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Archive for the ‘Quote’ Category

Found Truth

Posted in Event, Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , on September 20, 2018| Leave a Comment »

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Creative scientists and saints expect revelation and do not fear it. Neither do children. But as we grow up and we are hurt, we learned not to trust.

― Madeleine L’Engle

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This new painting is called Found Truth. It is a larger piece, 36″ by 36″ on canvas, and is part of the group of new work that will be traveling with me on Saturday down to the Principle Gallery for my Gallery Talk there.

This is a painting that very much speaks to me personally. Its scale and the initial impression it makes whenever my eyes look its way give it a sense of strength, of bold statement. And I think that is exactly what it is for me– a statement piece.

Maybe that is why I see it having a title that deals with the idea of the revelation of truth. It could the revelation of one’s inner truth or any number of other truths that make up our reality. Or maybe it is all of them because perhaps all truths are part of one larger truth.

I don’t really know. I’m still waiting for that moment of revelation.

I’m no saint so maybe I am a creative scientist, as Madeleine L’Engle writes above, because I do not fear it and do expect it. Oh, there are days when I revert to a more closed off stance, stepping back from that mound where the Red Tree stands, that spot where I have been completely exposed and vulnerable. The problem is that in order to receive revelation you have to make yourself vulnerable. In this open state you are susceptible to being hurt but, more importantly, you are in position to recognize and accept revelation.

That place of vulnerability is a spot many of us avoid, certainly as L’Engle points out, because of being hurt once or maybe many times before and the distrust this has fostered in us. None of us wants to be hurt and exposing yourself to the world creates that possibility.

So we harden our attitudes and our hearts, closing ourselves off. But in the process we also pull back from the light that nurtures us, that feeds our growth. The light that reveals the truth that we once sought and expected.

That’s how I see this painting, the Red Tree being exposed and vulnerable atop that mound. The clouds represent the perils of being there but beyond them is the light of self revelation– the reward of persevering one’s own vulnerability.

This all somehow makes sense in the small space of my mind. Hope you see it somewhat the same way in your own.

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Reminder:

Gallery Talk at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA this Saturday, September 22 at 1 PM.

Painting(s?) Giveaway, Prizes, Good Conversation, Some Stories and Some Laughs.

 

 

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The Moon’s Revelation

Posted in Event, Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , on September 19, 2018| 3 Comments »

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Art has no other purpose than to brush aside… the conventional and accepted generalities, in short everything that veils reality from us, in order to bring us face to face with reality itself.

–Henri Bergson

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This is another new painting, 16″ by 20″ on canvas, that is part of the group of work going with me to Alexandria on Saturday for my Gallery Talk (begins at 1 PM!) at the Principle Gallery. I call it The Moon’s Revelation and I have spent a lot of time over the past few weeks looking at it, both taking pleasure in it and questioning what I was seeing in it.

What purpose, if any, does it hold?

The question of purpose is a big theme for me lately. My own purpose and that of my work. The purpose of truth. Of institutions and laws. I can’t say if I have found answers any of these questions. But I still believe that there are clues leading to my own purpose somewhere in this piece and others.

They just have to be revealed, in the way the moon brings the colors of the fields to light in this painting.

Time , as always, shall be the revelator.

 

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And the Sky Cracked

Posted in Biographical, Music, Painting, Quote, tagged , , , , , , on September 18, 2018| 1 Comment »

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I am a being of Heaven and Earth, of thunder and lightning, of rain and wind, of the galaxies.

–eden ahbez

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The painting shown above is a new piece, a smallish 6″ by 12″ canvas, that will be going to the Principle Gallery on Saturday for my Gallery Talk there. Its title is And the Sky Cracked and is part of a small recent series that features my interpretations of lightning strikes. How accurate they are in a realistic or scientific way, I can’t say. That doesn’t really hold much sway for me, at least not as much as capturing how the lightning feels to me.

Lightning is an amazing thing, a natural wonder that inspires awe and fear like it was some sort of god. No wonder so many religions give their main gods the power to wield lightning. It can destroy yet can also illuminate, bringing clarity to a course of action. Being struck by lightning is how we often describe moments of the revelation of great truths, of moments of self-discovery that alter the lives of those who experience these moments.

Like the finger of a god pointing the way and giving light to the path forward.

Powerful stuff.

Walking through my woods I often see the traces of past lightning strikes etched in the bark of the trees. Some have splits that run from their tops all the way to the way to the ground, blackened by the heat of the electricity that surged through them. In the case of some recent strikes, the ground at the base of the tree is burnt where the cracked bark of the trunk runs into the soil.

We had one strike several years back that was like a multitude of shotgun blasts going off outside our door, so close there was not thunder to give us warning. The next morning I saw that an old, large white pine down our driveway had been hit by the lightning. A deep crack ran down one of its thick upper branches down into the main trunk.

About forty feet away I noticed a chunk of pine the size of a large brick laying in the grass. Looking back at the trunk I immediately saw the spot where it had been blown away from the tree, no doubt the boiling sap of the pine finding a weak spot there in which to explode.

About a year later, that large branch, the size of a mature tree in itself, came down in another storm. The power to destroy.

Here is another in this lightning series that will also be with me on Saturday. It is called Real Power and is an 18″ by 18″ canvas.

The quote at the top is from eden ahbez, perhaps one of the earliest hippies back in the 1940’s and the man who wrote the song Nature Boy, most famously recorded by Nat King Cole. I wrote about ahbez here back in 2009 and Nature Boy remains a favorite of mine. Below is the Nat King Cole version.

Hope you can make it to the Gallery Talk at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria on Saturday. It starts at 1 PM and there is at least one painting to be given away along with some other goodies. Oh, and some good conversation. See you there!

 

 

 

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Echo

Posted in Music, Painting, Poetry, Quote, tagged , , , , , , on September 16, 2018| 3 Comments »

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Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

–Carl Sandburg

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I like this line from poet Carl Sandburg. I think any artform acts in that way, as an echo of the person who formed it trying to bring that created remembrance forever to life. I often write about trying to see that sense of life in my work, that quality where the work has a feeling of movement–life— and seems to speak with its own voice.

What it is saying is an echo of what I was feeling in the moment it was created. And if I have done my job well, it sets these echos, these shadows, dancing. A reverberation from the past, the creators own echo sent into the future. A voice that will continue to speak, to echo, long after its creator has gone.

Or as Victor Hugo similarly stated: What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past.

Maybe it’s too early on a Sunday morning to try to work on logic that is somewhat circular. I think I’ve said what I want to say here but the better part of it might still be in my head. Alas, that’s the way it will have to stay.

For this Sunday morning music here’s a fittingly titled song, Echo, from the celebrated British folk trio, Talisk. It has a building intensity that I very much like. Give a listen.

The painting at the top is a new piece  whose title is A World of Mystery, an 18″ by 24″ on canvas. It is headed to Alexandria with me next Saturday, September 22 for my annual Gallery Talk at the Principle Gallery. The talk, which starts at 1 PM, features a drawing for a painting of mine as well as several other goodies. Hope to see you there.

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A Seuss-y Morning

Posted in Current Events, Favorite Things, Quote, tagged , , on September 15, 2018| Leave a Comment »

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Nonsense wakes up the brain cells. And it helps develop a sense of humor, which is awfully important in this day and age. Humor has a tremendous place in this sordid world. It’s more than just a matter of laughing. If you can see things out of whack, then you can see how things can be in whack.

–Dr. Seuss
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Feeling a little Dr. Seuss-y this morning. It has been my experience– a lifelong one, at that– that when I am flummoxed by this world, a little Dr. Seuss often provides a positive way forward. After reading an article about the influence of the late economist James Buchanan on current events, I needed a pick me up.
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I am not going to go into detail here about his theories and how they have been behind many of the economic and political moves that have brought us the vast economic inequality and burgeoning corporate oligarchy present today.  I will say that it definitely made me see things as  being out of whack and I had a real need for some Dr. Seuss style humor and nonsense.
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I believe he is correct in saying that nonsense wakes up the brain cells. Just the imagining of absurdity causes one to take different perspectives, to try to see things in different lights. That is the basis for empathy and altruism, things that are in short supply in world that seems to be more and more running according to Buchanan’s theories.
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Give me The Lorax or  Green Eggs and Ham any day. Then maybe I can see the world back in whack.

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Baziotes

Posted in Favorite Things, Quote, tagged , , on September 13, 2018| Leave a Comment »

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.Each painting has its own way of evolving. When the painting is finished, the subject reveals itself.

–William Baziotes
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William Baziotes is another painter you probably don’t know. He had a relatively short life, dying at age 51 in 1963 from lung cancer. His work has garnered a following over the years with some of his work approaching the million dollar pricetag at auction yet his name most likely is not known to but a few.
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He was born in Pittsburgh and worked throughout his career in NYC. He started as an abstract expressionist but transitioned into primitivism and automatism, which is attempting to paint completely detached from conscious thought. I like that idea but don’t think one can ever fully separate the mind and the work.
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There’s a lot I like in his work, especially the quality and complexity of his color. As for the quote above, it’s a thought that I firmly believe. Sometimes, even when starting with a goal in mind, you have no idea what a painting is truly about until the final stroke has been placed and you step back. Only then does it reveal what it has to say. Sometimes it is quite different than you thought it might be while working on it.
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And that is sometimes a welcome revelation.
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Heade’s Approaching Thunderstorm/ Redux

Posted in Current Events, Favorite Things, Painting, Quote, tagged , , on September 12, 2018| 3 Comments »

I ran this post about five years ago. It’s running again because the painting featured is a favorite of mine. But more than that, it seems to fit this time as well as any current artwork. I have added a quote from John Updike commenting on some of the works of the artist, Martin Johnson Heade. He points out attributes in Heade’s landscapes that I hope to find in my own work.

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“Heade’s calm is unsteady, storm-stirred; we respond in our era to its hint of the nervous and the fearful. His weather is interior weather, in a sense, and he perhaps was, if far from the first to portray a modern mood, an ambivalent mood tinged with dread and yet imbued with a certain lightness.The mood could even be said to be religious: not an aggressive preachment of God’s grandeur but a kind of Zen poise and acceptance, represented by the small sedentary or plodding foreground figures that appear uncannily at peace as the clouds blacken and the lightning flashes.”

― John Updike, Still Looking: Essays on American Art

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I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned Martin Johnson Heade here. This is really an oversight on my part as some of his work was really influential on the direction of my work early on, even though to the casual observer it may not seem apparent. After all, our styles and methods of painting were wildly different. The intensity of the color and contrast in his paintings of the floral subjects and tropical birds that he completed during his long and prolific career (born 1819 and died in 1904) really made me want to push my own color ahead. There is a site, Martin Johnson Heade- The Complete Works, that has his complete works online where you can see the great quality of his color and use of contrast.

But the painting shown at the top, Approaching Thunderstorm, from the Metropolitan Museum is my favorite Heade painting. The forms of the  black water of the lake set against the vibrant color of the shoreline is striking and  a most ominous storm cloud churns toward the boaters who have not yet fully heeded the signs of the oncoming storm.

It was painted in 1859, in the years before our country exploded in civil war. This painting was part of a cultural movement of the time that depicted the tension gripping our nation in metaphorical terms. The metaphor is strong and obvious in this painting with the dark band of the river symbolizing the division between the pro-slavery/states rights factions and the abolitonist/republican side. Several prominent abolitionist preachers of the era owned versions of this painting, many often referring to this coming storm in their sermons.

Knowing this makes me appreciate the painting on a different level. But it is still about the sheer emotional impact of the color and forms that hit me long before I knew its history. There is a tension and that feeling of stillness that occurs in the moment just before action occurs, something I have tried to capture in my own work at times. I still find this piece brilliant and inspiring.

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Striving on the Wind

Posted in Event, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , , on September 7, 2018| 2 Comments »

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To desire and strive to be of some service to the world, to aim at doing something which shall really increase the happiness and welfare and virtue of mankind – this is a choice which is possible for all of us; and surely it is a good haven to sail for.

-Henry Van Dyke

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This is a new painting that is part of a group of new work that will be going down to Alexandria with me next Saturday for my annual Gallery Talk at the Principle Gallery. I call this 16″ by 20″ painting Striving on the Wind.

I really enjoy painting these pieces with sailboats even though I must confess that I know practically nothing about sailing or boats in general. But the nature of the compositions with the bands of horizontal color  and the lure of the wide open sky along with the captured movement of the boats on the waves and in the sails makes it a tremendously appealing subject. Billowing sails on the waves under a big sky is a thing of beauty, even to this landlubber.

Plus, these pieces come with the inherent concept of the journey, the idea that there is an intended goal toward which the boat is headed. They have a built in sense of purpose. I can only imagine that sailing to a far destination is an act of total purpose, requiring the sailor’s complete focus and unwavering attention to keep the boat on course and afloat.

A sinking boat has lost its purpose.

And that sense of purpose is important to me, something I have always wanted to recognize in my own life. I think it must be equally important to many other folks out there. And I think that symbolism comes through in these pieces. Hopefully, the words at the top from author Henry Van Dyke align with that sense of purpose.

As he said: …surely it is a good haven to sail for.

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Striving on the Wind, along with a number of other new paintings, will be at the Principle Gallery next Saturday, September 15,  where I will be giving a Gallery Talk beginning at 1 PM. As is now tradition, there will be a drawing where one of my paintings will be awarded to someone in attendance along with some other neat prizes and plenty of good conversation. Hope to see you there!

 

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The Freshening

Posted in Event, Painting, Philosophy, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , on September 5, 2018| Leave a Comment »

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Truth has no continuity. It is the mind that wants to make the experience which it calls truth continuous, and such a mind shall not know truth. Truth is always new; it is to see the same smile, and see that smile newly, to see the same person, and see that person anew, to see the waving palms anew, to meet life anew. 

― Jiddu Krishnamurti, The Book of Life: Daily Meditations with Krishnamurti

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I was looking for some words to put with this new painting that is part of a group of work that is going with me to my Gallery Talk at the Principle Gallery next Saturday, September 15. I came across the words above from the late Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti and at first kind of scoffed at the idea that truth has no continuity. I immediately thought that truth, above all things, has continuity. It’s this idea that truth is some sort of nebulous form, always changing and never set, that has us in the situation we now face as a nation.

I believed that truth- especially objective, fact-based truth- was a straight unwavering line running from its inception until the end of time.

But the truth he describes is a different sort of truth. It’s a subjective truth based on our perceptions. How we see the world around us. To see truth, especially these subjective truths, as something set in concrete closes off the mind. We begin to look at the world with blind eyes and a mind filled with the truths of yesterday. We fail to see the beauty and freshness of the renewed truth that is before us in every present moment.

We may have seen yesterday’s sunrise and that has its own truth, its own set of conditions. Today’s may seem to have the same truth but it is always different, slightly changed. The same goes for each of us. We were one person yesterday but in some small and almost imperceptible way  we have changed. We may feel a bit older. A bit wiser. A bit happier or sadder or any number of different things. But we are not the same today as we were yesterday.

Our truth has changed.

And there is something wonderful in that. Oh, I know we would often like things, our truths of the past, to remain the same as we remember them. There’s reassurance in those static touchstones that clutter our memories. But today is a new truth under a new sky and a newly changed sun. The world is freshened and made new. It has a new truth of its own and it is our task, our hope and our joy to discover it anew.

I find that thought to be a fine basis for this painting, an 18″ by 36″ canvas that I call The Freshening. Winter is a perfect example of this idea of constant renewal. The falling snow creates a new truth, alters our perceptions of the world we see. It creates a new truth. And its melting creates yet another revelation of truth. As does the rising of the new day’s sun.

Maybe that seems a naive way of looking at the world in these complex times where truth means something different to so many different people. But there are simple truths  that make up our existence and looking at them in a simplified manner might not be such a bad thing.

Like looking at the world in the first light of day after a snowfall– freshened and new.

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My Gallery Talk at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria takes place on Saturday, September 15, beginning at 1 PM. There will be a painting giveaway, some other prizes, surprises, good conversation and puppets. Lots of puppets. Okay, that last part isn’t true. But you won’t know for sure unless you come.

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Paula Modersohn-Becker/Color

Posted in Favorite Things, Quote, tagged , , , on September 4, 2018| 3 Comments »

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I love color. It must submit to me. And I love art. I kneel before it, and it must become mine. Everything around me glows with passion. Every day reveals a new red flower, glowing, scarlet red. Everyone around me carries them. Some wear them quietly hidden in their hearts. And they are like poppies just opening, of which one can see only here and there a hint of red petal peeking out from the green bud.

–Paula Modersohn-Becker
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Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907) is yet another artist that is unknown to most of us. I know she was not known to me and as I was going through the images of her paintings from her tragically short career, I feel selfishly saddened for the loss of what more she might have had in store for us.
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Born in Germany, her actual artistic career lasted less than a decade but her work had great influence in the European art world of the early 20th century. Perhaps a leading edge of the Modernist movement to come, she worked only in tempera with a limited palette of colors and worked with simplified forms, sometimes scratching the painted surface to create her distinct textures.
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She died at the age of 31 from a post partum embolism.
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I love her quote at the top, how we all carry colorful red flowers with us. Some of us hide our flowers and others wear them for all to see. The artist’s chore – or gift- is to discover and express that red flower.
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Take a look below at some of the paintings from Paula Modersohn-Becker.
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