Redtree Times

Marsden Hartley (1877-1943)- “Cosmos: The Mountains“

All things that are living are expression and therefore part of the inherent symbology of life. Art, therefore, that is encumbered with excessive symbolism is extraneous, and from my point of view, useless art. Anyone who understands life needs no handbook of poetry or philosophy to tell him what it is.

–Marsden Hartley

I think this is an important point from a favorite artist of mine, Marsden Hartley. Trying to paint work that is pointedly symbolic, that tries to force meaning that doesn’t naturally flow from the subject, often feels flat and lifeless to me. Or extraneous and useless as Hartley put it.

Generally, the subject evokes its own meaning and feeling and the best the artist can do is enhance it with their own skills and style — the artist’s tools for storytelling– to make it apparent to the viewer.

Sounds easy. It’s not.

We often add symbology or clutter that either clouds, alters, or detracts from the inherent meaning of the subject.

We complicate when we should simplify.

It’s the story of communication throughout time. Simplicity always triumphs.

I hope that makes sense. I am tired this morning and it sounded okay halfway through my first cup of coffee. A couple of hours from now I might have questions about this.

Here are a few more of Hartley’s landscapes, most from his home state of Maine.

Marsden Hartley- ” An Evening Landscape”

Marsden Hartley- “Hall of the Mountain King”

Marsden hartley- “Strom Clouds, Maine”

Marsden Hartley-“The Ice Hole”

The mind gets distracted in all sorts of ways. The heart is its own exclusive concern and diversion.

–Malcolm de Chazal

I had a whole thing I meant to write here this morning but August, my annual nemesis with its heat and anxiety, has stripped me of my willpower to do so. I am distracted and sapped of energy this morning.

So, I guess the quote I was going to use fits anyway.

By the way, Malcolm de Chazal was a writer and painter from the African island nation of Mauritius, which is east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. It is a former colonial outpost that now has a highly diverse ethnic mix, a high income economy, and is a welfare state with universal health care, free education and free public transportation. It is considered one of the best economies and the most peaceful of the African nations. Just so you know.

Anyway, I am shucking my earlier plans for this post and just playing a song. It’s Who By Fire from the late Leonard Cohen. Goes with the painting.

“Angel’s Reach“- At the West End Gallery

How fathomless the mystery of the Unseen is! We cannot plumb its depths with our feeble senses – with eyes which cannot see the infinitely small or the infinitely great, nor anything too close or too distant, such as the beings who live on a star or the creatures which live in a drop of water… with ears that deceive us by converting vibrations of the air into tones that we can hear, for they are sprites which miraculously change movement into sound, a metamorphosis which gives birth to harmonies which turn the silent agitation of nature into song… with our sense of smell, which is poorer than any dog’s… with our sense of taste, which is barely capable of detecting the age of a wine!

Ah! If we had other senses which would work other miracles for us, how many more things would we not discover around us!

― Guy de Maupassant, The Horla 

I had someone recently ask me at the West End Gallery about this sky comprised of slashes of paint colors. Why was it painted that way and what did it represent?

I explained as best I could about the fact that there is there are forces always swirling around us, unseen and undetected by our feeble senses. The sky here just gives them a bit of form.

This always reminds me of the final story written by Guy de Maupassant, the great innovator of the short story. Titled The Horla, it is a tale of horror about an alien being — an invisible organism, actually– called the Horla that comes to earth with the intention of subjugating the human race. This unseen invader has the power to enter and sway the minds of its victims.

The narrator of the story describes his emotions, the vast emptiness that overtakes him, as he realizes what is happening and his powerlessness in the face of the threat.

It’s a story that certainly echoes these times. We are beset by a virus we cannot see and are hampered in our efforts to combat it by those who manipulate the minds and opinions with innumerable conspiracy theories for the purpose of obtaining money and power. Perhaps Rupert Murdoch is the Horla?

There’s another passage for the story that adds to the drama of these unseen forces:

I told myself: ‘I am surrounded by unknown things.’ I imagined man without ears, suspecting the existence of sound as we suspect so many hidden mysteries, man noting acoustic phenomena whose nature and provenance he cannot determine. And I grew afraid of everything around me – afraid of the air, afraid of the night. From the moment we can know almost nothing, and from the moment that everything is limitless, what remains? Does emptiness actually not exist? What does exist in this apparent emptiness?

This idea that emptiness does not exist is fascinating to me and echoes what I see in this sky. My idea of what might be contained in that emptiness is much more benign than the terror of the Horla, of unseen forces wanting to gain control of our world or destroy us. I would like to think that there are new dimensions and valuable energy swirling around us at all times if we could somehow detect them.

That might be more of a hope than any glimmer of the reality of what is really contained within the emptiness.

Maybe empty is just empty, a void that we fill with our highest hopes or darkest fears.

I don’t know.

My mantra.

I need to send some time looking at this painting so I can fill my emptiness with those higher hopes before darkness and fear rushes in to fill the void.

Hope it does the trick…

Change is not merely necessary to life – it is life.

–Alvin Toffler

Some stuff going on this morning and not enough time, energy, or willpower to write much. I will say that life changes fast and one must be ready to adapt, to move quickly on to those new paths that are suddenly set before us. That goes for us on the personal as well as the societal level, as famed futurist AlvinToffler pointed out in his book, Future Shock.

Sometimes stuff happens and we simply have to take care of it.

That being said, here’s a longtime favorite from the Rolling Stones for this week’s Sunday morning music.

All good wishes for your Sunday.

“Cool and Composed“-Now at the West End Gallery, Corning NY

To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world is almost a palpable movement. To enjoy the epic form of that gratification it is necessary to stand on a hill at a small hour of the night, and, having first expanded with a sense of difference from the mass of civilized mankind, who are disregardful of all such proceedings at this time, long and quietly watch your stately progress through the stars.

― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

I have expressed my extreme distaste for the month of August here in the past. I am not going to go through the list of experiences that formed my hatred for this time of the year. Let’s just say that it’s a month whose name alone never fails to put a giant, squirming knot in my gut.

And this first week of this year’s August has lived up to its reputation. It’s been a tremendously stressful week for a number of my favorite people in the world, for a variety of reasons all beyond anything I can do in the way of real assistance, outside of offering words of comfort and support.

I wish them all the coolness and composure of the painting at the top. It has that sense of detachment that Hardy describes so beautifully in the passage above. It’s a separateness where our problems in this world seem insignificant and one is able to obtain a stillness that allows us to sense the turnings of this planet as it makes its way through the cosmos. I can see that in this painting. Maybe that is its purpose, to alleviate the stress of times such as this.

Oh, to have that now.

But it’s August. Damnable August.

Here’s a taste of the coolness. I played a song titled River from Leon Bridges last week. This is another song with that title, this one a a favorite from Joni Mitchell that I have played more than once here in the past. It is the antithesis of August for me.

Ah, wish I had a river to share…

Drudgery is one of the finest touchstones of character there is. Drudgery is work that is very far removed from anything to do with the ideal – the utterly mean grubby things; and when we come in contact with them we know instantly whether or not we are spiritually real.

― Oswald Chambers

I was recently approached by a collector interested in possibly obtaining some of my Exiles paintings that were from around 1995. They were pieces that were in direct response to my mom’s illness and subsequent death at that time. The offer made me think about what these pieces mean to me and what I see in them. I realized that they had become more and more precious to me over the years. 

I ran the post below about the painting above several years back, speaking about how I saw this piece. I changed the opening quote which had been one from Thomas Edison. I went instead with the one above from Oswald Chambers. an influential Baptist preacher from around the turn of the 20th century who died in 1917 from appendicitis in Egypt while ministering to the troops there. I felt that there was an element of both drudgery and the spiritual in this piece.

I was going through old blog posts recently and I noticed that I had used the painting above a number of times in my earliest posts. It’s part of my Exiles series from back in 1995 and is titled Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, borrowed from the title of a group of Depression-era photos of sharecroppers in the American dust bowl shot by photographer Walker Evans.

I never really wrote about this painting except in what I saw as it’s similarity to what I saw in those photos of Depression era workers. I always felt a connection to this piece but thought it was an outer connection, one that simply had to do with my reaction to form and color and not with anything I might see of it in myself.

Maybe that was my hope.

But it is a painting that I find has more meaning for me than I might want to let on. It’s a piece to which I always return, again and again, to study closely. While I sometimes see it as apart from me, more and more as I live with it, part of me feels like I am that man, standing alone in his landscape.

A sometimes self portrait.

It’s not a flattering self portrait. I used to see this figure as sad or regretful, world weary. But that has changed over time. There is some sadness, some regret but more than anything, I now see him as resigned, neither happy or sad. He is in his place with work behind him and much more work to do. It still has a weariness in it, but not from a physical standpoint. It is more a sense of tiredness from working to stay ahead of the world’s constant encroachment, the world’s constant erosion.

But while it appears tired there is also a sense of implied strength and determination to stay on task.

The hand here is important to me, a symbol of the bond of a working mind and working hands. Ideas set in motion and realized.

It’s a painting that means more and more to me as times passes and the world works its erosive qualities on my self and my world, my landscape. Maybe I am that dirt farmer, looking back with pride in his work along with an apprehension that it will someday be carried away like dry soil in the wind.

Here’s a little music for the morning, a song that fits pretty well in tone and substance to the painting above. It’s the immortal Otis Redding with I’ve Got Dreams to Remember.

“Hope Rises“- At the West End Gallery

The untold want, by life and land ne’er granted,

Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.

― Walt Whitman, The Untold Want from Leaves of Grass

Nothing to say this morning. I need to get sailing, look for that untold want…

Here’s Rhiannon Giddens with a fitting song.

Get sailing, folks.

“Enduring Bond“- Now at the West End Gallery

I had another subject planned for the blog this morning but when I got over here I simply felt too tired to follow through with it. No get up and go at the moment.

One of those days, I guess. I imagine we all have them. At least, I hope it’s not just me.

So for today let’s just go with a coupling of the new painting above, Enduring Bond, that is hanging at the West End Gallery as part of my current solo show there. It’s one of my Baucis and Philemon paintings about which I have written here several times. I am pairing it with Wild Is The Wind, a song that was originally sung by Johnny Mathis in the 1957 film of the same name. I prefer the versions from Nina Simone in 1959 and David Bowie in the 1970’s.

Now I am going to try to find some energy for the day. Here’s the Bowie version of the song. Enjoy.