Redtree Times

NRBQ from The Simpsons

Few words today. Just want to get to work. Finally beginning to fall into a groove that finds me focused and isolated from the outer world– where I want to be at the moment.

Let’s have a little music , a little Shake Rattle and Roll to get things rolling, eh? Like the song says: Get out of that bed, wash your faces and hands... Here’s a version of that classic from NRBQ, one of the many great covers they’ve produced ( along with their originals) in the 57 or so years they’ve been around.

They just keep on keeping on. A good thing to do. Sometimes it’s all you can do.

Facing Mystery– Now at the Principle Gallery

I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don’t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we’re here. I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell.

― Richard P. Feynman

It’s an uneasy alliance when you live with uncertainty. The whole world sometimes seems filled with people who are so certain in their beliefs to the point that they have no compunction about expressing their certainty in a loud and sometimes violent manner. To not have that same degree of certainty in my own beliefs often makes me feel like an outlier, like I have perhaps overlooked some vital clue to the mysteries of our existence that all these others have somehow discovered.

But the more I watch those folks with an absolute high degree of certainty, as they stomp their feet and wave their fists and guns, the more comfortable I become in my uncertainty.

They don’t have any more answers than me. They might even have fewer.

Again, I can’t even be certain of that.

One thing I have noticed is that certainty leads to entrenchment of thought and a closing off of one’s mind and imagination. When you have all the answers why do you need to imagine anything more?

When I am uncertain, when I realize I don’t have the answers, I am sometimes now comfortable in that knowledge, much like idea behind the passage above the late and fabled physicist Richard Feynman. In fact, when I feel too certain, too confident, an unpleasant wave will then sweep over me, leaving me a little queasy at the prospect of my own hubris.

Now, don’t get me wrong here. I  do have beliefs. I believe that all people deserve respect, that all people have some redeeming quality and worth. That I –or anyone else, for that matter– am not above any other person nor am I beneath any other. I believe in my responsibility for my actions and for the affects of those actions on others.

I try to keep my certainly limited to the more positive aspects of this mysterious world these days. Then if I am wrong, nobody is hurt, nobody is the worse for my certainty.

That I can live with…

People who look for symbolic meaning fail to grasp the inherent poetry and mystery of the images.

—Rene Magritte

Today I am featuring a compilation four posts from the past several years that feature the words and works of painter Rene Magritte. I thought they worked well together as a group. And if not, the images are always interesting to examine. You be the judge.

I absolutely love this painting, The Banquet, from Rene Magritte in 1958. It has the effect where I don’t question anything about it. I just accept it as it is presented. I am not looking for symbolism in it at all, not looking for a reason why the red ball of sun is hovering low in front of the trees. The colors, the contrast, the composition– they create a whole sensation doesn’t need a why or what or how.

As Magritte points out, it contains poetry and mystery.

And that is something to try to understand. I know I often feel the need to try to explain my work, to point out where I find an emotional base in a piece. Sometimes that is easy, almost jumping out at you. But sometimes it is not so obvious and it is simply the mystery of the created feel, a great intangible pulse, that makes a particular painting work.

You see it, feel it, accept its reality yet you don’t fully understand the why and how.

And maybe that is just as it should be. Not all we behold can or should be explained. Sometimes, maybe we simply need to experience poetry and mystery.

.

Visible things can be invisible. However, our powers of thought grasp both the visible and the invisible – and I make use of painting to render thoughts visible.

― René Magritte

It’s an interesting thought, that our power of thought grasps both the visible and the invisible.

I, a seemingly visible thing, have sometimes felt invisible.

And I have sometimes seen things that turned out to not be there at all.

Thought is a magical thing.

And maybe that is why some folks paint, to attempt to capture those things they think they see and to take away their own invisibility.

Gotta chew on that one for a while…

Rene Magritte- The Empire of Light – Guggenheim Museum

Life obliges me to do something, so I paint. 

–Rene Magritte

I wasn’t sure what this post was going to be about when I started. Still don’t know, to be honest. I was simply going to put up a short quote with a painting or two by an artist, as I sometimes do. In this case the artist was the famed Surrealist Rene Magritte.

I liked the quote above. Simple. Concise. Right to the point.

Plus, I think it lines up with an answer that I sometimes give when someone asks how I became a painter: “Hey, everybody has to do something.”

That opens up what could be a whole philosophical discussion about what our obligations really are in our lives as humans.

Are we really obliged to do something?

I don’t know.

Maybe. I guess not doing something is, in it’s own way, doing something. I know that when I am not a painter I am, among many things, sometimes a lazy slob.

Life obliges me to do something, so I do nothing.

That doesn’t have quite the same cache as Magritte’s statement but it is sometimes true.

But for the most part, when life obliges me to do something, I paint.

Not like Magritte. In my own way, at my own pace and of my own choosing.

Hey, life can push me around but only so far.

PS: I was going to write about the painting at the top which is one version of a painting, The Empire of Light, that Magritte painted fourteen times. The subject was not going to be about the night scene of this painting with a blue sky above. Rather, it was to be about the repetition of forms by artists, a subject to which I am well acquainted. Maybe next time.

Rene Magritte- Decalcomania – 1966

I conceive of the art of painting as the science of juxtaposing colours in such a way that their actual appearance disappears and lets a poetic image emerge. . . . There are no “subjects”, no “themes” in my painting. It is a matter of imagining images whose poetry restores to what is known that which is absolutely unknown and unknowable.

–Rene Magritte, 1967,  in a letter two months prior to his death

The quote above from Belgian Surrealist Rene Magritte reminds me of an instance where I didn’t fully get across what I was trying to communicate in response to a question.  While speaking to a regional arts group consisting of enthusiastic painters, some amateurs and some professional, a question was brought up about the importance of subject.  Magritte elegantly stated in his words what I was trying to say that evening, that the purpose of what I was doing was not in the actual portrayal of the object of the painting but in the way it was expressed through color and form and contrast.  To me, the subject was not important except as a vehicle for carrying emotion.

Of course, I didn’t state it with any kind of coherence.  Hearing me say that the subject wasn’t important angered the man who  was a lifelong painter of very accomplished landscapes.  He said that the subject was most important in forming your painting.  I fumbled around for a bit and don’t think I ever satisfied his question or got across a bit of what I was attempting to say.

I think he was still mad when he left which still bothers me because he was right, of course.  Subject is important.  It is the relationship that you have with the subject that makes it a vehicle for accurately carrying the emotional feeling  you are trying to pull from the painting.  While I am not interested in depicting landscapes of specific areas, I am moved by the rolls of hills and fields and the stately personae of trees and that comes through in my painting.  Yes, I can capture emotion in things that may not have any emotional attachment to me through the way I am painting them, which was part of what I was saying to that man that evening, but it will never be as fully realized as those pieces which consist of things and places in which I maintain a personal relationship.

It is always easier to find the poetry of the unknown in those things which we know.

Rene Magritte- The Beautiful Relations 1966

Rene Magritte- The Mysteries of the Horizon 1928

Rene Magritte- The Son of Man 1964

The Incantation – 1994

Halloween today, in 2021, almost seems like a break from the scary people and behaviors that haunt and terrify on a day-to-day basis.

What I wouldn’t give to have the Frankenstein monster or the Wolfman or Dracula or even some other off-brand random vampire or ghost be the thing that most terrified me these days. At least, those scary beings could be rationalized away by simply telling yourself over and over that they did not exist.

The creatures that send shivers down my spine these days definitely exist and there is no chance of rationalizing them away.

Not going to go in to that now but let’s just say that I hope my fears today are as unfounded as those ones from my childhood based on monsters and myths.

For this Sunday morning music, let’s go with a scary classic from Screaming Jay Hawkins from 1956, his immortal I Put a Spell on You.  There are plenty of video versions of the song with Screaming Jay going through the schtick that served him well for decades after the song came out, with its glittery witch doctor costume and nose bones along with choreographed gyrations and kicks. But I want to keep it simple and am playing the original track.

Like other great songs, this song, written by Screaming Jay, has been recorded by lots of other artists. Nina Simone does a beautiful version. But my favorite cover is from CCR. It keeps the spirit of the song and honors it. I am throwing that on as well this morning.

Halloween  2021– scared yet?

Below is a repost of one of my more popular posts. After the 12 years since it first went online, I still occasionally get people contacting me who have come across this post and have memories of Monster Movie Matinee, the Syracuse-based show that ran for many years at 1 PM on Saturdays. A documentary was also made in the intervening years which chronicles the show and its effect on the many kids who found themselves glued to the couch watching classic (and not so classic) horror films. More clips and photos have come to light including those at the bottom. If you are interested in the documentary you can get more info at its Facebook page, Monster Mansion Memories.

Hope you have a very scary Halloween! Or not– it’s not necessarily a holiday suited to everybody’s taste. Here’s the post from 2009:

On this pre-Halloween Saturday, my mind switches back to past Halloweens and all the things that go with them.  Part of my normal Saturday routine growing up was to be in front of the TV at 1 o’clock to watch Monster Movie Matinee, a show out of Syracuse that ran for a couple of decades and showed classic ( and not so classic, as the years went by) horror and sci-fi movies.

It was a great kitschy broadcast. It would start with the camera panning in over an obvious model of an haunted-type mansion on a hill as eerie monster movie music played. It was hosted by Dr. E. Nick Witty (I think this is supposed to be a joke of some sort but it eludes me) and his assistant, the wretched Epal..

You never saw anything of Dr. Witty but his long emotive fingers but that was all you really needed along with his deep, rich voice and trademark laugh. His sidekick, Epal, was played by the station’s longtime weatherman who also played other characters (his other main character, an old seaman named Salty Sam, introduced me to Popeye cartoons) on a number of other locally produced shows, was covered in rough-edged scars and wore an eyepatch. His appearance seemed to constantly worsen and erode as the years passed.

They had storylines that they used as they introduced the films, little vignettes that ran from week to week. I remembered the show as goofy stuff but fun, though seeing some of the clips now I am surprised at the level of the performances by the two characters. They really put an effort into the production. But ultimately they let the movies they showed be the real stars and I saw most of the greats through them. All the Frankenstein, Dracula and Wolfman movies were in regular rotation in the early years mixed in with a plethora of lower quality, monstery B-movies, which unfortunately took over in the later years.

I remember one wet and dark Halloween Saturday back then spending the afternoon watching one of my favorites with Dr. Witty and Epal. It was The Creature From the Black Lagoon. It was a movie that was shown at least a few times a year so it became part of the kid memory bank. It was the story of a group of geological researchers sent to explore a fossilized skeletal claw-like hand found up the Amazon where they encounter the Creature, a rubber-clad Gill-Man who makes repeated attacks on the research vessel, finally abducting the babe girlfriend of the main scientist.

Originally in 3-D in the theaters, was a pretty stylish 50’s monster movie. Pretty good quality, actually. The Creature was a great costume, very sleek and somewhat believable- at least to the kid sitting on the couch with the Fig Newtons. It had nice underwater photography of the Creature gliding after his prey and also had great sound and music that really enhanced the story. It wasn’t the scariest but it kept you involved with the story. Like many other viewers, I always felt more of a connection with the Creature than I did with the crew of researchers and actually felt myself kind of rooting for him at times. Much like King Kong, he seemed sadly alone.

That wet and dark Saturday many years ago seems to come to life now whenever I think of the Creature or Halloween, for that matter. I remember the light, the feel and smell of that living room. Funny how certain things, even the smallest trivialities, imprint on the memory  when coupled with something important, as Halloween was to a kid.

Today I’m thinking of that day and that lonely Gill-Man and Dr. Witty…

There are three clips below. One is the opening is from the show’s later years and one is from the earlier black and white days. There is also a clip from the documentary, Monster Mansion Memories. 

“Harmonium” – At the West End Gallery

The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge the great powers around us and in us. If you can do that, and live that way, you are really a wise man.

–Euripides, The Bacchae

The words from the great tragedy The Bacchae from Greek playwright Euripides still ring true 2500 years after they were first uttered. The play, considered perhaps the greatest ever written, dealt with the eternal struggle between the forces of control and freedom between the gods and the masses.

Like most tragedies, it doesn’t end well. And in a most gruesome manner. Shocking, even by today’s standards where we have become somewhat inured to the outrageous.

I won’t go into those details here this morning.

Beyond that, the passage above speaks of maintaining a fine balance between the two poles of restraint and release, both as individuals and as a society. Those dwelling in the extremes, either in forms of theocratic authoritarianism or in unrestrained nihilism, are destined for an unhappy ending.

It is an unsustainable existence.

I could go on and compare it to societies here and abroad but for today I want to just point these words toward ourselves, the individuals.

A sense of harmony in ourselves and with the outer world is always the better way.

Of course, I can’t tell you how to attain or maintain it. I suppose if you wander off the trail between the two poles and find yourself in the weeds of extremism, you might not recognize harmony anyway. It might be a false harmony you’re seeing.

And if that’s the case, it might not be revealed as such until the tragedy comes to its conclusion.

I don’t know if this makes any sense at all this morning. I am most likely talking through my hat. It’s very early still and I am just thinking out loud.

But even so, maintaining a sense of harmony and balance in ourselves and in the world should always be the goal. I know it’s my goal though sometimes I stumble off the trail a bit here and there. Fortunately, I somehow find my way back to it at some point.

Or so I believe.

I mean, who really knows?

Now get off my lawn! Get!

I don’t have any illusion that The Creeper is as popular or will ever be as popular as any of the classic movie monsters, but I think in the heart of every young horror fan is his desire to create his own creature.

–Victor Salva

The quote from director Victor Salva is about his character who menaced filmgoers in the Jeepers Creepers series of horror movies in the early 2000’s. I didn’t know it when I began writing this article this morning but a new  entry in the series premieres today. What an odd — and kind of creepy– coincidence.

To be honest, I have never seen any of the films and most likely will not. But I like the idea behind Salva’s words above. Wanting to see something that fully clicks with something inside ourselves is the basis for art of all sorts. Even horror movies.

My version of that is the advice I give to aspiring artists of any medium: Paint the paintings you want to see. Write the books you want to read. Write the music you want to hear.

This quote also reminded me of this painting of mine from about 25 years ago that bears a similar title called The Creeper. It predates Salva’s films so it was not inspired by them in any way. I have written about this painting before, mentioning that it was one of the paintings that I regret selling. This was part of my Exiles series that were painted in the mid 90’s, mostly grieving figures painted with segmented features. 

 It was the first real series I had painted and was the basis for my first solo show. I think I only sold three of those pieces and regret having taken any of them from that group of work. I think because those pieces were so much the product of a specific emotional state at a certain time, I will not be able to capture that exact feel again. I have periodically painted figures in that style over the years since and while they have their own emotional impact, they don’t strike me as personally as these earlier pieces.

These few pieces are gone but at least I have images to take a look at when their memories start to creep in, much like that fellow above.

Here’s a song that I featured here a decade ago when writing about this painting. It’s The Creeper from the Ventures. This song is very reminiscent of Wipeout ( with maybe a little Peter Gunn thrown in) but is really distinguished by some super organ work  from the late, great Leon Russell in an early appearance in 1964.  It’s a good listen as we head into Halloween.

Because night has fallen

and the barbarians have not come.

And some who have just returned

from the border say

there are no barbarians any longer.

And now,

what’s going to happen to us

without barbarians?

They were,

those people,

a kind of solution.

Been reading some verse lately from Constantine P. Cavafy, the great Greek poet who lived from 1863 until 1933. He lived his entire life in Alexandria, Egypt and his work often captured the sensual and exotic cosmopolitan feel of that time and place. Readers of Lawrence Durrell and his Alexandria Quartet, in which Cavafy appears as a character, will know what I mean.

Though Cavafy was known for his poetry among the Greek community in Alexandria he spent most of his life working as civil servant. He didn’t actively seek widespread acclaim, turning down opportunities to have his work published while often opting to print broadsheets of his poetry that were distributed to only a few friends. His work didn’t realize wider acclaim until later in his life (and afterwards) when his friend, novelist E.M.Forster, wrote about his work, describing him as a Greek gentleman in a straw hat, standing absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the universe.

I love that description.

The lines at the top are from one of his most famous poems, Waiting For the Barbarians. It’s about a small principality in decline, with its governing bodies and citizens frozen in anticipation of an invasion from unnamed barbarians. It has a timely feel as it describes the power that fear plays in autocracies, how vilifying one’s opposition — the barbarians– is used as a tool to both govern and stoke fanatic nationalism in its fanatic followers, who in turn intimidate those seeking reasonable discussion and solutions to the problems faced by the nation as a whole.

The problem with this sort of strategy is that once that the strawmen created out of fear are proven to be less than formidable or even nonexistent, how does an autocrat keep control? 

Most likely they create new barbarians, someone newly found to fear and despise. Even if those strawmen turn out to be those people who hold the key to best addressing the needs of the citizens.

But, of course, even that strategy has an endpoint. We may find out for ourselves here, unfortunately, if we fail to pay attention in the next few years.

Here’s a fine reading of Cavafy’s poem from Miles Young, Warden of New College Oxford though I probably chose this particular version because of its use of gargoyles. There is also a bit of commentary at its conclusion.

“Symphony of Silence“- At the Principle Gallery, Alexandria,VA

I woke up on the couch last night just as a Stephen Colbert interview with Bruce Springsteen was coming to an end. Springsteen then finished the show with an acoustic version of the title track from his 1980 album, The River.

It’s a song that has always hung close to my heart and one, as Springsteen claimed last night, that has aged well. I spent a lot of hours in the dark back around that time, 40 some years back, listening to this song on my stereo, the soft blue light from my old Fisher amp setting a quiet and deep tone in the room.

Much of this album seemed to be made for listening in that blue light in the darkness. Sometimes I wonder if I am trying to recapture the feel of that blue light in some of my paintings such as the piece at the top. The feel, for me, is much the same. And the interesting thing is that though the circumstances of my life have changed dramatically for the better in the intervening decades, my reaction to this song is the same as it was when I was a depressed 20 year old married factory worker with little idea how to make my way in life with the few prospects available to me.

The fact is that I didn’t even know at that point that one could dare to dream of better things for themselves. And I think that’s the core of this song, that the inherent sadness of this life is not so much about unrealized dreams but more about undreamt dreams, about our inability to imagine ourselves in better circumstances in a better world.

Throughout the years, I knew so many folks without dreams or goals who languished in their day to day lives. When asked, many didn’t even know what they wanted for themselves.

They didn’t dare to dream. They were much like the  the narrator of this song, always looking back or in a sad present with nothing to pull them into the future. We need to dare to have a dream if only to have something that gives us a path into the future.

Failing to reach your dreams is a sad song but not having a dream at all is the saddest song of all. It is living without hope. Maybe the reason this song resonated so strongly with me is that I was in the midst of realizing this back then. It’s a realization that helps me still.

Here’s the song from Bruce Springsteen, pared down and still as powerful as it was forty one years ago.

The Waiting Room– At West End Gallery

We are always falling in love or quarreling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose them, getting ill and recovering, following public affairs. If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.

― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Fighting distraction is a big part of being an artist. Or for non-artists, in just getting anything done at all.

It’s much too easy to fall prey all sorts of distractions when you’re alone in the studio, waiting for some sort of divine– or even less than divine– inspiration to appear. It gets to the point that you are actually waiting more for the distraction than the actual inspiration or act of creation that comes from it.

I know that I often feel like I spend the better part of my time waiting for something that most likely will never come. Or, as C.S. Lewis points out above, favorable conditions that will never materialize.

He’s right on that account. Waiting for favorable conditions is a favorite excuse of the distracted among us, myself included. I often put off projects or ideas because it’s just not the right time to start a new piece or work out a new idea.

When exactly will the right time show itself?

The answer is, of course, when you say so, when you simply say you’ve waited long enough. You just get out of that chair and start, conditions, favorable or otherwise, be damned.

Conditions adjust to the effort.

I would like t say that this is advice for others but in reality it is a reminder more for myself. It’s something I have to constantly remind myself  so much so that it almost becomes a mantra that is always running in my mind. Otherwise, I fall prey to every sort of distraction, from shiny new objects of the images and sounds that come over the interwebs to the lingering doubts and worries of every shape and size that inhabit every corner of my studio.

There is part of me always looking for a reason to not start working and another part that is constantly at battle with that urge. Even that sometimes creates its own sense of waiting.

So, it’s time to get to work. But first, I have a couple of things that need to be done. Then, I promise myself that I will start.

Well, get ready to start.

Break out the mantra…