Redtree Times

In the next couple of weeks I will be focusing here on work from my annual solo show at the Principle Gallery. This year’s show is titled Between Here and There and opens next Friday, June 4 at the Alexandria gallery. But this morning, I have several tasks to see to and am rerunning the post below about the late artist Preston Dickinson. Great work. See you tomorrow!

I’m a fan of the Precisionist movement in art which was formed in the early 20th century and often depicted the industrial structures that were fueling the growth spurt taking place in America. There are some big names in this movement, mainly Charles Sheeler and Charles Demuth, both of which I have featured here in the past.

But, like many of the movements in art, there are many lesser but equally brilliant stars in their universe. I recently came across one that really hit with me, mainly because of the energy and breadth of his work. I thought it was all really good, really strong and evocative. But it moved in many directions, pulling from many inspirations. There was some Futurist work, some elements of Cubism and others. It was as though this was an artist that was so talented that he was having trouble finding that single voice that fit his needs.

His name was Preston Dickinson who was born in NY in 1891.  He studied as a youth at the Art Students League under William Merritt Chase and soon after, with backing from a NY art dealer, headed off to Europe to study and exhibit there. Coming back to America, he moved around a bit but by the late 1920’s was considered among the stars of American Modernist painting.

In 1930, he moved to Spain to live and paint and several months after being there contracted pneumonia and died there. He was only 39. He produced only a few hundred pieces of work in the twenty years or so in which he was producing work.

So maybe there is something to this feeling that he was still in the midst of finding his true voice. It makes me sad to ponder what might have been and what sort of work was lost to the world when he passed away. He was obviously a huge talent with an active and inquiring mind.

I am glad to have just stumbled across him now and hope that the joy his work brings me somehow moves into my own.

Still a lot to do today before I am ready to deliver the work for my June 4 show to the Principle Gallery tomorrow so I am going to be brief.

Due to circumstances that kept my friend who has made most of my frames for the past 23 years from supplying me, I had to scramble for some frames for this show. I think, all in all, it was a successful effort that included using frames I had in stock, some new frames from well known frame manufacturers, some raw wood frames I scoured and found on the internet, and a handful of handmade frames, which I am showing here.

While it’s more work than I would like to take on on a regular basis, I generally like the results with the handmade frames. I like the idea of an artist-built frames to go with a painting, especially if it echoes the feel of the work. It adds something personal, something unique, to the work.

I think that is the case with these two. Like my work and myself, they are not perfect. You won’t see them in Fine Woodworking magazine anytime soon. But they feel quirky and definitely attuned to these pieces.

Plus, they are solid. They have a heft that makes me think that you could fend off a marauding team of grizzlies with one of these in hand. For all I know, they might even be bulletproof.

Hope I– or you— never have to find out if these claims are true.

Vincent Van Gogh- Wheat Field in the Rain 1889

If you work diligently… without saying to yourself beforehand, ‘I want to make this or that,’ if you work as though you were making a pair of shoes, without artistic preoccupation, you will not always find you do well. But the days you least expect it, you will find a subject which holds its own with the work of those who have gone before.

-Vincent Van Gogh

I really just wanted to show these two Van Gogh paintings that feature the falling rain as part of the overall composition. I recently have been particularly interested in seeking out lesser known Van Gogh paintings. We all know the major one, Starry Night and the like. There’s a reason they are so special to us. But there is something quite exciting about these more obscure pieces, something that fills in the blanks between the better known work.

But beyond that, the sentiment above from Van Gogh really resonates with me. Sometimes it seems as though those paintings which you aim at with all your greatest effort fall flat while on those days when you have little idea of where the work will go, something special emerges quite unexpectedly.

It is those days and those painting that you crave as an artist. Oh, it is gratifying to create work that you feel is well within your body of work. That is to say, work which follows a path you have trod upon many times before. But to have those days and those pieces that surprise you– well, that is beyond gratification. It has an almost religious aspect, like an affirmation of one’s belief in something greater.

But those days are often rare and come without a hint of what may emerge. Even sitting here now, I don’t know if today will be one of those days. But just knowing that it is possible makes me anxious to get at it.

Enjoy the Van Goghs and I am going to move into my day.

There’s too much to do this morning so I am running this post from 2016, adding a piece where Van Gogh copied a well known Hiroshige painting. But just as then, I am anxious to get my brush back in my hand soon.

Van Gogh- Landscape at Auvers in the Rain

Van Gogh- Bridge in the Rain (After Hiroshige)

Alberto Giacometti in his studio ca. 1960

Basically, I no longer work for anything but the sensation I have while working.

-Alberto Giacometti

That sounds about right.

I am in the midst of prepping work for my upcoming June 4 show at the Principle Gallery. Prepping consists of framing and matting and staining and sanding and varnishing and this and that and so on. All important in presenting the work but none of it is actually the painting that I call my work.

And I am severely missing that work in these last couple of weeks as I have had to put down the brush to finish off the show. The months leading up to this point were the most intense period of work that I have had in several years. My productivity has waned a bit in recent years and this show, after a year that was memorably awful for us all, demanded a new commitment to the work.

And I believe that I found it.

I locked myself in basically over the past several months and just worked. It was in recent weeks, as I approached this point where I would have to stop painting for a while to prep the show, that a realization came to me. I saw clearly that how important that sensation I had while working, as Giacometti puts it, was to me, how it drove everything in me and unlocks so many things there.

I need that sensation. It is a self-generating source of energy and the path to that place where I am at my best, where I have an opportunity to be more and expand my understanding of this existence.

This realization required a deepening of my commitment to my work. I want and need to delve deeper and the work is the only way to get there.

Just felt that needed to be said aloud, even if only for myself to hear. Now, I have to get back to prepping so that I can truly get back to that work.