Redtree Times

“Harmonium” – At the West End Gallery — Final Week!!

Well, it’s alright, even if you’re old and grey
Well, it’s alright, you still got something to say
Well, it’s alright, remember to live and let live
Well, it’s alright, the best you can do is forgive

–End of the Line, The Traveling Wilburys

It’s the last few days of my show at the West End Gallery. The works included in this year’s show, Through the Trees, comes off the walls after this coming Thursday, August 26.

The end of any show generally carries a little sadness or wistfulness. It’s always a time to look back at the show, to put it all in some sort of perspective.

To see what sold. And what did not.

To get an idea of how people reacted to certain pieces. Or did not.

To determine if I would have changed anything about the work in that particular show and to begin to chart a course for my new work.

Sometimes the answers and conclusions I draw from this retrospection are clearly defined and leads me directly into the next phase of my work, seamlessly.

Other times, it’s not so clear cut. There might be no obvious conclusions. These instances are the more confusing and frustrating periods for me where I find myself looking for some push from the past, some given direction to follow. But there is none offered or recognized.

In a way, these times without direction are the most exciting even though they often put me on edge and fill me with frustration. I guess it’s because they are filled with unknown quantities, discoveries, and potentials. And that is where the breakthroughs, those sometimes elusive fresh paths of creativity, lie.

I am still in the measurement phase with this show. There are things I want to carry forward and some small things I might have changed or added. I was pleased with the reactions to some works and slightly disappointed by the reactions to some pieces who I felt deserved more attention.

I don’t really mean disappointed because in every show there are works that, going in, I feel will be among the first that find new homes. The painting at the top of the page, Harmonium, is such a piece.

It has become an accepted fact for me that these pieces inevitably are among the last to leave the galleries. It didn’t use to be that way. Early in my career, I could tell instantly that a new piece would be swooped up quickly once it hit the galleries. But as time went on, I lost that capacity and the works I often felt most strongly about were slow to find homes.

I think this came about because my criteria for judging my own work has evolved and changed over time, perhaps becomes bit narrower and esoteric. In the beginning, my perspective was no doubt closer to the typical viewer than it is now. I was new in my career and was really only doing what I did because it was work I wanted to see and was not finding elsewhere. Everything was fresh and new.

Time has added many changes and evolutions, some dramatic and some less perceptible and more nuanced.

Okay. The point is that there are things to be considered and absorbed at the of a show. I am in that process now and so far, so good– for the end of the line.

That was a lot of work to get to this song. Here’s a song, End of the Line, from the Traveling Wilburys— Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne. I often forget how much I enjoy this song until I hear it again. See if that’s the case for you with this slightly extended version.

Aspire to be like Mt. Fuji, with such a broad and solid foundation that the strongest earthquake cannot move you, and so tall that the greatest enterprises of common men seem insignificant from your lofty perspective. With your mind as high as Mt Fuji you can see all things clearly. And you can see all the forces that shape events; not just the things happening near to you.

― Miyamoto Musashi

Want to be quiet this Sunday morning. Enough noise and chaos in the world without me kicking in my two cents. What better way to quench that desire than a little art from Hokusai and his Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji. Doesn’t get much better than that.

By the way, the passage above is from Miyamoto Musashi who was a Japanese swordsman/writer/artist of the early 17th century. He had 61 sword duels– his first at age 13– in his life and prevailed in all. Pretty interesting figure. 

To continue the Fuji theme, let’s hear Fujiyama from Dave Brubeck for this week’s Sunday morning musical selection. The accompanying video is a slideshow of Hokusai’s Fuji prints. Good stuff as always from Mr. Brubeck and his ensemble.

Myself, I am just going stay quiet and try to follow the advice from Musashi to be more like Mt. Fuji.

For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me. With every acquaintance I make, the population of phantoms resembling me increases. Somewhere they live, somewhere they multiply. I alone do not exist.

― Vladimir Nabokov, The Eye

The painting shown here, Mirrors and Windows, hangs here in the studio and I pass it several times a day–it’s on the way to the bathroom. But even though it’s been in this spot for several years now, it usually draws my attention. It’s been that way since it was painted back in 2013.

As I wrote back then:

I found myself looking at this piece quite often in the studio, trying to ascertain what it was that was pulling me in. As I looked, I began to be more aware of the road running through which signified to me our life’s journey. We spend our lives looking in mirrors and out windows, living in reflections of ourselves and the outer world.

There must be some perfect balance in this. Somewhere, somehow, we hopefully reach a point where we know who and what we are and turn away from mirrors and begin to look for windows in which we can expand our vision of the outer world and gain greater wisdom.

Years later and it has carried the meaning well that I gleaned from it back then, that real art serves as both a window and a mirror, giving the viewer insights and views into the world and reflecting their place within it.

Just this morning, I stood in front of it and wondered if was looking at it as a mirror or a window.

I came to the conclusion that it might be both.

“Show’s Over, Folks“- At the Principle Gallery, Alexandria, VA

The patient cannot remember the whole of what is repressed in him, and what he cannot remember may be precisely the essential part of it.. He is obliged to repeat the repressed material as a contemporary experience instead of remembering it as something in the past.

― Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle

I am sharing what might seem like an odd triad this morning– a passage from Sigmund Freud on compulsion, a Red Chair painting of the aftermath of what looks to be a wild party and a song, Can’t Let Go, from the odd and wonderful pairing of Alison Krauss and Robert Plant.

I think there’s a connection in there somewhere. Just can’t be sure if anyone else will see it.

A compulsion to repeat ourselves is an underlying theme in my work. I sometimes think I know there is something more in these familiar forms and colors and lines and icons –the omnipresent Red Tree, for example– than meets the eye and that if I keep delving into them, they will at some point reveal their secrets to me.

Some tidbit of wisdom, an iota of truth, that will make it all make sense.

That must be close to a definition of compulsion. Probably much in the same way that we– both individually and collectively– seem to constantly repeat ourselves, making the same missteps and covering the same ground as though we have some sort of short term memory dysfunction that prohibits us from seeing the patterns we have followed all along, that keeps us from learning from our mistakes.

I am hoping there is some constructive effect in my own compulsion. I would hate to think that the decades of work that have came with it are a matter of me making the same mistake over and over again.

Maybe I should stop contemplating my navel this morning and get to work. Who knows? Maybe today will be the day I figure it all out, the day that bit of long sought wisdom is finally revealed.

Or not. Doesn’t matter. My compulsion would most likely blind me to it and keep me at it even if I find it now.

In the meantime, enjoy Alison Krauss and Robert Plant‘s version of Can’t Let Go, from a soon to be released album. It’s a song famously covered by Lucinda Williams on her great 1998 album, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.

Good stuff.

“Basepaths“- Now at the West End Gallery

I have been pretty open about my dislike of the month of August. There is a past of negative incidents and events in it that definitely taint it for me. I don’t know if it’s one of those deals where past performance creates an environment that continues to produce similar results or what.

Just not a fan of this time of year. Let’s just keep it at that.

But from past Augusts, I know that the key to getting through to September is to find something to hang your hopes on, something on the horizon to shoot for.

In July, I didn’t think it would be baseball and the Yankees, to be specific. They had went through a host of injuries to key players, some lost for the season or the better part of it, and their performance was mediocre to say the least. They looked like hell out there, nobody playing up to anywhere near their average level of performance and  they sometimes  were forced to field a team with several untested minor leaguers called up to start games in different positions. Hardly the mighty Yankees with unlimited resources.

In July, they had a bad stretch, blowing several games including being swept by their perennial nemesis, the Red Sox. They simply looked plain sloppy and distracted. That I could identify with but one of the reasons I watch baseball is to get away from that feeling.

They were what seemed a country mile back in the standings, way out of playoff contention. The season looked like it was almost time to start saying, “Wait ’til next year!”

It looked hopeless.

But it wasn’t. As long as there is a grain of hope and effort to sustain it, there’s a chance. They rebounded, got a few key additions from the trade deadline and some players returning from injury. Their level of effort  increased dramatically and there seems to be a renewed sense of purpose and enthusiasm in the dugout. They have made mad rush in the past few weeks, culminating in a sweep of a doubleheader yesterday with the Sox that catapulted the Yanks past them in the standings and back into playoff contention.

They have finally shown some heart and hope springs out of that.

There is still a long way to go and maybe they will stumble later in the season. But for now, it was a needed elixir for a guy mired in the morass of August. It was good to have this small thing to hold on to, something in which to find a grain of hope.

Some heart.

Because, as the song from the play and movie Damn Yankees goes, You Gotta Have Heart.

Van Gogh- Interior of the Restaurant Venissac in Arles, August 1888.

There is something intimate about painting I cannot explain to you – but it is so delightful just for expressing one’s feelings.

–Vincent van Gogh

I came across the above Van Gogh painting online yesterday. It was one of those pieces that I couldn’t recall ever seeing, even in the books with his collected works. It probably was in there somewhere but just didn’t register with me like it did yesterday.

I immediately liked this piece and just seeing it made me feel better in some small way. It was like stumbling across one more cookie when you thought the cookie jar was empty. You savor this newfound delight a bit more.

Or maybe it has to do with the intimacy that Van Gogh mentions above. He’s right, there is something intimate about painting. Every piece offers some small secret or aspect that comes from the mind and soul of the artist.

So, this morning I am greatly enjoying a morsel from Van Gogh. Not a bad way to spend a few minutes on a dark morning with torrential rain pounding the roof for the time being here in upstate NY.

Now, what’s old Van Gogh trying to tell me here?

“Fire and Ice“- At the West End Gallery

Slow getting around this morning. In August, I dream of the gray coolness of fall and winter. Feels like a good moment for a short Robert Frost poem– Fire and Ice.

“Sequester’s Moon“- At the West End Gallery

The things that I loved were very frail. Very fragile. I didn’t know that. I thought they were indestructible. They weren’t.

― Cormac McCarthy, The Sunset Limited

Tired and achy this morning, the result of a recent lower back injury/issue, whatever you want to call it, that kept me from sleeping much the last couple of nights. Though I think ( and hope) this will pass within a week or so, it brings to mind a thought that has been rolling around lately.

Life turns on a dime.

I have seen it recently with friends and loved ones whose lives change dramatically from the sudden onset of illness or world rattling events such as wildfires. One day your world seems to be cruising into the future as well as could be expected and the next it is turned upside down. The future that was right in front of you yesterday seems much further away today, with a lot more complications and hurdles between you and it.

It might not even be the same future.

It makes one realize the fragility of our existence in this world. We can plan and visualize our futures but sometimes as the old Roberts Burns line goes:

The best-laid schemes o’mice an’ men Gang aft agley.

Or as you may better know it, without the Scottish intonations: The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

So we adapt. We attempt to heal or strengthen our defenses. We learn to do things in a new way. We try to fight back to that original future we foresaw.

It’s what we do. It’s all we can do.

And it’s worth the struggle because as dark and ugly as the world is on many days, it can be far more beautiful and bright on others.

So, if you’re feeling great and your future seems certain, enjoy it now because the world changes quickly. Don’t be surprised if your tomorrow is much different that your today.

For this Sunday Morning music, I am playing a song from singer/songwriter Nanci Griffith who died this past Friday at the age of 68. I don’t know what took her life, if it was an extended illness or if her life just turned on that dime. She was a wonderful songwriter best known for From a Distance, which was a giant hit for Bette Midler, as well as this song, Once in a Very Blue Moon, which was a hit for Dolly Parton. She was also an effective performer with her distinctive trilling voice. She did a marvelous cover of Townes Van Zandt‘s tragic Tecumseh Valley.

She will be missed. I thought Once in a Very Blue Moon was appropriate for today.

Please enjoy the day you have at hand.