Redtree Times

Disney Artists circa 1959

The best advice I have ever given students who have studied under
me has been this: “Educate yourself, do not let me educate you—use
me, do not be used by me.”

— Robert Henri, The Art Spirit

The passage above from The Art Spirit, a wonderful book from legendary painter/teacher Robert Henri is quoted by Walt Disney in the opening moments of an interesting short film I came across yesterday morning. I was happy to hear Walt quote that passage since it is basically the same advice I have offer when I have spoken to students over the years. The idea being that you can learn technique but an individual style created by fostering and employing your own unique set of experiences and perceptions.

On yesterday’s blog, I had written about Eyvind Earle, a great painter who was also a scenic artist for many Disney animated films of the 50’s and was looking for a video on his work when I came across 4 Artists Paint 1 Tree: A Walt Disney “Adventure in Art.” It was made around 1959, the time in which Disney’s Sleeping Beauty was being made.

In order to show how diverse artists contribute their individual talents to a large project, Walt Disney had four of his main artists go out one day to be filmed painting their individual interpretations of a single subject. The subject was, as the title gives away, a tree.

I thought I would share the film here today. As you can see from the photo of the four artists at the top with their finished paintings, each artist has unique style and perception. It’s interesting to hear their thoughts on how they approach their subject and how they translate their vision into paint.

I was particularly interested in seeing Eyvind Earle’s technique and was pleased to hear him talk about initially painting the silhouette of the tree in black since I have always done that as well.

If you have about 15 minutes and are interested in the creative processes of four very accomplished artists, give a look at this film. Being a Disney film, it is well done.

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Eyvind Earle- Santa Ynez Memory

Then very slowly I go to slightly lighter colors until little by little, the forms begin to take shape and I start to see what is happening. Since I never plan in advance, I simply let myself be led by instinct, taste and intuition. And it is in this manner that I find myself creating visions that I have never before imagined. And little by little certain color effects develop that excite me and I find the painting itself leading me on and I become only an instrument of a greater, wiser force…or being…or intelligence than I myself am.

–Eyvind Earle

I have discussed my appreciation for Eyvind Earle on this blog in the past. Earle was a celebrated artist/illustrator who died in 2000 at age 84.  He was a child prodigy and had his first solo show ata gallery at the age of 14. He exhibited his work in gallery shows for many years but gained his ultimate fame with his popular stylized Christmas cards through the years and with his time spent working with Walt Disney in the 50’s and 60’s as a background artist. He was responsible for the look of many of the animated films of that time from Disney, including the classic Sleeping Beauty.

I have a massive two volume set of the works and writings of Earle’s work that I often pull from the shelf. There’s much I am drawn to in the graphic works from Earle– the colors and the rhythm of his landscapes, for example.

I am also attracted to the great clarity in his work. The compositions are often complex in design but come across as simple, a duality that I really find appealing. The color is bold and could be a little sharp in tone if it weren’t harmonized so masterfully within the picture plane. He is a pure genius at handling harmony and contrast– another duality that strikes me.

I also like the fact that Earle was an unabashed landscape artist, feeling no desire to express himself through figurative work. He found total expression in his handling of the landscape around him, often depicting the open spaces and coastlines of California. They are not mere scenes but have emotion and a depth that goes well beyond the surface, another aspect that appeals greatly to my desires for my own work.

The passage at the top briefly describing his process further links my attraction to Earle and his work. As he describes his process, I am struck by how similarly we describe how we work such as not planning anything in advance, working from light to dark colors and following the excitement of certain colors until the work seems to be taken out of our hands.

Until we become instruments.

I have often described the process and the final creation as being beyond me, the whole of the piece being more than the sum of all the parts I call myself. I have also described the sense of purpose I feel from these pieces, how I feel connected to something greater.

I can’t ever recollect using that term, instrument, before, maybe because it sounds a little presumptuous. But it does line up with what I have described in the past. And to read that Eyvind Earle felt much the same way about his work is comforting, especially on those mornings when I feel far removed from anything close to a greater force. Just knowing that the work might take me to that point where I transform into an instrument for something beyond myself makes the day seem easier to begin.

This post is edited from a combo of past blog entries. I came across the Earle passage at the top again early this morning and it really jumped out at me so I decided to combine a couple of posts since I haven’t featured Earle’s work here for several years. That leads to this week’s Sunday Morning Music which plays on the theme of being used as instruments for a greater force. The song is from Janis Joplin and is her rendition of Work Me Lord. There are some remarkable live versions of her performing this song out there, most notably from Woodstock in 1969. If you’ve ever watched her live performances you have seen someone channeling some greater force. Her studio work, like this track, is not far removed, bringing that same level of emotional commitment that made her such a compelling performer.

She was some kind of instrument.

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BlueMoonWatch– At Little Gems, West End Gallery

I wonder whether there will ever be enough tranquility under modern circum­stances to allow our contemporary Wordsworth to recollect anything. I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm. I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.

— Saul Bellow, Paris Review interview, 1966

In yesterday’s post, I listed a number of ways in which I, like most of us, am limited. Looking over the list later, I realized that I had left off one very important limitation:

A finite span of attention.

Distraction comes much too easily to me. My mind often shoots from one shiny object to the next. It can be any number of things, some important and some trivial beyond belief.

It ends up often feeling like a chaotic whirlwind of distractions with bits of news, things to be done, worries, tidbits of trivia, old song lyrics, movie lines, passages from literature, reruns of old memories, details from favorite paintings, exterior sounds that nag at the edge of my consciousness, and on and on and on. Ad infinitum.

Except…

Except for those times when I am painting and everything closes off and my attention is, like Saul Bellow says above, arrested in the midst of distraction. Whatever is playing in the background is suddenly unheard and unseen. I become unaware whether it is sunny, cloudy, raining or snowing outside the large picture window just several feet away.

The whirlwind pauses and there is stillness. The only thing I see and respond to is what is in front of me. My next move. My next stroke. The constant weighing and balancing of the colors and forms which keep shifting until I feel at some point as though I am in among them.

It’s as close to a meditative state as I can imagine.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t happen every time I stand before the easel or at the table. My finite attention span and the endless world of distraction are worthy and tenacious opponents.

But when it does happen, for that brief instant there is all encompassing calmness. It might be the eye of the storm or even infinity or eternity for all I know.

But I can’t worry about what it is or isn’t.

I can just calmly accept it with gratitude.

Now get the heck out of here– you’re distracting me.

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GC Myers/ Work-In-Progress, February 2024

Can a finite being ever attain infinity?

After all, isn’t that ultimately the goal of the artist, to seek that intangible state of infinity, that all-encompassing state of being beyond our knowledge and sight?

I don’t know the answer.

I do know that I am a finite being, limited in so many ways.

I have a finite amount of talent and ability.

Finite amount of intelligence.

Finite amounts of insight and experience.

Finite discipline.

Finite imagination.

Finite faith.

Finite certainty.

Finite courage.

Finite patience.

Finite energy.

Finite potential.

Finite time.

I am finite, limited in all ways.

The exception to that being seemingly unlimited amounts of fear and self-doubt.

And hope.

Hope that I can somehow exceed all my many limitations to attain that infinity I seek.

Is that enough?

Maybe. Maybe not.

And maybe one’s finiteness doesn’t matter.

Perhaps it is in the desire, the continual reaching for it, despite one’s human limitations.

I had these thoughts while working on the new painting at the top over the last few days. Thinking about it now, maybe infinity comes in the work itself.

I don’t know but, as a truly finite being, certainly hope so…

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The Song That Brought Me Here– At Principle Gallery

What we have not had to decipher, to elucidate by our own efforts, what was clear before we looked at it, is not ours. From ourselves comes only that which we drag forth from the obscurity which lies within us, that which to others is unknown.

–Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past

We all carry a lot of baggage with us on our journey through this life.  It’s a rare moment when we find ourselves free from all the traces from the past that we lug along– all the snippets of conversations, faces, song melodies and lyrics, pictures, smells, film clips and everything else we have input into the hard drive of our mind is always whirring around. I know that I will sometimes pull up some fragment from the past and wonder how I was still holding on to this piece of information. It might be the name of someone that I barely knew forty or fifty years before. Somehow it hangs on and occasionally pops out, confounding me with the idea that this seemingly useless bit of data is taking up space that could be occupied by truly meaningful information.

Like old Popeye cartoons. The one with Olive Oyl singing What We All Need is Brotherly Love runs on a loop in my head.

Or the year that Humphrey Bogart died–1957.

Or the name of the book that influenced the original Superman comic. (It was Philip Wylie‘s Gladiator— an interesting and fun read, by the way.)

Or the names of obscure musicians and their songs. Many times I have cursed Jay Ferguson and his one hit song, Thunder Island— a song that I didn’t even really like– for taking up valuable space in my brain when I can’t retrieve something much more important from my memory.

Or the name and minute details of the life of someone I met once forty years ago. This becomes even more maddening now when I can’t remember the name of someone I have just met ten minutes before.

But somehow, despite and because of all this detritus, we emerge in some individual form.

A single distilled version of everything that we take in.

A single voice. One song.

Now here’s a little Popeye along with Wilco. It’s a video for Wilco’s Dawned on Me from last year [2012] and it features the first hand-drawn Popeye cartoon in over 30 years. I can’t remember if Olive Oyl danced like this in my memory but now I will.  The data has been entered.

This post is from 2013 with a few additions.

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“The world concerns me only in so far as I owe it a certain debt and duty, so to speak, because I have walked this earth for 30 years, and out of gratitude would like to leave some memento in the form of drawings and paintings—not made to please this school or that, but to express a genuine human feeling.”

― Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

I was wandering through the studio the other day looking at the paintings that are here. There are pieces that represent just about every year from the past 29 or 30 years. It’s been such a long time that even if it’s one or two pieces a year that end up back with me, it adds up.

But it wasn’t the number of pieces that struck me this time. It was more a question of what will become of them one day. Will they still exist long after I am gone? Will they find homes where they will spark some emotional response with their new owners or will they never be seen again as they rot in some mountainous landfill somewhere?

It was a sort of memento mori, a reminder of my death which made me somewhat sad. But it also made me hopeful that the work will somehow live beyond me and serve one day as a memento vivere, a reminder of my life. 

In the end, I realized that if even a few make it to the future, that would be alright with me. They would serve as expressions of my gratitude for my time here and hopefully help some future person recognize their life’s own uniqueness and express their own gratitude for it.

This reminded me of a post from back in 2018 that dealt with this using a passage from a Vincent van Gogh letter to his brother. I thought it was worth sharing again, if only to look at van Gogh’s wonderful works.

[From 2018]

Thought a good way to kick off this week might be to share a few paintings from Vincent van Gogh along with a quote from one of his letters that speaks very much to my own feelings about my own reasons for doing what I do. These are not his better known paintings, though some of you may well know these pieces. They’re pieces that speak to my own personal inclinations. You might notice that most of these paintings have his ball sun/moon.

The idea of feeling a need to leave a memento behind that expresses one’s gratitude and one’s expression of self is one that is not foreign to me. I often think about how my work will speak for me after I am gone. Actually, if it will speak into the future at all and if so, will it be an honest reflection, a true representation of my voice.

I know that an artist, for all of the ways they try to guide the narrative about their work and life, has little control over their work in the future.

What will be, will be.

Their voice might echo but it is always just that, an echo, a one-sided conversation from the past. Hopefully, what is said in that echo reverberates and speaks to someone of that future time so that they can fully understand and connect to the feeling behind it. And if so, with the hope that they might respond to that voice in some way that continues to give life to it.

As I said, an artist has little control over this outside of doing their work with honest efforts and emotions. It’s obvious this was the case in the work of van Gogh and we continue to have a conversation with his echoes from the past, his mementos of gratitude.

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Edgar Degas– The Millinery Shop

Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do.

—Edgar Degas

I have always loved this quote from the great Edgar Degas. It has meaning on a couple of different levels for me. First, it speaks to the sheer difficulty of the process of creating a painting. If you look at it as a purely mechanical process– step 1, step 2, step 3 and you’re done— it does seem exceedingly simple.

But art is not purely craft. There is an intangible element that gives it meaning for both the maker and those who take it in after it is made. Tapping into that intangible is the difficult part. Some days it is near impossible and makes the job very difficult, even though it might seem easy and effortless on its surface.

Been there, done that. In fact, sometimes having more skills and tools available sometimes hinders creativity as the artist begins to rely on the tried and true, which sets a limit on their further exploration.

The second meaning I get from Degas’ quote is how others view this job. I know folks who can only view art as a hobby and if you’re working as an artist, you’re just fooling around with doodles and such. They often don’t see it as work at all. They don’t understand that it is much more than having a particular ability. They don’t see the great effort that is required to have a career as an artist.

The long hours alone. The sacrifices you make to be able to have enough time.

The often sheer frustration that comes in creating work. The days and weeks and months spent feeling blocked and uninspired, times in which you question your own ability and value as an artist.

The many hours spent doing unseen and boring things like photographing, prepping, matting, framing and varnishing that are required to make the work presentable.

The agony of having to constantly self-promote in order to keep your name visible in the public eye. For most artists wanting to support themselves in the current business of art, they must serve as their own primary advocate.

The pain of having your work–- your creation and your voice— ignored, outright rejected or under-valued, not to mention the self-doubt that comes along with these things.

I am sure there are a bunch of other crappy things that are just slipping my mind at the moment.

This isn’t meant to be a whine fest. Every business has its own challenges, and I am sure anyone who has ever been self-employed can see their own situation in most of these things. For example, every restauranteur knows that great food is not enough to make a restaurant successful.

I understand and accept these pitfalls and they don’t detract from my view of this career at all. I just want people to understand that an artist’s life is not unlike their own with most of the same challenges and problems. It may sometimes seem easy, even romantic, but that is just the view from far outside.
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That being said, I wouldn’t trade this job for any other. Thanks for allowing me to think that.

This post was from back in 2018. I apologize for it not being more about Degas’ work. I tried to make that clear in the title for the reposting. To make up for it, here are some more my favorites from Edgar Degas:

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Cool Contemplation— At Principle Gallery

The two ways of contemplation are not unlike the two ways of action commonly spoken of by the ancients: the one plain and smooth in the beginning, and in the end impassable; the other rough and troublesome in the entrance, but after a while fair and even. So it is in contemplation: If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.

–Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning (1605)

I don’t know exactly why I chose the three parts of today’s triad. Maybe they don’t exactly line up up with one another. Maybe they do. Take them for what they’re worth.

Being Sunday and needing a song to play, I chose the song first. It was R.E.M. and their Man on the Moon. Next, looking for an image, I came across the piece at the top, Cool Contemplation. The clarity of its light and the positioning of the moon made me feel as though the crow was contemplating some great thought, perhaps something to do with the moon, the house in the distance or the even more distant moon.

Maybe he was pondering whether he could fly to that moon? It seems so close.

The passage from Francis Bacon seemed to just fall into place. We often have a lot of certainty in our beliefs and opinions. These are sometimes unfounded and untested, simply based on what we want to believe. Plain and smooth as Bacon might have put it. It’s the easy way and the one chosen by most of us.

But it is best when our opinions and beliefs are grounded in long contemplation that involves challenging them, discarding the flaws of logic and fact that are uncovered, and then reevaluating and adjusting them.

As Bacon points out, it’s rough and troublesome. Not the easy way.

Reading bacon’s quote felt like it belonged in today’s triad. It is a celebration of real productive contemplation, the kind born of uncertainty and curiosity. It also reminded me of a certain political movement– a cult, if you will– who has very much embraced the easy way. There is no self-awareness nor self-reflection in this movement. They are adamant in their certainty, never challenging their first reactions or beliefs and never discarding flaws of fact or logic. And because they refuse to acknowledge the factual mistakes and problems in their logic, they never reevaluate or readjust.

It remains constant. Which means it is forever grounded in its errors and misunderstandings. According to Bacon, it will ultimately end in doubt and failure.

It will certainly never achieve the certainty of truth.

Okay, enough. You know I want to write more on this and be much more explicit and maybe drop a few f-bombs here and there. I am trying to keep this space free of the craziness out there. I have enough in here for all of us.

So, take what’s here for what it’s worth.

Here’s R.E.M. with Man on the Moon.

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Lit Candles, 2006

We were so close, there was no room
We bled inside each other’s wounds
We all had caught the same disease
And we all sang the songs of peace
Some came to sing, some came to pray
Some came to keep the dark away

— Melanie, Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)

Wasn’t going to write this morning. Looking for the Muse, you know. That kind of thing. But I thought it should be noted that singer/songwriter Melanie died this week at the age of 76. Most of you who remember Melanie most likely immediately think of a couple of her hits from the early 1970’s, most notably, Look What They’ve Done to My Song, Ma and Brand New Key. The latter was almost a novelty hit with lyrics that may be familiar to you if you are of a certain age: I’ve got a brand new pair of rollerskates/ You got a brand new key.

But she had chops, being one of only three solo women to perform at Woodstock. In fact, this song, Lay Down (Candles in the Rain), was written about her experience at that festival. It’s a song that dropped off my radar for many years until I found it again a few years back. I always get a thrill out of this version with the Edwin Hawkins Singers.

Great and memorable stuff. G’bye, Melanie. Thanks.

Now, where’s that Muse?

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Breaking Joy–At Principle Gallery

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, something which gives me the greatest joy.

It can seem so simple. Yet I see people who seem joyless and I wonder where the joy might be in their life.

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.

The above was posted here back in 2009. Some things have changed. It’s not a sunny morning for one thing. And our good girl, Jemma, our rescue Corgi, passed away years ago so the joy of her resting against my chest is no more. But there is still joy in the contented purrs of our cats, especially the feral family that currently occupies my garage. There is something so satisfyingly joyful in having a near-wild creature choose to let you love them. To trust you.

The mother cat disappeared for several days last week. We feared she was dead. I was heartbroken since she had transformed from what was originally a snarling, swatting wildcat into a creature that openly showed her affection for me with loud grinding purrs and soulful, contented gazes up at me as I petted her.

Thankfully, she returned a few days ago and we were joyful. But she was obviously injured and kept her distance. We believe she had an encounter with a raccoon in the garage.

But in the last day or so, she has progressed and returned to the garage which I seal up at night so that no other creatures can enter. She is on the mend, moving much better, and has allowed me to once again stroke her.

She is back once more with her purrs and stares. It’s a small thing but it makes me happy.

Gives me joy.

And maybe that is the sort of victory that Gandhi described at the top, the kind that remains after persevering and enduring all the hardships this world sometimes bestows upon us.

Maybe hard-earned joy is the ultimate victory.

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