Redtree Times

Beguiled– Now at West End Gallery

I’ve seen the smiling of Fortune beguiling,
I’ve felt all its favours and found its decay;
Sweet was its blessing, kind its caressing,
But now it is fled, fled far, far away.

–Alison Cockburn, ‘The Flowers of the Forest’ (1765)

Just a short Thank You once more for the folks who came out in support of my show opening on Friday evening and to Jesse and Linda Gardner at the West End Gallery for all they have done for me over the past 30 years.

And thank you to every person who came out for yesterday’s No Kings rallies across the country. It is estimated that over 7 million concerned citizens hit the streets without any reports of arrests, violence, or major problems of any sort. This number doesn’t take into account those who participated in related protests around the world, most taking place around American embassies.

It was large and peaceful, and every single person did so for free, out of love and concern for their country. This reality stands in stark contrast to the ridiculous rhetoric from vacuous and vapid members of the GOP and the rightwing media that labeled the participants as either violent criminals and terrorists or paid partisans. 

With the desperation of these absurd claims, it is becoming crystal clear to more and more people that we are now in a race between an authoritarian regime on the verge of locking down control of this country and a growing and widening resistance seeking to prevent this.

Yesterday, was ample proof that resistance in the near future will be large and engaged.

Hope grows in such numbers.

Here’s this week’s Sunday Morning Music, from the one and only Ella Fitzgerald. This is her wonderful take on the Rodgers and Hart classic, Bewitched, Bothered, And Bewildered. It doesn’t get much better than this. It is paired with the new small piece at the top, Beguiled, from the West End Gallery show and a bit of verse from the Scottish poet/wit/hostess of the late 1700’s, Alison Cockburn.

Works for me…

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There are two freedoms – the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where he is free to do what he ought.

–Charles Kingsley, Charles Kingsley: His Letters and Memories of His Life (1877)

On the morning after a show opening, I would normally simply thank everyone who came out the prior evening to see the new work and have an all too brief chat with me. I am doing that of course, for the folks who made it into the West End Gallery last night for the opening of Guiding Light.

I cannot be more appreciative for those folks, nor would I be anything less than effusive in my praise for them if I didn’t think that what is happening around the country today deserved attention here this morning.

Here and everywhere.

I am, of course, talking about the No Kings rallies that will be taking place all across the nation today. These peaceful gatherings of voices raised against the madness we are currently witnessing here in this country are vital shows of the strength and mass of opposing voices. It is important to show mass unity behind the rejection of those who seek to take away our freedoms and rights and who seek to exert control over our thoughts, words, and movements. To stand against those whose deepest desire is to make this country this a kingdom, dividing it into to baronies and duchies for their king’s wealthy enablers.

My own loosely formed credo has always been that I just want to be left alone and so long as others are not attacking or harming me or anyone else, I will leave them alone in return.

But when that pact is broken and others are attacked or harmed it is my duty, my obligation, and my responsibility to speak up. It is that simple– if I don’t stand for others, who will stand for me?

That is the price of freedom that must be paid.

If we can’t pay that price or are kept from doing so, we are no longer free.

As former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas wrote in a dissenting opinion from 1952:

The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.

The millions that will be in the streets today are not terrorists nor are they partisans paid to be out there by nefarious organizations. Anyone with eyes and a handful of still operational brain cells understands that people will rise against tyranny on their own accord.

And fighting tyranny is truly on the table today. It is not opposition to the other party’s policies. It’s not about a matter of perspective or degree on any one issue.

It is black and white.

Decency versus indecency.

Compassion versus cruelty.

Unity versus division.

Justice versus the criminality of injustice.

Freedom versus subjugation.

Sorry to go on a rant this morning. However, it had to be said. I am sick of those who ignore or refuse to see what is clearly at hand.

If they aren’t willing to pay the price now, we will all pay dearly sooner rather than later.

Hit the streets, folks. Sing. Dance. Twerk in your frog costumes. Be strong but peaceful. Raise your voices on high.

That’s the cost of freedom.

Here’s song that you might want to keep in mind today from Crosby, Stills, and Nash.

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It is not what we have, but what we enjoy that constitutes our abundance.

—Epicurus, Principal Doctrines (ca 280 BC)

This is another new painting, 30″ high by 15″ wide on canvas, that is part of my Guiding Light show that opens tomorrow at the West End Gallery. It is titled Land of Plenty.

When I while I was working on it, and afterwards as well, I felt that its meaning was in how its colors and compositional rhythms expressed the beauty and plenitude of the farm fields and the surrounding landscape.

A vast cornucopia that provides for all.

That might still be correct but this morning I am not so sure. Taking the words above from Epicurus to heart, I looked at this piece from a different perspective. The lines that section off and divide the fields seemed to now serve as barriers that separated us from the surrounding abundance.

It was land owned by others. It wasn’t for everyone. As if it was owned by someone greedily saying: The land is rich and giving but only for me, not for thee.

I was seeing it as being representative of how we often talk about nations being wealthy or poor. For example, we like to boast that we are the wealthiest nation in the world. And looking at the fields and factories, the many banks and McMansions, or the numbers on multiple spreadsheets, that might be objectively true.

But that doesn’t mean it translates equally tor the average person. 

Now, before you start yelling Commie, Commie at me, let me explain where that fits into my thinking.

What I am saying is that we may be indeed surrounded by wealth and abundance, but we are not defined individually by it. As Epicurus stated 2300 years or so ago, it is not what we have but what we enjoy that defines our true wealth.

In this painting, at least for this morning, I see the Red Tee as being amidst the gold of the fields that are not available to it. But what is free and open to the Red Tree is the rising sun on the horizon, the fresh air it takes in, the beauty of the mountains that call in the distance, and the open road that winds through it all.

The freedom to simply be.

All that it needs in the moment.

That’s a land of plenty.

Take this all with a grain of salt. I don’t know how this will hold up as a reading of this painting. Probably won’t last until this afternoon, let alone tomorrow or a week from now.

And that’s okay because it’s not for me to explain it now. What I saw in it this morning is just the perception of a tired, anxious person still sipping his first cup of coffee in the dark.

It speaks for itself now in its own voice. Eventually someone will hear that voice and whatever truth that is in it will be revealed to them alone. 

And that is as it should be.

My annual solo show, this year titled Guiding Light, opens tomorrow, Friday, October 17, 2025. The show is now hanging in the gallery and is available for previews and prebuys. There is an Opening Reception from 5-7:30 PM. Hope you can make it there!

There is also a GALLERY TALK taking place on Saturday, November 1, beginning at 11 AM. Watch this space for further details.

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One Path Ends and Another Begins— At West End Gallery

Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.

–James Baldwin, The Price of the Ticket (1985)

Change is inevitable. Nature, from the expanse of the universe to the smallest microbes, is a constant series of adjustments and adaptations.

Nothing remains static or unchanged.

The courses of mighty rivers are constantly shifting. The largest boulders succumb eventually to weather.

Being creatures of born of nature and inhabitants on this spinning ball called Earth, it holds equally true for us humans. The paths we individually follow in our lives seldom run straight or forever.

Things happen. Circumstances change, sometimes drastically. Sometimes these changes come as a conscious decision. That’s pretty rare. We tend to find a level of comfort on the path we are following and seldom opt to jump to a new and unknown one.

No, change often come without us requesting or desiring it. This change arrives totally by surprise and sometimes in a most shocking manner. It shoves us off our normal path and when we regain our footing, we discover that the path we found so comfortable and homey is no more.

But there is a different path ahead. It’s not the same and we might even resist having to get on it at first. But from where we are, it is the path we must follow and somehow make our own. Change our strides to match the contours of the path and attempt to adapt to the different landscape that we now pass through.

Most of you have experienced such one path ending and another beginning. If not, you will at some point.

It is the rule of life, after all.

One path ends and another begins.

The thing to remember is that though these changes often knock us off our boots and make us feel frail and susceptible, the challenges we face on this new path we are forced to follow often reveals new strengths and aspects of ourselves we didn’t realize we possessed.

It might be a hard path, but it might well get you to where you need to be if you can embrace what it has to offer.

One path ends and another begins.

The new painting at the top is titled, unsurprisingly, One Path Ends and Another Begins. It is 10″ by 15″ on canvas and is part of Guiding Light, the solo exhibit of my new work at the West End Gallery on beautiful Market Street in Corning, NY.

Show opens this coming Friday, October 17, 2025. There is an Opening Reception from 5-7:30 PM. The show is now hanging in the gallery and is available for previews and prebuys.

There is also a GALLERY TALK taking place on Saturday, November 1, beginning at 11 AM. Watch this space for further details.

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Chasing the Elusive— Now at West End Gallery

What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.

–Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (1946)

I spent too much time already this morning writing about the link between the image of the new painting above and the words of Viktor Frankl. It ended up feeling off the point and empty. I was trying too hard which, oddly enough, was the point I was trying to make.

We often try to force things into place in meaningless ways, hoping to chase down joy and avoid the pain, suffering, and heartbreak that life presents us as part of the deal of existing. Pursuing this sort of joy is like running after dandelion seeds in the wind. The nearer you come to them in your chase, the more the air movement from your legs and arms causes them to move further away. 

Sometimes we must be reminded that joy and meaning are often hiding in the duties we are obligated to fulfill as humans. The meaning that comes in giving of yourself in the service and care of others, for example.

The joy of the selfless rather than the selfish.

I don’t know that this new painting, Chasing the Elusive, fully captures what I am stumbling around with my words this morning. I see it as being about the effort we often make in chasing down dreams and meaning that are actually within us all the time, attainable if we recognize the purpose found in our duty and love for others.

I am struggling with expressing this, as you can see. I am going to take my own advice and stop chasing it. Just let it be.

Let the dandelion seeds settle. 

The painting, Chasing the Elusive, is 8″ by 16″ on canvas and is included in this year’s edition of my annual solo show at the West End Gallery, Guiding Light, which opens this coming Friday, October 17. The opening reception for the show runs from 5-7 PM. 

Hope you can make it. 

Here’s a favorite composition, Gnossiene No. 1 from Erik Satie. This is a little different take on it from a group called Decostruttori Postmodernisti. Not sure if Satie would have ever envisioned his piece being played by with a theremin and trombone. That’s the way the world goes round, right?

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Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one’s weakness. … It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.

— Mahatma Gandhi (Young India, 23rd January 1930)

I always hesitate in using the word prayer in the titles for my work. I have never had the certainty of belief that faith requires so prayers for me felt like mailing wishes in an envelope without an address on it. It felt to me like a fruitless exercise if the message never went anywhere beyond myself. 

After a time though, I began to realize that prayer was not asking some astral father figure for things and situations that suited my personal preferences in any given moment. It was not about changing circumstances, about personally gaining, about winning battles or defeating enemies or overcoming disease.

No, it was more about finding the peace of mind and the sense of acceptance needed to cope with life as it is.  About finding a path through chaos. About finding stillness amidst the din. 

It was about simply finding an understanding of some sort.

I began then to see that prayer was as much inward as it was outward bound. It was about first affecting the change in oneself in a way that allowed one to feel as part of the light of the grand scheme laid out before us so that it no longer felt like a dark mystery.

It might be called prayer or meditation or ponderance or any number of other words. Anything that expresses, as Gandhi called it, a longing of the soul.

Anything that seeks an answer to the eternal question: Why?

That’s what I gleaned from this new painting, A Prayer For Understanding. There’s more to say, of course, but I am going to leave it right there this morning. You can fill in the blanks in your own words and thoughts, if you so desire.

Art is like that.

For this Sunday Morning Music here’s George Harrison and his hit from 1973, Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth). Seems to fit here.

A Prayer For Understanding is 30″ by 15″ on canvas, and is included in my solo exhibit of work, Guiding Light, that opens this coming Friday, October 17, at the West End Gallery. The Opening Recption on Friday runs from 5-7 PM.

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Something Beyond— At West End Gallery

But We Had Music

Right this minute
across time zones and opinions
people are
making plans
making meals
making promises and poems

while

at the center of our galaxy
a black hole with the mass of
four billion suns
screams its open-mouth kiss
     of oblivion.

Someday it will swallow
Euclid’s postulates and the Goldberg Variations,
swallow calculus and Leaves of Grass.

I know this.

And still
when the constellation of starlings
flickers across the evening sky,
it is     enough

to stand here
for an irrevocable minute
     agape with wonder.

It is     eternity.

— Maria Popova

This poem, But We Had Music, is from Maria Popova, who has written the wonderful blog The Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings) since 2006. I have gleaned so much from her insights and sharing of the writings and thoughts of so many great thinkers. I seldom come away after reading her blog without a wealth of new perceptions.

But this time her own poem instantly hit me as a fitting companion to the painting at the top, Something Beyond. It is, of course, one of the paintings featured in my new solo exhibit of work, Guiding Light, that opens next Friday, October 17, at the West End Gallery.

For me, this piece speaks to the same realization that comes in Popova’s poem– that though our lives here are so often filled with busyness, worries, sorrows, joys, opinions, and accusations, there sometimes come moments that remind us of the temporary nature of our time here. We are so often lost in the boiling, roiling, and turmoiling of the minute details of everyday life that we lose sight of the miracle and wonder of it all.

I had such a moment as the one described in the poem just yesterday when I had to run into town early in the morning. It was cold, our first freeze of the season, and there was an icy fog hanging on the road. After a few miles there was a break in the fog and the morning sky softly broke through. There was a lovely and delicate salmon pink color created by the sunrise on the low cloud above. A group of eight or nine geese was rising out of the field off to my right and flew in line across that pale pink sky. They were flying perpendicular to me, both of us moving toward the same point ahead, so that I was able to watch them for more than mere glance. It was a lovely few moments, so tranquil and natural that it felt like a small bit of grace from somewhere beyond, a simple reminder of the wonders that surround us. 

It’s easy to lose sight of that. We live our lives in what could and should be a simple and wonderful world. Unfortunately, it all too often seems tangled up with the stupidity, anger, hatred, and confusion usually brought about by those who forget that we are ephemeral beings living on borrowed time and that no amount of money or power will change that fact. 

A handful of geese in the sky on a cold October morning can sometimes feel like a remedy to all that. 

Below is a reading of Maria Popova’s poem from singer/songwriter Nick Cave with visualizations from filmmaker Daniel Bruson. I have also included a piano piece, Spanish Waltz, from Spanish pianist Nel Aique. It came on while I was writing this and it mirrored the feel of the flight of those geese yesterday morning. Lovely.

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