Redtree Times

The Spirit of Silence

Who then tells a finer tale than any of us? Silence does.

—Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen), Last Tales (1957)

I am going to heed the words of Isak Dinesen this morning and let silence tell its tales. It will certainly tell a better one than I this morning.

Here’s a piece of music from Lithuanian composer Vytautas Miškinis performed by the Atlanta Master Chorale. It is titled Dum Medium Silentium which is derived from a 12th century Gregorian chant whose first line translates as While all things were in quiet silence.

Enough said…

Terminus– At the West End Gallery

While we have the gift of life, it seems to me the only tragedy is to allow part of us to die – whether it is our spirit, our creativity or our glorious uniqueness.

–Gilda Radner, It’s Always Something (1989)

Have a lot going on this morning but thought I’d share this post that ran in 2015 after first running in 2010. I added the quote above with Gilda’s glorious uniqueness:

This season always signals the end of one year and the beginning of the next and generally sets me to thinking about pasts and futures, thinking about their connection and how it affects my life and work. One way to examine the past is to delve into genealogy, something that I began doing in earnest several years ago and continue on a regular basis, especially at this time of the year. It has provided a background, a basis for being and a connection with my environment that I often felt was missing as I grew up.

I will talk a little bit about it with family members, trying to pass on my findings, but have gotten so used to glassy-eyed looks of disinterest that I now seldom bring it up in conversation. Not everyone wants to look back and I can respect that. For me, however, it has been essential to my own progress forward, providing me with perspective and a sense of being. I wrote a bit about this several years ago on this blog, documenting a relative’s pitiable existence and how it relates to my work. I think it says as much about how I define my purpose as an artist as well as anything I have written before or since.

I woke up much too early this morning. Deep darkness and quiet but my mind racing. Oddly enough I found myself thinking of a person I had come across in my explorations in my personal genealogy. It was a cousin from several generations back, someone who lived in the late 1800′s in rural northern Pennsylvania. The name was much like so many of those you often come across in genealogy, one with few hints as to the life they led. Few traces of their existence at all. 

 At the time, it piqued my curiosity for some reason I couldn’t identify. He was simply a son of the brother of one of my great-great grandparents. As I said, you run across these people by the droves in genealogy, people who show up then disappear in the mist of history, many dying at a young age.

But this one had something that made me want to look further. I could find nothing but a mention in an early census record then nothing. No family of any sort. No military service. No land or property. No listings in the cemeteries around where he lived. I searched all the local records available to me and finally came across one lone record. One mention of this name at the right time in the right place, a decade or so from when I lost sight of them.

It was a census record and this person was at that time in their late 30′s. It was one line with no other family members, one of many in a long list that stretched over two pages. I had seen this before. Maybe this was a jail or a prison. I had other family members in my tree who, when the census rolled around, were incarcerated and showed up for those years as prisoners. So, I went to the beginning of the list and there was my answer.

It wasn’t a prison. Well, not in name. It was the County Home. This person was either insane or mentally or physically handicapped though at that time it could have been something like epilepsy or for just being too different. It was a place for living out their life in a home when they could or would no longer be cared for by family.

It struck me at the time that this person was certainly much like myself and everyone else. He was someone who lived and experienced feelings as we all do. He would have laughed and cried, loved and been happy, and felt alone and afraid. And now he was merely a name representing a person who has probably not been thought of in many, many decades. If ever.

This all came back to me in a flash as I laid there in the dark this morning. I began to think of what I do and, as is often the case when I find myself wide awake in the dark at 3:30 AM, began to question why I do it and what purpose it serves in this world. Is there any value other than pretty pictures to hang on a wall? How does my work pertain to someone like my relative who lived and died in obscurity? 

In my work, the red tree is the most prominent symbol used. I see myself as the red tree when I look at these paintings and see it as a way of calling attention to the simple fact that I exist in this world.  I think that may be what others see as well– a symbol of their own existence and uniqueness in the world. 

If I am a red tree, isn’t everyone a red tree in some way? Isn’t my distant cousin living in a rural county home, alone and apart from family, a red tree as well? What was his uniqueness, his exceptionalism? He had something, I’m sure. We all do.

And it came to me then, as I laid in the blackness. Maybe the red tree isn’t about my own uniqueness. Maybe it was about recognizing the uniqueness of others and seeing ourselves in them, recognizing that we all have special qualities to celebrate. Maybe that is the real purpose in what I do. Perhaps this realization that everyone has an exceptionalism that deserves recognition and celebration is the reason that I find it so hard to shake the red tree from my vocabulary of imagery. 

 Don’t we all deserve to be a red tree, in someone’s eyes?

There was more in the spinning gears this morning but I want to leave it at that for now.  It’s 5:30 AM and the day awaits…

Hugo Ball Reading His Poem Karawane

The symbolic view of things is a consequence of long absorption in images. Is sign language the real language of Paradise?

–Hugo Ball, Flight out of Time: A Dada Diary (1927)

I read the words above and wondered if Hugo Ball, one of the founders of the Dada movement of the 1920’s, was referring to the meaning found in the universal language of symbols and icons or actually meant sign language, such as ASL,  American Sign Language. Either might make sense.

I finally found an online copy of Ball’s book, Flight out of Time: A Dada Diary, and found the complete passage. Turns out he was referring to the imagery of the painter.

The painter as administrator of the vita contemplativa [contemplative life]. As herald of the supernatural sign language. That has an effect on poets’ imagery too. The symbolic view of things is a consequence of long absorption in images. Is sign language the real language of paradise? Personal paradises- maybe they are errors, but they will give new color to the idea of paradise, the archetype.

Mystery solved. Okay, it wasn’t much of a mystery and probably doesn’t hold much meaning for most folks.

But there is something to be said about the power of symbology as a language. I can certainly reach out to more people in a variety of cultures much easier with my images than with my words.

The main elements in my work have highly symbolic meaning. The Red Tree, Red Roofed Houses, Red Chairs, the sun/moon balls in the sky– all translate easily without words. And if I have done my job well enough, the nuance of meaning that I see in these symbols translates as well. In a best-case scenario, an image could translate equally to anyone anywhere with any level of education.

This is not meant to put visual imagery or the shape and symbology found in music over the written or spoken word. There is no better way to transmit thoughts with intricate nuance and meaning than well written words.

But even the language of words has its own shapes. Going back to Hugo Ball, we find that he was an innovator in sound poetry, which would be poetry that discards all meaning and creates rhythm and shape with nonsensical word-like sounds. One of his sound poems, Gadji beri bimba, was adapted to the song I Zimbra on the 1979 Talking Heads album Fear of Music. Its lyrics were as such:

Gadji beri bimba clandridi
Lauli lonni cadori gadjam
A bim beri glassala glandride
E glassala tuffm I zimbra

I know this post hasn’t really delved into any great depth on these subjects and a lot can be debated. I am just throwing it out there as I come across it early this morning. Maybe it was just a pretense to play I Zimbra. The performance of the song below is from an appearance touting David Byrne’s American Utopia Broadway show and features an intro that better explains this blog.

I am also including a reading of the Hugo Ball poem Karawane from the top of the page. This is read by Marie Osmond. Yes, Marie Osmond is now a Dada artist…

Plus, I think I will throw in one more song this morning that is based on the shapes of sounds more than meaning of words.

It’s a 1973 song from Italian singer Adriano Celentano who set out to prove that any song that even sounded like it was sung in English could become a hit in Italy. He created a song comprised of pure nonsense that sounds vaguely like words spoken in English called– buckle up for this title– Prisencolinensinainciusol. As he had predicted, the song became a hit in Italy though I think it has as much to do with its thumping rhythm as its nonsense words.

You be the judge.

The happiness of most people we know is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things.

–Ernest Dimnet, What We Live By, 1932

I think about repetition quite often. There’s the repetition of history, for example, where we seem doomed to continuously relive every mistake made in the past by our forebearers. Like we, somehow, are going to achieve different results than those in the past.

Or on a smaller scale, the repetition of destructive behaviors by individuals, even though they often know that the outcome will not be any better than it was in their past. We all know those people. Hell, we may be those people.

I guess that would be the kind of repetition that Ernest Dimnet was writing about in the excerpt at the top. Dimnet was a French priest who had a worldwide bestseller in the 1920’s with his book The Art of Thinking. It was an early self-help book that placed Dimnet’s works at the time on the same level of that from Dale Carnegie and his eternally classic How to Win Friends & Influence People.

Dimnet didn’t have the lasting power of Carnegie and few know the name now. I read several recent reviews of his books online and was surprised at how relevant those reviewers found Dimnet’s observations and advice.

I guess human nature hasn’t changed much in the past century.

Repetition, see?

Then there’s the repetition of small non-destructive behaviors like those exhibited by us creatures of habit. I find them to be coping devices, things that provide an orderliness to stave off chaos. Even writing this blog on a daily basis for the past 13 or 14 years has become a repeated exercise on which I depend in order to stay upright.

I also think of repetition in terms of my work. I repeat forms and themes endlessly. It’s done both consciously and subconsciously. I accept and embrace it but sometimes worry about it. However, I seem incapable of changing my pattern. I often feeling like I am in an eternal Groundhog’s Day as though I know that there is something I need in those same forms and themes and that the next one will somehow reveal that vital information to me.

Maybe today will be the day…

Here’s a song from Steely Dan that sums up Dimnet’s words pretty well. It’s Do It Again.

Edward Hopper –Early Sunday Morning, 1926

Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world… …The inner life of a human being is a vast and varied realm.

—Edward Hopper, ‘Statements by Four artists’, ‘Reality’ 1, Spring 1953

When I find myself struggling with my work, I usually turn to some of my favorite painters. Sometimes just examining again those paintings which once provided so much inspiration often gets me back in rhythm.

Maybe it as simple as seeing a pattern or rhythm or color and recalling how I had once integrated my versions of those things into my own work. Maybe my versions have changed or now absent. Or maybe the future in which I now sit, with some gained knowledge and skills, allows me to glean something new that I had missed in earlier examinations.

Or maybe it is just a break from being immersed in my own work. Reviewing the personal vision of others sometimes allows me to reset and reorganize.

Steady the ship, as it were.

And Edward Hopper does that as well as anyone for me. And it’s not just the work. There is something I get from the limited number of quotes he provided that jibes well with my own views on working as an artist. For example:

The man’s the work. Something does not come out of nothing.

That is akin to something that I have told students I have addressed art classes in the past. Talent and skill is wonderful but without something to say, without being a well rounded person, it will often not amount to much.

And then there’s this:

So many people say painting is fun. I don’t find it fun at all. It’s hard work for me.

I have long stated that this is, like most jobs, a hard and demanding field. It is often frustrating and certainly humbling. And even humiliating when you factor in the amount of rejection to which one is subjected.

It sometimes feels like you are running an endless marathon in which you are continually losing speed. You realize that winning the race is out window and all you can do is keep moving ahead with the hope you can someday reach the finish line having ran the best race you could.

That being said, I wouldn’t choose to do anything else at this point.

It’s what I do.

Let’s look at some of Hopper’s better-known works, okay?

Charles Demuth- Number 5

The last mad throb of red just as it turns green; the ultimate shriek of orange calling all the blues of heaven for relief and support… each color almost regains the fun it must have felt within itself on forming the first rainbow.

–Charles Demuth, Letters of Charles Demuth, American Artist, 1883-1935

Running very late this morning and thought I’d run a post from way back in 2009 about a favorite painter who I have only mentioned once or twice in all those years, Charles Demuth. His coloration in his Precisionist paintings were a big influence on my early work and examining them again always refreshes me.

And I feel the need to be refreshed.

I’ve been a fan of Charles Demuth since the first time I saw his work.  He was considered a part of the Precisionist movement of the 20’s, along with painters such as Charles Sheeler and Joseph Stella among many others, with his paintings of buildings and poster-like graphics such as this painting, I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold. He was also one of the prominent watercolorists of his time and while they are beautiful and deserve praise in their own right, it’s his buildings that draw me in.

Demuth’s work has a tight graphic quality but still feels painterly to me. There’s still the feel of the artist’s hand in his work which to me is a great quality. There are photorealist painters out there whose craftsmanship I can really admire but who are so precise that they lose that feel of having the artist’s hand in the work.

I like seeing the imperfection of the artist. The first time I saw one of the Ocean Park paintings from artist Richard Diebenkorn, it wasn’t the composition or color that excited me.  It was the sight of several bristles from his brush embedded in the surface. To me, that was a thrill, seeing direct evidence of the process. The imperfect hand of the artist. I get that feeling from Demuth.

He also had a great sense of color and the harmony and interplay of colors. His colors are often soft yet strong, a result of his work with watercolors. His whites are never fully white and there are subtle shades everywhere, all contributing to the overall feel of the piece. His work always seems to achieve that sense of rightness I often mention.

His works, especially his paintings of buildings, have a very signature look, marked by a repeated perspective where he views the buildings above him. His paintings are usually fragments of the building’s upper reaches. There’s a sense of formality in this view, almost reverence. I don’t really know if he was merely entranced by the forms of industrial buildings or if he was making social commentary.

Whatever the case, do yourself a favor and take a look at the work of Charles Demuth.  It’s plain and simple good stuff…

I saw a cold, dark, black emptiness. It was unlike any blackness you can see or feel on Earth. It was deep, enveloping, all-encompassing. I turned back toward the light of home. I could see the curvature of Earth, the beige of the desert, the white of the clouds and the blue of the sky. It was life. Nurturing, sustaining, life. Mother Earth. Gaia. And I was leaving her.

Everything I had thought was wrong. Everything I had expected to see was wrong.

I had thought that going into space would be the ultimate catharsis of that connection I had been looking for between all living things—that being up there would be the next beautiful step to understanding the harmony of the universe. In the film “Contact,” when Jodie Foster’s character goes to space and looks out into the heavens, she lets out an astonished whisper, “They should’ve sent a poet.” I had a different experience, because I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound.

It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna . . . things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.

I learned later that I was not alone in this feeling. It is called the “Overview Effect” and is not uncommon among astronauts, including Yuri Gagarin, Michael Collins, Sally Ride, and many others. Essentially, when someone travels to space and views Earth from orbit, a sense of the planet’s fragility takes hold in an ineffable, instinctive manner. Author Frank White first coined the term in 1987: “There are no borders or boundaries on our planet except those that we create in our minds or through human behaviors. All the ideas and concepts that divide us when we are on the surface begin to fade from orbit and the moon. The result is a shift in worldview, and in identity.”

–William Shatner, Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder

A convergence of things this morning. One of the first things I came across was a short excerpt from the new autobiography from William Shatner that came out earlier this week. This excerpt, featured above, was about his voyage into near space that took place last October.

Reading it, I could easily imagine the feelings he experienced, the dread and grief of seeing all you know and love beyond reach as you plunge into the deepest darkness of the universe.

Geez, I get that feeling when I have to venture beyond the mailbox at the end of our driveway.

It reinforced my own feelings on this planet. I like this place and, while I kind of understand the desire to venture boldly toward new frontiers, feel that we are extraordinarily fortunate to be here.

Earth is a gift.

With cooperation and an eye to its fragility, this Earth could easily provide us with all we need for all foreseeable time.

I feel some of that same dread and grief knowing that we probably don’t have the ability to transcend our shortcomings– greed, bigotry, and any of the other Seven Deadly Sins— in a way that would allow us to achieve widespread cooperation or provide the needed care.

But we are here.

Earthlings.

We live in a world that is filled with beauty and wonders, yet we dream of hurtling through space toward near planets that are inhospitably hot or cold, with unbreathable atmospheres and without water or lifeforms. At least any that we can recognize or understand.

I don’t know that there’s any point to this. Shatner’s words just rang out at me this morning.

The convergence I mentioned came after I had decided to write about the excerpt from Shatner’s book. I opened the YouTube opening page to find a matching song for post and for this week’s Sunday Morning Music. The first thing I saw was a recommended listing for a song called Earthlings from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

I had featured Nick Cave earlier in the week and don’t usually like to share two songs from the same artist in the same week (though I had done this already this week with John Prine) but this just seemed to match up too well to not use it. Plus, it has a seasonal touch with its mention of Halloween.

So, here’s that song from Nick Cave, for all of us– Earthlings and non-Earthlings alike.

The Allure— At the West End Gallery

“Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you’ve got a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies-“God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”

― Kurt Vonnegut

I used the words above from the book God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater from the late Kurt Vonnegut, as the opening for a post on kindness a couple of years back. It was a short little essay that for some reason gets a number of views seemingly every day.

It surprises me but it also makes me glad that a post like this attracts people.

After all, kindness is a good thing and I would like to think that anything that furthers kindness among others is good, as well.

The words above are spoken to the infant twins of a neighbor as part of a baptismal speech from Eliot Rosewater, the book’s protagonist. It seems like a ridiculous bit of advice to speak over infants at a religious ceremony, but the sentiment is striking in its simplicity and practical application.

Contrary to Mr. Rosewater’s advice, it may not be an actual rule. But if you got to be something, why not be kind? Don’t cost a thing, you seldom have to apologize for it, and you might even make someone else’s day. Or week. Or month.

Hell, why not?

Here’s a simple and kind song, You Got Gold, from the late John Prine.

Maybe that gold inside you is your own kindness.

I do what I can to convey what I experience before nature and most often, in order to succeed in conveying what I feel, I totally forget the most elementary rules of painting, if they exist that is.  In short, I allow faults to appear, the better to fix my sensations.

–Claude Monet, 1912

I’ve been in this studio for 15 years now and it has gotten to the point that I now look past certain things. They begin to barely register so I try to periodically stop and take things in. This morning I decide to look at the things on a built-in nook on a wall in my studio kitchen. A couple of shelves of art books, books of essays and poetry and odds and ends. Two small early favorite paintings on the top shelf. A stained-glass experiment and a piece of pottery from a late friend. An agate with a polished face. A couple of other small things but my gaze stopped when it fell upon this little sign.

It’s a little stained now. It’s been with me for what seems like forever, in my house, in my old studio and now here, in this place. It’s not much but its meaning has meant a lot to me over the past quarter century.

I realized in that moment this morning that I hadn’t fully looked at it for quite some time. And that I needed to heed its advice now. 

I thought it was worth a replay of the post that I wrote about this sign back in 2012.

I have had this little sign hanging in my studio for the last 16 years [over 25 years now], a rough reminder to myself when I begin to feel like my work is bending to the rules and judgments of others. It reminds me that I am working in my own realm, my world beyond the reach of others. I control the parameters of what is possible, of what defines reality in my work. The rules of others mean nothing in my little painted world.

Over the years I have glimpsed this small sign at times when I have been feeling that my work is stagnating or beginning to adhere to accepted conventions. At those times I have been spurred to push my work in some new direction. It might come in the form of heightening the intensity of color or introducing new hues that seems incompatible with nature, for example.

It’s as though these two words are prods that constantly tell me that nobody can control me when I am here in my created world. There’s a great liberation in this realization and I find myself trusting my own judgment of my work more and more. Because I have created my own criteria for its reality, criticism from others means little now.

I think that’s what I am trying to get at here, that an artist must fully believe that they are the sole voice of authority in their work, that they, not others, determine its validity. Maybe that’s why I am so drawn to Outsider artists, those untrained artists who maintain this firm belief in their personal vision and create a personal inner world of art in which it can live and prosper.  Rules mean nothing to them- only the expression of their inner self matters.

Riding Rhythm– At the West End Gallery

Come sail your ships around me
And burn your bridges down.
We make a little history baby
Every time you come around.
Come loose your dogs upon me
And let your hair hang down.
You are a little mystery to me
Every time you come around.

—Nick Cave, The Ship Song

It’s a busy time right now as I prep for an upcoming show in early November at the Kada Gallery in Erie. Seems like the sand in the hourglass that marks my remaining time for the show is falling faster and faster. It’s been that way for every show in recent years. It just takes longer to get ready.

I don’t know to what I should attribute this. Age? Process? Something else completely apart from painting itself, some sort of mental distractions?

Sometimes I think it is a result of aging. It takes me longer to do everything and painting is no exception. You would think after all this time that it would be quicker and more efficient.

But it’s not. So, maybe it’s process. After all, my process was never set in any traditional manner of painting, never done in one way only. It was always freestyle–whatever worked in whatever way– and it was always evolving. Things like different technique and elements come and go, some gone forever. But more things have been added than subtracted over the past 25 years and, as a result, I find that each piece requires much more time and effort.

Factoring that into an aging body and an all too often distracted mind, it makes sense. I try to compensate by being more efficient in the prep stages for these shows, things like photographing and framing the work, and it helps somewhat.

But I still find myself short on time. Like now.

There’s much work to be done in order to get my show’s ship to port. In that vein, here’s The Ship Song from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.