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Archive for the ‘Recent Paintings’ Category

Show Tonight

Posted in Recent Paintings, tagged on July 15, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Well, another opening tonight.  It’s for my new show, Avatars,  at the West End Gallery in Corning, one that I’ve been featuring work from over the last couple of weeks.  This is my eleventh solo exhibit at the West End so there is a definite familiarity with everything but that doesn’t make it any less angst-filled, a condition I’ve described all too often here in the blog.

I won’t bore you with that today.

I will say that I really am pleased with this group of work.  The gallery has a very warm feel with the way the work hangs together and there is a sense of completeness.  I tend to view each show not from my judgement of individual pieces but rather how the group works as a single entity.  Looking at a hung show is like looking at painting for me, taking it all in and instantly weighing how each element affects the next, how each affects the overall look of the whole.  And with this show, there’s a feeling that each piece is in its proper place.  Completeness, as I said.

Of course, it’s easier to reach that feeling of completeness when there is a consistency of strength in the individual paintings.  I think this show has great strength throughout it.  That’s just my opinion, which should come as no surprise, but this is a really difficult group for me to pull out only one or two pieces that I could use as the answer when asked, as I always am, which paintings from a show are my favorites.  I could say that nearly every piece here is my favorite.  I know that sounds like a parent asked to choose which child is their favorite.  But, like a parent, I see things in each  that speak to me, that make each significant in its own way.  Things that make me proud as a parent. 

 So, I may not be able to tell you which is my most favorite but I will be able to tell you what I see in each that makes it special to me.  I  actually like seeing what paintings other people choose as their favorite, comparing what they see in each to my own feelings about the piece.  That’s one of the highlights of each show for me.

If you’re in Corning tonught, please stop in at the West End Gallery and take a look.  I would be glad to hear if you have a favorite.

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The Calm Ahead

Posted in Recent Paintings, tagged on July 14, 2011| 1 Comment »

I see this painting that is part of the West End show that opens tomorrow night, The Calm Ahead, as a sort of personal aspiration, a goal to be reached.  I was in a gallery the other day and the person that I was speaking with asked about the tranquility that he saw in the paintings.  He wanted to know if that mirrored my own personal calm.

I responded by telling him that the purpose of these paintings for myself is to pacify my own fears and anxieties.  I told him that they were not a reflection but were instead a hoped-for endpoint.  They are what I wish to be-  calm and at peace with themself and the world around them.  I said that I felt that I was closer on that road to this place than I was not too long ago.

And that is really what I feel about this painting.  It is an idealization of the placid mind, the Red Tree standing tall and self-assured as it is bathed in the golden light from the sky.  I see the fork in the road as being symbolic of the choices that must be made as we make our way through the landscape of our life.  Some will take us to that place we desire and some will take us further away.  I see the fields as representing the work and toil of our lives, as those labors which sustain us.

That’s the short take on this piece.  I could say more but I think that says all that needs to be said. 

The Calm Ahead is 14″ by 24″ on mounted paper and is set in a 20″ by 30″ frame.  It is, as previously noted, part of the Avatars show at the West End Gallery in Corning, NY that opens with a reception tomorrow evening, July 15th.

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Testify

Posted in Recent Paintings, tagged on July 12, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Another painting from this year’s West End Gallery show, opening  this Friday.  This piece is titled Testify and is 8″ by 26″ on paper.  Set in a white mat and wider black frame, its rich color gives it a real visual pop on the wall.  While it was in the studio, it was a painting that I found myself glancing at on a regular basis, my eye pulled to the deep oranges and yellows and the contrasting black trees that almost form a cage in the scene, which is the basis for the painting’s title.

I see the Red Tree here as the obvious central character, one that is making a testimony, an avowal, of some sort.   Some might see the word testify and take it for the evangelical meaning where one testifies or outwardly professes their faith.  Others might see testify in the legal sense where one is giving evidence.  For me, it is, in a sense, both.  I see the Red Tree as testifying to its own existence, as declaring that it has substance in this world, that is has a mind and voice of its own that must be heard.  It is existential truth.

The black bony trees serve as witnesses to this testimony.  You could see them as willing witnessses, reinforcing the Red Tree’s declaration of self.   In this view, their curves almost remind one of a celebrant in some sort of religious ecstasy, dancing and gesturing to the heavens.  But to me, with their united and encaging stance they seem to be trying to quiet the single voice of the Red Tree.  Their is a somewhat ominous quality to them in, a dark wall over which the Red Tree is trying to assert its truth.

Well, that’s how I read it at this point.  I have to restate that when I start a piece such Testify I am not going in with any idea that this is what I will be trying to convey.  I have no idea where the paint will take me and even now, as I sit writing this post, I am seeing things in it that evaded me before.  It’s as though I am almost looking at someone else’s work and trying to discern what it is saying to me.  I think that is when the work is most effective– when I don’t know what i want to say and just let the paint speak for itself.

I would testify to that.

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Time Dormant

Posted in Recent Paintings, tagged , on July 11, 2011| 1 Comment »

My show at the West End Gallery in Corning opens this coming Friday, July 15,  and this week I will be featuring several pieces from the show. This is my eleventh solo show at the West End and I really try to make each show have its own look and feel.  I think this year’s show, called Avatars, really accomplishes that goal.  I saw the show after it had been hung in the gallery and there’s a real continuity between the works as well as a clean overall spareness that echoes the quiet of many of the pieces.  It has a sense of calm throughout, a tranquility that I have long sought and often wrote about here.

This is a smaller piece, about 10″ by 10″ on paper, that I call Time Dormant.  It’s a painting that uses the exposed strata of the earth below to create a sense of passed time as well as a visual rhythm that plays off the darker trees above that rise in tangents from the earth.  The white of the moon serves as a cool distant eye that witnesses this passage of time as well as being a focal point that brings the elements together.

This use of strata is a spin-off from my Archaeology series and is really about creating the rhythm I mentioned above with strands of color that have an organic quality that seems natural and right to the eye.  My hope is  that this sense of rightness will make them register almost intuitively with the viewer who will immediately sense what these layers denote without much thought.  Again, that’s my hope.   It may not be the overriding factor, or a factor at all, in whether the piece appeals to a viewer.  I can never really know that.

But I do know that I like the calm in this small painting, this feeling of being connected to an eternal pause in time.  There is a soothing quality that speaks of something more than the eye sees.

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The Sharing

Posted in Recent Paintings, tagged on July 8, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Well, the work for my show at the West End Gallery, Avatars, is complete and ready to be delivered later today.  Always a relief to be finished.   I’m pretty happy with this group of work and think it will hang well in the gallery.  One of the last pieces that I completed for this show is shown here.  Called The Sharing, it’s a 24″ by 24″ canvas and it has a great glow that I hope is showing on the computer screen.

The title comes from a few quick thoughts on the nature of sharing as seen in this piece.  The intertwined trees represent two beings sharing a life together, the trees strengthening one another,  one sharing the burden of support  for the other. They also represent a shared responsibility for the work that is required to sustain life.    The fields represent that work as well as the sharing of resources within a community. 

There is an idealistic quality to this piece, one of a common good that serves everyone.  Of an ideal world where we gladly accept part of the burden of those in need.  We are all made better by sharing.

This is not as eloquently put as I would like.  These are just off the cuff thoughts about this painting and what I see in it.  As I’ve said a hundred times before, you may see something completely different.

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Enigmatic Family Pictures

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged on July 5, 2011| 1 Comment »

I’m in the last few days of preparation before the delivery of my new show, Avatars, to the West End Gallery in Corning, which opens on July 15, next Friday,with an opening that starts at 5 PM.  This is one of the paintings from that show, an 11″ by 11″  piece that I call Family Pictures. 

 It’s a continuation of the work that started primarily as black and gray work and has slowly evolved into more of a sepiatone with dashes of color.  The sepia adds to the feeling of old family photos that gives this piece its name.  I see the red chair and the self-referencing picture hanging in this scene as the basis for this painting.  As the title of the show implies, they are both avatars for the living, in this case descending generations of a family.

At least that’s what I think it might mean.

I was intrigued by this piece from the moment it was done and find myself going back to it over and over.  I can’t really put a finger on it but there’s something here that draws me in personally, that poses questions that I can’t yet answer.  Actually, the questions themself are enigmatic and hard to discern.  But I keep looking with the hope that questions and answers will reveal themselves at some point.  But while I’m waiting the simple geometry of the composition is somehow soothing and protective and the red of the chair and the picture pulse like a heartbeat in that sepia room, creating a rhythm that soon blends with my own.

Like looking at family pictures.

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Avatars

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged on June 29, 2011| Leave a Comment »

This is the painting that is featured on the invitation for my next , Avatars, which opens July 15th at the West End Gallery.  It is titled The New Avatar and is 23″ by 33″ and on paper.

I chose to use the word avatar as the title because I wanted to have people look beyond the surface of the piece, past the representational quality of the work.  Past the idea of the painting as a landscape.  I wanted to stress the  idea that the painting and its subject is symbolic of something more, something beyond the apparent.

 An avatar is the incarnation or manifestation of a person or idea.  In Hinduism, this incarnation is of an Immortal Being or the Ultimate Supreme Being, usually Vishnu, the Preserver.  The word avatar is derived from the Sanskrit and means descent and usually implies a descent into mortal realms for special purposes, to instruct or to guide.

Maybe that’s too much to ask for paint smeared on a surface but I wanted to at least open it to the possibility of being more than it seems.  More than a Red Tree.  More than a Red-Roofed house.  More than a Red Chair.  I hoped that the viewer might see something in the work that might reveal itself only to them, something that would be an avatar for what they needed or desired in their own lives.

Again, that’s asking a lot for what seem to be simple landscapes.  I may never know if I’ve succeeded in this aspiration.  That may not matter.  Just continuing  to find a new avatar in each new piece that speaks to me, that reveals some sort of meaning if only for my eyes, may be the final reward. 

 And that is good enough for me. 

 

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Secret Inside

Posted in Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , on June 27, 2011| 9 Comments »

We dance round in a ring and suppose, While the secret sits in the middle and knows.

–Robert Frost

**************

This is a new painting,  in size about 11″ square  on paper, that I will be showing at my next show that opens in a little over two weeks at the West End Gallery in Corning.  I call this piece Secret Inside.

I really didn’t know what to think of this piece after I painted it.  All of the elements fell into place strictly from a compositional standpoint, without a lot of rumination over meaning or intent.  Theysimply worked in the context of the scene.  It wasn’t until I had time to step back and study it for a bit that it started to reveal its meaning to me.  Or at least what it means to me.  You might see it differently.

I began to see the interior scene as the secret self, the part of us that we seldom expose to the outer world, which is seen out the window.  The guitar represents our hidden self-expression and creativity.  The painting on the wall (looks suspiciously like one of mine) represents the desire for beauty and the book on the table, the desire for knowledge.  The empty bottle symbolizes our weaknesses, our vices.  Perhaps the desire to forget. 

The table shows what might be seen illuminated in a glimpse from the outside and the overall darkness of the interior reveals itself as that dark part of us that is never visible to the outer world.  Or which we hope is never visible.

As I’ve said many times before here, this is only my personal take on this.  You might see something completely different, perhaps something much less symbolic or you might see it as something darker, more sinister. 

It all depends on your own secrets inside.

 

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(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay

Posted in Favorite Things, Recent Paintings, Video, tagged , on June 24, 2011| Leave a Comment »

This is a new piece that I just completed for my next show which opens in a scant three weeks at the West End Gallery in Corning.  This is a smaller painting, at just over 6″ by 14″ on paper that I’m calling Island of Memory.  It incorporates two of my icons, the Red Tree and the Red Chair, in a simple composition that recalls much of my earlier work.  It also is divided into two large blocks of color with a ribbon of white between the two parts, also like the earlier work.

I have mentioned the Red Chair signifying memory for me and in this painting it takes on that role.  It seems that often our memories become unique through time and  a memory of an event might only exist for one single person even though others might have witnessed the same event .   The event may not have etched itself as deeply in the minds of the others or may not have much significance.  Or they may remember it in a much different way, perhaps a differing aspect of whatver happened, if they remember it at all.  That is what I see here– the idea of a recollection exisiting in one small place.  I know I’m not doing this justice with this explanation.

It also reminds me of the classic Otis Redding song, (Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay, a song which fills my own island with memories.  I listened to that single hundreds, maybe thousands of times growing up yet I’ve avoided using it on this site.   I always felt a protective attachment to it and it’s always bothered me when other singers (and non-singers– I’m reminded of a hysterical George Hamilton version of it from the late 60’s) covered this song through the years.  It seems like these other versions somehow pulled from the special nature of Otis Redding’s version, making it less special.  The awful histrionics of Michael Bolton come to mind.  But all I have to do is hear the simple ease and strength of Otis’ rendition and those thoughts fade to nothing.

It is a special song.  And it seems to go along in tone with this small painting.  Give a listen…

 

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The M Is For Moonlight

Posted in Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged on June 21, 2011| 2 Comments »

I finished this painting yesterday, a 12″ by 36″ canvas called Moonlight Theatre.  I really enjoy working on these pieces.  They grow very organically, one bit leading to the next, and easily absorb my full attention making time fly by.  When I started I fully intended to work on a landscape, one with a few red-roofed houses.  I even started in the lower right corner with one of my typical windowless houses.  I started to put my brush to the canvas for another hosue when I stopped and began to sense that there was a cityscape here instead.  So it came to be.

I opted for windows and doors in this painting, something I only use on rare occasions.  I normally like the anonymity that comes from windowless structures in these paintings but here there is that same sense even with the windows.  They’re like the eyes and faces of a crowd of people crossing the street in a large city, aloof with little recognition of anything around them as they move.  If their eyes are like windows, they’re open but you can’t see in.  The same here.

I finished most of the painting before putting the M on the marquee of the theatre in the forefront of the piece.  I had already decided that the marquee was the focal point of the painting and wanted it to lead to or be influenced by the title.   I saw this as a city at night and felt that the word moonlight was in there somewhere.  That’s when I decided on the M for the marquee.  Moonlight Theatre.

Cheri came into the studio soon after I had finished and, after looking at it, asked  ” Is that M your initial?  Aren’t we a little self-centered?”

I hadn’t even considered that when I chose the M.  It was always for Moonlight but I could see how it could look that way.  I immediately thought of changing the M.  Maybe an O for Orpheum, which is a common name for theatres.  But I decided to hold off.  I liked the M and its angles in this piece– it just seemed to fit.   Besides, it was already Moonlight Theatre in my mind.

So it stays.  For now, M is for Moonlight.

 

 

 

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