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Mr. President (Have Pity on the Working Man)

September 3, 2017 by redtreetimes

Labor Day weekend and I thought I’d share a song from many years back that asks for a little help for working folks from the nation’s chief executive, who normally (an odd word these days) advocates for working class.

History never repeats itself exactly, every time and setting changing the pattern ever so slightly. But there are some parallels in this song from Randy Newman back in 1974. He didn’t name a president in the song but it is implied he was referring to Hoover in the time of the Depression as well as President Nixon , pleading with them to do something about the expanding rate of poverty and wage stagnation for the working classes, something that hasn’t changed in the forty-some years since the song came out.

Some of the lyrics seem eerily prophetic for these times, as well:

Maybe you’re cheatin’
Maybe you’re lyin’
Maybe you have lost your mind
Maybe you only think about yourself

Too late to run, too late to cry now
The time has come for us to say good-bye now
Mr. President, have pity on the working man
Mr. President, have pity on the working man

So, have yourself a good holiday. Here’s Randy Newman and Mr. President (Have Pity on the Working Man) from 1974.

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Work Song

September 2, 2017 by redtreetimes

Labor Day weekend and I wasn’t planning on posting anything today, figuring that I was due a break because at heart I always considered myself more under the label of worker than artist. Even in my terminology paintings are more often referred to as works or pieces. And when I was starting out I felt my ability to labor, focused and on task, wold provide a big boost in pursuing this path. And it did.

So Labor Day remains a favorite holiday for me in theme. I like the idea of work and the meaning and purpose behind it. I like the history of the holiday, how the growth of  Labor and Unions being celebrated coincided with the growth of this nation and the middle class, how these movements gave us the protections and guarantees that we all too often take for granted these days. We forget that these  things were not given to the workers– they were demanded and fought for.

Bled and died for.

So have a great weekend. Picnic. Parade. To my friends in Texas, you don’t have to be reminded about work– you have much ahead of you. But take a minute and think about the work you do, the life you live and those earlier people who worked and fought hard so that you might have a better life than their own.

Here’s a great piece of classic jazz from Cannonball Adderley. It is titled Work Song. Jazz might not be your thing but you have to admit that these guys are working it. Oh, and the little piece of work at the top is a new small painting, Sound & Silence, that is now at the West End Gallery.

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My Annual September Song

September 1, 2017 by redtreetimes

It’s the first of September and I let out a sigh of relief that August is behind me. I have confessed my dislike of August here in the past. For me, it’s usually a month of heat and anxiety, a month in which every bad thing seems to find me.

But this August was kinder and gentler and I am truly thankful. I know that this has not been the case for others across the country. Most notably, a storm of biblical proportions named Harvey that swept across the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana. You know the story too well.

If you can, reach into your pocketbooks and send what you can to help them out in some way. It’s the right thing to do.

September always gets me a little melancholy but in a good way. More wistful and nostalgic than sad. It’s a feeling that seems more pronounced as I find myself actually in what could be the September of my life. When this time comes I feel like looking at black and white photos and listening to September Song, which, if you think about it, is a very black and white song.

I acme across this photo of my old studio which stands up the hill from my home and current studio. It is slowly being reclaimed by the forest around it and will someday no longer exist. I like that idea of impermanence for this studio. It was almost meant to be that way as an indicator of how small we are in the face of nature, as Harvey is currently showing us.

I have included an early blog entry from 2008 that describes it along with this year’s version of September Song, which is from Johnny Hartman, jazz vocalist that is probably unknown to most of you. I know that he was off my radar. But his voice is beautifully strong and smooth and this is a lovely, faithful version of the iconic song.

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  This is a photo from a book, In Their Studios: Artists & Their Environment  from the photographer, Barbara Hall Blumer.  It was a project that she carried out in 2007 documenting the studios of visual artists in the general area of the southern Finger Lakes, centering on Corning, NY, which has a vibrant artistic community.  The result was a beautiful book that gives insight into the work spaces and habits of many artists.  For me it was interesting to be able to peek into a bit of other artists’ lives.  I highly recommend the book for anyone interested in the process of art.

This is my first studio, one that I built in 1997 and worked in until January of this year [2008], when I moved into a much larger and slightly better appointed studio.  This first studio was located in the woods that above my home and gave me what I called the best commute around, a short walk each morning up the hill through dense and fairly young forest of mixed hardwoods and white pines.  Sometimes I would stop and wonder at my good fortune to have the luxury and pleasure of this walk each day.

It was a very rustic space without running water (and the facilities associated with running water!) or a lot of heat for that matter but it served me well for ten years and its setting had a presence in much of my work.  It was very tranquil and from its windows I had great views of the woods and wildlife–  deer, gray and red fox, coyotes, raccoons (who at one point made their way into my roof) and even a weasel chasing after a rabbit. In the winter it would be spectacular as the snow would cling to the white pine branches almost to the ground.

Again, I wondered how I was so lucky…

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

“Self Determination” Ends

August 31, 2017 by redtreetimes

“The end of a melody is not its goal: but nonetheless, had the melody not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either. A parable.” 

― Friedrich Nietzsche

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Today is the last day that my solo show, Self Determination, hangs at the West End Gallery in Corning.

It’s been a great show by all metrics. Many paintings have found new homes. Many people have come through the gallery to see the work. We had a full house for the Gallery Talk that went with this show.

Personally, beyond seeing people take the work home with them, it was a very rewarding show in the recognition and acceptance of my own voice. As paintings came off the wall and were replaced by work that the gallery had on hand, there wasn’t a loss of constancy between the new and older works. I had been a bit worried that the older work would stand out but it fell together seamlessly. There were paintings that were a couple of years old that felt reborn among the newer paintings.

And that pleased me, confirming my belief and hope that I was really working in my own creative voice. This work was who I am. It wasn’t forced, wasn’t contrived. It was real.

And for me, that is what I have been seeking. I have always wanted the work to speak to the viewer in plain and simple terms, like a conversation with a friend where you are absolutely yourself, with no pretense or posturing. With an openness that allows free expression of deeper emotion. And to my eyes and senses, that was what I was feeling with this group of work.

I want to thank everyone who came out for the show during its run, especially those of you who chose to make some of these paintings part of your life. Your support and your eyes are a constant source of encouragement.

And special thanks, to Jesse and Lin at the West End Gallery for your belief, your acceptance and your always honest representation of my work. I cannot fully express how much that has meant to me personally and professionally.

So, that being said, if you want to see the show, today is your last day. Hope you can make it.

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Acres of Diamonds, Again

August 30, 2017 by redtreetimes

I have been working on some new small pieces. When I finished this piece, which is 2″ by 6″ on paper, and was trying to read what I was seeing in it, I immediately thought of the blog entry below from several years back. The article and the painting both deal, as I see them, with how we often look for answers from far outside ourselves and fail to see the riches and possibilities that surround us in plain sight. I call this painting In the Gem Fields.

“The more intensely we feel about an idea or a goal, the more assuredly the idea, buried deep in our subconscious, will direct us along the path to its fulfillment.”

—Earl Nightingale

______________________

It’s funny sometimes what you take from an experience in your life.  At one point in my life I was in the retail car business, working at a Honda dealership both as a salesman and a finance manager.  In order to keep their sales staff engaged and excited about pushing their product, the management there would periodically send us to seminars with industry-specific motivational speakers and would also have sets of motivational tapes from other speakers that they would encourage us to listen to in our free time.

One of the sets of tapes was from a famed motivational speaker named Earl Nightingale who had a deep and engaging voice that added a serious dimension to whatever he said.  As I listened to his tapes, it was easy to feel my interest growing as he told his little tales and his lessons began registering within me.

One of his stories was a short retelling of a classic lecture  called Acres of Diamonds from Russell H. Conwell (1843-1925), an interesting fellow who was a baptist minister, a lawyer, a philanthropist and the founder and first president of Temple University.  The lecture, one that Conwell delivered over 5000 times during his lifetime, made the point that the riches we seek are often right in our own backyards.  His tale is of an African farmer who sells his farm in order to go in search of diamonds and finds nothing but failure that ends with his suicide.  Meanwhile, the man who took over the farm found an abundance of diamonds and ended up with one of the largest diamond mines in Africa.

There were a lot of lessons to be learned from this tale but primarily  what I took away  was that I must leave the car business–it was not my backyard.   It was the place to which I had come in search of my own diamonds.  I had not even, at that point, began to search my own backyard. I am not sure if that was the message that management had been hoping would sink in.  Or maybe it was.

The other part of Nightingale’s message was that you had to set a course, aim for a destination.  Everything was possible if you knew where you wanted to go and truly set your mind to it.  He gave a laundry list of great human accomplishments that were achieved once we put our minds and wills in motion towards their fulfillment.  That resonated strongly with me.  I had seen many people over the years who seemed deeply unhappy in their lives and most had no direction going forward, no destination for which they were working.  Aimless, they drifted like a rudderless boat on the sea, going wherever the strongest current took them without having any influence over this motion.

If you can name it, you can do it in some form.

As I said, it’s funny how things influence you.  It’s been about twenty five years since I heard those words but they still resonate strongly with me, even now.  I try to be always conscious of the goals I set, knowing that the mind and the universe will always try to make a way for the possibility of achievement.

Posted in Advice, Motivation, Quote, Recent Paintings | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

The Mysterious Orphan

August 29, 2017 by redtreetimes

I’ve written about some of the orphans,  as I call those paintings that find their way back to me eventually, never finding a permanent home after showing in most of the galleries that show my work. Fortunately, it’s a fairly small group so I can recall most of the details about each of these pieces, even the older ones. But the painting above has been floating around in my space like a mysterious satellite for so many years now that I have lost all recollection of it.

In fact, I can find nothing about this painting in any of my files. No title. No numbering or date. No photos.

Nothing.

It has been living in a horrible frame that I would be embarrassed to show in public, one that I tried to transform by adding layers of gold paint. That was a bad idea. It made the whole thing, painting included, look absolutely awful. I am relatively sure I never exhibited this painting as a result of how it looked in that terrible frame. At least, there are no records of it being shown.

It’s a 16″ by 20″ canvas and I think that it is from around the year 2000. I say that because it doesn’t have my normal layers of textured gesso under the paint and it is done in oil paints rather than acrylic, which would have been from that timeframe.

I had avoided this painting for years in the studio. I kept it facing away in a small stack against a wall so that I wouldn’t be forced to look at the monstrosity it was in that frame. But recently, curiosity had me pull the piece out. I tried to separate the painting from the frame in my mind but the stink of the frame still overwhelmed me.

If I was going to actually see that painting I had to take it out of that frame.

And I was pleasantly surprised when I did that. Oh, it’s not like I found a lost masterpiece. But freed from the shadow of the unsightly frame, I recognized that it was a good piece, one that would definitely fit within the tone and scope of my work from the time in which I believed it was painted.It wasn’t ugly at all. In fact, I began to grow quite fond of it in its liberated state.

It was like turning over a photo that has been face down in a drawer for years and seeing something that surprises you in a pleasant way, reconnecting you with something you had pushed deeply into the recesses of your memory.  It’s that image that has been hidden for many years where you get to see it anew with a different perception based on personal growth and change.

It’s the same image from the same time but you see it differently.

So I brought it out into my painting space and I look at it now and again. And it pleases me to know this orphan once again.

 

Posted in Early Paintings, Painting | Tagged , | 2 Comments »

Last Days of “Self Determination”

August 28, 2017 by redtreetimes

Just a reminder that Self Determination, my solo show at the West End Gallery, comes down after this coming Thursday, August 31.

It’s been a great show thus far and I send out appreciative Thank You’s to all of you who have taken time to see the show. So, there still a few days yet to get into the gallery if you want to see the show and haven’t been able to find the time.

Hope you can make it!

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I Don’t Know

August 27, 2017 by redtreetimes

I don’t know…

I would guess that I’ve said that phrase a couple of hundred thousand times in my life. Or maybe even a million times. But then again, I don’t know.

As years pass, I am constantly fascinated by how little I know despite consciously trying to obtain more knowledge. It turns out the only thing I really know is that there are an awful lot of things out there that I will never know.

That doesn’t make me happy but I have learned to live with it and take some comfort in knowing that I am not alone. I don’t think any of us really knows as much as we let on. Oh, some speak with absolute certainty and and an air of confidence but that’s just bravado or a simple failure to recognize their lack of knowledge. I do know that.

From personal experience, unfortunately.

So I cringe a bit now when I spot that arrogant certainty in the declarations coming from myself or others. Then I cast a doubtful eye towards these claims, my own included.

What does this have to do with the price of a gallon of milk in Kokomo? I don’t know. I’m just blabbing in order to set up this week’s Sunday morning music. It’s from the Irish singer Lisa Hannigan  and is titled, fittingly, I Don’t Know.  I particularly like this version shot in a Dingle pub. Lovely.

Have a good day and be wary of those who seem a bit too certain. Or not.

I don’t know.

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Posted in Advice, Music, Video | Tagged , | 2 Comments »

Satish Gujral

August 26, 2017 by redtreetimes

We here in the US often tend to be a little narrow in the scope in which we regard art. We often don’t take enough time or make much of an effort to seek out the art that is not purely westernized, not European or American in its origin. But there is a world of expression out there and much of it is remarkable and universal in what it has to convey to us. And, most likely, we are not aware of it.

Take for instance Indian painter Satish Gujral. Born in 1925, Gujral is a painter, sculptor, muralist, graphic designer, writer and architect. He may be India’s best known living artist. And he did it all while suffering from deafness caused by an illness at age 10. His deafness was later, at age 72, reversed by surgery.

There is a lot to tell about him including him as a young man with no knowledge of English or Spanish and an inability to hear either, traveling to Mexico in the early 50’s to study with Diego Rivera. Or the fact that his brother became Prime Minister of India. Or the social commentary behind his work. I will leave finding more on the particulars of his life up to you.

For me, it was the pure and broad appeal of his work that drew me in. I love his imagery, his use of color and form in his paintings. He has had a long and varied career producing a large body of work in many fields but through it all, his voice is consistent– of his culture but in a universal tongue that speaks to all. Take a look at the images and video below to judge for yourself.

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Far From Me Redux

August 24, 2017 by redtreetimes

I was going through my files, looking at some work from several years ago. It’s something I do on a pretty regular basis as a way to charge my batteries. I see things in these older pieces that reignite ideas that have been swept away to the folds of my brain. Sometimes an idea, like a new composition, comes in a flash that seems exciting, something that tells me that I need to followup on it. Then hours later it is gone or has turned hazy, replaced by the work at hand.  

Oh, sometimes I write them down, rough sketches on loose bits of paper but more often than not they go into that heap that resides somewhere deep inside me. Sometimes they come back on their own, happily for me. Other times, they need a little coaxing, a prod of my memory that sometimes takes place when I revisit older work. Seeing this earlier work in sequence, grouped together, kicks off memories and these older ideas sometimes jump forward. Old friends.

I had that feeling just this morning. I wasn’t going to write anything, was just going to get to work on some things that needed finishing and maybe start a new piece with the hope that the work would create its own inspiration. That is often the case. But I came across a piece from a group of work that I did back in 2011, sepia toned interiors with landscape seen distantly through windows. It excited me on many levels to see the whole group together and I had flashes of other ideas that had either been hiding or were newly forming. It energized me greatly.

Here’s one of those pieces from back in 2011 and what I wrote at the time:

This is a painting I recently finished, a small piece, only 4″ square on paper.  It’s a mix of landscape and very uncomplicated still life with stark but distinct elements throughout.  There’s a simplicity that runs through this scene that covers a depth of feeling, a pang from the heart.

I sat this aside for a day or two after finishing it and found myself coming back to it.  There was a familiar tone to it that reminded me of something that I couldn’t quite identify until this morning when I walked into the studio.  I looked at it as I sat down and instantly said to myself, “Far From Me.”

It was the old John Prine song from his first album which came out forty years back, in 1971. There was something in this piece that filled me the feeling of Prine’s lyrics of gradual loss:

And the sky is black and still now

On the hill where the angels sing

Ain’t it funny how an old broken bottle

Looks just like a diamond ring

But it’s far, far from me

This piece will probably always be that song now for me, a personal avatar for a song buried deep inside and often forgotten.  Funny how things work…

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

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