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Archive for the ‘Video’ Category

Give Back the Key to my Heart

Posted in Music, Recent Paintings, Video, tagged , , , on October 18, 2012| 2 Comments »

Really busy this morning, trying to wrap up some things here in the studio before my show at the Kada Gallery, Inward Bound,  that opens this coming Saturday evening with a reception that begins at 6 PM with a short gallery talk and runs until 9 PM.  Normally, the week before the Kada show is kind of easy in the studio as it’s the last show of  my year but this year is a bit different as I have one more big event after this.  As a result, my work schedule is a bit more full than it normally would be.  But this is actually a good thing in that it allows me to focus on things other than the upcoming opening and the angst that always accompanies it.

It seems to be working as I don’t feel nearly as anxious as I often do a day or so before the opening.  Maybe it’s the distraction of the work I’ have in front of me or maybe it’s the confidence I have in the strength of the work in this show.  I think this is a really strong group of work, including the piece shown above,  Cool and Free,  and  I know that it will hang beautifully in the gallery.  I feel as though I’ve done my best and I’ve learned through the 35 or so solo shows that I’ve done over the years that  no amount of anxiety will change that.  So, I put thoughts of the show out of my mind and get back to work.

Here’s a little bit of music to work by.  It’s Uncle Tupelo’s cover of  Give Back the Key to My Heart, which was originally recorded by Texas legends The Sir Douglas Quintet featuring Doug Sahm, who sings on this track.  Younger readers probably have no idea who Doug Sahm is but his She’s About a Mover will most likely ring a bell with most older readers.

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Contest Ends!

Posted in Favorite Things, Video, tagged , on October 4, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Well, this year’s Name This Painting! contest has come to an end, as of  several hours ago.  There are so  many worthy titles here.  I’m going to go over the list today and choose the one that I feel fits best.  I will announce the winner tomorrow although it seems hard to say that some of these titles are not winners in some way.  I want to thank everyone who submitted titles.  Your insights and thoughts are really inspirational, believe me.  If I could, I would be sending you all prizes.

So, as I go back to contemplating which title stands out for me, here’s a version of a favorite song of mine, Perfect Day from Lou Reed.  I’ve played his original version before here but this is a bit different.  It’s actually a BBC promo that has multitudes of artists singing lines from the song.  But the power of the song comes through.  Enjoy and come back tiomorrow to see which title wins.

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September Song

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, Video, tagged , , on September 19, 2012| Leave a Comment »

It’s that time of the year.  Cooler.  Darker at the edges with leaves coming down.  A   feeling of reflection comes with this turn from summer to autumn and it inevitably brings to my mind  September Song, the old Kurt Weill standard.  It is high on my list of favorite songs and at this time of the year I tend to seek out versions of it that I haven’t yet heard.  There are so many to find by such a wide array of artists, from Sinatra to Lou Reed.

I came across the version below from a guitarist I bet most of us have never heard before, Lenny Breau.  I know that I didn’t know his name or work, which is  a shame given the scope of his talent.  He was a great jazz guitarist who died in 1984 at the age of 43 ,  the result of a murder which remains unsolved to this day.  Another shame.  But he left behind a body of work that is wonderful and his playing is well known in some circles.

His version of September Song comes from a CD,  Boy Wonder,  that was released after his death.  It contains a group of work that he recorded as a 15 year-old  when he was a studio musician in his native Maine.  Beautiful work for such a young player which does this always lovely song great justice.

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I’ll Fly Away

Posted in Early Paintings, Music, Video, tagged , , on September 16, 2012| 5 Comments »

I recently was asked  if I ever painted any landscapes from a bird’s eye  perspective and this piece immediately came to mind.  My records on it are sketchy but I believe it was a 6″ by 9″ image on paper painted sometime around 1996.  It’s long been a favorite in my mind.

There’s something in the way the blue of the barn’s roof and the red of the silo stand out against the stripes of the fields that does something for me.  I know that’s not very deep analysis  but, hey, it’s early on a Sunday morning.  Also, there’s something about this image that  always brings to mind a song, the old gospel favorite I’ll Fly Away.  Maybe that’s the connection here.  The song is about a final release from the earthly bonds of life and this piece is definitely about  a freedom, a release of some sort.  Maybe not about  the final departure but definitely about being freed and moving from one state to another.

Transformation?

I don’t know.  But I do know that I like this version of I’ll Fly Away from Gillian Welch accompanied by her husband, David Rawlings.  Enjoy and have a great Sunday, the last of this summer.

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Redux: It Is What It Is

Posted in Influences, Video, tagged , , , on August 29, 2012| Leave a Comment »

When I was speaking last week with the docents at the Fenimore Art Museum, I was confronted with a question that asked about the repetition of forms and themes of my paintings, particularly my use of the Red Tree.  I think I answered the question satisfactorily, stating that I tried to paint as far as possible from the conscious part of my mind . I pointed out that painting in series of repeated forms allowed me to put aside thoughts of composition and focus on the color and texture that carry the emotional weight of the painting.  The theme and focus of the painting was really just an invitation to the viewer to enter the picture and experience the underlying emotional content.  And that was where I hoped the viewer ultimately arrived .

But driving home, I thought about a  blogpost from a few years back that addressed the same question and my own concern early in my career with allowing myself to simply paint whatever came out of me.  I hope that  posting this piece from October of 2009 helps better answer that question from the Fenimore docents:

There was an episode of Mystery! on PBS starring Kenneth Branagh as Swedish detective Wallander. It was okay, nice production but nothing remarkable in the story but there was a part at the end that struck home with me and related very much to my life as a painter. Wallander’s father, played by the great character actor David Warner, was, like me, a landscape painter. Now aged and in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s, his son comes to him and intimates that he can’t go on as a detective, that he can’t take the stress. The painter then recalls how when Wallander was a boy he would ask his father about his painting, asking, “Why are they always the same, Dad? Why don’t you do something different” 

He said he could never explain. Each morning when he began to paint, he would tell himself that maybe today he would do a seascape or a still life or maybe an abstract, just splash on the paint and see where it takes him. But then he would start and each day he would paint the same thing- a landscape. Whatever he did, that was what came out. He then said to his son, ” What you have is your painting- I may not like it, you may not like it but it’s yours.” 

That may not translate as well on paper without the atmospheric camera shots and the underscored music but for me it said a lot in how I think about my body of work. Like the father, I used to worry that I would have to do other things- still lifes, portraits, etc.- to prove my worth as a painter but at the end of each day I found myself looking at a landscape, most often with a red tree. As time has passed, I have shed away those worries. I don’t paint portraits. Don’t paint still life. I paint what comes out and most often it is the landscape. And that red tree that I once damned when I first realized it had became a part of who I am. 

I realized you have to stop damning who you are…

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Release

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, Video, tagged on August 12, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I’m in the studio on a Sunday morning and itching to get back to work.  Sounds like a good time for a musical interlude, something bright and positive.  This song  comes to mind.  It’s from Laura Marling, a young British singer/songwriter that I highlighted here back in December.  It’s titled All My Rage and, despite the title, is quite upbeat, with a line that serves as a mantra:  I leave my rage to the sea and the sun…

Good advice.  Have a great Sunday.

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Young Man Blues

Posted in Music, Video, tagged , , , , , on July 29, 2012| 1 Comment »

I am running around this morning, trying to get things ready for a visit to a couple of galleries over the next couple of days.  I won’t be posting anything while I’m on this little roadtrip so I thought I’d just share a little music that somewhat has the tempo of my mind when I’m rolling down the road.  This is a video of The Who from 1970 at the Isle of Wight doing Young Man Blues.  This is a great recording so you get to see Roger Daltrey in his full-fringed, mic twirling splendor, Keith Moon at this bangin’ best and Pete Townsend tearing it up in his dystopian  industrial coveralls while John Entwhistle stoically provides the bottom end that churns it all along.  Just vintage great stuff.

The accompanying image shown here is a painting of mine  from many years ago called Faust’s Guitar.  I did a few versions of this composition and it still catches my eye.  He should be wearing Pete’s coverall…

Enjoy and I’ll be back in a few days.

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Air of Mystery

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, Video, tagged , , on July 22, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Well, another opening has passed.  The West End Gallery show went well the other night, thanks to everyone who came out.  I couldn’t be more appreciative for people taking time to visit and look at my work.  It makes  all the time and effort feel worthwhile.

The show hangs together really well with a great deal of color and warmth cast from the walls.  One piece that drew a lot of comments is the painting shown here, a 16″ by 20″ canvas called Air of Mystery.  It has a real presence on the wall with its strong color and purple fingers of cloud reaching across the moon/sun that sheds light on the patchwork fields on the distant hills.  A blood red field that makes up the foreground adds to the mysterious feel of the piece.

I don’t really know what it means yet and, for the time being, I’m content with that.  I’m going to take a few minutes to relax this morning, drink my coffee, read the newspaper then do a little painting.  A good Sunday morning and I feel like I’m reflecting light which happens to be the title of a Sam Phillips song from several years back that always makes me stop and listen when it comes up on my playlist. Maybe it’s that line: Now that I’ve worn out the world/ I’m on my knees in fascination.  It has it’s own melodic air of mystery. It’s from an album, A Boot and a Shoe, produced by her then husband T-Bone Burnett,  that I like very much.  Here it is:

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Paul Strand

Posted in Favorite Things, Photography, Video, tagged , , , , on July 7, 2012| 4 Comments »

I thought I had mentioned the work of photographer Paul Strand here before but can’t seem to locate it.   Strand lived from 1890 until 1976 and was part of the Modernist era of the early 2oth century, using his camera to capture the urban landscape’s abstracted forms in a way that no photographer had to that time.  The image shown here, Wall Street, is perhaps one of his most famous.

His portraiture is also quite striking.  Doing a Google image search, the page is immediately filled with multiple fairly closely cropped images of  faces in black and white.  They’re shot in a way that might make you think it would be difficult to discern any particular photographer’s eye but seeing them altogether shows clearly how he saw his subjects and show the continuity in his work.  Strand was a student of the great Lewis Hine and carried on Hine’s use of the camera as a tool for social reform.  His photos of the inhabitants of the city streets are powerful and gritty.

One of his projects was a film, Manhatta,  with the great Modernist painter/photographer Charles Sheeler, another of my favorites.  It is a really interesting view of the bustling, swelling city from 1921 taken from Strand’s and Sheeler’s unique perspectives.  Just great imagery.

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Sad Day in Mayberry

Posted in At the Movies, Favorite Things, Television, Video, tagged , , , , on July 4, 2012| Leave a Comment »

It’s fitting that on this American holiday that we mark the passing of an actor who represented an idealized slice of Americana.  Andy Griffith, who died yesterday at the age of 86, was best known for his portrayal of Sheriff Andy Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show.  On the show he and his deputy, the immortally funny Barney Fife, prowled the mean streets of Mayberry, a gentle North Carolina that has come to symbolize  America’s rural past for many.  Andy administered an equally gentle brand of justice with folksy common sense  and patience.  Of course, no real town could live up to the idyllic nature of Mayberry where everyone got along and even Otis the town drunk was lovably comic but it didn’t matter.  It was a lovely comic fantasy that was easy to buy into.

I know that I did.  I can still watch the show and laugh out loud or be touched when Andy straightens out Opie with a folksy moral tale.  A pure slice of goodness.

The flipside of that goodness was exhibited in Griffith’s performance in the 1957 film from Elia Kazan, A Face in the Crowd.  It’s a dark satire that chronicles the rise of Griffith’s character Lonesome Rhodes from drifting drunkard to a national media star  with great influence over public opinion that he wields in a cynical fashion.  Lonesome Rhodes is a classic film character, a larger than life personality that is a little over the top  with a veneer of charm and charisma that hides a truly nasty inner core.  He’s a far cry from anyone ever seen in Mayberry.   A Face in the Crowd is a great, great film that still rings true today.  I periodically hear rumors of people wanting to remake it today and I always hope that they let it be as it is.  I don’t think you could have a better Lonesome Rhodes than Andy Griffith.

Have a great 4th of July.  Here’s a taste of Lonesome Rhodes:

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