Redtree Times

Waiting For the Light– Coming to the Principle Gallery, June 2022

This notion that we must wait and wait while we slowly progress out of enslavement into liberation, out of ignorance into knowledge, out of the present limitations into a future union with the Divine, is only true if we let it be so. But we need not. We can shift our identification from the ego to the Overself in our habitual thinking, in our daily reactions and attitudes, in our response to events and the world. We have thought our way into this unsatisfactory state; we can unthink our way out of it. By incessantly remembering what we really are, here and now at this very moment, we set ourselves free. Why wait for what already is?

― Paul Brunton, Advanced Contemplation: The Peace Within You

This new painting has an interesting dichotomy of feeling for me. On one hand, it makes me think that it might be about waiting, with the Red Tree here perched on a hillock anticipating the coming light of day.

Like Penelope on the shores of Ithaca waiting for Odysseus to return.

But on the other hand, I get the sense that the Red Tree here is beyond waiting, that it already understands that it already has all that it needs in this moment, that it already knows what it is.

That it already knows the was, the am and the will be of itself.

It waits for nothing because everything is already at hand.

It makes me wonder where my own self lies between those two poles, one of waiting and the other of being. I am not that advanced as a human, so I imagine it’s much closer to the waiting side of the equation. My anxieties attest to that.

This piece serves as both a reminder of where I might be now and to a point to which I hope to advance. And both are in the same place. Both are at hand.

Just have to unthink my way to that bit of knowledge.

The painting at the top is a new 12″ by 12″ canvas titled Waiting For the Light. It is part of my upcoming annual solo exhibit at the Principle Gallery, opening Friday, June 3, 2022.

The quote is from Paul Brunton (1898-1981) who was a British writer who traveled to India in the aftermath of his service in World War I where he encountered Hindu/Buddhist mysticism for the first time. He wrote several best-selling books on his experiences that more or less brought Hindu/Buddhist thought to the west for the first time in popular form.

I first stumbled across his work at a decisive point in my life and might not be here today but for that chance discovery. I still often turn to his words and observations when I feel overwhelmed. And like this painting, he points out that most of the answers are already within ourselves.

Absorbed– Coming Soon to Principle Gallery, Alexandria, VA

What I call innocence is the spirit’s unself-conscious state at any moment of pure devotion to any object. It is at once a receptiveness and total concentration.

― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at this new painting that is headed to the Principle Gallery for my annual solo show there in June. There’s something in it that makes me focus on it. Maybe it’s the composition where everything– the trees, the path, the spiral pattern of the sky– is pushing the eye inward toward the glowing sun/moon.

Or maybe it’s the saturation in the color. Or maybe it comes from something I desire in my own lagging ability to concentrate.

I can’t say for sure. Most likely, it’s some combination of these things, some alchemy of odd elements that come together in ways I can never predict.

The words from Annie Dillard above seemed to reinforce what I am seeing in this piece. It has a sense of innocent devotion, a feeling that is earnest and intense.

Thinking about it a bit, I guess those are words I would like to have attached to the bulk of my work– innocent, earnest and intense.

This new 20″ by 16″ painting on panel is titled Absorbed. As I said, it’s part of Depths and Light, my 23rd annual solo show at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA that opens on Friday, June 3. I think this painting falls neatly into that depths and light category.

The Forever Bond— Coming to the Principle Gallery

Art is the child of nature in whom we trace the features of the mother’s face.

― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It’s Mother’s Day 2022.

For some, aging changes this day. After one’s mother has passed on, it becomes less about celebrating the day and more about revisiting distant memories, trying to recall small nuances of voice and manner before they fade further from memory. A certain smile or laugh or a moment that only the two of you shared.

The events of the past few years, where a pandemic has robbed so many families and children of their mothers makes the day feel even a bit more bittersweet. I have seen how the loss of a mother can stay with a child to the end of their own days.

My mother’s mother, my grandmother, died when my mom was a toddler, just over 18 months old. It changed the course of her life in so many ways and she always seemed on a search to find something about her mother. She walked the small rural cemetery where her mother was buried several times, seeking her final resting place, not knowing that her grave didn’t have a stone marking it.

The year before she died, I took mom to the local Public Records office to obtain her mother’s death certificate. I don’t know what she was looking for on it, what small bit of info it might provide that she didn’t already know. But just having it seemed to fill some sort of need in her. She seemed content just to have it in hand.

The idea that there are literally hundreds of thousands of young children- as well as adult children- who have lost their moms in these past few years saddens me. I hope they don’t go through life with that same void that I know existed in my mom.

So, on this day, celebrate your moms and all that they have given you.

The painting at the top is new and part of my upcoming solo show at the Principle Gallery, opening June 3. The title of this 10″ by 20″ painting is The Forever Bond. It is part of a long running series of paintings based on the Baucis and Philemon myth but it also seems to fit the tenor of this day.

I am pairing it with this week’s Sunday Morning Music selection, Mother and Child Reunion from Paul Simon.

For those who know how to read, I have painted my autobiography. 

–-Pablo Picasso

I would like to write an autobiography but can’t decide who I want to write it about.

I run this Picasso quote and painting every few years. It always makes me wonder if that will apply to my own work at some point in the future when I am long gone, if people will be able to discern any part of my real self or life in the work.

I guess I hope that they will though I’m not completely sold on that. Maybe it doesn’t matter. I am sure it won’t matter to me at that point, having moved on to whatever fate awaits one after death. So, if they can’t read my autobiography in the work that survives me, it won’t be a tragedy.

But on the chance that they do see something of my life in the work, what might it be? Will it be accurate or some idealized version?

And how accurate is our own self-image most of the time? After all, it’s normal for most of us to overestimate those things we see as our strengths and downplay our flaws and weaknesses. Nobody wants to write in their autobiography that they’re not that smart or strong, that they have at least as many, if not more, glaring flaws as the average person. That they have lied and stole and hurt people along the way.

That being said, maybe an autobiography in one’s art rather in writing might be more honest. It is always in the moment in which it was formed and not mere recollection. It is as it is, not written as we want to remember it.

Plus, it is both precise and ambiguous. It very seldom says anything overtly but is filled with unavoidable clues to its meaning and the person behind it– if the work is honest.

And I hope- and believe- that my work is honest and earnest. So maybe it will serve as an autobiography just as it does for Picasso.

Let’s hope it’s worth the trouble…

Journey and Light– Coming to the Principle Gallery

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

― William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

I didn’t want to write this morning, worried that I would begin to spout angry opinion that would serve no purpose. But, supposing that I can retrain myself and feeling a sense of obligation, mainly to my work, I will push onward.

I am in the last couple of weeks of painting for my upcoming show, Depths and Light, at the Principle Gallery, opening June 3. It’s always a hectic and nervous time, filled with both elation and extreme doubts. I find myself loving and doubting– and loving and doubting again– each new piece, sometimes within a matter  of minutes.

It would be so much easier if I didn’t give a damn.

I guess that could be said for most things.

But I do care about my work, about my expectations for it and how myself and others perceive it. By expectations, I mean that I want the work to have some level of meaning and purpose, even if it is only discernible to me.

The new painting at the top is part of this show and it fills those expectations. It is a 16″ by 40″ canvas that I call Journey and Light.

The meaning I attach to it is very much in line with the lines above from William Blake. Each iota, each part of this natural world, ourselves included, is a reflection of the whole.

We come from stardust after all.

It should be a simple thing to realize but we spend our lives chasing other ends and purposes which end up being trivial and meaningless in the end. We chase and chase and come to a point where we see that all that matters is within reach, is found in the understanding that we can, as Blake points out, hold Infinity in the palm of our hand and see heaven in a wild flower.

And that’s the sense I get from this painting, that emerging into an opening where the sun rises on the far horizon, we realize that our chase for things and beliefs has been futile. Everything we need is in that sun, the gras that surrounds us and the dirt beneath our feet.

It sounds too simple, I know. You most likely will say that life seems far more complicated, that this understanding gives no real answers for our day-to-day questions and concerns.

And maybe you’re right. But maybe we need that understanding in order to find momentary escape and clarity.

Respite from the chase. Moments of peace and quiet amidst the din and chaos.

Maybe that understanding allows us to feel as though we are standing in that sunlight, feeling the breeze on our face as it comes over the hills and across the grasses.

That’s the sense I get from this piece.

And that’s enough for me this morning.

Strange Victory, 1997

Up early this morning, checking in on the news from Ukraine. The death and destruction just tear at the soul, but the reports and images of the Ukraine force’ gains bring moments of hope that sometime in the hopefully near future they will feel the joy that comes in overcoming long odds to emerge victorious.

It’s hard to reconcile the images of loss and devastation with any sense of victory’s elation or relief. But in any war where the invader is defeated or repelled, those two poles of reality often stand together in the aftermath. It made me think of a favorite poem from Sara Teasdale and an earlier painting from the 1990’s that was derived from that poem. It’s a poem that will no doubt have meaning for the people of Ukraine in the future.

Thought today would be a good morning to rerun a post on both from ten years ago. From 2012:

I woke up very early this morning with many things running through my mind. All sorts of thoughts and  imagery crowded my thoughts and I found myself thinking of this painting above, Strange Victory. It was painted many years ago and this is the only image I have of it, a photocopy that is much more washed out than the original so it doesn’t quite catch the subtlety of the snowfield. Though long gone, it has long been a favorite of mine as well as of my wife who calls it the Dr. Zhivago painting. It is perhaps the piece I regret letting go most of all. But at least I know where it is and know that it is loved and well cared for with its current owner.

I particularly like the barren feel of the snowy plain and the way the sky dominates and sets the emotional tone of the piece, its red tones set against the cold setting in a way that makes the moment seem large as the figure trudges slowly forward. The rifle slung over his shoulder with the gun barrel down gives it an ominous sense, as though this figure was returning from battle or returning empty-handed from a hunt for sustenance. The moment just seems to loom large in this piece.

The title came after the painting was complete and was based on a favorite poem from Sara Teasdale, the great and tragic American poet. Published in 1933 after her death via suicide in that same year, it is short and elegant, filled with the grand emotional swing of going from the depths of despair to an elation in finding someone familiar who has somehow survived where others have not. This simple discovery of a familiar survivor as something to rejoice in the face of what seems to be total loss is a victory in itself.

Just a powerful statement of existence.

So, while I am up much earlier than I normally would be, I find myself thinking of this painting and these words. There are worse things…

Strange Victory

To this, to this, after my hope was lost,

To this strange victory;

To find you with the living, not the dead,

To find you glad of me;

To find you wounded even less than I,

Moving as I across the stricken plain;

After the battle to have found your voice

Lifted above the slain.

—Sara Teasdale

“From a Distance“- At the Principle Gallery

I got ceilings right up in the sky
all my ceilings give you room to fly
feel like a castle when you step inside
feel like a castle where a queen reside
I’ve got all these spaces above my head
but no space at all in my heart for your loneliness

–Miriam Jones, Room In My House

Went on YouTube early this morning to search for a Sunday Morning Music selection and there was a surprise in my feed. It was a new video of singer/songwriter Miriam Jones unboxing vinyl copies of her new album, Reach For the Morning, which features the painting at the top on its cover. I think I was as eager as Miriam to see it.

Though I don’t want to put labels on her or make comparisons, Miriam’s music is what I guess would be considered Americana. She established herself while she was based in England over the past decade or so before moving to Vancouver just a few years ago.

When Miriam and her manager approached me last summer to ask for permission to use the image for the album cover, I went online to find her music. I very much liked what I found. Strong voice to go along with strong writing and playing and a knack for finding the hook in her songs. I found myself holding onto the refrains from several of her earlier songs for a long time, often humming them while I worked.

Good stuff.

But her new album, Reach For the Morning, which is being released on June 17, feels like a step up. I was able to get a preview of the album awhile back and was thrilled. Everything is heightened. Her voice sounds great and her songwriting is on mark. Great production and performance across the album.

She also has several songs from other artists that she covers masterfully. For me, the sign of a great cover is shaping a song it in a way that respects the meaning and composition while still making it into something that has a unique quality. Miriam succeeds on all counts.

I am really pleased to have my work on Reach For the Morning ( great title which I will no doubt borrow at some future point) and wish her much success with it. I will be playing more of her work from the album after its release date but for today here is her first release from it, Room In My House.

As I said, just good stuff.

I’ve also included the new video of Miriam unboxing the album to give you an idea of how it looks as well as the song Warning from her last album, Between Green and Gone. Warning is one of the songs that sticks with me.

Please give a listen and keep an eye and an ear out for Miriam’s upcoming album.

Botanica Hereditas– Soon at the Principle Gallery, Alexandria VA

I had an inheritance from my father,
It was the moon and the sun.
And though I roam all over the world,
The spending of it’s never done.

― Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

The new painting above is 16″ by 12″ on aluminum panel and is part of a small group of similar pieces that I am calling the Botanica series. Each of these paintings in this series are simply constructed with sections of stems or trunks or vines rising up through the picture plane and bisecting a shaft of light that fades into color at both sides.

The plants themself are imagined. I didn’t want to rely on faithfully replicating nature, as magnificent as it is in its original form. This is mainly because I am not a botanist and, outside of but a few, have never been able to hold the details and names of most plants and trees for very long in my mind. I have to be constantly retold, year after year, the name of this or that plant. So, any resemblance in these created organisms to reality is coincidental, not intended in any way.

There’s a sort of liberation in this. Not having to compete with what is real allows the viewer to see what is before them without the prejudice of knowledge, to judge it on its own merits.

Hey, that sounds pretty good. I’ll think I’ll keep that line for use in the future since it applies to much of my other work as well.

This particular piece is titled Botanica Hereditas— Botanical Inheritance. I saw the dead tree trunk here as what is left behind for future generations, a structure on which they can build on and rise. Here that inheritance is literally a structure that supports the subsequent growth. The thicker vine uses the structure merely as guide and rises much on its own while the thinner vine clings closer to the inherited trunk, needing its support in order to continue moving upward.

It is all set against a backdrop of chaotic and slashing colors, symbolizing the peril and chaos against which all life is set. We spend much of our existence in seeking order out of this chaos and often find it first and sometimes solely in the supportive structures provided by family.

Our inheritance.

Botanica Hereditas is part of my 23rd annual solo exhibit at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, this year titled Depths and Light, which opens Friday, June 3, 2022.

Rest Stop – At the West End Gallery

And your doubt can become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become criticism. Ask it, whenever it wants to spoil something for you, why something is ugly, demand proofs from it, test it, and you will find it perhaps bewildered and embarrassed, perhaps also protesting. But don’t give in, insist on arguments, and act in this way, attentive and persistent, every single time, and the day will come when, instead of being a destroyer, it will become one of your best workers–perhaps the most intelligent of all the ones that are building your life.

― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Ah, it’s that time of my painting year, the time of doubt. It arrived yesterday afternoon.

I had finished a new painting and was pleased with the results.

Very pleased.

I was excited and eager to throw myself into the next piece immediately, armed with all that enthusiasm and energy that I had built up over the months. This self-propelling momentum is a driving force in prepping for my annual shows, something I seek throughout the year but seldom find.

But somewhere in between finishing the last stroke on that new painting and standing before the next blank surface placed on my easel, self-doubt smashed me over the head like an ugly giant with a fifty-pound sledgehammer.

I suddenly began to wonder if I was totally wrong about my judgement of my new work, that the excitement and confidence I was getting it from it was misguided. Was I somehow blinded to the glaring flaws that others might immediately see in the work? Was I the tone-deaf guy who sings loudly and confidently in public?

If you’ve read this blog for any time, you probably recognize this. It happens every year, especially at this time of the year in the weeks and months leading up to my shows when I doubt whether I my work is good enough or that I have done enough.

I know by now, after decades of going through this feeling, that all I can do is wait it out and to simply work through these periods of doubt.

It’s like dealing with a very specific and narrow band of depression.

It sometimes leaves as quickly as it comes and sometimes lingers a bit longer, always nagging and heckling me from the back of my mind.

And the more excited I am about the current work, the more intense the doubt. The fervor of this current makes me think I could be on the right track with my current work.

Either that or I am very wrong in my estimation of it and the giant of doubt was right all along.

At the moment, I want to believe in the work and not in the doubt. And that little bit of belief — and the immersion into the next painting– might be enough to get me through.

Always has in the past. No reason to believe it won’t this time as well. Makes me grateful for having gone through this before.

I wonder how many talented people have fallen before the sledgehammer of doubt and given up much too early on their own abilities?

I imagine it is a high number. Why wouldn’t it be? Why would anyone want to go through the churning stomachs, the headaches, the self-loathing and the many other nasty little tics that arise out of such doubt?

I don’t have a specific answer for this except that it is all I know and that the end result is worth the trauma that comes with such bouts of doubt. And like Rilke points out above, recognizing then overcoming doubt can become a valuable tool in judging and building one’s work and life.

As a result, I have come to see this doubt, as inconvenient and uncomfortable as it is, as a necessary and somewhat beneficial evil. Its current reappearance was expected and perhaps right on time.

Hoping it does what I need it to do. And hoping that those other folks who go through these times of doubt early on can see that this doubt can morph into some form beneficial self-criticism if they initially fight through it.

It’s worth the fight.

I didn’t want to show one of the new paintings for this post for fear that someone might think that particular piece somehow made my doubt arise. Instead, I am showing a piece from a few years back that remains a fave. Rest Stop has yet to find a home but that doesn’t not give me a bit of doubt about its appeal to me.