Life is very short… but I would like to live four times and if I could, I would set out to do no other things than I am seeking now to do.
—William Merritt Chase
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I find this to be a very interesting quote from the American master William Merritt Chase (1849-1916). I don’t think about it very often but given a choice of doing what I am doing with my life and being able to freely pursue any other life, I would continue, like Chase, on the path I am currently on.
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I know there could be greater adventures, greater importance, greater rewards, wider travels and so on in other pursuits. But this life meshes with my character and my preferences so well that the thought of doing anything else seems almost absurd at this point. It never even enters my mind.
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And there is something calming in the certainty of this. It’s one less thing that might gnaw at me, to make me question my own decisions. One less thing in which to find uncertainty in a world overflowing with it. When I enter my studio, I know I am in my proper place. Oh, I might question my decisions, my actions, in that space but I can no longer imagine myself being in any other place. And like Chase, I find myself wishing I could live four more of these lives.
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And that’s a good thing.
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Here are some more painting from William Merritt Chase. Hope his words somehow apply to you. Have a great day.
I read an interesting article in The Atlantic by Eliot Cohenthis week that has stuck with me for the past few days. It parallels the possible fall of the current administration to that of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. How fitting that the Scottish play, as it is often called, might mirror the fall of a man with a Scottish ancestry.
The end may be brought about by those he has freely abused and those around him who serve him not from admiration or love but from fear and the self-serving nature of the position, things that will no doubt soon fall away as the downward spiral hastens and his true nature of this utterly selfish person becomes apparent to even those who still follow him with fervor.
As Cohen writes:
…his spirit remains tyrannical—that is, utterly self-absorbed and self-concerned, indifferent to the suffering of others, knowing no moral restraint. He expects fealty and gives none. Such people can exert power for a long time, by playing on the fear and cupidity, the gullibility and the hatreds of those around them. Ideological fervor can substitute for personal affection and attachment for a time, and so too can blind terror and sheer stupidity, but in the end, these fall away as well.
Who will be Macduff, the one who ends the reign of the tyrant, in this version of the play is yet to be determined. But the last words of Macduff before he is urged by Macbeth to Lay on, Macduff should be remembered:
Then yield thee, coward, And live to be the show and gaze o’ the time: We’ll have thee, as our rarer monsters are, Painted on a pole, and underwrit, ‘Here may you see the tyrant.’
In case you don’t know the play, it doesn’t end well for Macbeth.
For this week’s Sunday morning music I have chosen a nice collaboration of a song from the great American songbook from Elvis Costello and the late great Chet Baker. The title fits well with an article about a man who demands love and loyalty but offers none in return: You Don’t Know What Love Is.
Mid-fifties temperatures made it a cool,comfortable stroll over to the studio this morning. These guys were waiting for me part way down the driveway where it emerges from the woods. They are some of the resident critters who regularly visit me. There are quite a few other bucks and a number of does and fawns, including one thin doe, Skinny Girl, who often sleeps between the shrubs and the foundation wall of the studio in the front. She knows it’s a safe spot. Many of these deer have grown up within sight of the studio and know they are secure within a certain area. It’s been interesting to watch many of them grow up.
This time of year the bucks, like this group, still travel through the woods together, not yet ready to begin their annual display of strength where they establish their dominance in an area for rutting. In a month or two the strongest buck will clash with and chase off the weaker and younger bucks. There is a large, thick bodied 10 or 12 point buck, not part of this shown group, that shows up periodically and seems like the dominant buck. He even makes a different sound when he runs, pounding the ground with his heaviness. It’s a frenzied time for the deer when the mating rut begins and the big bucks exert their dominance but for now they happily coexist.
Along with the deer, there are plenty of other residents who regularly show up around the house and the studio. There are small groups of turkeys who like the deer, are grouped together by sex at this time. A flock of seven or eight toms regularly stroll through pecking at everything, hopefully hoovering up all of the ticks that abound in these woods. They seem pretty at home and not too skittish when they see me unlike the group of hens who rush off through the underbrush at the first glimpse.
There is also a regular parade of squirrels, chipmunks, woodchucks, skunks (although they haven’t been as regular a visitor this year), raccoons, foxes, coyotes and a periodic bobcat. I am sure I am missing someone here but I know they will show up soon to remind me..
Then there are the many birds who inhabit these woods and regularly visit the pond. The caw of the crow, the squawk of the jay, the distinct call of the thrush and the wacky cackle of the pileated woodpecker often echo through the woods, along with the sounds of the black birds, chickadees, titmice, mourning doves and my favorites, the cardinals. It must be the red.
We’ve had large ospreys visit the pond with a huge splash as they dive for fish and herons who take a quieter approach, often seeming like pieces of sculpture as they wait without any motion at all for a frog or small fish to come within their reach. And then there are the swallows and bats diving and dancing in the sky above the pond as they help keep down the bugs. And there’s the red-tailed hawk who hovers around, menacing the other birds. And at night, the hoot of the owls comes out of the blackness.
It all gives me a real Peaceable Kingdom (like the famous folk paintings from Edward Hicks) kind of feeling watching so many of these critters coexisting and allowing me to be part of the group. Not a bad feeling on a cool Saturday morning.
It is my dream to create an art which is filled with balance, purity and calmness, freed from a subject matter that is disconcerting or too attention-seeking. In my paintings, I wish to create a spiritual remedy, similar to a comfortable armchair which provides rest from physical expectation for the spiritually working, the businessman as well as the artist.
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–Henri Matisse
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I have read (and shared) a different translation of the quote above from the great Henri Matisse. It aligns perfectly with my own hopes for my work and stands almost as a credo. At the end of the day, I am trying to create work that allows any viewer, no matter how much or how little they know about art, to withdraw into their own inner space while at the same time feel a sense of communion with a greater whole. To move into a place that feels safe and comforting.
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A spiritual remedy, as he calls it.
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It’s not something you can have in mind, however. It only comes in the process, as the thoughts that may have been pressing on my mind are set aside and my own emotions are leveled off to a state of calm. It has to be my own spiritual remedy before it becomes that of anyone else.
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When it happens, it is a lovely thing and the world seems somewhat right.
Over a century ago, in 1912, the Titanic, claiming to be the biggest and best ship of its time, made its maiden voyage heading from England to New York.
Well, there’s a ship out there right now, big and as full of itself as the Titanic. Its name is written in large gaudy gold letters across its bow and like the Titanic begins with a T.
This week, the iceberg that has been looming on the horizon moved perilously close to this ship. And I have a feeling that this iceberg is bigger and deeper and vastly more dangerous than the pompous Captain and his First Mates ever could imagine. They think they can simply evade the part of the iceberg they can see. And the passengers who trust this captain believe that he will steer them clear.
We all know how this story goes: Big Ship+North Atlantic+Iceberg+Crash+Bottom of the sea+Celine Dion singing. Closing credits and fade to black.
There are a lot of people out there saying that the events of this week are the end of the story, that they are a small iceberg that can be swerved around and the big ship trudges onward. But we all know that icebergs are sometimes massive and that the sighting of one is often just the beginning of the story.
We have sighted the iceberg and even the tip of the iceberg is big. This story has just began.
There are so many things we’ve been brought up to believe that it takes you an awfully long time to realize that they aren’t you.
–Edward Gorey
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I love the work of the late great illustrator Edward Gorey which very often took matters to dark and quirky places. His Gashlycrumb Tinies, a primer style book with small children being done in in a variety of curious ways, is a prime example. I’ve shown a few here. At face value, it’s awful yet there is a quality to it that still makes you smile at the macabre absurdity of it.
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It’s often thought that Gorey, who passed away in 2000 at the age of 75, was English, mainly because much of his work looks very Victorian and Edwardian. Lots of well appointed gentlemen and gowned matrons brandishing cigarette holders. However, he was from Chicago and lived most of his life there, in NYC and on Cape Cod, where he died. He actually only left the USA once in his lifetime.
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One little factoid that interested me was that one of his stepmothers was the actress who played the cabaret musician who sang and played guitar in the movie Casablanca. She was playing the guitar during one of my alltime favorite scenes which featured Resistance fighter Victor Lazlo leading the band in a rousing version of the French anthem, La Marseillaise, that drowned out the singing of the Nazis in Rick’s bar. I guess that doesn’t mean much as far as Edward Gorey’s work but I thought it was a neat little detail.
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I also like the quote at the top from Gorey. It’s one of those realizations that come only with the passing of time, after years of trying to fit one’s self into a mode of behavior that is acceptable to others. At a certain point one realizes that they don’t have to satisfy anyone’s expectations or beliefs but their own. It’s the beginning of freedom.
This morning, I was looking at the wall in my studio that is directly in front of the desk where I write this as well as the easels where I paint. It’s a large stone fireplace that is about fourteen feet wide made from local creekstone. There are bookshelves built into the wall, the shelves formed by thick slabs of bluestone. There are also three half round ledges that jut out from the wall that were obviously placed to show off tchotchkes.
I have a number of personal things littering the wall. There are several of the carvings from the years before I began to paint. An old snowshoe. A carved crow from a well known regional sculptor shares one of the half round shelves with a cheap carving of Don Quixote that my sister gave me as a Christmas present when I was still a kid . There’s a Buddhist prayer wheel given to me by a friend along with a thumb piano made from koa wood, picked up on a trip to Hawaii many, many years ago.
But in the center is a painting from a few years back, an abstract comprised of colorful blocks. I knew when I did this piece that it was strictly mine and wasn’t surprised that it didn’t find a home. There are several such pieces here in my main painting space. Maybe it’s the fact that I did them just for my own satisfaction that make them favorites of mine. I know this painting catches my eye several times a day and there is definitely a sense of satisfaction in each glance.
Even with that, I don’t know that I would do such a piece again. If I did, the scale of the painting would be much larger, maybe four or five feet square, so that its colors and forms had the size to make a real statement. A bold yelp whereas this small painting is a whispered wish. But that whisper is mine and I wish on it every day.
Below is a post from back when it was made. The quote totally aligns with how I see the key to creativity– finding that medium and process that corresponds with the way one thinks and feels.
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The artist is a man who finds that the form or shape of things externally corresponds, in some strange way, to the movements of his mental and emotional life.
—Graham Collier
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I have been working on dream inspired patterned forms, as I’ve noted here several times recently. I have been incorporating into the layers that make up my skies in simple landscapes where they serve to give added depth and texture. It works really well in that context and it would be easy to just use it in that way.
But there is something about some of them that make me just push them to the forefront alone without masking them with any representational forms over them. Something beyond narrative. Elemental. Like it is somehow tied to my own internal shapes and forms and patterns.
I was thinking this when I came across the quote at the top from the late jazz musician/composer Graham Collier. It made so much sense because I think that is, in general, the attraction of art for me– it’s an external harmony of internal elements.
I didn’t know much about Collier who died in 2011. He was a bassist/bandleader/composer who was the first British grad of the Berklee College of Music. He played around the world and also wrote extensively on jazz but he still wasn’t on my radar. While I like jazz, my knowledge, as it is in many things, is pretty shallow. So I decided that I should listen to some of Collier’s music.
The first song I heard was titled Song One (Seven-Four) and it just clicked for me. It was so familiar and seemed to be right in line with the piece at the top, a 12″ by 12″ painting on masonite panel. It made me think about the connection with music, how sounds often take the form of shapes and colors in the minds of both musicians and listeners.
Again, very elemental.
So I began to think of these newer pieces as music. It creates a context that makes sense for my mind, one that gives me a way of looking at the work without seeking representational forms. It’s an exciting thing for me and I look forward to some newer explorations in this realm in the near future. For Graham Collier’s clarification, I am calling the piece at the top Jazz ( Song One). Here it is :
What does the artist do? He draws connections. He ties the invisible threads between things. He dives into history, be it the history of mankind, the geological history of the Earth or the beginning and end of the manifest cosmos.
—Anselm Kiefer
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Anselm Kiefer (born 1945) is a contemporary German artist whose work is often epic in size and scale. You can see this in one of the photos below. Many of his more recent paintings use molten lead as a medium which creates these large ominous and heavy (obviously!) areas in the paintings. Over his long career he has been controversial, especially in confronting his German heritage and the events of the first half of the 20th century. But it is always interesting.
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Several things he has written or said have really resonated with me, including one quote from which I stole a bit to use as the title of a painting, The Palace of My Memory. The quote summed up perfectly how I view the body of my work. I believe I am creating a place, a palace if you will, where my collected memory can be preserved and survive, hopefully, long after I am gone.
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Here is that quote:
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But I believe above all that I wanted to build the palace of my memory, because my memory is my only homeland.
The British photographer Alfred G. Buckham (1879-1956) was one of the pioneers of aerial photography. Already a photographer, his career as an aerial photographer began with the outbreak of WW I.
He became the first head of aerial reconnaissance for the Royal Navy and later translated that to a private career of daring and wondrous shots taken from small planes, often with him standing perilously on the plane with one leg tethered to it. He was involved in 9 plane crashes and it was only in the ninth that he was seriously injured, having afterward to breathe for the rest of his life through a tube in his throat after a tracheotomy.
This shot at the top of the page taken by Buckham from above Edinburgh, Scotland around 1920 is one of my favorite photos. I urge you to check out the website devoted to the career and work of Alfred Buckham. Interesting stuff.
I thought I’d accompany this photo with a track from the album Skala from musician Mathias Eick that is titled, of course, Edinburgh. Another track, Oslo, was featured here several weeks ago. Not all the tracks are titled after European cities, in case you were wondering.
I think this composition fits the photo very well, with a gliding beat that I can imagine aligns itself well with swooping over the Scottish landscape in a small plane in 1920. Give a closer look and a listen and have a good Sunday.
I really just wanted to share one of my favorite Edward Hopper paintings but the message attached really speaks to my own thoughts on painting. The painting is his Early Sunday Morningfrom 1930.
I like that it seems so still, so static, yet it is filled–at least for me– with tensions and deep emotional content. That reaction is my own imagination reacting to the elements of the painting. Hopper created an armature, a framework, that gives shape to the emotional response of the viewer without filling out all of the details.
You look at it and there are guides in place that gently direct you to Hopper’s own emotional location. But it never spells it out in great detail, never tells you what you should feel. It relies on your imagination to fill in the voids, to fill it with details to which you can personally relate. You are no longer a mere viewer, you are an emotional participant.
That’s how I think a painting should work, as a sort of active terminus where the work of the artist and the imagination of the viewer meet.
Sometimes, it works that way. Sometimes, it doesn’t. I think this Hopper definitely works in this way.
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