Redtree Times

On the Sunny Side – Now At the Principle Gallery Show

The storm and its fury broke today
Crushing hopes that we cherish so dear
The clouds and storms will, in time, pass away
The sun again will shine bright and clear.

—Keep on the Sunny Side, Ada Blenkhorn & J. Howard Entwisle, 1899

I thought it would be a good idea to show one of the smaller pieces from my current show at the Principle Gallery. I like this painting a lot, mainly for its color and brightness which gives it a sense of hope and optimism. I also like the balance of the composition. It’s simply constructed but it feels full and right, something I always look for in my work.

Plus, it has a message that we need to keep in mind during these stormy times.

Its title is On the Sunny Side which was nabbed from the titles of two songs that came to mind, actually. One was jazzy classic On the Sunny Side of the Street (grab your coat /grab your hat/ leave your worries on the doorstep), a song from the 1930’s that has been recorded by countless artists over the years. The other was the bluegrassy Keep on the Sunny Side which was written in 1899 and popularized by the Carter Family in the late 1920’s.

Either song works really well with this forward-looking piece but for today I chose the version from The Whites which was included in the great soundtrack for the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? It’s a lovely, faithful rendition of the song and it fits nicely with the upbeat tone of the painting.

And that’s something I can use this morning.

The Garden Beyond Chaos– At the Principle Gallery

One man practicing kindness in the wilderness is worth all the temples this world pulls.

― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

Maybe the simple act of being kind is the only answer we need.

It certainly serves a greater purpose than the all too many examples of hate-preaching I have observed in recent weeks. For example, this past Sunday in a suburb of Fort Worth, a Baptist preacher called for the deaths of all gay people, saying, “They should be lined up against the wall and shot in the back of the head! That’s what God teaches. That’s what the Bible says.”

Now, I’m no Bible scholar nor am I even identified as a Christian, but I don’t believe that is in the book that these folks like to swing around and hold up so high. Doesn’t really seem to be in line with the teachings of their savior, if you ask me.

No, it’s just plain old run of the mill hatred and an incitement to violence. Instead of trying to help their congregation find and spread peace, love, and kindness, they instead seek to sow even more divisions prejudices, and hatreds in this world.

Instead of calming souls, they add to the chaos and turmoil.

And as the good book says, “Chaos begets chaos and that is a plague upon the Lord.”

Hey, I can make up stuff from that book, too. And, hell, mine doesn’t call for anyone to be shot in the back of their heads.

No, kindness, along with love and acceptance, is the simple solution for what ails this world and keeps it in what seems to be a constant state of chaos. Trying to find beauty in and unity with this world and the others in it would appear to be a much more productive way of existing.

That’s pretty much the meaning I find in the painting at the top, The Garden Beyond Chaos, a new piece from my current Principle Gallery show. It’s about how beauty and coexistence with all beings provides a barrier against the chaos that swirls around this world. About how kindness, love, and beauty create a form of order that is a yin to the yang that is hatred and chaos.

It might appear to be a naive notion. But I would gladly wallow in that form of naivete to the end of my days rather than live in a world filled with nothing more than hatreds, judgement, and prejudices.

Oracle’s Light– Now at the Principle Gallery

Every single human being should be the fulfilment of a prophecy: for every human being should be the realisation of some ideal, either in the mind of God or in the mind of man.

― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

Oscar probably has it right: humans should lead lives of intention. Many try. As a result, those that do look for some sort of guidance or template to follow. This should come as no surprise– we all need some assistance in getting along. Actually, all the help we can get.

Some use religion, some philosophy, some education and knowledge, and some the latest self-help trend. Whatever it might be, we all seek symbols that serve as guideposts for the path ahead.

Something that tells us we are doing the right thing, living our lives well. In a way where we set a course to follow rather than living our lives like the ball in a pinball machine, being thrown from side to side, back and forth, by things we don’t choose and cannot control. A life of steady action rather than one of constant violent reaction.

To that end, we often seek guides and guideposts.

I often see the Red Tree in much of my work as a symbol of this sort of guidepost. It almost always stands alone, slightly elevated above the rest of its surroundings. It seems to be in a stance where it appears to be either symbolically observing, sermonizing, prophesying, or teaching.

The Red Tree here seems to be in a position where it appears to me to be in the role of the soothsayer or prophet who has made its prediction and waits now for it to come to bear. The bright light of the rising sun symbolizes the coming realization of its prophecy. I suppose it could be a sunset which could also serve in the same manner, depending on the tone of its prediction, whether it predicted a coming light r a falling darkness. leading me to give it the name Oracle’s Light.

This was piece that sat in on the stone hearth in front of my easel for quite some time, the last piece to leave my painting area to be framed. There was something about it that made me want to keep it in front of me, as though if I kept it there long enough it would share the secret of its prophecy with me.

Unfortunately, it didn’t. 

But I am one of those people who will keep looking for that guide, that guidepost, that symbol that will hopefully serve some meaningful purpose in going ahead. And this piece simply reminds me of that.

Oracle’s Light is 22″ by 28″ on aluminum panel and is included in my solo exhibit, Depths and Light, which is on view until July 3 at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA.

Navigating Chaos– Now at the Principle Gallery

Where the blue of the sea meets the sky
And the big yellow sun leads me home
I’m everywhere now
The way is a vow
To the wind of each breath by and by
The water sustains me without even trying
The water can’t drown me, I’m done
With my dying

-Johnny Flynn, The Water

Not going to say much today. Just going to show a painting from my current solo show that hangs at the Principle Gallery, thank a few people and share a song that I thought might fit this particular painting.

First, the painting is Navigating Chaos, which is 24″ by 24″ on canvas. Finding balance amidst chaos might be the central theme of this show and this piece might best exemplify that idea. The sky is built from chaotic marks and the small boat heaves among sharp slashing waves. The sailor struggles to keep balance, to cut through it all.

Perhaps a metaphor for these strange times.

This was a piece that I spent a lot of time with, here in the studio. After it was done, I placed it at point where it was in my sightline whenever looked up from my easel. Maybe it was a reminder to maintain my own balance, to focus on things beyond the chaos.

I don’t know for sure. But it served some purpose at the time and does the same even now.

Secondly, let me thank Michele and her great staff– Clint, Taylor and Owen— at the Principle Gallery for their constant support over the past quarter century of our relationship. Their professional attitudes, their attention to detail, and the kindness and warmth of their friendship have meant the world to me, both artistically and personally. I can’t say enough here.

Finally, here’s a song for this Sunday morning that I think matches up well with the painting. It’s titled The Water and it’s from British actor/musician Johnny Flynn. I first became aware of him when he portrayed Albert Einstein in the Genius series, not aware that he was a popular musical performer as well. This is a duet with the wonderful singer/songwriter Laura Marling.

Enjoy.

You can take a virtual tour of the exhibit by clicking here.

Garden of Delight– At the Principle Gallery Show

The artist is always beginning. Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery is of little worth.

― Ezra Pound

This year’s Principle Gallery show has opened and hangs until July 3. As it is with every show, there is a sense of finality in delivering the work to the gallery.

An ending, if you will.

Of course, that is just the ending of its creation, the end of my time, thought and effort spent in bringing it to bear. I have put all I can into each piece and my time with them soon comes to a close.

But in that time with them, I have pulled discoveries, lessons, and emotional connections from this work. Their leaving creates new beginnings for me, new avenues to explore.

But it is not an ending at all for the work itself. Their entry into the world through the gallery is a new beginning with whoever becomes their custodian. A new conversation will begin between the work and that person. It is the beginning of what I, as an artist, hope is a long and meaningful relationship between the two. 

You never fully know why a person chooses a piece of your work. It may be a mere decorative choice or to set a tone in a certain space. But your deepest hope is that it has personal meaning and connection with that person, that it transcends just being something neat or pleasant on the wall. You want it to be a portal to thought and feeling.

I know that’s my thought as I begin a new piece, as I am about to do in just a few minutes. I want my ending with the work to become a new beginning for someone else.

You can take a virtual tour of my show by clicking here.

The Forever Bond— At the Principle Gallery

I kept looking for something to kick this post off, some quote or blurb that would set the tone, but I couldn’t find anything that captures the mix of feelings of accomplishment, pride, fear, and anxious smallness that comes with the opening of any show I have ever done. Oh, I can find words to describe any of those things separately but that weird mix of conflicting and opposite emotions isn’t easy to find.

Well, let’s just start by saying that my annual solo exhibit of new work opens today at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA. This exhibit, Depths and Light, is my 23rd consecutive show in this fabulous gallery, going back to the first show, Redtree, in 2000.

There is an opening reception from 6-8:30 PM which marks the formal opening of the show. Unfortunately, I am unable to attend this year. Next year, come hell or high water. I promise.

I have strong feelings about this show. This is where the feeling of accomplishment and pride I mentioned earlier comes into play. In the months leading up to this day, I lived with the work for many hours each day in the studio and the totality of it together always brought me a great sense of fulfillment. It all felt full and complete.

I sensed this during the process of painting the works for this show. Each piece seemed to demand additional depth and layers that went beyond what I had employed in the past. As a result, each piece took much longer than in the past, requiring much more effort and often left me feeling debilitated at the end of each.

This actually felt good, as though I were investing even more of myself in the work, if that were possible. It felt like I was using all my built-up experience and ability to its fullest potential. That’s all you can ask for as an artist, so the exertion turned into a form of exhilaration. I believe this shows itself in the work.

I hope so.

I am not going to go into the smallness and fears that I mentioned in the first paragraph. There’s plenty of time to discuss those things in the future. Today, I want to focus on the better part of the day, that the work gets to show itself apart from me and that it gets to take on a life of its own.

All I can hope for as an artist.

I hope you can get into the gallery to see the show. For those of you who aren’t able to visit the gallery, you can take a virtual walk-through the exhibit by clicking here. It’s easily navigated and you can get the titles and info for each painting by putting your cursor on the blue and white circle next to each painting. It gives you a great sense of the space and the work.

A little tidbit on the space: The building, Gilpin House, is a historic site that was originally the residence of George Gilpin who was a relative, friend and business partner to George Washington. So, there’s a good chance that old George might have walked these same floor boards or warmed his hands in front of that very fireplace. There probably wasn’t a Red Tree hanging over it then.

Again, you can take a virtual walk-through by clicking here.

Or you can browse the exhibit catalog by clicking here.

Reinforced – Part of the Principle Gallery Exhibit

The Long View- At the Principle Gallery

Say Hallelujah– At the Principle Gallery Show, June 2022

Who is rich? He that rejoices in his portion.

— Benjamin Franklin

Say Hallelujah is a new 18″ by 24″ painting on aluminum panel that is included in my annual solo exhibit at the Principle Gallery that opens tomorrow, Friday, June 3. There is an opening reception that runs from 6-8:30 PM which, unfortunately, I will not be able to attend. But this year’s exhibit is well worth seeing in person without me being there as I feel it’s one of my strongest shows yet.

It was a group of work which excited and engaged me fully here in the studio. I hated to see it leave this space.

Say Hallelujah is a good example from this show with its deep colors, bright blossoming sky and the relationship between the Red Tree and the sun rising on the distant horizon. It a piece with strength and conviction that, as a painting, stands boldly on its own yet links seamlessly to the other work in the show.

It’s a piece that expresses the simple gratitude in just existing as one is, set apart from greed or envy and rejoicing in the beauty of the world around us.

That’s message that definitely fills a need these days. Makes me want to say “hallelujah.”

In the High Country– At the Principle Gallery Exhibit

—And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.

–Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, William Wordsworth

This painting is called In the High Country and is 24″ by 18″ on aluminum panel. It is part of my annual show at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria which opens Friday, June 3.

I have special affection for this piece. I suppose that’s because it reminds me somewhat of the hilltop plateau where I spent some of my teen years. Though I only spent perhaps five or six years there before leaving home, it deeply affected me.

It was a place that forever made me think of myself as a hill person, someone at home pushed up closer to the sky, high among the trees and fields. Someone who finds themself out of sorts in places where hills and mountains are nowhere to be seen and is instantly soothed with the first sight of a hillside in the distance.

My hilltop was forever windy and you could look across the tops of the shorter chains of hills that ran parallel to it, gathering a view that probably extended for thirty or forty miles.

It was an elemental place, one of silence and distance. It served as a teacher, a sort of hilltop yogi that whose wisdom was gained by merely being still and silent in its presence. It was the kind of place that still makes me stir when I read the words of Wordsworth in the excerpt from his poem above:

The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being

It felt more like a person than a place, if that makes any sense. I guess that shouldn’t be a big surprise since I have often seen the landscape around me in human rather than geological terms. I often see human forms in hilltops and trees and rock formations. It’s a big part of my work, actually.

But this observation about my early hilltop home came to me when I was recently looking at this painting and suddenly saw it as a portrait. Actually, for some strange reason, it reminded me of two specific paintings, one being Diego Velazquez‘ 1650 portrait of Pope Innocent X and Francis Bacon‘s 1953 distorted take on it.

But that observation aside, this made me think how this location was more human than place in my mind, one that felt like a personal relationship with private conversations and kept secrets.

I suppose that is not unusual for any place that one holds deeply as home. But that’s what I see in this piece and why it speaks a little deeper to me.

The show is now hung at the Principle Gallery, ready for viewing ahead of its opening on Friday, June 3. The exhibit catalog is now available online by clicking here.

Lakesong— At the Principle Gallery Show, Opening This Friday

There is a lake that one day refused to flow away and threw up a dam at the place where it had before flowed out and since then this lake has always risen higher and higher. Perhaps the very act of renunciation provides us with the strength to bear it; perhaps man will rise ever higher and higher when he no longer flows out into a God.

― Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche, of course, was famed for uttering the words God is dead. I am not here to dispute or defend his theory on the existence of God and Heaven.

That’s not my job and I am not interested in swaying anyone from whatever they might believe unless, of course, those beliefs prove harmful to or denigrate others.

Other than that, believe what you wish. More power to you.

But I do like Nietzsche’s lake metaphor in the excerpt above from his book The Gay Science, which was also where he first wrote the words God is dead.

The idea that we should live for the life we have before us rather than a hoped for afterlife makes sense to me. It’s something I have often brought up here in many posts including some very recent ones. I often think that we have immediate access to both heaven and hell here and now on this earth. It simply depends on how much we are willing to work towards one or other.

That’s a pretty rudimentary thought, one that I don’t really want to go into further here today. But it does serve as the premise for what I see in the painting shown above, Lakesong. It’s a 30″ by 15″ canvas that is part of my show of new work that opens Friday at the Principle Gallery.

It contains symbolic elements that I often employ. The field segments and rows symbolize work and the orchardlike trees the bounty of nature, for example.

There is steeple in the structures in the midground representing belief. But, as in the metaphor of Nietzsche, the lake and the Red Tree, symbolizing man here, has risen above it and seems to be living fully in the moment, in a type of tranquil communion between the Red Tree, the lake and hills before it and the sun above. It creates a very peaceful feeling for me, one that makes me take pause and try to see whatever bits of heaven might be around me at the moment.

And there are plenty.

That, of course, is just my take on it. You might not see it that way or want to dispute my reading. That’s okay. I would be disappointed if everybody saw or reacted to it in the same way.

Let’s end this today with a nice piece of music from contemporary pianist and composer Greg Maroney. The title is Lakesong and, unsurprisingly, blends very well with this painting of the same title.

The Steadying Light– Included in the Principle Gallery Show

Men’s lives are short.
The hard man and his cruelties will be
Cursed behind his back and mocked in death.
But one whose heart and ways are kind – of him
strangers will bear report to the whole wide world,
and distant men will praise him.

– Penelope in The Odyssey, Homer

Didn’t want to do my normal Memorial Day kind of post. No talk of patriotism, bravery, or self-sacrifice. No flag waving or glorification of war.

I guess that’s because as much as Memorial Day is about remembering our war dead, it is also about those folks who lost those soldiers– the parents, wives and husbands, children and friends of the fallen.

Those who remember. Those who memorialize. Those who had to go on with the hole left by the loss in their lives.

Some don’t even move on with their lives, remaining caught up in that moment of loss. The Penelopes of the world, waiting eternally for their Ulysses to return. However, in the case Penelope, her mythic hero ultimately returned. Most others were not so fortunate.

That aspect, the idea of the waiting Penelope, has often shown up in my work. I often think of my Red Tree, especially those perched on a mound on the shore beside an endless watery horizon, patiently witnessing the recurring dusks and dawns of many days as they wait for some sort of release from their vigil of loss.

Each new light of dawn renews their hope and each fading dusk dashes it.

Great loss has that effect. I know that when I visit the national cemetery where my parents and grandparents are buried and walk among the stones memorializing the many dead soldiers, I find myself thinking as much about the people who these soldiers left behind, those who hold their memory dear and feel the loss in their passing.

The people who carry memory forward. May they find some steadying light.

The Steadying Light is a 12″ by 24″ canvas that is part of my 23rd annual solo exhibit at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA. The work is now in the gallery and the show opens Friday, June 3, 2022.