Redtree Times

Natural Throne– Coming to Principle Gallery

The greatest monarch on the proudest throne is obliged to sit upon his own arse.

–Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack

This is another new painting, Natural Throne, that is coming to the Principle Gallery with me on Saturday, when I will be giving a Gallery Talk there. 

This is a small piece, coming in at 5″ by 7″ on panel, but it has a bigger feel in person. I think some of it comes from its surface appearance. It is painted with inks on a panel with a gesso surface that is very smooth. When finished off with a final layer of varnish, it has the look of glass or enamel, its surface giving it a glow. Quite striking, it feels as much like an artifact, an object, as it does a piece of art. 

But one shouldn’t let the surface appearance discount the painting itself. I believe it would hold up well whatever surface was under it.

I call this piece Natural Throne partly from an idea of personal sovereignty that lingers in my mind. This is not to be confused with sovereign citizenship, that fringe movement that has existed for a long time where people believe they are beyond the rules and regulations and obligations of the country in which they exist. No, this is more about people feeling small and having little control or say-so in their life or the world.  It’s about finding a place, a little space of their own, and seeing as their private kingdom, even if only in their minds.

I see this painting in this way because, as I have mentioned here before, this is one of those pieces that I see being as much as a royal portrait as it is a landscape. In these pieces, I often see the Red Tree as the crowned head with the mound on which it rests serving as a colorful robe of state and its kingdom spreading out behind it.

I definitely got that feel here.

Of course, you might not see it that way. And, as always, that is as it should be. I am just giving my view of it as I sit here this morning on my regal arse in my little kingdom in the woods.

Okay, I have to get to work. There are decrees to be issued, cat boxes to be cleaned and garbage to be gathered. Monday is the day for the royal garbage pickup here in the realm.

Ah, the life of a king…

Archaeology: The Future Looms– Coming to Principle Gallery

We’re all so clogged with dead ideas
passed from generation to generation
that even the best of us don’t know the way out
We invented the Revolution
but we don’t know how to run it
Look everyone wants to keep something from the past
a souvenir of the old regime
This man decides to keep a painting
This one keeps his mistress
He [pointing] keeps his garden
He [pointing] keeps his estate
He keeps his country house
He keeps his factories
This man couldn’t part with his shipyards
This one kept his army
and that one keeps his king

—Marat, act 1 – Peter Weiss, Marat/Sade (1963)

What do we carry with us into the future? What do we leave behind?

Do we haul our best intentions, and our idealism? What about our creativity and sense of history– do they get hauled forward? Or is it all left to molder among the shards of pottery, rusting machine parts, broken toys, plastic bags, and other souvenirs we leave to the future as monuments to today?

Do we take with us our worst impulses and lack of responsibility, dismissing history and forgetting all that is buried in the past? Do we continue to drag the dead ideas of the past with us?

 I don’t know.

Those are some questions that sometimes come to mind when I look at some of the pieces from my Archaeology series. These questions seemed to pop up even more with this new small painting (10″ by 10″ canvas) from the series. There is something in it, something I can’t quite identify, that makes it feel as though there is a decision to be made about our future. I am sure the current political environment comes into play in my thinking but it feels as though it goes beyond even that. As though outside of a natural calamity — giant meteor strike, supervolcano eruptions, or all the land masses of the Earth suddenly sinking to the bottom of the oceans– we have a chance to determine what the future holds.  That we get to decide what those things are that we deem to be necessary for our survival and not mere souvenirs of a lost past.

Huh– that’s more thought than I wanted to expend this morning.

Anyway, this painting is titled Archaeology: The Future Looms and it is headed to the Principle Gallery this coming Saturday, September 28. I will be there to give a Gallery Talk beginning at 1 PM. Check out yesterday’s post to see the painting (Point of Contact) that will be awarded to one lucky attendee. It’s usually fun so I hope you can make it.

For this Sunday Morning Musical selection, here’s a somewhat fitting song, Souvenirs, that is sung by here by the late, great John Prine.  The song was written by Steve Goodman, who also wrote The City of New Orleans, recorded most famously by Arlo Guthrie. Most people have little knowledge of Goodman or his wonderful songwriting since he died in 1984 at the age of 36 due to leukemia. 

Point of Contact — Grand Prize at Next Week’s Gallery Talk

The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

–Bertrand Russell

It’s one week until my annual Gallery Talk at the Principle Gallery. It takes place next Saturday, September 28, beginning at 1 PM. One of my favorite parts of these talks comes at its end, in a drawing that is held for one of my paintings to someone in attendance. I have written before about how I choose these pieces, that they must have personal meaning for me. The chosen prize for this talk is Point of Contact, an 11″x16″ painting on paper, framed and matted at 16″ by 21″. It’s one of those pieces that often makes me stop and consider it whenever I pass it here in the studio. To be honest, I never thought I would give it away.

But it seems like the right thing at this moment. Hope you can make it to the Gallery Talk at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria next week. I will try to make it interesting. Maybe even fun. Plus, you might be the one to take home this painting. Who knows?

Here’s what I wrote about Point of Contact several years ago:

These handful of words from the great British thinker Bertrand Russell pretty much sums up what I see in this painting, Point of Contact.  And that is that there is a world of wonder within our grasp — those magical things– if only we make the effort to recognize the patterns and forces of which they are comprised.

I have said before that we are part of a greater pattern. I believe that it can be found in two simple ways– either looking inward or looking outward. Since we are formed from this pattern, we can find parts of by examining our own inner world, our thoughts and dreams. Or we can examine the world immediately around us for the hints of the pattern that are everywhere if only we can identify them.

Unfortunately, in this busy modern world we too often find ourselves doing neither. We live in a sort of limbo where we are mesmerized by the glossy lure of technologies that occupy our every moment. It’s hard to look inward or outward when our eyes and thoughts are fixed on the screen in our hands.

Don’t get me wrong– I’m no technology-resisting Luddite. I embrace the wonders of this technology when it serves us and provides a real purpose, when it expands our knowledge and sends it to the far corners of the world. The possibilities for good things from our technological often seem endless.

But none of it matters if we lose contact with the greater powers and wonders that surround us every day, forces and patterns that patiently wait for us to unravel the magic that makes them invisible to us.

These are things that may well forever be beyond technology. Maybe it is more a matter of refining our internal technology.

I know to some this sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo. Maybe the idea of great forces and patterns surrounding us seems a bit loony to some. I get that. But set that aside, if you must, and simply consider the benefits of looking away from your smartphone or laptop for a short time each day to examine the inner and outer world outside of that screen. Maybe if we do this on a regular basis our wits will sharpen to the point that we will better see that world of magical things as Bertrand Russell pointed out.

Natural Anthem– Coming to Principle Gallery

I can’t run no more
With that lawless crowd
While the killers in high places
Say their prayers out loud
But they’ve summoned, they’ve summoned up
A thundercloud
They’re going to hear from me

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in

–Leonard Cohen, Anthem

This is a new smaller painting (6″ by 12″ on canvas) that is coming with me to the Principle Gallery for next Saturday’s Gallery Talk. It’s a piece that speaks to an island serving as a symbol of personal sovereignty, as it being a place where one can remain apart from the forces that shape the outer world.

A place where you are bothered by nobody and you, in return, bother nobody.

Of course, that place can’t truly exist in the real world. As John Donne said, no man is an island. We all interact with the world every day in more ways than we realize, in both beneficial and bothersome ways. Regardless of how hard we try to deny it, we are connected to the world as a whole.

But this idea of personal sovereignty, of seeing ourselves on this remote island, plays a vital part in dealing with the travails presented by the modern world. Well, it does so in my mind, at least. I create it for myself in my work and in shaping it from the art of others across the creative spectrum– music, literature, film, drama, etc.

I think this inherent symbolism is why I often go to the island as a subject in my paintings. It has an instant elemental feel that speaks to me and inevitably evokes a response from others. I believe it’s a mostly positive reaction, but I can never know how everyone reacts to any of my work. There might be a whole group out there who hate the island and see it as coldly isolating. I can see that.

I saw the violinist (or is it a fiddler?) here as playing the national anthem for this tiny sovereign state. I was going to call it National Anthem but settled on Natural Anthem as its title. It made me wonder what song I might choose as the natural or national anthem for my own tiny island of being.

I can think of many songs that might serve well in this capacity but perhaps it would be Anthem, a favorite song from Leonard Cohen whose lyrics began this post. I think the sky in this piece illustrate the idea of the cracks in everything where the light gets in. Give a listen and think about what song you might choose as your own natural anthem.

This painting is in a group of new works that will be coming to the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA on Saturday, September 28. I will be giving a Gallery Talk there beginning at 1 PM that is open to all and will conclude with a free drawing for one of my paintings that will go to one lucky attendee. Hope you can be there!

In the Light of Stillness— At West End Gallery

I said that the world is absurd, but I was too hasty. This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart.

–Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, And Other Essays

There are times when I feel a bit lost with my work. I find myself not sure what I am looking for in it, not sure if I am on the right path with my work or if it has any meaning at all. This always leads me to question what I was originally seeing in the work, what in it gave me the idea that it had purpose or meaning in the first place.

What was I finding in it then? And why?

Thinking about this recently, as I was struggling a bit, I began to settle in on the idea of somehow finding clarity. It was the idea that while I might not be able to completely stave off the chaos and darkness I perceived in the world, I could create a small island of respite from it in my work.

A sliver of reason in an often unreasonable world.

Clarity meant, for me, that the work would be easily entered by the viewer. They wouldn’t need an interpreter to tell them what it meant to them, wouldn’t need prior knowledge of art history or anything else for that matter. They could just hold onto whatever edge they might find in it and find a smoother ride through the chaos.

That didn’t mean that it had to be superficial or shallow in its meaning. The chaos of the world was never ignored or hidden. It was always present, looming. Chaos, in fact, became the background on which this world of clarity was built. The gesso of one of my painting’s surface is applied haphazardly in a chaotic manner.  The hope is that the viewer will not notice it at first, that they will focus on whatever it was in it that attracted them originally.

My belief is that having this chaotic underlayment creates depth in the clarity of the feeling of the painting, whatever that might be. If one takes hope from it, that hope is a rational form of it. Not irrational in a cockeyed optimist sort of way. It is a hope that understands that, while there are forces that turn the world that appear chaotic and beyond our understanding, we have an ability to find some sort of clarity.

Breathing room, I guess you might call it.

I don’t know. Just thinking out loud this morning.

Here’s another song from the new album, The Southwind, from guitarist Bill Mize. I had a post about him last week, mentioning that he had chosen a painting from my Archaeology series for the cover of his new album. I thought this song fits well for today’s subject. It is his arrangement/interpretation of a wonderful Dolly Parton tune, Light of the Clear Blue Morning.

Clarity…

Maxfield Parrish– Aquamarine

It is generally admitted that the most beautiful qualities of a color are in its transparent state, applied over a white ground with the light shining through the color.

–Maxfield Parrish

I am currently preparing a small group of work for my Gallery Talk at the Principle Gallery on Saturday, September 28. Part of my prep work for the talk is also trying to think through things I might speak about. One question that often arises is what artists I view as influences. I usually respond with a quick list but often forget to mention Maxfield Parrish. 

I came across the quote above recently and I realized that the very thought he expressed about the beauty of transparent color on a white ground was the basis for almost all my early work. I painted then (and sometimes now) with watercolors and transparent inks on a white gessoed surface. It give a glow to the colors that imbues everything with light.

This thought reminded me of meeting someone who had seen my 2012 show at the Fenimore Art Museum who said that he was attracted to my work because they were the paintings he wanted to paint.  That’s advice I often offer to would-be painters and, looking at the work of Maxfield Parrish, I can see myself now in his shoes.  Below is a reposting of a blog entry from January of 2009 that I think really summarizes what I see in his work and how I have incorporated some of these things into my own. I have also added a video slideshow at the bottom of this page containing Parrish’s best-known pieces.

Christmas Morning 1949– Maxfield Parrish

Today I want to just show the influence of Maxfield Parrish on my work. He is certainly well known for his fairy tale-like scenes of scantily-clad young women or children in fantastical settings but I have always loved his other, lesser known work, particularly his landscapes and homescapes. 

There’s an intensity and warmth of color that I find completely compelling, drawing you in immediately and immersing you in a luxurious blanket of warm tones. For instance, in the piece above, Christmas Morning 1949, even though it is a wintry, snowy scene there are warm tones in the snow fields. It changes how you look at and feel about the scene, differentiating it from the normal, obvious winter landscape. 

Hunt Farm- Maxfield Parrish

I am also visually excited by the way Parrish used gradience in the colors of his skies, taking a deep rich color at top and drawing it down in lighter fragments of the colors that make up the original color. It creates a brilliant effect. 

The trees often took a central part in his compositions as well, something to which I was obviously attracted. Many were boldly colored and powerful. 

The houses were mainly long range and very idyllic, warm interpretations. More home than house. There was never a specific story conveyed in these homes, just an overall feeling that was formed by their part in the overall picture. 

I have also been influenced by the way Parrish put his compositions together, how all the elements were placed to create mood. The way the trees fill the picture plane. The way the houses are shown, seldom in full view. More about feeling and inference rather than representation. 

I could go on and on about his work and all the little things comprising his magic that I’ve tried to incorporate into my own work but the images tell the story much better. Enjoy…