This ia a kind mash-up of past Valentine’s Day posts, with a Baucis and Philemon painting and a favorite love poem to accompany a blog entry that features a great tune from Otis Redding. Here’s that blog entry from five years ago:
Another Valentine’s Day. We often think of it as a day to express your fondness for the one you love. But at its heart, there is an element of yearning and loneliness in the day.
To give someone a Valentine as a kid– or maybe even when you’re a little older–is not only an offering up of your feelings for that other person but also a plea for their attention and affection. It is an admission of need and vulnerability that is very human, as is the need to know that you are indeed loved by another.
This song, These Arms of Mine, is from Otis Redding. For me, Otis can do no wrong and few can better express the yearning that I am describing here than Otis.
Have a good day. And if you love someone, let them know every day, not just on this day.
“Of course, there must be lots of Magic in the world,” he said wisely one day, “but people don’t know what it is like or how to make it. Perhaps the beginning is just to say nice things are going to happen until you make them happen. I am going to try and experiment.”
–Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden, 1911
…until you make them happen.
A lot of us wish and hope for better things and a change from those parts of our lives that disappoint us. But until we act on those wishes and hopes, nothing usually happens.
Things stay the way they are.
Of course, wishing and hoping can be viewed as the primary stages of making a plan of action or setting a course and goal for the future. And that’s important.
Action without a goal can be as fruitless as wishing and hoping without action.
But the two– the wish and the action– put together can produce a sort of Magic, much as Colin the bedridden boy discovered in The Secret Garden. It’s a Magic that is within our grasp once we realize this fact.
I am going to give a really basic example. Many years ago, when I was in the early stages of my art life, I wished and hoped for a solo exhibit. I had only been showing my work publicly for a very short time, less than two years, so I didn’t have a reputation or name to pave the way. It would have been easy to shrug it off and do nothing, but I decided to act on my wish. I had been working on my Exiles series, work that was very personal. I put together a proposal for show of these paintings and introduced myself to the director of the Gmeiner Art Center in Wellsboro, PA, about an hour from my home. She was impressed by the work and the presentation and gave me a solo show that winter featuring the Exiles paintings.
One thing that struck me about this was when a couple of other artists approached me at a local gallery opening around the time the show at the Gmeiner ran. Both were established artists who had been working much longer than I and had actual bodies of work. They seemed kind of envious that I was having this show and asked how I got this show.
My answer was simple.
“I asked for it.”
I could see on their faces that this was a revelation, that this simple action was something they had never thought to do.
You can’t wait for your hopes and wishes to come to you. Sometimes, you have to take the step towards them, to put things in motion and to make Magic happen.
Unfortunately, a lot of us don’t ever get the connection between wishes and actions. And that’s a shame.
Make something happen today. Make some Magic.
Of course, if you read this blog regularly, you probably know that this is all just a setup for playing a song. I thought that today’s words and image would match up nicely with a hit song, Wishin’ and Hopin’, from Burt Bacharach, who died this past week. This is the 1964 hit version from Dusty Springfield. Though it seems a little dated and she seems a little needy in this song about getting a guy, the premise that it takes action to achieve wishes and hopes is correct : You won’t get him/ Thinkin’ and a-prayin’, wishin’ and a-hopin’
“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.
It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
This is kind of a reconstructed replay of a post from a couple of years back. It just felt right this morning, sitting here in the studio
It features a song for this week’s Sunday Morning Music, Calling Me Home, from one of my big favorites, Rhiannon Giddens. There’s a line in the song that always jumps out at me:
Remember my stories, remember my songs/ I leave them on earth, sweet traces of gold
It makes me think of that existential question: What is it we leave behind?
That immediately brought to mind a favorite excerpt, shown at the top, from Ray Bradbury in his sci-fi/ dystopian classic Fahrenheit 451. It’s those things to which we devote or full effort, our mind and time, that have lasting effect. Often, things that are done with no real expectation of anyone recognizing your thought or effort in doing them.
It makes me think of my pond. I can see its top now in the winter since the leaves have fallen from the trees.
I built it back in the summer of 1998 during a week spent relentlessly pounding against the hard pan soil beneath the clay of my property on a rented Cat D9 dozer. Still wondering if my brain has stopped reverberating form the beating that Cat gave me. But that was a small price to pay. The thrill of seeing that empty pit fill in the rains later that summer and fall along with the many life forms that soon made it their home were as satisfying as anything I have painted.
I often look at it– as I am this moment– and think that it will be here long after I am gone, supporting lives of creatures that will have no knowledge of my efforts.
And that pleases me greatly. Even as much as any legacy, if any, my work here in the studio will have.
It always comes down to those things we do with love and the people that we touch and affect that outlast the lives we have here on this planet. As Mr. Bradbury put it: Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die.
These things you keep You’d better throw them away You wanna turn your back On your soulless days Once you were tethered And now you are free Once you were tethered Well now you are free That was the river This is the sea!
–This Is the Sea, The Waterboys, 1985
Don’t have much to say this morning but thought I would share a song that I came across this morning. It’s from the ageless Tom Jones and his version of a song from a Scottish band that I have featured here in the past, The Waterboys. This is a song from what is called their BigMusic period in the early 1980’s, which is when I first began listening to their music. An interesting and influential group though not many folks here are aware of them now.
This song, This Is the Sea, is masterfully performed by Tom Jones here in a performance from 2021 when he was a mere 81 years of age. I am always fascinated by how he maintains that powerful voice, as well as how he manages to say relevant with his choice of material and his always interesting interpretations of these songs. This is different than the the Waterboys’ original but holds true to the integrity of the song while still making it his own.
As an artist who has went from being a younger artist to a now aging one, I find inspiration in his work from recent years even though I work in a much different medium. It reminds me that I always want to be pushing forward, to not be stagnant and relying on and restricted by those things I have done in the past. You got to push past the boundaries you put up for yourself. Set new challenges.
Because as the song says: that was the river, this is the sea.
God is not in the vastness of greatness. He is hid in the vastness of smallness. He is not in the general. He is in the particular. When we understand the particular, then we will know all.
–Pearl S. Buck, God’s Men (1951)
…hid in the vastness of smallness…
Though I do not adhere to any single belief system or single deity, I love the excerpt above from Pearl Buck. We often look to the greatest, the loudest, the brightest– the furthest reach of everything– as proof of the miracle of the world in which we exist. The grandeur of the tallest mountains and the deepest seas.
But so often just the smallest of those things we look past while searching for some reason for our existence hold the very proof we seek. Sometimes small things hold the majesty and power of tall mountains, deep oceans and the sun high in our sky.
If only we pause to look close enough…
Well, that’s my statement for this year’s Little Gemsshow at the West End Gallery which opens tonight. There’s ample proof of the vastness to be found in smallness in this year’s show from so many of the gallery’s artists. I’ve participated in every Little Gems show since 1995– my first public display of my work– and this might well be the best of those 29 shows. It’s a beautiful exhibit of the power to be found in small works.
Hope you can get to see it.
FYI- The group at the top, all included in this show, are true Little Gems, each measuring just under 2″ by 2.”
I thought I would include a word about the death of Burt Bacharach, who passed away at the age of 94. What a career and what a unique talent! I was both stunned and surprised going through the list of songs he wrote. Most were easily recognizable as the hits he had during the 60’s and 70’s but some were news to me. For example, I was surprised he wrote The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Or The Story ofMy Life for Marty Robbins, Magic Moments for Perry Como and several others. I’ve sang along to all these songs and more not knowing they were Burt Bacharach songs.
Of course, he is best known for his work with Dionne Warwick. Theirs was one of those rare perfect unions of composer and artist. I played this video here of the two of them back in 2016. It shows Bacharach working with Warwick on a new song before the recording session and displays how beautifully the two worked together. It’s fascinating to see how he communicates his vision for the song to Warwick and how she easily she comprehends and responds to his cues. It goes a long way towards explaining why she was such a perfect vessel for his music. The clip ends with the full recording of the song. The song is Loneliness Remembers What Happiness Forgets.
The knack of our species lies in our capacity to transmit our accumulated knowledge down the generations. The slowest among us can, in a few hours, pick up ideas that it took a few rare geniuses a lifetime to acquire.
Yet what is distinctive is just how selective we are about the topics we deem it possible to educate ourselves in. Our energies are overwhelmingly directed toward material, scientific, and technical subjects and away from psychological and emotional ones. Much anxiety surrounds the question of how good the next generation will be at math; very little around their abilities at marriage or kindness. We devote inordinate hours to learning about tectonic plates and cloud formations, and relatively few fathoming shame and rage.
The assumption is that emotional insight might be either unnecessary or in essence unteachable, lying beyond reason or method, an unreproducible phenomenon best abandoned to individual instinct and intuition. We are left to find our own path around our unfeasibly complicated minds — a move as striking (and as wise) as suggesting that each generation should rediscover the laws of physics by themselves.
~Alain de Botton, The School of Life: An Emotional Education
Alain de Botton is right. We have accumulated the knowledge of the ages and made it virtually accessible to almost anyone anytime anywhere. Yet, though we stand at the current and ever heightening apex of knowledge, our emotional and behavioral development has not accompanied us on the climb.
The world has become increasingly complicated and interconnected and we are left to fend for ourselves with little more than our brains and minds. And while that brain might be suitably equipped for the job, we have no idea how to control it. It’s like we have instant access to a very powerful computer yet barely know how to turn it on or off let alone perform up to its capabilities. There’s no owner’s manual or website for customer service.
Some of us fumble around in the dark trying to find out how to make better use of these brains and minds on our own. Some band together and use theirs sparingly, often following the thoughts and guidance of religious and ideological leaders. Some give up altogether and run on autopilot, simply echoing the words and behavior of the mobs.
We try to use it as best we can– with mixed results, which often leaves disappointed, disenchanted, and disturbed.
This brings me to the character depicted in the current Ring of Fire series that is part of the Little Gems show that opens tomorrow at the West End Gallery. They feel as though they are among those who feel lost in this world, who don’t quite understand how the state of things came to this point and are struggling to make their way through it. Faced with a complicated world with complicated dangers, they can only respond in a primal manner.
Trapped in their own rings of fire…
That’s the last thing I am going to say about this series, at least for some time to come. I am having second thoughts on showing this series at all and have few expectations for it. But despite these misgivings, this work serves a great purpose for me in fumbling my own way through my own ring of fire.
I am playing a song from Johnny Cash today that is notRing of Fire, which you might have anticipated. This is from his later work, near the end of life. This song might also apply to these characters who feel lost and alone, with no other person to turn to. Here’s Nobody.
When I get older losing my hair Many years from now Will you still be sending me a Valentine Birthday greetings bottle of wine
If I’d been out till quarter to three Would you lock the door Will you still need me, will you still feed me When I’m sixty-four
–Paul McCartney, When I’m 64
This is another of the new small pieces included in the Little Gems show, now hanging at the West End Gallery. This little 2″ by 4″ painting is titled Hearts Eternal and is what I call one of my Baucis & Philemon paintings based on the couple from a Greek myth that I have detailed here many times before.
Being that it’s a favorite theme to revisit and that we’re less than a week from Valentine’s Day, this little piece seemed a natural fit for the Gems show. Of course, the dominant feature of this painting is the magenta-red mound from which the intertwined trees arise. I leave it to the viewer to interpret this but for me, it’s as though they are atop a red beating heart.
Along with that magenta-red heartmound, there’s lot that I like in this small piece. It packs a wallop for the little space it occupies. It’s one of those pieces that would make a great large work if I could scale everything up in size without losing any of the effect of the smaller piece.
That’s a lot more difficult than you might imagine. Things that work small don’t always translate well as they grow in size. But sometimes they do, and that potential is one of the added benefits I get from doing this small work. These pieces always spark a lot of the work that comes in the months that follow.
Here’s a song that sort of fits the painting and the fact that Valentine’s Day is nearing. This is When I’m 64 from the Beatles. It was written by Paul McCartney when he was a mere 14 years old, one of the first songs he wrote. As someone who has been married forever and who has lost my fair share of hair, this song has taken on added significance for me as the years stack up.
And Warmth Arrives— At Little Gems, West End Gallery
There is no distress so complete but that even in the most critical moments the inexplicable sunrise of hope is seen in its depths.
–Victor Hugo, The Man Who Laughs, 1869
I’ve been featuring new small paintings that are included in this year’s edition of the Little Gems exhibit that is now hanging at the West EndGallery. The opening is this Friday, February 10 with an opening reception that runs from 5-7:30 PM.
The piece above is 6″ by 6″ on paper and is titled And Warmth Arrives. It’s part of a group of pieces I’ve been working on lately that are done in shades of gray and black with a small amount of color in the tree and sun. This contrast between the grays and the areas of color make the colors seem more intense and adds an animating quality to the piece. It also brings a sense of warmth and other positive things– hope, contentment, joy, etc.– to the more somber tone emanating from the black and grays.
This juxtaposition of dark and light feelings is nothing new in my work. Even my most color drenched paintings feature an underlying darkness that brings a contrasting tone to the optimism that might otherwise be indicated by the bright colors. This adds a realistic edge that keeps the work from seeming too naive or blind to the darker, grittier aspects of the world we inhabit.
Pragmatically hopeful. Maybe that is how this work should be described.
No matter how we describe it, I think we all look for signs of hope, especially in the darkest of instances. And that brings me to a song for today. It’s an older video of Willie Nelson doing his rendition of The World is Waiting For the Sunrise. The song was written at the end of World War I when the world was definitely in need of some pragmatic hope. It became a hit record in the 1920’s and later gained renewed fame as a 1952 hit for Les Paul and Mary Ford. It has been recorded 100’s of times over the past century but I like this swingy version from Willie who plays here with the late Paul Buskirk, who was a Texas music legend who made key contributions to Willie’s success.
Like the sunrise, this song is a good thing to wake up to.
For art to be free and universal you must create like a god, command like a king and work like a slave.
–Constantin Brâncuși
I was looking for something to pair with this little painting and came across the quote above from the great Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncuși. His words really hit the bell for me, both summing up what I feel about creating art and what I see in this very small painting.
I have long felt that the artist had to create their own inner world and universe. It might be based on the outer world in which they reside but it is a separate world. It has its own atmosphere, its own feel, its own sense of place and time.
This would be the create like a god part of Brâncuși’s words.
In that newly created world, the artist is the law. The artist determines what is right and wrong. If the artist says the trees shall be red, the fields purple or orange, and the sky green, that is how it shall be done. As Pharoah might have said: So it is written, so it shall be done.
This would be the command like a king part.
To make this world, with its own rules and sense of right and wrong, a reality requires hard work. It demands sweat and dedication, not half-hearted efforts, to maintain the vitality and viability of this newly formed world, those things it requires in order for others to accept and embrace this new world. Tens of thousands of hours of dedicated work and sacrifice go into it.
That, of course, is the work like a slave part.
I see all three parts in this new little piece that is part of the Little Gems show, opening Friday at the West End Gallery. It represents the world that has been formed in my work over the past 25+ years, with its own rules of how things are and can be along with its own symbol language. The fields in the foreground, for example, are always a symbol of hard work for me. Or I guess I should say that it’s a symbol for that which is created from hard work.
The slave part with its hard work and sacrifice might sound pretty unappealing and has been a deal breaker for many talented people. But I have found that once you have embraced the roles of God and King/Queen in your work, the Slave role becomes much easier to accept.
I call this little painting Merit Badge. When it was completed, I looked at it and thought that it summed up my world well. I also thought it would make a great merit badge if my work were some odd Scout category. Like, if you saw this patch on their sash you would know that they earned their God/King/Slave badge.
To go along with these words and image, I am including a favorite song of mine that I last played about 5 years back. This version is from a band called The Big Beats with vocalist Arlin Harmon. I don’t have a lot of info on either though from what I can glean Harmon was a highly esteemed singer out in the Northwest. It’s a solid rocking performance with a different flavor.
And in my world where I am God/King/Slave, that’s called good stuff.
Well, my poor man, seems we’ve made some progress in my field. Millennia have passed since you first called me archaeology.
I no longer require your stone gods, your ruins with legible inscriptions.
Show me your whatever and I’ll tell you who you were. Something’s bottom, something’s top. A scrap of engine. A picture tube’s neck. An inch of cable. Fingers turned to dust. Or even less than that, or even less.
Using a method that you couldn’t have known then, I can stir up memory in countless elements. Traces of blood are forever. Lies shine. Secret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light.
If I want to (and you can’t be too sure that I will), I’ll peer down the throat of your silence, I’ll read your views from the sockets of your eyes, I’ll remind you in infinite detail of what you expected from life besides death.
Show me your nothing that you’ve left behind and I’ll build from it a forest and a highway, an airport, baseness, tenderness, a missing home.
Show me your little poem and I’ll tell you why it wasn’t written any earlier or later than it was.
Oh no, you’ve got me wrong. Keep your funny piece of paper with its scribbles. All I need for my ends is your layer of dirt and the long gone smell of burning.
—Archaeology, Wisława Szymborska, 1986
The new painting at the top, Archaeology: The Red Shoe, is included in the Little Gemsshow that opens this coming Friday, February10, at the West End Gallery. The Archaeology series began in 2008 and was a reaction to me feeling blocked in advance of my annual shows. I had three or four solos shows that year. The Red Tree had been my signature element for almost a decade at that point and I had lost a bit of confidence in it, felt that it may have run its course and that I could say little more with it. I was wrong about that, of course, but this concern pushed me to this series with their artifact fields beneath the trees and landscapes above.
It has been one of my more successful series and has had lasting appeal. I still hear from people around the world on this particular series even though I’ve only painted a few, maybe four, of these Archaeology pieces in the past six or seven years or maybe even longer.
I don’t exactly know why I don’t do more of them. Maybe I am fearful they say more about me than I want to share though I doubt that’s the case after 25 years of exposing myself via my work and nearly 15 years of this blog. I imagine that I have given enough data so that anyone who is paying attention — online archaeologists, if you will–would know much about me. Maybe too much.
No, I think it’s because they are draining to paint. They take full concentration as I am constantly weighing and balancing the composition. I like doing them but always feel a bit exhausted after working on them. And I like examining after they are done to see how things come together, to see if they tell a story or if there is any common ground between the objects.
They have a cryptic quality that appeals to that repressed archaeologist part of me, the one who wants to figure out how things might have come to be how and where they ended up.
The part that wonder what we leave behind will say to those in the future.
As the late Polish poet and Nobel Prize winner Wisława Szymborska said in her poem above:
Show me your whatever and I’ll tell you who you were.
I wonder who she would say I was from viewing this painting?
For this Sunday Morning Music, here’s a song that borders just a bit on the idea of archaeology but it makes up for it in the fun factor. The song is The Mesopotamians from They Might Be Giants. No, it’s not about the people of ancient Iraq. It’s about a band called The Mesopotamians who hope that one day, perhaps long after they are gone, their work will be newly discovered by some musical archaeologist from the future.
Redtree Times 