I recently came across the work of the artist Jan Toorop and really found myself attracted to his imagery. I hadn’t heard of him but at the first glimpse immediately wanted to see more. Toorop was another of those artists who have not garnered as much attention outside his home in the Netherlands as you might expect when you consider the work and the influence it had on other artists of the time. Toorop’s work largely influenced the work of Gustav Klimt and other Symbolist painters of Northern Europe. You can see this in the piece above, Fatalisme.
Jan Toorop was a Dutch-Indonesian artist born on Java in 1858 who moved to the Netherlands as boy. He worked in many styles in his early career, sometimes in pure Realism but often following the trends of the time. He produced work in a decidedly Pointillist style as well as work that was purely Impressionistic. But in the early 1890’s he began to develop the style that garnered the attention of many other artists. It was Symbolist imagery based on Javanese motifs carried by dense and curvilinear line work. Eventually, this led to him working in an Art Nouveau style later in his career.
Toorop died in 1928. There is a Jan Toorop Research Center that has a site that displays the wide range of his work in a chronological fashion. I like this way of showing the work as you can see the evolution in style over time. His daughter, Charley Toorop, was a celebrated painter as well who produced a series of wonderful self-portraits throughout her life and had another very accomplished painter for a son (and grandson of Jan), Edgar Fernhout. A very talented family, indeed.
Well, the opening for my Home+Land show at the West End Gallery was Friday evening and went very well– just a perfectly wonderful night with plenty of people and lots of conversation. It was a pretty large crowd, especially for a summer opening, but it still was one that met my criteria for a good show: most of the attention was focused on the work on the wall.
I have been to plenty of crowded openings where the work is sometimes an afterthought and all the people there are facing inward in private conversations. For me, a good show is one that is outward focused, one where the eyes oriented to the wall. And even though there was a good number of people, it seemed to me that most were there for the work.
And that really satisfies me in some deep way and for that I would like to thank all of you who took time from your summer schedule to spend a little time to take a look at the work. I could not be more appreciative. And thanks to Linda and Jesse once again for hanging the show in a way that seems to bring it all together in the gallery. Again, I could not be more appreciative.
That said, it’s time for a Sunday morning music and this week I felt like something older and mellow and, for me, the voice of the late and great Sam Cooke can often fill that bill. This is a song he wrote that has been covered by many artists but his version always seems the real thing for me. It’s from 1962 and has very recognizable backing vocals from Lou Rawls. Here’s Bring It on Home to Me.
PS: The painting at the top is from the show and is 12″ by 24″ canvas piece titled Back to the Land.
I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for.
Georgia O’Keeffe
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My show, Home+Land, opens tonight at the West End Gallery with an opening reception that runs from 5-7:30 PM. The West End was the first place to give me an opportunity to display my work, over twenty years ago, and has served as a home base for my painting in the years since. I’ve written here in the past how different my life might be without that first opportunity.
As a result, I attach special significance to my shows here. Maybe that played a part in my choice of Home+Land as the title for this year’s show.
I’m not sure.
But I do know that, no matter how widely traveled my work is beyond this area, it personally means a lot for me to have my paintings strike a chord with and be appreciated by my friends and neighbors locally– people who often know me in other ways than my being an artist.
And I hope that happens with this particular show. It is a show that I feel explores the idea of home and place in many colors, textures and forms. It is a show that I feel represents my work fully to this point in time and speaks for me in ways that words never could, much in the way Georgia O’Keeffe said her work did in the quote at the top.
It would be easy to sit here and write umpteen words about the two pieces from the show shown here, In the Land of Many Colors at the top and Lake Tranquil below, but they effortlessly say more than I could ever say with all my struggling words. As they should.
So, if you’re in the Corning area tonight, stop in at the West End Gallery for a bit. Have a glass of wine, stroll around the gallery and see the show. I’ll be there to answer any questions you might have and would love to hear your comments.
The deeper the blue becomes, the more strongly it calls man towards the infinite, awakening in him a desire for the pure and, finally, for the supernatural… The brighter it becomes, the more it loses its sound, until it turns into silent stillness and becomes white.
–Wassily Kandinsky
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Certain colors always raise a strong visceral response from me. I think my use of reds and yellows is evidence of this as is my affinity for the color blue, which I’ve discussed here. Maybe Kandinsky hits the mark with his words: it calls man towards the infinite, awakening in him a desire for the pure and, finally, for the supernatural.
I know for myself those are feelings that often are driven forward when I work with the color blue. There is often a contemplative feeling, one that wonders at the unknown, that infinite, that we seek, that comes with the color. I see it in the painting at the top.
Called Blue Awakening, this 18″ by 24″ painting on panel has a simplified and almost naive appearance at first glance. But the blue of the sky set against the pale whiteness of the moon changes the piece from a folksy vignette to one of meditative wonderment. The Red Tree here takes on a glow that speaks of a new understanding or acceptance of its place and purpose in the universe. It represents a true awakening of the spirit for me.
The interesting thing for me is that there is not a tremendous amount of blue in the painting. There are a few tones throughout the lower landscaped half of the painting and much of the sky are tones that move away from blue. But the blue that is there commands the space, creating the overall feeling of the piece. Such is the power of blue.
This painting is, of course, part of my solo show, Home+Land, which is now hanging at the West End Gallery and opens with a reception tomorrow evening from 5-7:30. The show runs from July 17 until September 4, 2015 and there is a Gallery Talk on Saturday, August 1. More info on that in the next couple of weeks.
Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.
–Omar Khayyam
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This is another painting from the Home+Land show that opens this coming Friday, July 17, at the West End Gallery. Titled Melding to the Moment, it is a 24″ by 36″ canvas that, for me, pretty much holds the same message as the words above from Omar Khayyam. I see it as about being totally in the moment, in a sort of harmony with all things.
Using This moment is your life… as a rule, it is in finding those moments of contentment and happiness that can define your view of your life. To be able to stop and block out regrets of the past or worries for the future allows one to enjoy the pleasures of the present, that slice of life immediately before you– that small wonder that might be lost when we are immersed in thoughts of what we have done or what we will do.
The song of a bird. The smell of the grass. The way the light comes from behind a cloud or the feel of a warm breeze on your skin. All small things, small moments. But all moments that create the textures of life if we allow ourselves to simply pause and meld to the moment.
At least that’s how I see this piece. It was one that was a long time coming, growing in small fits and starts. I would work on it for a while and would see it going in a direction that didn’t quite suit me in that moment so I would put it aside. Several weeks, perhaps even a couple of months, passed and I would pull it back out and do a bit more and where I thought it was headed was not at all where it was going.
So I waited a bit longer. Finally, a few weeks back I went back and it transformed into the painting that you now see. It is nothing like I originally envisioned it in its earliest stages. It went beyond where I thought it would be and that is always a pleasant surprise.
I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.
—Robert A. Heinlein
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Freedom is a word that gets thrown around a lot by politicians and pundits. It is the basis for untold numbers of credos, adages, maxims and bumper stickers. But for all its use, I don’t think many of us give even a single thought to what the word means for ourselves.
I’m not here to try to define the word. I think it has personal meaning for each of us that can’t be easily contained in one single definition. My idea of freedom may not match yours and your freedom may not seem like freedom at all to me. And maybe that’s the main thing in freedom– we are free to define our freedom as we wish.
The only constant is the moral responsibility that we take for our actions, as famed sci-fi author Robert Heinlein lays out so well in the quote above. We can never be free from the responsibility we must take for our actions nor from the repercussions from others in response to our actions. That is one freedom to which we will never be entitled.
The painting at the top is a new painting, a 24″ by 24″ canvas, that is part of my Home+land show that opens this Friday at the West End Gallery. Titled In the Air of Freedom, it represents for me the freedom that I have found in the last twenty years of painting. Painting has given me a means of free expression, a voice to send out into the world, a contentment and purpose that I struggled and failed to find to find in the years before I came to it. It has come to define my own freedom. I see the Red Tree representing that free expression and the fields behind it representing for me the labor and responsibility that accompany it.
As I said, freedom seems like it should be something we can easily put into words but it it turns out to be a much more complex creature. Take a minute and really think about it. How do you define your own freedom? What makes you feel free?
One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.
—Hermann Hesse
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Well, my show, Home+Land, is now hanging at the West End Gallery ahead of this Friday evening’sopening reception. Feedback has been very strong thus far which alleviates some of the jitters that normally accompany the run-up to any of my shows, something I’ve written about here a number of times in the past.
This period between delivering the show and the opening is always one of uncertainty. Even though I may feel confident and truly satisfied in the work, in this time period a lingering doubt always seems to rise up that perhaps my perception of the work will not jibe with that of the general public. After many years and many of these shows, I know this an irrational fear, that how others see the work is beyond my control and so long as I feel that the work speaks honestly and confidently for me there is nothing to worry about.
And that is something that I definitely feel the work does in this show. I feel completely invested in this show with a certainty that this group is an authentic representation and extension of my work and my self. For better or worse, it just feels honest.
This was something I found to be true when I was putting together the short video preview below as I wanted to keep it shorter and didn’t want to include everything. It was difficult deciding which pieces to include and which to leave out– each would add something and none which be out of place.
But in the end I felt pretty good about the group I chose and hope you’ll take a moment to decide for yourself.
This is another new painting from the Home+Landshow that opens this coming Friday at the West End Gallery. It’s 16″ by 20″ on panel and is titled Seeker of Light. It’s a painting that drew my attention on a daily basis in the days before it left the studio, the blue tones in it satisfying a personal desire for that color that often comes over me.
There’s something in that blue that, for me, creates a sort of color intoxication. At the end of a day when I have been working up close, only inches away, I find myself smitten with the color, wanting to just keep painting endlessly with that color. I’ve talked with people in the past about this, trying to describe how I actually have to consciously pull myself away from the color or it would engulf my entire body of work. It’s pull for me is that strong.
And even though the whitish light of the moon seems to be the center of attraction here, I think it is pull from the blues that is the strength of this piece. At first glance, it’s a scene that should feel wintry and cool but the blue tones here have a deceptive warmth, supported by the underlying reds and violets, that belies the natural coolness of the color. It gives it a welcoming feel, inviting you in to follow the lines running in toward the light.
There’s so much more I could say about this painting but I won’t as it no doubt says it best for itself in the eyes of the viewer.
But that does lead us to this week’s Sunday morning music which has a reference to that color blue. This song is from Van Morrison when he was starting his career with the Irish band, Them, back in the musical British Invasion of the mid-60’s. Though they had a short life as a band, only about two years, Them produced some of the most enduring music from that era including the classic Gloria andHere Comes the Night along with this cover of It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue written by Bob Dylan. This song, with its haunting lead in, certainly doesn’t feel its age, almost 50 years old, to me.
Well, this morning has been a quiet one as I knock about in my studio that now feel empty after delivering the work for my solo show, Home+Land, to the West End Gallery. There’s a sense of relief and befuddlement hanging in the air. Over the past year I have had deadlines always hovering ahead of me, always something waiting to be done. So when a rare moment without a deadline pops up, it takes me a while to figure out how to deal with this bit of free time. But I will find a way through this pesky free time.
At the West End, they were planning on hanging the show last night and this morning so that it would be available for previews by this afternoon and I’m eager to see how it looks. It’s a pretty big show and I think it will be show with a lot of oomph in the space but I can’t be sure until it’s on the walls.
One piece that I think will look great in the space is the painting at the top, Heart+Land, a large 36″ by 36″ canvas. The size coupled with an opulently warm feel and a sky that seems to reach out to you makes it a piece that is hard to ignore. At least, that’s how I feel.
I know when it was in the studio it was a piece that drew my eye on a regular basis. For a while, I had this piece along with several others set up in the basement of my studio in an area where I do my daily workout. I found this painting a great one to focus on while exercising, allowing myself to get lost in the layers of texture and the many shapes throughout the piece. Very meditative. It made my workout so much easier. I’m going to miss this piece for that reason and many others.
Anyway, the show is in the gallery. Please stop into the West End Gallery to preview the work and if you’re in the Corning area on Friday evening, please stop in and say hello.
We have always held to the hope, the belief, the conviction that there is a better life, a better world, beyond the horizon.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt
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This new painting, a 24″ by 30″ canvas that is part of my Home+Land show at the West End Gallery, is a piece that really has strong appeal for me personally. Maybe it’s the warmth in its colors and the way its forms and textures flow together. Or maybe it just has something to say to me.
I call this piece Believer and, for me, I saw differing forms of belief throughout the piece, as seen in the obvious reference to religious belief as represented in church and steeple.
The farm and silo I saw as a symbol of a belief in the earth and one’s own self-sufficiency, a belief centered on common sense and knowledge. I saw the Red Tree as the believer, as FDR said in 1940, that there is a better life, a better world, beyond the horizon. It is a symbol here of the dreamer, the explorer. The believer of a better future.
The radiating sun represents a constant for all of these beliefs. We all believe that the sun will come up each day. It has always done so and I believe that it will probably continue that way for the foreseeable future.
I guess the point is that, unless we have abandoned all hope in ourselves and this world, we all have a belief system of some sort, whether it is in our own god (or gods) or in science and knowledge or in a better world beyond the horizon.
As for myself, I believe I’ll have another cup of coffee…
I recently came across the work of the artist Jan Toorop and really found myself attracted to his imagery. I hadn’t heard of him but at the first glimpse immediately wanted to see more. Toorop was another of those artists who have not garnered as much attention outside his home in the Netherlands as you might expect when you consider the work and the influence it had on other artists of the time. Toorop’s work largely influenced the work of Gustav Klimt and other Symbolist painters of Northern Europe. You can see this in the piece above, Fatalisme.
Redtree Times