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Can’t Find My Way Home

January 7, 2018 by redtreetimes

I opened the YouTube site this morning in hopes of finding a suitable song for this Sunday morning’s musical interlude and it was right there, waiting for me in the recommended section. I began to listen to the song and opened my files to find an image that jibed with the song, at least as I was hearing it in the moment. I opened a file of images from several years back and the first one I looked at felt instantly like a match.

Sometimes things fall into place.

And I appreciate that because there are so many other times when everything is a struggle, when every decision seems clouded with doubt and every action feels out of rhythm. Slog is a word that comes to mind. Just the sound of the word brings to mind the effort required on those difficult days.

But these effortless days wash away all remnants of that word and feeling. I remember that the painting I chose, Only Now, shown at the top being done on such a day in the early days of 2012. It seemed to fall on to the canvas without much assistance or direction on my part. It needed to exist in that moment, needed to find its way into this world.

Needed to find its way home.

Interestingly, this painting has never found a permanent home in this world. It has been at the gallery that represents my work in California for several years now and the ease and freedom in it that makes it a personal favorite for me has never spoken loudly enough to someone who might give it a permanent home. which is not that unusual as some of the paintings that speak to me most personally are often the last to make their way to a new home. Maybe the void in these pieces that need to be filled by the viewer in order to complete them can only be filled by me.

We’ll see.

So this week’s song is fittingly titled Can’t Find My Way Home from Blind Faith back in 1969. Blind Faith, for you youngsters out there, was considered one of the first rock supergroups. The group was comprised of Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Ginger Baker and Rick Grech, all stars in big-name, established bands. They didn’t last long– one album and one tour– but they left a mark, including this song.

Give a listen and have yourself a good day.

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, Painting | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments »

Wall of Confidence

January 6, 2018 by redtreetimes

I think as an artist it’s very easy to [equate self-worth with artistic success] because of the nature of the work. If you think of art as a job, then your product is so much more than hours invested. The product is a piece of yourself, so of course if the reception is not the greatest, then it can feel like a direct hit to who you are as a person. I think this happened a lot more when I was younger and still finding my way around. I would doubt my direction when a viewer wasn’t thrilled. The trick for me is not to put more distance between my work and myself, but to close that gap completely. I can see myself in the art that I create, and that builds a wall of confidence.

–Hollie Chastain

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I was reading a bit this morning on one of my favorite websites, Brain Pickings, when I came across this quote from contemporary artist Hollie Chastain, a Tennessee based artist who works in paper art and collage. The quote was included in an article about creative blocks and her words really spoke to me.

I liked the idea that at some point there is no gap between the artist and their work. The artist is the work and vice versa. But that term she employed, wall of confidence, really hit home. I see ias being t something that comes with continuing to stick with what you know is true to who you are as an artist and not being swayed by momentary lapses in confidence. It’s a wall that protects you from the peaks and valleys that come in the course of a career, that shield you from those times when you are not the flavor of the month.

It’s a wall that allows you to fight off creative blocks, knowing that you are secure in your own vision and the work that flows from it.

When that wall is there, you– actually, I should be saying I here–just have to get to work. And that is what I am going to do.

Thanks for the good words, Hollie.

You should check out Hollie Chastain‘s work. Good stuff. You can get to her site by clicking here.

I Came to Get Down-Hollie Chastain

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Warming It Up

January 5, 2018 by redtreetimes

I like winter. The cold and the snow don’t bother me as a rule. But in these extended periods of cold, when the temps hover around zero and below with the winds making those temps feel even more perilous, I long for warmer weather. 30 degrees sounds like a balmy heaven at this point. Light jacket weather.

But you live with the weather you have. When life gives you frozen lemons, you make frozen lemonade. Lemon squishies?

So, it’s a cold and quiet landscape outside my studio windows and I’ll revel in the hard beauty that is there while I feel a little warmth from this morning musical selection. When it comes to warmth, Ella Fitzgerald singing Gershwin’s immortal Summertime from Porgy and Bess fills the bill for me. When the livin’ is easy…

Enjoy this performance, think warm and have a great day.

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

The Contrast of Influence

January 4, 2018 by redtreetimes

I stop every time I go back through old posts on the blog and come across this photo. It makes me think about how we constantly take in information in many forms and what we do with that input– how it affects our perception and vision as we move forward. As an artist, this is the fuel that feeds my furnace. 

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I was listening to music this morning as I read email and puttered around. My iPod was docked and in random mode so anything could come on.  At first one of my favorite pieces, Tabula Rasa from composer Arvo Part, played. It’s a modern classical piece that I have always identified with. Tabula Rasa translates as empty slate and was actually very influential in a lot of my early painting, helping me visualize the feeling of wide space as I painted.

Next up was Highway Patrol from Junior Brown, which is worlds away from Tabula Rasa. It’s clunky and chunky and throttles along on Brown’s deep twangy voice and his unique guit-steel guitar licks. I began to think about how the mood shifts so quickly between the two selections, how the mind is suddenly thrown from silence to chaos and how in the vacuum of that contrast something new is being formed

Something very interesting in this contrast. I began to wonder if this has an effect on my painting, on strokes and color selection.  Am I looking for different things in my work when different types of stimuli are present? It’s something I’ll have to examine further.

The picture shown is of a visual/psychological phenomenon called the contrast triangle. Just above the reflected light on the water is a dark triangle in the sky, tapering from the area above the lit reflection on water up to the moon/sun in the sky.

This triangle is not really there.

If you cover the water, the darkness fades away. Go ahead, try it.

The triangle only exists in our eyes and minds. Our reaction to the reflected light creates something new, a different form. Don’t know why I put this in today except that maybe this little area of created vision is similar to the influence of other stimuli on a person’s creative work.

I don’t really know.  I am working off the cuff here, you know.

Here was the next song that came up this morning, perhaps the third leg in my own personal contrast triangle.  It’s another favorite, Gillian Welch performing with her husband David Rawlings, with Miss Ohio.  What this triangle will produce in my eyes is yet to be seen but I am sure it is something.  We’ll see…

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, Music | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments »

Another Look at Ivan Albright

January 3, 2018 by redtreetimes

Maybe it is the extreme coldness or just the prospect of facing another year that might very easily resemble last year. Whatever the case, I find myself in sort of a dark mood, one that has slowed my creative process a bit as of late. I feel stuck in a slightly dark rut but don’t feel particularly worried about it as I have plans on digging my way out of it very soon. But this momentary darkness had me reexamining the work of Ivan Albright, a painter I featured here way back in 2009. I’m replaying that blogpost below with the addition of a video of his work and a few more images. It’s ominous stuff but well worth the look.

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This painting on the left, And Into The World  There Came a Soul Called Ida, is the work of the late Ivan Albright. Not a household name by any means, but if you’ve seen his work you’ll definitely remember it.

I saw a large  retrospective of his work a number of years ago at the Met and was fascinated ( and a little creeped out, I have to admit) by his subjects and the darkness and tone of the work. But it was the incredible textures of the paintings that I found amazing. They were very sculptural on the surface, with deep moonscapes of color, layer after layer of paint that seemed to be shoved and mashed on to the surface. It was unlike anything I had ever seen.  It was obviously the product of a huge amount of labor but it wasn’t labored. There was something very beautiful there that transcended the unflattering depictions of the paintings.

Albright was best known for the painting he produced that was used in The Picture of Dorian Gray, the 1945  film version of Oscar Wilde’s famous novel of a corrupt young man who defies the ravages of time while his portrait reflects the true result of his debauched life. His painting was the horrifying image at the end of the film.

I’m still fascinated by his work even though I have to admit I get a queasy feeling when I really take in the whole of his characters, like seeing a car wreck and not being to turn away. They are horrible and beautiful at once. I now also really appreciate the epic efforts that must’ve went into creating these pieces, the hundreds of hours that must have been spent.  The patience of maintaining vision.

So check out the work of Ivan Albright. You don’t have to like his work  but you should be aware of it…


Posted in Favorite Things | Tagged | 5 Comments »

Happy New Year, Baby

January 1, 2018 by redtreetimes

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

—Alfred Lord Tennyson
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That’s a resolution I think many of us would happily accept for this new year.

Here’s a little music from the late great Johnny Otis. You most likely know him best for Willie and the Hand Jive but if you get a chance take a look at his bio sometime. An interesting guy. This is his Happy New Year Baby.

So, have yourself a good day and may 2018 mark the return of the power of truth. Happiness and peace to you in this New Year.

Posted in Current Events, Music, Quote | Tagged , , | 6 Comments »

Spirit in the Night

December 31, 2017 by redtreetimes

New Years Eve, folks, and an end to 2017.

Thank god for small favors.

I’ve been recalibrating here at the end of the year, as I’ve explained in some recent entries. I’ve been revisiting old works and writings, trying to blow off the shell of complacency and rediscover that urgent need that drove  my earliest creativity. This also has me re-examining early influences in all things– art, movies, literature and music.

To that end, I found myself watching a couple of hours of old performances early this morning from Bruce Springsteen, mostly grainy black and white films from the 70’s. It may sound odd but Springsteen’s work, his performances and his rapport with his audience throughout his career have informed much of what I have tried to create in my own career. From the first time I saw him perform over 40 years back, I was enthralled by his commitment to growing his work, his complete effort in every performance and his desire to reach out to every member of his audience.

The consistency of his work and his desire to seemingly give more than his audience expects every time speak volumes to me.

So, to end this year I thought I’d go back to a performance at the Capital Theatre in Passaic, NJ in 1978 and one of my favorite Bruce songs, Spirit in the Night, from his first album. It’s great to watch Bruce interact with the audience here.

Have a good New Year’s Eve and let’s hope for better things in 2018.

 

Posted in Favorite Things | Tagged | 1 Comment »

Hank’s Lost Highway

December 30, 2017 by redtreetimes

The year is coming to an end and for me it’s a time of reflection. I reposted a piece yesterday on that subject and this post from back in 2009 speaks to that same theme. Plus, anytime I can look at a Hopper painting and listen to one of my favorite Hank Williams songs, it’s a good post to revisit.

Whenever I see an Edward Hopper painting I feel a bond with him, as though he were a kindred spirit in a world full of alienation.  There is always a great sense of distance in his paintings.

Aloofness. Looking out but looking in.  A disengagement of sorts from the wider world. Even in his cityscapes, one feels as though they are miles away from anyone else.

I suppose this disengagement may be the reason I and many others choose to communicate in paint. With few exceptions, I have seldom felt inclusion in many groups of people, always feeling a bit like an outsider. And while I have actually become comfortable in this position, always bearing a sort of suspicion toward groups or cliques, the need to be heard drives my painting.

Even in a world of alienation, one wants to have their say.

In my paintings, I sometimes see this aloofness in my red tree and the way it is often portrayed as a single figure in a large space. Sometimes the pieces reflect a celebration of the self and self-reliance but sometimes there is this sense of a Hopper-like alienation. The solitary character just wanting to be heard.

I don’t see this as being a sad portrayal. There’s much more I could say on this but I think that’s enough for the moment.  Here’s a song from the great Hank Williams that kind of speaks to this subject.  It’s Lost Highway, a song that is, for me, one of the most transcendent songs Hank ever recorded, a song with a spirit that feels new and alive even today, even with its early ’50’s production values.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Is It There, Again?

December 29, 2017 by redtreetimes

I am at the point of the year where I am constantly questioning what I doing, looking back at the past year’s work and determining in which direction I want to move ahead into the new year. It’s a sometimes frustrating exercise, especially when I find myself still lacking in areas where I had hoped to grow or where there are paths of aspiration still unexplored. But frustrating as it might be, it’s part of how I work. 

I came across this entry from several years back and it reminded me of a question that I sometimes forget to ask these days, one that must be addressed even though its answer is basically an abstract notion. But it is a question that must be asked or the work begins to lose purpose and meaning.

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GC Myers- First View 1994It’s that time of the year when I get to take a deep breath and begin to look forward into the next year, trying to determine where my path will lead next. It’s never an easy time doing this, trying to see change of some sort in the work especially after so many years of being what I am and painting as I do. It always comes back to the same question: What do I want to see in my paintings?

That seems like a simple question. I think that any degree of success I may have achieved is due to my ability to do just that,  to paint work that I want to see myself, work that excites me first. So I have been doing just that for most of my career, painting pictures that I want to see. But there is another layer to the question.

What am I am not seeing in my work that I would like to see? What is it that I need to see?

That’s a harder question. How can you quantify that thing that you don’t know, might not even have imagined yet?

It might be a case of  knowing it when you see it.  I know that my first real breakthrough was like that. I was simply fumbling along, looking for something that nagged at the edge of my mind. I wasn’t sure what it would look like, had not a concrete idea of what it might be. It was just there in a gaseous form that I couldn’t quite grasp.  But when the piece emerged in a tangible form– which is the painting at the top here, First View, from 1994– I instantly knew what it was that I had stumbled on  and that it was something that  very important to me.

It might not look like much to the casual viewer now but in an instant I could see in this little painting everything I was sensing in that gaseous, intangible form that hovered at the edges of my mind. I could see a realization of all of the potential in it. Even now, after years of evolving from it, I can see how it connects to everything in my work, even those things I had could not yet see when I painted it.

And that’s where I find myself at the moment. There’s something out there (or in there, I probably should say) that I want to see, might even need to see. But I don’t know what it is yet. But I will know it when I see it.

And, trust me, I do plan on seeing it.

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Always Look on the Bright Side…

December 27, 2017 by redtreetimes

Been taking a little hiatus but still wanted to post something today, maybe just a simple song. I spent quite a bit of time this morning listening to music on YouTube, doing that thing where you keep choosing an obscure but somehow related video on the right side, seeing how far it can lead you down a twisting rabbit hole of oddball songs and forgotten genres. I heard a lot of songs I haven’t heard in years, some good and some not so much.

It was going pretty well and I thought I had my choice when out of the blue, the YouTube algorithm turned up this song from 1979’s Monty Python’s Life of Brian. I knew I had my choice for the day. During the Falklands War in 1982, the British naval ship HMS Sheffield was hit and sunk by an Argentine missile. As the crew was waiting to be rescued, the crew broke out singing this song and it has become tradition among British troops in dire situations.

So whether it’s sinking ship or a nation stumbling along at the end of an odd year, it might be the right song for the day. It made me feel better this morning. Feel free to sing or whistle along…

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