Saturday, October 29, marks the opening date for my show, Part of the Plan, at Erie’s Kada Gallery. It starts with an opening reception— which is free and open to the public–beginning at 6 PM that I will be attending. Below is the artist statement for this show along with the painting that shares its title with that of the show.
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I guess most people would classify me as a landscape painter and it would be hard to dispute that statement. After all, most of my work does use the lines and forms of the landscape as its basis.
Fields and skies. Hills and lakes. Trees and trails. All that surrounds us.
But for me, I have never saw my work as being about only the landscape. It was never about capturing a singular place, never about representing an actual geographic reality.
For me the work was not about painting what is. No, from the very beginning it was about capturing hopes and desires. It was about providing a platform where I could freely express my innermost feelings.
But most importantly, it was about creating a world that welcomed me, that made me feel that I was somehow a piece of a larger pattern. I don’t know if it can be called religious, spiritual, psychological or simply a matter of physics but I needed to create a world where I played a role.
A place where I was part of the plan.
The world I see in my work holds patterns and rhythms that swirl through the skies and surge through the rolls of the colorful landscape. There are forces that are made visible that we would never see in our normal world and among it all the Red Tree stands as our representative, standing placidly with the knowledge that it belongs there as part of the plan.
This is a difficult thing to describe. It is something that becomes more evident through viewing the work itself. I hope you will take a moment to look a little deeper at these paintings and maybe see a glimpse of what I am describing. Or better yet, see yourself for what you are—a part of the plan.
The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.
The works must be conceived with fire in the soul but executed with clinical coolness.
There are two ways of looking at my paintings for me. During the process, I view it as an assemblage of parts, a series of decisions to be made and obstacles to overcome. It feels very much like it is part of me at that point, like I hold all the cards and determine where it will go and what it will inevitably be. I feel a bit like a mechanic or a surgeon in that time.
Never doubt that a small number of dedicated people can change the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has.
Thank god that we are finally past the three presidential debates. I thought I’d have a little musical break to cleanse the taste of last night’s debate out of my mouth. Oops, I guess I can’t get away from it– I think we all know who the puppet was last night.
I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.
Introspection, or ‘sitting in the silence,’ is an unscientific way of trying to force apart the mind and senses, tied together by the life force. The contemplative mind, attempting its return to divinity, is constantly dragged back toward the senses by the life currents.
In these current strange days, I am not quite sure how I feel about Bob Dylan winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. I think I’m okay with it. After all, I’ve always though of him as much a writer/poet as a musician. His lyrics have been winding around the world for fifty some years and it’s hard to find any musician just about anywhere who hasn’t been influenced by his words, his music and his social consciousness.
It is through gratitude for the present moment that the spiritual dimension of life opens up.
Redtree Times