Redtree Times

Color and Glide— Coming Soon to West End Gallery

So scanty is our present allowance of happiness that in many situations life could scarcely be supported if hope were not allowed to relieve the present hour by pleasures borrowed from the future.

–Samuel Johnson, The Adventurer No. 69, Idle Hours (1753)

The other day I mentioned not wanting to write about my work when so many wrongs were being spread among us. I didn’t want my focus on art or that of anybody else appear to be a distraction or seem ignorant of what is taking place.

Thinking about it in the days that followed, I realized that I was mistaking the function of art in such times. It is not a distraction at all. It is instead a release, a form of relief that is badly needed if one is aware and stays informed on what is taking place. Anyone who is disturbed by injustice and possessing even an iota of empathy and compassion for their fellow humans can be eaten alive with stress and anxiety in such times.

They need relief of some sort at some point. But not as a distraction nor to make them ignore their fears and cares. No, they need something that calms and gives hope in some way. Something that allows them to step out of the parade and stand hidden in a cool dark shadow for a few moments in order to catch their breath and take in the small details and wonders of this world that may have been overlooked in the hubbub of this moment. To find hope in a small glimpse of beauty, something that reminds them of why they need to continue to care and to stay involved.

No, art is not distraction at such times. It is a needed breath of clean air that keeps us going.

Relief. Release.

It is hope.

Hope and relief are what I find in this new painting. I had a hard time titling it because it does so many things for me that focusing on one thing seemed to leave out others that seemed as vital for me. But it was the ease of the boat going into the many colors and pattern of the sky that captured me. I feel as though I can get lost in the colors of the sky here, each block of color like a new burst of flavor and feeling.

But more than that, it makes me feel hopeful. it reminds me of the freedom of the mind and feeling, that part of us that can’t be captured, dictated to or governed by others.

It is boat gliding under a sky of wonder.

I call this painting, 16″ by 20″ on canvas, Color and Glide. It is included in Guiding Light, my solo show at the West End Gallery that opens October 17.

For this week’s Sunday Morning Music, I am going with a song whose title, along with its lyrics, might also fit this painting. This is Drift Away by Dobie Gray from 1973. The song was originally recorded by others as a country song, but Dobie Gray’s version far outstrips them in depth of feeling in my opinion.

A Bellow to the Void– Coming to West End Gallery

He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers.

–Charles Péguy, The Honest People in Basic Verities: Prose and Poetry (1943)

I didn’t know much about him when I came across the words above, but the author of them, Charles Péguy, was an interesting character from what little research I have done this early morning. Born into poverty in Orleans in 1873 and fatherless since the age of one, Péguy transcended his rough start in life with education, becoming a well-known essayist and poet in France. deeply nationalistic, Péguy enlisted at the outbreak of WWI and was among the first soldiers sent into battle. He died in combat at Marne in 1914.

The Poetry Foundation article on him states:

French poet, philosopher, and journalist Charles Péguy grew up poor in Orléans, France. He combined fervent Catholicism with socialist politics to create a body of work unlike any other. As a Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism writer suggested, “Most critics find that Péguy’s literary works exist outside the mainstream of modern French literature.” George E. Gingras, writing in the Encyclopedia of World Literature, noted, “Ultimately unclassifiable, Péguy was a solitary, best remembered for resisting all forces seeking to make political capital out of moral issues.” Péguy composed lengthy poems and plays, but philosophical journalism is his trademark.

In my brief research, I am finding he it is hard to attach a label on him. Unclassifiable is probably the right word for him. There seems to be a contrarian streak to him, one that made him willing to speak the truth as he saw it even when it went against the prevailing tides of sentiment. The next lines that follow the passage at the top are:

One must always tell what one sees. Above all, which is more difficult, one must always see what one sees.

A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.

All three of these short lines speak a truth, at least in the way I perceive them. If you see what you see, you must say what it is and to remain silent, refusing to bellow out what it is that you do see, you then become complicit with those who seek to deceive and abuse. That certainly seems applicable to the current situation. Actually, it’s a truth that speaks to any time because there have always been those seeking to deceive and abuse along with the many who have remained mute as it happens.

That final line about a word not being the same with one writer as with another translates to artists as well. The work of some artists from the gut, is part and parcel of their being, while other artists maintain a distance in their work from their gut, their true self. This distance can sometimes be cloaked in beauty, but it is often perceptible, bringing a coolness and aloofness to the work.

Like the soul is not fully engaged.

Obviously, I hope that my work falls in that from-the-gut and with a bit of soul category. At least, I try to create it in such a way. Maybe I am not always successful, but I try to say what I see.

And I do try to bellow the truth in what I see. We have so little time here and the voice of each of us needs to ring out in some way that to not bellow what is right and true is a deception of ourselves and our souls.

That is what I see in the new painting at the top, A Bellow to the Void. It is 14″ by 14″ on canvas and is included in my October solo show, Guiding Light, at the West End Gallery. There is a primal quality in the image of someone yelling their truth into the night sky. Like Whitman’s barbaric yawp echoing over the rooftops of the world.

As I said, we have so little time here. We are witnesses to our lives and times. To say what we see, to bellow it out to the void, is a duty to ourselves, our descendants, and our souls.

That’s enough said for now. I have to get upon the roof now. A bellow will soon commence.

Here’s Mumford and Sons with their Awake My Soul. Good stuff to kickstart your soul on a Monday morning.