great job pairing the paintings with original glass work — each seemed to reflect and enhance the other.
The race leader this year is past two-time Tour winner Chris Froome, a Kenyan-born Brit whose skinny frame hides a huge diesel motor within that seems to just chug and chug without end. Froome’s dominance is quite remarkable but just enduring such a race is incredible in itself. Three weeks with only two days of rest that covers about 2100 miles that wind around France and neighboring countries, up and over the highest peaks and mountain passes in the Alps and Pyrenees. 
It’s been a warm summer. I guess for some of us that’s an understatement. The mowed lawns are burned to the color of Shredded Wheat and ponds show more and more of their banks as the water levels slowly descend. There’s a dustiness in the air from the driveway that coats everything and the thickness of the heat has me dreaming of hopefully cooler days ahead in the fall and winter.
What a time, what a time…
I am really swamped in the studio getting work ready for my upcoming show at the West End Gallery. Too much to d0 so I wasn’t going to write anything today except maybe mention the start this morning of this year’s Tour de France, one of the great spectacles of world sport. This great bicycling event starts at Mont Saint Michel, an old abbey on a tidal island off the of coast Normandy, France. As you can see in the photo above, it’s an amazing sight, one that always stirs some mysterious emotional response within me.
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.
I spent ninety percent of my money on wine, women and song and just wasted the other ten percent.
Just a short entry today for Father’s Day. It probably seems like a questionable choice to select Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone from the mighty Temptations as the song for this Sunday. It’s a song about an absent father and his son who is trying to discover who and what his father truly was. Not deeply sentimental and definitely not warm and fuzzy.
It’s hard to believe that Paul Simon has been a major part of the American songbook for over 50 years, since The Sound of Silence arrived back in 1964. If you want to get technical, Simon has been writing and recording since 1957. So it’s closer to 60 years. And through all that time, he has continued to move forward, never opting to cruise by on a well-built reputation and a deep body of stellar work.
Redtree Times 