Redtree Times

We had a scare over the weekend when our cat, Zsa Zsa,  disappeared for a couple of days in the woods, leaving us to believe she was gone for good, most likely taken by a coyote or bobcat.  It has happened to us  before but that certainly doesn’t make the sudden loss any easier.  Zsa Zsa came to us as a very young feral cat with absolutely no socialization with humans or their ways.  Smart and athletic,  she was a quick study and had turned into a great pet after breaking down our resistance to being attached to a creature that inevitably will break your heart.  Luckily, this time she showed up two nights later, about 3 in the morning, a little frazzled but none the worse for her adventure.  Our sadness suddenly turned to joy at seeing her.

This made me think about several of the cats who have passed through our lives, almost always just showing up and choosing our place to make their home.  I wrote about the Boys a few years back and their story is a very bittersweet one to remember but an interesting one:

I came across a group of photos from a few years back that brought back very bittersweet memories. The photos were of a pair of feral cats that took up residence around our place along with a three legged raccoon that was in the vicinity for a short time. The cats tolerated the raccoon’s presence and they never seemed too upset when he helped himself to the food we put out for them.

The cats were an interesting pair. We called the tiger one Partner and the other Ben although we always called him simply Black & White. Partner and Ben were the Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin characters from the movie Paint Your Wagon. The two cats had started coming to our place in the woods a few years before and came separately. Ben was super skittish and would never let you get close enough to touch him but hung around and came to understand when there was food available. Partner was more affable and approachable but he only came once in a great while, at which point ben would attack him and chase him away, off into the woods.

This went on for a year or so and we seldom saw Partner then one year, as a very bitter winter began to close in Partner came and made a stand. Instead of running away he held his ground against Ben. It was horrible. For a day or so, they were in what seemed to be non-stop combat outside our house. Under our house. Maybe on our house, I don’t know. There was thumping and screeching and all sorts of awful noise. We would try to intervene but they would run out of sight and pause for the time we out there then resume immediately after we went back inside.

The next morning when I put out some food for them, they both emerged. They were a mess with bloody cuts and scrapes on both. Yet they were together now with not a hint of malice between them. From that time on they were inseparable. They spent that very cold winter sleeping together in a makeshift box I had built for them, one on top of the other. When they would walk through the yard or up our walkway, they would walk in step with their shouldersshoved  together as though they were joined at the shoulder. As spring and summer came, they would lazily sleep on our walkway, often spooning as they laid together with their legs wrapped around each other or would sleep facing one another, their paws lightly touching. When our female cat, Tinker, was outside, Partner would make attempts to be friendly but Ben wanted no part of her and, in an obviously jealous act, would aggressively push himself between the two. It was an amazing transformation from their previous animosity to this sweet friendship.

It was short lived however as they both passed away later that next winter, both disappearing with days of one another, obviously very ill. We’ve always regretted not being able to do more for them but through this time they never let us get too close to them, always being wary of any attempts to corral them. So when I see these photos I am torn between the sheer sadness of their hard fought existence and the absolute joy and comfort they had found in their love for one another. A rare thing indeed…

Read Full Post »

For ten years I walked up the road through the woods to my old studio. It was a logging road from the two or so times the forest had been harvested over several decades and ran along a run-off creek that dries up most summers. There were two visible tracks from the tires of vehicles that had climbed the gentle rise over the years and as the years passed, another track formed between them.

This was the path I walked several times a day, up and down the hill. At first I thought nothing of it. It was simply a path. But over the years I began to notice things about it. I could walk the path in the absolute black of night with no problem, each step falling in a natural way directly to this path. If I tried to walk off the path it seemed unnatural and required a degree of attention to my stride so I wouldn’t stumble.

I came to realize that my trail was the path of least resistance. It was the path that carried me with the least effort. Each step fell naturally in place, accounting for the slightest change in the topography and had the same effect as water flowing down a creek.

I began to notice that the trails formed by deer and other animals were the same. When I followed them, they would move slightly in one direction or the other, just when your stride wanted to shift naturally and simply from gravity. There was the same sense of rightness I talk about in my painting. They never veer drastically, always in smooth, subtle curves. They would always run along the grade as though were the elevation lines on a topographical map. Following them required little effort or thought.

Going off the path was a different matter. It took thought, concentration and effort. There were new obstacles to overcome. Branches that crossed the path, blocking your view ahead and slapped the side of your head. Downed trees that had to be climbed over. Roots that rose through the dirt and tripped you. It was real work.

I guess herein lies the point. If I wanted to go where others had went before me, I could follow their trail. This would be the simple and logical way. But if I wanted to go to a different place, one that was fresher and less visited, I might have to set my own path. It wouldn’t be easy. It would require more effort, more thought and the risk of not finding my way. But if I forged ahead and found my way, there would be a new, hard won discovery and the sense of accomplishment that comes with it.

I could blather on a little more but I think my little lesson learned from the land (nice alliteration, eh?) has come to an end. We all choose our paths. Some take the easier trail. Some blaze new trails. And some go into the woods and never come out…

This post originally ran here in April of 2009.

Read Full Post »

There are times when ideas for a piece come from seeing something once or twice and taking what you remember of it and using that in your work.

For example, a number of years ago I remember driving through the Poconos on the way to NYC. As I drove down a hill, I glimpsed to my right a group of trees, maybe an orchard. It was early morning and the sun was low behind them, casting long individual shadows in the damp, long grass. The whole scene was taken in in the blink of an eye.

I call that the 60-MPH view. Actually, it’s closer to 75 MPH but who’s really keeping track?

From this split-second glance I returned to the studio a few days later and took the elements of that scene that remained in memory and created several versions of that scene. They were vibrant and alive. It was as the speed of the glimpse took away interfering details and distilled the remaining elements into something stronger.

The painting above, Above the Babble, is another kind of this taking in quickly and using the elements from memory. My sister had a small print that has hung for many years in her home. I always would notice the print when I visited but didn’t spend much time in front of it. One day in the studio the composition of that piece, as I remembered it, came to mind. This was the result along with several subsequent versions over the years. None of them really look like the print in any specific detail but for me they echo the rhythm and feel of the inspiring piece.

I try to use this viewing process when I look at other artists’ works as well, taking in the work quickly then trying to remember what I saw. This forces the strengths, as I see them, forward and they remain in my memory. This allows me to find things in work that is very unlike mine that I ultimately use in my own work. A form of synthesis, I suppose….

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 I am periodically running some of my favorite older posts.  The above post originally ran here on February 9, 2009.

Read Full Post »

I had an interesting conversation at the opening a week or so back at the Kada Gallery in Erie. It was near the end of the night and John D’Angelo, the brother of Joe D’Angelo who owns the gallery along with wife Kathy, approached me. John is in his 80’s but it is not an old 80’s. He is vibrant and filled with energy. He is also a very talented man. After his retirement, John started carving full size carousel animals, copying the masters who crafted the beautiful creatures that adorned the merry-go-rounds of the late 1800’s and the early parts of the 1900’s. His beautiful beasts were the subject of a show at the gallery that drew huge crowds and raves.

We talked for a short while about the paintings then I asked him more about his carvings. He talked about how he just couldn’t sell them. Not because there was no demand. On the contrary, he described how many people were upset that he wouldn’t put a price on them, wouldn’t part with them at the show. He said he only gave them away to family members and held on to the rest. He talked about the joy of carving the animals and how, after he was done, he would run his hands over the large smooth carvings and be filled with wonder as to how he had done this. It seemed beyond him, more than he was capable of doing. He asked if I ever finsihed a painting then ran my hands over it with that same feeling.

I immediately knew the feeling he described. In fact, it brought back a memory of the piece shown above, Big Fish. It is a large wide painting that is over 60″ wide in its frame and now spends its days in a very prestigious office in DC. When it was still in my studio, I was part of a project for a book by photographer Barbara Hall Blumer where she would visit artists’ studios and chronicle them in their work environment. On the day she visited my old studio, which was infinitely more rustic than my current one, she had me show her around and talk about my process as she snapped away. At one point, I stood at one of my painting tables where this piece was resting, nearly complete. As we talked, I absentmindedly ran my hands over the surface of the heavily textured painting, feeling the coolness of the paint on my skin. Barbara noticed and commented as she took a shot of my hands on the painting, asking if that was something I did regularly.

I thought about it and said I guess I did.

Thinking about it now, I was indeed doing that very thing that John D’Angelo had described. I often look at my work after it is done and wonder where it came from, how something so graceful came from someone so often awkward. About how it seemed more than me, just as John had described. I needed to feel it if only to verify that it was real, that it indeed existed outside of my mind. It’s a strange feeling and one that I was pleased to share with John that night, comforted in knowing he knew that same feeling of surprise and wonder.

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

The post above ran originally in November of 2010.  I’ve been very busy lately and have been periodically running older posts that my favorites.

Read Full Post »

I’m on the road today so I thought I would rerun a post and  painting from May of 2009:

Joy lies in the fight, in the attempt, in the suffering involved, not in the victory itself.

— Mahatma Gandhi

How do you define joy? Is there such a thing as joy that is the same for every person or is finding joy strictly a personal preference? Are there people who live without any joy at all in their lives or are there moments in everyone’s lives where they experience something close to joy? Maybe it’s not a giddy kind of joy. Maybe joy for some is a feeling of contentment, an absence of fear, an absence of pain.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe joy is finding that which takes away our fears and pains.

I don’t know. I know that it doesn’t have to be sought. It’s just there or it’s not. For me, it might be as simple as laying in the grass and having my dog come over and lay against my chest. It might be in sipping a cup of tea or watching the deer graze laconically in the yard. It might be in laughing out loud at something I’ve seen a hundred times yet still find funny or in making my wife laugh. It can seem so simple yet I see people who seem joyless and I wonder where their joy might be.

Certainly, they must have something which brings them something akin to joy. At least contentment. But maybe it’s not for me to see or maybe they live a joyless existence. Who knows? Just something I wonder about on a sunny morning when the sun filtering through the trees, scattering patches of light on the thick grass beneath them, brings me joy.

By the way, the painting above is a new one, The Coming Together, that is part of the Principle Gallery show in June (2009). It features the entwined trees I sometimes use as well as the field rows. I really like the feel of this piece and love the texture and color in the surface.

Makes me happy.

Gives me joy…

Read Full Post »