If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.
–Anne Bradstreet, Meditations Divine and Moral (1664)
Cold here overnight. Single digit cold with a supper clear sky and a bright moon. The light reflected on the icy crystals that were created by the extreme cold, making it seem like there were shining diamonds scattered in the frosty grass.
It would have been an even more spectacular display if there had been snow on the ground. Even so, it was beautiful as it was.
Finding beauty in the harshness is somewhat akin to the words above of Anne Bradstreet, who was both the first North American writer and woman to have their work published in the 1600’s. Bradstreet (1612-1672) was born to Puritan parents in England and came to the Massachusetts Colony in 1630. To be honest, I don’t know much about her work, which was primarily poetry. But a quick look at her biography shows that while she was cultured and well-educated, she, like most of the early settlers who came here, endured extreme hardship, suffering from mutliple maladies and losses.
She knew about finding beauty in harshness.
I am sharing a song this morning called Chilly Scenes of Winter. I was going to play Hazy Shade of Winter from Simon & Garfunkel but I somehow always confuse their title with Chilly Scenes of Winter which was a wonderful 1979 movie. It is a small quiet, quirky and funny in a bittersweet way film with a great cast. You can click here or on the title above to see it on YouTube.
That aside, when I searched for the song, Chilly Scenes of Winter, mistakenly thinking I was looking for Hazy Shade of Winter, I came across the song below with that title. It is from an early pioneer of country music, Cousin Emmy. Born in Kentucky in 1903, as Cynthia May Carver, she performed under the name Cousin Emmy from the 1930’s until her death in 1980. She was big country radio star from the 1930’s into the early 1950’s. She drifted into obscurity but found her career revitalized with the folk music movement of the 60’s and the bluegrass revival thereafter.
I don’t know much about Cousin Emmy or her music, but I like this song. Her voice has that kind of flat and plaintive tone to it that is indicative of the music of that part of Kentucky. And it is also a song about finding happiness after suffering loss. In the song she finds a new love after being slighted by her beau who himself is then slighted by his new love.
The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
I hesitated a bit about the use of the excerpt above from a book by author Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, that I read probably thirty years ago.
It’s considered by some as McCarthy’s magnus opus and one of the greatest of American novels. My memory of it is of its powerful imagery of the relentless chaotic violence that marked the tale, which is set in the Texas-Mexico borderlands in the late 1840’s. It’s a powerful told story that has the feel of the most lurid Hieronymus Bosch painting one could imagine.
It’s a book I would like to revisit but I keep putting off, especially in the context of America at this moment in time. It might be too disheartening to see parallels from that book in a contemporary reality.
Even so, the excerpt above describes what I see as the basis for much of my work, which is the need to seek some sort of order in the chaos, mystery, and seemingly senselessness which this world presents to us on a daily basis.
It might be a fool’s errand. I’ve said that many times before. But to not seek some sense of order in the swirl of chaos, some light in the dark, is unimaginable. Unacceptable.
To seek order means that we have not ceded control over our lives and fates to superstition and fear. That we have chosen to think and reflect on those mysteries of life.
And maybe if we can somehow pull one single thread of order from that vast tapestry of mystery and chaos, we will count ourselves among the fortunate ones who live outside the realm of chaos and fear.
Just one thread…
This post ran a few years back but I thought I’d share it because it included the painting at the top, An Orderly Life, which has been at the West End Gallery for several years now. It’s one of those pieces that really resonate for me personally and every time I come across it in the gallery I feel a pang for it. It’s a mixture of wanting it back for myself– as I said, it holds personal meaning for me– and sorrow that it hasn’t spoken to anyone else in the same way. The sorrow is always more pronounced for those pieces that I feel hold something special or that really strike a chord within me. I think this piece will soon come back to me and I will accept it with that same mix of happiness and sorrow. It actually makes the piece feel more alive to me in that we humans experience that same sort of acceptance and rejection throughout our lives, often going unrecognized for whatever their special purpose might be. In a way, the painting is just living a normal life.
And that is okay.
Here’s a 2009 song from Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens. This is titled To Be What You Must.
“I always had the feeling that we were amateurs in a world of professionals. Amateurs stand so much closer to what they are doing, and they are driven by enthusiasm, which is so much more forceful that what professionals are driven by.”
–Emeric Pressburger, on his film partnership with Michael Powell
I recently watched the documentary Made In England: The Films of Powell & Pressburgeron TCM. It was made by Martin Scorsese who is a huge fan of the movies of this pair, citing them as a major influence on his films. I am also a fan of their very unique films– The Red Shoes, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus, and many others. They often look different, with their lush colors and daring perspectives, than other films from their time and have stories with ideas that also seem far from the mainstream. There is a richness that runs through their work.
The quote at the top of the page from Emeric Pressburger was part of the film and it jumped out at me. This idea of being an amateur in a world of professionals is one that I have often, if not always, felt about my own place in the art world. This kind of links in with what I wrote yesterday, when I was describing my anxiety over the Phronesis interview with Scott Allen. I wrote a bit about sometimes feeling like an impostor when speaking, or even writing, about what I do, that there are far more qualified and talented artists out there who should be speaking about art.
But it was second sentence in that passage from Pressburger that clarified everything for me. It was the enthusiasm of an amateur– that stupid courage, as I put it yesterday– that brought me there. It was the excitement of just doing work that I wanted to see and wasn’t finding elsewhere. There was freedom in not knowing or caring what others were doing or how my work might compare to their work.
And that has worked for many years. Of course, there are blips, times when I begin to think I am a professional, begin to care how my work compares to others or that it has to be more polished or conventional. Much as Pressburger points out, the professional me then is further from that initial force that drove me when I only saw myself as an amateur.
It is something I am struggling with right now. It sounds funny but I want to feel like an amateur again. I want to have that stupid courage at play again, that feeling where I don’t give a damn what anyone thinks about what I am doing or how it compares to anyone else’s work. In fact, I don’t want it to compare to anyone else’s work.
To just do it and let the chips fall where they may.
Is that an easy thing to do? It sounds like it should be, doesn’t it?
It isn’t. As with anything, there are complications, other things to be considered– the need to make a living, the need to maintain your relationship and goodwill in the galleries that show your work, the constraints of time and energy, etc. The good thing here is that stupid courage sometimes convinces you to set aside those concerns and, as they used to say, let your freak flag fly.
Hope any of this makes sense to you. It’s kind of the thing that an amateur might write. Maybe I am back on track?
We’ll see.
Here’s a song from Moondog who I spoke of in the Phronesis interview. I am not going to go into any detail at the moment, but he was a most interesting character. Another amateur in a world of professionals. I find myself often listening to his unique music. I will write more about him soon. This is a song called Rollo which Scott Allen said was his son Will’s favorite.
“Phronesis is a creative act, especially when navigating the unknown…It’s not just what happens when we’re faced with dilemmas, paradoxes, and crucible moments. Of course, that’s where our strength of character shines and guides our action choices, which is why we mark it as an act of practical wisdom.”
— Dr. Elena Antonacopoulou
I’ve known Scott Allen for some time now. Actually, I knew of him long before I met him when his wife asked if I could paint a small painting for him that she could give to him on completing his doctorate. In the years after, we have stayed in touch and have met a couple of times. Always an enjoyable experience as Scott is a great guy, very well-rounded with a wide range of interest and plenty of insights.
But more than that, Scott is really good at what he does. Here’s a bit from his website:
Dr. Scott J. Allen is a speaker, academic, author, and podcaster who empowers people and organizations to build stellar leaders.
Scott J. Allen, Ph.D., is an award-winning educator passionate about working with people at all levels and across industries. He serves as an instructor in SMU’s Cox School of Business Executive Education and spent more than 17 years as a professor of management. He also serves as a leadership consultant with Winding River Consulting. His areas of expertise include leader development, the future of work, and executive communication.
Beyond those impressive credentials, Scott also has a popular podcast that deals with leadership titled Phronesis, which is in the top 2.5% of all podcasts worldwide. Phronesis is a term describing how knowledge and wisdom is put into practical use. It goes all the way back to Aristotle who described it as such:
Phronesis… involves not only the ability to decide how to achieve a certain end, but also the ability to reflect upon and determine good ends consistent with the aim of living well overall.
Coincidentally, I used this quote and the word phronesis for a painting many years ago.
A couple of months back, Scott asked me to be interviewed for his Phronesispodcast. I wasn’t sure why since I don’t consider myself a leader in any way, especially from a business or organizational perspective. It’s easy to be a leader when you’re a one-man show.
In fact, I was a little apprehensive. It’s that impostor syndrome thing, where I will somehow finally reveal how unworthy and addle-brained I am. I often feel that when standing in front of group at gallery talk where I look out and know that I am most likely the least educated person there. I sometimes wonder how I tricked all those folks into sitting there listening to my blathering and if this will be the day when I finally show my inadequacy.
Of course, I agreed to do the interview with Scott. One of the great advantages of not being well educated is that I don’t know what to fear. It’s almost a form of courage. You might call it stupid courage. I’ve employed it a lot in my life. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t.
Scott was a pleasure to work with– knowledgeable, well-prepared, gracious, and forgiving. A real pro. He said he could edit out my occasional stumbles and the uhs and umms that sometimes fell out my mouth. I left feeling a little apprehensive, of course. I don’t think I’ve ever done an interview when I didn’t come away feeling like a moron in some way.
But even so, it came out better than I had expected, to be honest with you. Scott did a masterful job of making me seem reasonably coherent. Of course, I might be wrong there. But I think it touches on a lot of different things some of which I will discuss here over the coming days.
If you so inclined, you can listen here below or can go to Scott’s Phronesis site where you can listen to this episode or some of the many other interesting interviews he has conducted with a wide range of people. You can also subscribe to his podcast there. Lots of good stuff!
Thank you, Scott, for doing such a fine job with this and for your support and friendship through the years. It is very much appreciated. All good things to you and your family!
True stability results when presumed order and presumed disorder are balanced. A truly stable system expects the unexpected, is prepared to be disrupted, waits to be transformed.
—Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
I am running way behind this morning for some unknown reason. Wasn’t going to write anything but this line from Tom Robbins that I came across a few days ago was stuck in my head and I wanted to get it out. I think it’s relevant for these times when it often seems that the balance between order and chaos is way out of whack.
How we get back in balance is a question that I doubt anyone can answer with any degree of accuracy. When it happens– if it happens– it will come in an organic manner that is filled with unexpected events and actions. I think it will seem to many like labyrinth where we will sometimes feel like we’re further and further away from the end as we feel our way ahead in the dark when in fact we are near emerging from the maze. Conversely, there will be a point where we will feel like we’re nearly through it and we aren’t even close to the end.
Don’t know if that makes any sense to you this morning. Like I said, I am late and rushing a bit as a result. I thought the painting at the top, Chaos & Light, now at the Principle Gallery, would align with Robbins’ passage along with the song below from Chicago. It’s from their first album and is titled Saturday (August 29, 1968). It is about the riots at the Democratic National Convention that took place in Chicago in and around that date. This includes the Prologue which is an address to the anti-war protesters that ends with them chanting “The Whole World is Watching!”
It was a time out of balance, to be sure. And certainly not the last. I sometimes wonder if we truly regained balance at any point since then.
Anyway, that’s it for today. Got to go try to get things back in balance– here at least. For once.
In the moonlight which is always sad, as the light of the sun itself is—as the light called human life is—at its coming and its going.
—Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son
This line from Dickens always makes me wonder about a lot of things– about the emotional feel of moonlight and sunlight, about how each serve as a witness to our existence, about our affinity for light as humans, and how we react to light.
This wondering brings up lots of questions. Is our life in the light, be it sunlight or moonlight, even real? Or are we mere ghosts, manifestations of formless souls, that only exist and find form in dimensions of light?
I sure don’t know. But I do like wondering, especially about those questions that can’t be answered. Sometimes it seems like those are the only questions that matter.
I see that the light is breaking in gray through the trees. Time for this ghost to get moving.
Here’s a song from Joni Mitchell from her jazz-tinged work of the early 1980’s. This is Moon at the Window.
There is surely no greater wisdom than well to time the beginnings and endings of things.
–Francis Bacon, Of Delays, 1625
I came across the post below from a couple of years back this morning and thought I would use it to accompany the painting shown above. It’s a small watercolor from 1994 called Greenie’s Barn. It represents for me a beginning as it was painted in that period where I was discovering an artistic voice, at a point coming after what I feel was the major breakthrough in my development. Everything was fresh and exciting, with new discoveries coming with every session of painting. I look at this painting and that jumps out at me because I can remember how thrilled with what I was seeing in this small piece at the time. I loved it the colors at its edges, the ragged nature of its form, its quietude and contrast of light and dark. All things I desired in my work. It felt like it was signaling a direction for me to follow, as though it were a weathervane on that barn.
The barn itself reminded me of the old barns in this area. Many that I knew as a youth have long fallen to the ground from neglect as the farmers who built and used them for generations died out or moved into other forms of work. I see some now, teetering and ready to fall, sections of their roofing peeled back, exposing their roofbeams, and I feel a sadness for them. They were such important structures in their time, often maintaining an almost regal presence in their landscape, and now their kingdom was gone.
So, for me, this small painting of a barn represents both beginnings and endings. I don’t know why I named it Greenie’s Barn. It just felt right at the time and I remember referring to barns by their owners’ names as a kid. It has been with me for 30 years now and I never wanted to offer it in a gallery, but I felt now was the time. It’s at the West End Gallery now as part of their holiday show.
The post below from a few years back deals with beginnings and endings as well. It ends with this week’s Sunday Morning Music selection.
I tromped up through the woods yesterday. The snow wasn’t deep and it was cold enough to freeze up some of the boggier parts of the hillside so that I could wander through. It was something I hadn’t done for some time. Too long. Even though it’s only less than a quarter mile up in the woods, it seems like a world removed from the home and studio down below, which themselves often feel far removed from the world at the end of our long driveway.
It’s quieter than down below, the trees and the terrain muffling sound. The crunch of the snow underfoot is clean and clear. It’s a good sound.
With the snow on the ground and the leaves now gone, I could see deeper into the woods. I was able to better see the individual trunks and crowns of the trees. Some were like anonymous people in a crowd scene in a film, not really standing. While I could still appreciate their individual beauty, they didn’t stop my eye.
It was the bigger trees that jumped out at me, the beech and maples and the now dying ash trees that have been ravaged by the borer beetles. It made me think how loggers must look through the woods, their eyes measuring and taking in the shape of each tree until one large tree sets off their inner alarms. It made me wonder how my great-grandfather, who at the age of 17 first set out into the Adirondack forests in 1872 leading his own crew of loggers, would look through these woods. Would he simply see the trees as a form of income or would he look upon them as companions? After all, this was man who spent much of about 60 or so years in the deep woods in all sorts of weather conditions, most of the time coming before the use of tractors and chainsaws.
It’s one of those times when you wish you had a way to spend a few minutes speaking with an ancestor.
As is always the case in nature, the forest reminds you of the beginnings and endings. The floor of the forest is littered with dead trees that have tumbled over in wetter and windier times or, in the case of the mighty ashes that have died from the damage of the beetles, rot then fall in large chunks until all that is left is the lower trunk of the tree. The remnant ash trunks are sometime twenty plus feet tall.
I am always a bit sad when seeing these dead trees who by virtue of location and environment didn’t last as long as they might have in other places. But even so, among their bony remains on the forest floor new saplings and young trees abound, all straining upward trying to push their faces to the light.
It’s a reminder of the inborn desire to struggle and survive that is present in all species. We all desire to exist, to feel our faces in the sunlight of this world. But, as the forest points out, we all have beginnings and endings.
And that’s as it should be. How would we be able to appreciate this world, to see it as the gift it is, if we knew our time here was without end?
I don’t know the purpose of this essay. I simply started and this is what it ended up as. A beginning and an ending…
Here’s a song that is about beginnings. Not a holiday song. You most likely will get your fill of those everywhere else. Not to say I won’t play one or two in coming days but today let’s go with From the Beginningfrom Emerson, Lake & Palmer.
Snow was falling, so much like stars filling the dark trees that one could easily imagine its reason for being was nothing more than prettiness.
― Mary Oliver
Several things to do this morning so I wasn’t planning on writing. But the looking at the light snow that has covered the ground and all the trees here at the studio put me in a mind to want to look at some of the snow paintings of Dale Nichols that I have featured here in the past. Whenever I come across them, I sense a form of completeness in them that I find very satisfying. Maybe it’s because it represents a quality that I seek in my own work. I don’t know but it is always there. Worth looking at this post from a few years back as the snow lightly falls this morning.
Most likely prompted by the recent weather here as well as a desire to try a slight change of palette, I have been doing a small group of snow paintings recently. I thought I would look at several other artists, especially those with a distinct personal style, to see how they handle snow in their work. One of the artists whose snow works really stuck out was Dale Nichols, who was born in Nebraska in 1904 and died in Sedona, AZ in 1995. He is considered one of the American Regionalists, that loosely defined group of primarily landscape painters whose work for which I have long expressed my admiration.
His biography is a bit sparse and there isn’t a lot written about him, but Nichols lived a long and productive life, serving as an illustrator, a college professor and the Art Editor of the Encyclopedia Brittanica. He also spent a lot of time in Guatemala which resulted in a group of work with Meso-American forms that is quite different from his Regionalist work and more than likely influenced the color palette of his normal work as well.
But Nichols is primarily known for his rural snow scenes and it’s easy to see why. The colors are pure and vivid. The snow, put on in multiple glazed layers with watercolor brushes has a luminous beauty. The stylized treatment of the crowns of the bare trees adds a new geometry to the paintings. There is a pleasant warmth, a nostalgic and slightly sentimental glow, to this work even though they are scenes that depict frigid winters on the plains of Nebraska. Free of all angst, they’re just plain and simple gems.
You can see a bit more of Dale Nichols other work on a site devoted to him by clicking here.
It was that hour that turns seafarers’ longings homeward- the hour that makes their hearts grow tender upon the day they bid sweet friends farewell…
― Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio
Dante had it right– dusk is that hour of recollection, some warm and some less so. As I age, I see this more clearly, most likely as a result of simply having more to look back on than look forward to at this stage in my life.
Don’t jump too hardly on that last line. I feel there is still a tremendous amount of living ahead for me and others my age or older. It’s just math– the ratio of time lived to the expected or hoped for time left in one’s life– says that the greater part of our life is behind us for people of my age and older.
And I believe dusk does often remind us of this fact. It’s a time when we sometimes pause to look back on the day, to reckon what we have done and not done during that time and to measure what lies ahead for the next day.
And sometimes this recollection extends back further than the day that just passed due to the moment in which it takes place. Maybe it’s the warmth and color of the sunset. Maybe it’s the way the landscape around us changes in the setting light, as colors deepen and contrast to the narrowing light. Whatever it might be in that moment, something triggers flashes of distant memories.
Words spoken and unspoken. Maybe just a glance from a face you remember or the most innocuous detail from some moment that didn’t seem important when you saw it so long ago.
Sometimes these moments are full and make sense. Sometimes they are fragments that seem insignificant. Yet they remain in place in our memory.
And as that moment of recollection passes and we move to settling in for the night and looking ahead to the coming day, these recalled moments dissolve, much like the setting sunlight melts into darkness.
There’s a wealth of recollections to pull from as one ages and maybe I see that in the depth and richness of the colors here. Maybe every stroke of color in that sky is a fleeting and flashing moment from my memory. I don’t know.
It makes me think of when my dad was in his final years suffering from dementia. His memory was spotty at best and often large segments of it were absent. I remember one instance when he was disturbed and asked me with great seriousness to tell him who his mother was. I went to a photo of her from her college yearbook (Potsdam 1918!) that was on a bulletin board we had put up in his room. I pointed her out and explained in great detail her history. He listened to me more intently than any other time I can remember in my life, like he needed to know this and wanted to inscribe it deep into memory.
Looking back on that moment now, I can only imagine him as the Red Tree looking back and, instead of the richness of individual colors in that sky of memory, he is seeing a hazy grayness with occasional peeks of color. A recognizable tree or hillside whose color has faded to a duller shade, almost gray. And the distant deeply colored mountain that might have been his mother was not even visible.
Makes me appreciate every moment, every fleck of color, every drop of light, every insignificant recollection that remains with the hope that my dusk never fully dissolves.
This post ran a few years back. I came across the image of the painting at the top, And Dusk Dissolves, and remembered that this painting was still at the West End Gallery. I had forgotten that it was there. It’s a very large piece, 30″ by 48″, so it is often difficult to find space for it on the gallery walls. But it remains a favorite of mine. Seeing it and reading the post reminded me of my parents, who I have been thinking about in recent weeks.
Here’s a song about looking back, a version of a favorite Beatles song, In My Life, from 1965‘s Rubber Soul album. Hard to believe this song is almost 60 years old. This version is from the American recordings of Johnny Cash, done in the final months of his life. n a long and storied career, I’ve always felt it was among his most impactful work. His age and ailments changed his delivery and imbued the songs with real heart-felt emotion and purity. A powerful group of music. This version of the Beatles’ song is not so different stylistically, but it it is filled with his own personal meaning which, n a way, makes it his own.
Poetic power is great, strong as a primitive instinct; it has its own unyielding rhythms in itself and breaks out as out of mountains.
–Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters toa Young Poet
The line above from Rilke has been translated a couple of different ways. This is an abridged version that omits any reference to the subject, a German poet, who Rilke was describing in his letter. This version becomes only about poetic power. This is the version you will mainly see quoted today.
The original version was a direct reference to Richard Dehmel, a German poet who died in 1920 from injuries sustained in WW I. Dehmel was an influential poet in Germany in the pre-war years, his verse considered very rhythmic. It was a favorite among popular composers of that era– Richard Strauss, Carl Orff, and Kurt Weill, for examples–who regularly set his poetry to their music. He is best known for his work that was strongly sexual in nature, so much so that he faced obscenity charges several times.
The original line is at the end of a paragraph where Rilke writes about his admiration for the beauty of Dehmel’s work as well as his concern that he sometimes went beyond the prevailing accepted levels of decency of that era. The original line:
His poetic strength is great and as powerful as primal instinct; it has its own relentless rhythms within, and explodes from him like a volcano.
It wasn’t changed that much actually, mainly keeping a direct reference to Dehmel and using the explosive nature of a volcano instead of breaks out as out of mountains.
I know this is not of much interest to anyone, but I only mention it because the original made me think of the Red Tree in some of my paintings as a sort of small volcanic explosion. I had never thought of them in this way and it intrigued me. It gave them a new dimension.
I can definitely see this in the painting at the top, On the Blue Side, which is at the West End Gallery. The Red Tree here has a feel of released energy, as though it is exploding from the earth. Maybe trees and everything springing from the earth is a small volcano, a bursting eruption of energy? I don’t know but I like the idea.
Hmm….
Here’s a song that is about mountains in a way. This is Remember the Mountain Bed, another favorite from Mermaid Avenue, the Wilco/Billy Bragg collaboration where they composed music for the unpublished Woody Guthrie lyrics. Good stuff.
Redtree Times 