You’ll get mixed up, of course, as you already know. You’ll get mixed up with many strange birds as you go. So be sure when you step. Step with care and great tact and remember that Life’s a Great Balancing Act. Just never forget to be dexterous and deft. And never mix up your right foot with your left.
-Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!
This is one of the smaller pieces from my Entanglementshow that opens June 13th at the Principle Gallery. It’s 6″ by 8″ on canvas and I call it Balancing Act. Not quite sure if the balancing act refers to this person to staying upright on the small peak or in life in general, as Dr. Seuss reminds us with his Life’s a Great Balancing Act.
Or does it refer to the act of living as we do between planes of existence, one physical and one ethereal as the tangles of energy in the sky here suggest?
Or might it be the balancing act between reality and perception?
Hmm. More to think about here than I first thought. I guess it all comes down to how someone is feeling at any given moment or how they see things as a whole.
I have to think on this a little more so let us have a little Sunday Morning Music. This song seems like a good fit and a fine way to jumpstart your day. This is Over Under Sideways Down by the Yardbirds (with Jeff Beck on guitar) from back in 1966. Sounds like a great way to describe the sky in this painting.
The Answering Light At Principle Gallery, June 2025
Who am I? This or the other? Am I one person today, and tomorrow another? Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others, and before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling? Or is something within me still like a beaten army, fleeing in disorder from a victory already achieved?
—Who Am I?, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters & Papers from Prison
It is said that the true character of a person is revealed in times of adversity.
It is also said that true character is revealed with the attainment of power but I’m not going to talk about that this morning since having great power is much rarer than the many forms of adversity that can us common folk. Besides, that adage is definitively proven by the soulless creature now brandishing power here in this country.
But most of us face adversity of some sort at some point in our lives, a time when we are forced to make decisions that show just who we are and what is contained within our character. At such times we must decide whether to dither or take action. To speak out or be silent. To fight or take flight. To accept and succumb to our fear or to resist and overcome it.
This all comes to mind for me in this new painting, The Answering Light, from my upcoming Principle Gallery show, Entanglement. On one hand it is a quiet and somewhat placid piece, almost meditative in its nature. On the other hand, I see the house here as representing one of those critical points in time when such a decision must be made. It is still quiet but more brooding than meditative as an answer is sought.
I see the swirling tangle of energy in the sky as providing an answer which is to do that which is right, that which is not in disharmony with the energy of the universe. It is also a reminder that this is a point in which there is the opportunity to mold and alter the character that has been formed throughout one’s life. A time to overcome those mistakes of judgement from our past, to reestablish our strength of character– to find redemption of a sort.
The light and energy of the sky cautions that whatever you decide will define your character because you will do what you will do because that is what and who you are.
This same question of who we are and what that will us do is contained in a poem written in a German prison during World War II by theologian and anti-Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I have written about Bonhoeffer a number of times here and the post on his essay, On Stupidity, has been by far the most popular post on this blog over the past several years.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor and theological writer who stood in direct opposition to the Nazi regime and spoke out against its programs of euthanasia and genocide. He had an opportunity to stay in the US in the late 1930’s, safe from the reach of the Nazis, but he insisted on returning, believing that if he were to rebuild the German church in the war’s aftermath he must endure it with its people.
He was imprisoned in a German prison in 1943 and later transferred to a concentration camp. He was implicated in a plot to assassinate Hitler and was hanged in the waning days of the war, in April of 1945.
In this poem, Who Am I?, Bonhoeffer poses many of same questions and concerns that I see in this painting, They are the same questions and concerns that I have for my own character. I think it is a fine companion for this painting.
That’s a lot to say here this morning and I am not sure that I’ve said it clearly or with any sense at all. I write these things as first drafts each morning so sometimes they are not always all I want them to be. Some things are missed or said in a clunky way. Kind of reflective of my own character. Below is the whole poem from Bonhoeffer.
The Answering Light, 24″ by 12″ on canvas, is included in my exhibit of new work, Entanglement, that opens Friday, June 13 at the Principle Gallery with an Opening Reception from 6-8:30 PM. I will also be giving a Painting Demonstration at the gallery on the following day, Saturday, June 14, from 11 AM until 1 PM.
Who am I? They often tell me I would step from my cell’s confinement calmly, cheerfully, firmly, like a squire from his country-house.
Who am I? They often tell me I would talk to my warders freely and friendly and clearly, as though it were mine to command.
Who am I? They also tell me I would bear the days of misfortune equably, smilingly, proudly, like one accustomed to win.
Am I then really all that which other men tell of? Or am I only what I know of myself, restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage, struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat, yearning for colours, for flowers, for the voices of birds, thirsting for words of kindness, for neighbourliness, trembling with anger at despotism and petty humiliation, tossing in expectation of great events, powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance, weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making, faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?
Who am I? This or the other? Am I one person today, and tomorrow another? Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others, and before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling? Or is something within me still like a beaten army, fleeing in disorder from a victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine. Whoever I am, thou knowest, O God, I am thine.
–Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters & Papers from Prison
Setting Course— Headed to Principle Gallery, June 2025
Gravity is so strong that space is bent round onto itself, making it rather like the surface of the earth. If one keeps traveling in a certain direction on the surface of the earth, one never comes up against an impassable barrier or falls over the edge, but eventually comes back to where one started.
–Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time
I am not sure that the passage above from Stephen Hawking is perfect for what I am seeing in this new painting but for this morning it will do just fine. The painting, headed to the Principle Gallery for my June show there, is titled Setting Course and is 24″ by 24″ on canvas.
Though from its outward appearance the sailboat here seems to imply setting a course to some distant destination, that is not necessarily how I read it for myself. As it is with much of my work, I see all journeying and searching not as being outward but rather inward.
The answers we think can only be found by seeking outside ourselves are often contained within. Often it is the contrasting and gained experience we find on the outward journey that provides the clarity to recognize the answers within. We find that we didn’t know what we thought we knew, didn’t want what we thought we wanted, weren’t what we thought we were, and so on.
We may voyage around the world but it usually ends, as Hawking points out, with us coming back to where we started– the destination within ourselves.
I see this painting and its interwoven nature of the inward and outward as another form of the Entanglement that is the theme for this year’s exhibit. We are contained in everything and, as a result, become the destination for our every journey.
Every course we set leads back to us.
Okay, my head hurts a little now. Maybe I should have just said that I like this painting simply because I deeply feel its colors and forms and that the boat here makes me think of living a conscious life of self-reliance and self-determination.
Maybe even that is too much to say.
How about I just say that there’s something speaks to me, and I hope it says something to you as well?
Kind of a long journey to get back to that, right?
Like the boat here, I am moving on this morning. Here’s a favorite song whose mood and title feels right for this painting. Plus it feels like perfect fit for a cool, rainy May morning with lots of those same blues and greens outside the window here in the studio. This is Blue in Green from Miles Davis.
Setting Course is included in my exhibit of new work, Entanglement, that opens Friday, June 13 at the Principle Gallery with an Opening Reception from 6-8:30 PM. I will also be giving a Painting Demonstration at the gallery on the following day, Saturday, June 14, from 11 AM until 1 PM.
House of Blues – Coming to Principle Gallery, June 2025
She left me here with nothing, waiting here for something Something I could believe in Some were born to win the game, some were born to lose And they live their lives every night in the house of blues
— House of Blues, Gregg Allman
This is a new painting that will be going to my Entanglementexhibit that opens in June at the Principle Gallery. It’s 12″ by 16″ on panel and it is titled House of Blues.
This is one of those pieces where I wasn’t sure when it was done. Part of me wanted to add more, to make it feel less stark. Undecided, I set it aside for a while, occasionally putting it back on the easel to consider how I could add to it.
But after some time, I realized that adding anything would remove the heart of this painting which was in the naked emptiness of the horizon. Much like the atmosphere created by the Blue House itself and the bare tree beside it, the cold distance of the horizon mirrored the felt emptiness of longing and loss.
It’s a painting that has grown on me over the time it has lived with me. Like some people, it’s not a painting that welcomes you in with open arms. It speaks of spaces and thoughts that remain private.
Maybe that’s the appeal for me.
Here’s a song of that same title and much of the same tone from the late Gregg Allman. It’s not an exact match but it works, especially on a cool and gray May morning with rain beginning to fall.
Eternal tourists of ourselves, there is no landscape but what we are. We possess nothing, for we don’t even possess ourselves. We have nothing because we are nothing. What hand will I reach out, and to what universe? The universe isn’t mine: it’s me.
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
Wasn’t going to post anything this morning until I came across this post from just a couple of years back. Though it doesn’t deal with my upcoming show, Pessoa’s words certainly match up perfectly with the theme of my June show. Thought it was worth sharing again. Plus, there’s also a great Mavis Staples/ Levon Helm song. Win-win…
I recently came across the passage above from The Book of Disquiet, the “factless autobiography” of Fernando Pessoa, the Portuguese poet/author, that was published after his death in 1935. Reading it made me look further into the book and I was surprised at how his description of his internal travels lined up with my own. He wrote of the landscapes he saw within while I paint mine.
There is another similar quote from Pessoa that is supposed to come from The Book of Disquiet as well:
The true landscapes are those that we ourselves create. I’ve crossed more seas than anyone. I’ve seen more mountains than there are on earth. The universe isn’t mine: it’s me.
I haven’t been able to find this specific passage in the book yet. I believe it has to do with the variance between the several translations of the book from the Portuguese. However, this one rings even more true for my work. That sentiment of traveling the internal landscape has been the driving force behind my work for my entire career. It manifested itself in the large painting from 2012 shown at the top, The Internal Landscape.
It’s an image that has been shown here a number of times over the years and remains what I would consider a signature piece, a truly representative image of my inner world.
It felt like it needed to be seen again this morning.
Have to run because there are new places to see and explore this morning. In parting, here’s a song that feels like it fits. This is Wide River to Cross from Mavis Staples and the late great Levon Helm.
Betwixt and Between— At Principle Gallery, June 2025
Between two worlds life hovers like a star, ‘Twixt night and morn, upon the horizon’s verge. How little do we know that which we are! How less what we may be! The eternal surge Of time and tide rolls on, and bears afar Our bubbles; as the old burst, new emerge, Lash’d from the foam of ages; while the graves Of Empires heave but like some passing waves.
—Lord Byron, Don Juan (1819)
I’ve had these lines from Lord Byron in my holster for a long time, waiting for the time when they would mesh with one of my paintings. Today seems like as good a time as any to unleash it.
The painting is Betwixt and Between, a smallish 10″ by 10″ canvas that is included in my upcoming show at the Principle Gallery. It’s easy to see by its sky that it is a prime example of the title for this year’s show, Entanglement. But it also presents an image of our temporal existence between this physical world and that of the ethereal and raises the question: To which do we truly belong?
Maybe we belong to both, real life examples of Schrodinger’s Cat, existing simultaneously in paradoxical states of being. Or maybe not. Who knows for sure?
These lines from Byron also point out that so much that we exult– money, power, fame, etc.–is meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Like the message of the poem Ozymandias from his good friend P.B. Shelley, Byron says that all empires one day fall and are lost to time and tide, exposing the folly of believing that we can attain an immortality of some sort in this world.
We might write our names on the slate of this world, but that slate is eventually and always wiped clean.
As for the painting itself, I am pleased with its look and feel. It speaks easily and simply to me. For me that’s always a good thing. Stark simplicity was a goal for much of the work in this show. I wanted clarity and didn’t want feeling to get lost in detail. This piece very much reaches that goal, at least in the way I see it. I think there’s a lot to see, feel, and think about in this small painting.
Maybe you will see that as well. Maybe not. Who knows?
Entanglement opens Friday, June 13 at the Principle Gallery with an Opening Reception from 6-8:30 PM. I will be in attendance to chat and answer any questions you might have so long as they don’t pertain to advanced mathematics or botany.
I will also be giving a Painting Demonstration at the gallery on the following day, Saturday, June 14, from 11 AM until 1 PM. I will also be in attendance at this event, in case you were wondering.
I was raised outta steel Here in the swamps of Jersey Some misty years ago Through the mud and the beer The blood and the cheers I’ve seen champions come and go So if you’ve got the guts, mister Yeah, if you got the balls If you think it’s your time Then step to the line And bring on your wrecking ball
—Wrecking Ball, Bruce Springsteen
Running a little late but wanted to share some Sunday Morning Music. Thought that some Springsteen would be appropriate since he had a bit of a run-in with the creature who now occupies the People’s House. At a show in England, Bruce opened his show by saying that though we were now under the thumb of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration the America of which he wrote for the better part of the past six decades was still there. His is an America of hard working, hardscrabble, hard luck folks who are decent and caring and are just trying to make their way through this world unscathed.
El Presidente Grande Naranja took umbrage at these remarks and basically threatened Bruce with all the power of the highest office in this land for Bruce exercising his First Amendment rights in his criticism of the administration.
I am not going to get into the whole affair this morning except to say those who threaten our basic rights such as free speech and due process and the institutions that have kept democracy afloat for 250 years are not acting in the best interests of America. A virtual wrecking ball is being smashed into every corner of the American edifice.
And the only response to such an attack is with an even bigger wrecking ball, one of accountability and justice.
That’s all I am going to say. Here’s Wrecking Ballfrom Bruce Springsteen. Some good advice in here: Hold tight to your anger/And don’t fall to your fears.
All birth means separation from the All, the confinement within limitation, the separation from God, the pangs of being born ever anew. The return into the All, the dissolution of painful individuation, the reunion with God means the expansion of the soul until it is able once more to embrace the All.
–Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf (1927)
The expansion of the soul until it is able once more to embrace the All…
The title, Reunion, for this new 36″ x 12″ painting from my June show at the Principle Gallery came long before I was reminded of the passage above from Hesse’s Steppenwolf. But the message comes pretty close to that of both this painting and the Entanglement exhibit as a whole, as I have attempted to describe in recent posts here.
I say attempted because I really don’t know, so my words are often lacking. It is still a mystery to me, one that will remain so until the energy that animates the physical form I temporarily inhabit reunites with the all-encompassing energy of the universe, the Alldescribed by Hesse.
It is the mystery of this whole thing that I am trying to capture with much of the work from this upcoming show. The landscapes in these paintings are spare, often small islands or sailboats on the seas or lone trees or houses on wide plains. As in this piece, they are set low in the picture plane in a way that, for me, symbolizes the smallness or insignificance of the ephemeral nature of our existence in relation to the vast and seemingly eternal energy represented by the sky.
My desire was to have the skies, with the rhythm of their patterns and twists and turns, be the focus of these paintings. The idea is to represent a form of energy that seems chaotic from afar yet has motion and rhythm that hopefully becomes apparent to the viewer who takes the time to dwell in these pictures.
I know I have found this work most rewarding. It is a theme that has shown itself in my work over the past decade. In 2016 I did a group of similar work that remains close to my heart. I moved away from it but every time I reviewed that particular work, I found myself asking why. It moves me as much now as when it first emerged. I think these new takes on that theme takes it further and deepens the meaning of it.
Being a mysterious thing, there are certainly questions raised. That’s a good thing, in my opinion. Are there answers to be found? That’s not for me to say. As with most things, the answer is in the individual and where they are in their way through this temporary bit of time and space.
That is, if there are answers at all. Maybe just asking the question is all we need. Maybe it’s the first step in aligning our energy to that great Entanglement with which we will one day be reunited.
Until that time, it shall remain a mystery.
Entanglement opens Friday, June 13 at the Principle Gallery with an Opening Reception from 6-8:30 PM. I will also be giving a Painting Demonstration at the gallery on the following day, Saturday, June 14, from 11 AM until 1 PM.
I wasn’t going to add a song to this post but as I was finishing up a song came to mind that made me laugh. It felt a little goofy and out of place for a fairly serious post but then I thought, why not? The title alone works for me with this painting. Plus, I haven’t shared a lot of Elvis here in recent times. This is Return to Sender.
Wherever the Wind Takes Me – At Principle Gallery, June 2025
It’s hard to tell the difference between sea and sky, between voyager and sea. Between reality and the workings of the heart.
–Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
This was one of the first pieces completed for my upcoming Principle Gallery exhibit. It pretty much sent me in the direction that had me deciding to focus on the unity and interconnectedness of all energy and things as the theme for the show. It was the painting that spawned the idea of Entanglement as the show’s title. It’s been a favorite for me here in the studio over the seven months or so since it emerged.
It’s called Wherever the Wind Takes Me and is 15″ by 30″ on canvas. The title implies a journey or voyage of some sort and that’s true for the most part. My take on it is that there are all sorts of journeys, some that take you outward to distant shores and some that take you inward to equally distant shores within yourself. Both offer the potential for adventure and discovery of something new and perhaps life-altering.
The other thing that comes to mind for me from this painting, even in its title, is that we often go on such journeys without knowing what it is that we seek. And that is just as it should be because we often can’t recognize what it is that we most need. We think we know but we are often mistaken, especially when our conscious mind has not yet opened and melded with the greater entanglements that surround us.
It is then, when we journey– inward or outward without expectation of answers or discovery–that we may learn what it is that we need most.
It is then that the Entanglement will guide us– in the form of the wind in this painting– to what it is that we unknowingly seek.
In this case, the wind knows just what that is.
That might not make sense to you. It often doesn’t make sense to me. That makes me think I might be on the right track. The wind will let me know…
Here’s a tune that has been in my mind since I woke up this morning and it kind of fits. Kind of. The song is from The Byrds, their cover of Dylan’s You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere.
Entanglement opens Friday, June 13 at the Principle Gallery with an Opening Reception from 6-8:30 PM. I will also be giving a Painting Demonstration at the gallery on the following day, Saturday, June 14, from 11 AM until 1 PM.
I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.
–Robert Frost, The New York Times (Nov. 7, 1955)
I am at that point in preparing for my annual solo show at the Principle Gallery where fear and panic set in. I begin to doubt every movement or decision made in producing the work. It’s a common occurrence with any of my exhibits at this juncture in the proceedings. You would think after nearly 70 such solo shows that these doubts would subside, that one would maintain absolute trust in their work and the processes they employ in producing it. But they never do.
This feeling of angst made writing a blog post about my new work difficult this morning so I am once again running one of my most popular blogposts with hardly a day going by when it doesn’t get at least a handful of views. It is about a well-known essay from poet Robert Frost that describes in a poetic way how his work emerges. I write about the many parallels to the way I paint that I see in Frost’s methodology.
Much of it certainly applies to the work from this show, which seemed to guide me rather than be guided by me.
A little bit of that was on display at the demonstration I gave recently at the West End Gallery. I will be doing another such demonstration at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria on Saturday, June 14, the day after the opening of my show, Entanglement, on Friday, June 13.
The poet Robert Frost wrote a wonderful preface to the 1939 edition of his collected poems. It was titled The Figure a Poem Makes and it described how he viewed his process of unveiling the true nature of his work. Reading it, I was struck by the similarities between his development of a poem and how I view my process for a painting.
For example, the following paragraph-I have highlighted individual lines that jumped out at me. I probably could have highlighted them all:
It should be of the pleasure of a poem itself to tell how it can. The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same as for love. No one can really hold that the ecstasy should be static and stand still in one place. It begins in delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down, it runs a course of lucky events, and ends in a clarification of life–not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion. It has denouement. It has an outcome that though unforeseen was predestined from the first image of the original mood-and indeed from the very mood. It is but a trick poem and no poem at all if the best of it was thought of first and saved for the last. It finds its own name as it goes and discovers the best waiting for it in some final phrase at once wise and sad-the happy-sad blend of the drinking song.
A painting often begins in delight, assuming direction, as Frost put it, with the first line laid down. A certain tone of color, the shape of a form, the way a line bends, the manner in which a brushstroke reveals the paint or in how the contrast of light and dark excites the eye. The delights pull you in and keep you engaged and it is not until you have finished that you are able to understand the sum of these elements, to detect the wisdom, the meaning, behind it all. It is only then that you know what you have uncovered and how it should be named.
The work itself, if left to its own means, knows what it is and will tell you.
Then there is this gem of a paragraph:
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader. For me the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering something I didn’t know I knew. I am in a place, in a situation, as if I had materialized from cloud or risen out of the ground. There is a glad recognition of the long lost and the rest follows. Step by step the wonder of unexpected supply keeps growing. The impressions most useful to my purpose seem always those I was unaware of and so made no note of at the time when taken, and the conclusion is come to that like giants we are always hurling experience ahead of us to pave the future with against the day when we may want to strike a line of purpose across it for somewhere. The line will have the more charm for not being mechanically straight. We enjoy the straight crookedness of a good walking stick.
I have often spoke of the need to have my emotions near the surface when I work, to always need to feel excited and surprised by what I am working on. To recognize new things I never knew as being part of me. If I am not moved by the thing I am working on at any given time, how can I expect others to be moved by it? This paragraph speaks clearly to my experience as an artist.
Then there is the final sentences of the essay:
Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting. A poem may be worked over once it is in being, but may not be worried into being. Its most precious quality will remain its having run itself and carried away the poet with it. Read it a hundred times: it will forever keep its freshness as a petal keeps its fragrance. It can never lose its sense of a meaning that once unfolded by surprise as it went.
My translation of this, as a painter, is that the work must be free to move and grow of its own volition. It tells you where it wants to go and, if you don’t constrain it and try to push it to a place to which it was not intended, will reveal its truth to you. If you can do that, it remains always fresh, always in the present and always filled the excitement and surprise that it contained in that burst when it was created.
And that, to feel always fresh and in the present, is the goal of all art, be it painting, poetry, music, or dance.
I don’t want to bore you too much. It’s a great essay and is a valuable read for anyone who makes art in any form. You can see the whole book, The Collected Poems of Robert Frost, and read this essay in full by clicking here. The link takes you to one of my favorite sites on the whole interwebs, the Internet Archive, which has a huge library of available books that you can view in book form online. With its great search engine, it is a super reference tool.
Redtree Times 