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Kiefer Connections

August 20, 2018 by redtreetimes

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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.
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Posted in Biographical, Quote | Tagged , | 1 Comment »

Edinburgh

August 19, 2018 by redtreetimes

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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.

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, Photography | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Hopper and Imagination

August 18, 2018 by redtreetimes

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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 Morning from 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.

Posted in Favorite Things, Painting, Quote | Tagged , , | 3 Comments »

Aretha/ Runnin’ Out of Fools

August 17, 2018 by redtreetimes

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Well into middle-age now, I can’t remember a time when Aretha Franklin wasn’t around to provide vital part for the soundtrack of our lives. Her best known songs are part of who we are and how we define ourselves in our own time. She won’t be around but her work will continue that job for some time to come.

Here’s one of my favorites, a song from back around 1964 that probably has been overlooked a bit in the deluge of Aretha music that has been played in the last day or so. It’s a great song and a good look back at early Aretha. Here’s Runnin’ Out of Fools.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyiKqXc2OT0

Posted in Current Events, Music | Tagged , | Leave a Comment »

Giacometti: Painting What He Sees

August 16, 2018 by redtreetimes

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If only someone else could paint what I see, it would be marvelous, because then I wouldn’t have to paint at all.

—Alberto Giacometti
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This quote from the great sculptor/painter Alberto Giacometti reminds me of a bit of advice I’ve attempted to pass on for a number of years: Paint the pictures you want or need to see.
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This idea that I wasn’t finding what I sensed I needed to see drove me early on and still does today.
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It makes me wonder if I had been aware of someone painting the pictures that I now paint when I was first starting out, would I be painting now? Would there be a need?
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Even though I want to say that, yes, I would definitely still be painting, I really can’t fully say that mainly because the little spark of doubt it creates makes me think it might well be true. But, of course, it would have to fully satisfy my need and maybe no one artist could do that. Or maybe even seeing that needed work might spark a new need, a further boundary.
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Hmm. Something to chew on this morning. Now, I best get to work. If no one else will paint the pictures I need to see, I better get going.

Posted in Advice, Favorite Things, Quote | Tagged , | Leave a Comment »

And the Rains Came

August 14, 2018 by redtreetimes

Been raining for a couple of days now, often in loud and long downpours. Looking out from my studio, I can see the run-off creek that runs through my property, normally dry at this time of the year. It’s gushing brown now, nearly overtopping the large culvert into my studio, and has a roar that fills the woods.

Down the length of the long driveway into my property, the water runs on it like it’s a newly minted stream while beside the driveway the creek rushes well outside its banks, meeting the driveway water and merging into a mass that covers everything. The end of our drive looks like a  large, moving pond.

There are a few younger deer playing in the now hard rain, running through the heavy, muddy overflow coming off my pond. The ground is soft and giving underfoot, like walking on a sponge.

We’re fortunate in our location. High enough to avoid real flooding and far enough away from the water coming out of the creeks and run-offs that run through the property. A lot of other folks won’t be so fortunate and will most likely have to face a long clean up after the flash flooding that is taking place. A day or two more and we might be into heavy river flooding and that’s real trouble.

Hopefully, tomorrow will bring some sun, some relief. But for now, I’ll watch the water run brown with the deer splashing through it. A bit of a watered-in day, as my friends in Texas might call this.

Here’s a great version of the Bob Dylan song Down in the Flood from the bluegrass legends, Flatt and Scruggs. Enjoy and stay dry.

Posted in Current Events, Favorite Things, Music | Tagged , , | 6 Comments »

Dorothea Tanning

August 13, 2018 by redtreetimes

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Art has always been the raft onto which we climb to save our sanity. I don’t see a different purpose for it now.

—Dorothea Tanning
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Doing research for this blog, I run into so many artists that work well into their nineties and beyond that I begin to get hopeful for my own longevity. I try to see if there is some sort of common denominator among them, something that might be a key to their long careers and lives.
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There seems to be among many, at least to my eye, a constant striving for growth and change in their work. There are often new subjects, new styles, new mediums and new processes. But a constant state of wonder.
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Dorothea Tanning is one such example. Born in 1910, she worked until late in her life and died at the age of 102 in 2012. Her work changed throughout her career, having multiple phases, but always remained her own. I am only showing a few of her pieces here, a few that immediately grabbed me this morning, along with a short video with a bit of an overview. Like many artists I show here, I don’t know a lot about her work but hope to use this as an introduction.
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Hopefully, in forty years or so, I will still be following Ms. Tanning’s example. But most likely only if I try continue to attempt to grow. Because as Dorothea Tanning also said: It’s hard to be always the same person.

Tanning, Dorothea

Posted in Favorite Things, Motivation, Neat Stuff, Painting, Quote | Tagged , , | 2 Comments »

Shine You No More

August 12, 2018 by redtreetimes

I am going to be brief on this Sunday morning. Probably like many of you, time is short and there is much to do this morning. But I wanted to still put out a piece of music and some sort of image as is the norm here on this blog. Long held habits are hard to break.

The image above is a painting, Radiance and Shadow, that is hanging in my current show at the West End Gallery. I thought I’d pair it with a tune from the Danish String Quartet, a group that deftly mixes folk and classical traditions. Their recent album, Last Leaf, is their take on a blend of traditional Nordic folk tunes and dances. This song, Shine You No More, is a new tune by one of the group’s members but is derived from the work of a 16th century English composer. It is definitely a dance tune.

Give a listen and have a good day.

Posted in Music, Recent Paintings | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments »

Grace Hartigan

August 11, 2018 by redtreetimes

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I perceive the world in fragments. It is somewhat like being on a very fast train and getting glimpses of things in strange scales as you pass by. A person can be very, very tiny. And a billboard can make a person very large. You see the corner of a house or you see a bird fly by, and it’s all fragmented. Somehow, in painting I try to make some logic out of the world that has been given to me in chaos. I have a very pretentious idea that I want to make life, I want to make sense out of it. The fact that I am doomed to failure – that doesn’t deter me in the least.

–Grace Hartigan
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Grace Hartigan (1922-2008) was a painter based in NYC. She often called herself a second-generation Abstract Expressionist because she used the influence of the major artists of the genre as a jumping off point for her own distinct work.
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While we certainly work in different forms of expression, I admire the strength and vibrancy of much of her work. I also like her work, such as some below from her Oranges series, that incorporate the written word, in this case the poems of her close friend, poet Frank O’Hara. And I certainly understand her own words above, especially about perceiving the world in fragments and trying to put that chaos into some coherent form of logic. And the doomed to failure part, as well.
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I think that sense of failure, that goal that always move out of reach, is the compelling part of painting. If you felt you reached that desired endpoint, there would be no point in continuing.
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Posted in Influences, Motivation, Quote | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments »

Frankie and Johnny

August 10, 2018 by redtreetimes

Frankie and Johnny is an old American traditional murder ballad. What an odd term, murder ballad. It sounds like it should be American and it certainly has been well adapted here. But it does have roots going back to 17th century Europe. It just came here as part of our immigrant tradition.

Anyway, Frankie and Johnny is one of our best known murder ballads, one with a history that some says goes back to the 1830’s. It tells the story of a woman who is wronged by her philandering man and vents her anger by killing him.

The artist Thomas Hart Benton illustrated the murder scene in a print (at the top of the page) as well as part of his epic American mural located in the Missouri State House in Jefferson City. In the photo below, you can see it just above the doorway.

As a song it has been recorded by several hundred different artists in a wide variety of genres. I was reminded of my favorite version the other day when it came on my dad’s radio when I was visiting him the other day. This version from the great Sam Cooke was one that I listened to incessantly when I was a kid. The lyrics and Cooke’s vocal inflections are engraved in my memory bank. I believe that if I ever suffer from the dementia that affects my dad I would remember this song and Cooke’s take on it.

It is a tremendous version of a great song that builds and builds to a roaring crescendo. Cooke definitely puts his own signature on this song, as he did on just about everything he ever sang. This has stuck in my head for the last few days.

Give a listen. We’ll call today Murder Ballad Friday.


 

Posted in Favorite Things, Music | Tagged , , | 2 Comments »

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