Redtree Times

New Day Rising– Now at West End Gallery

In private places, among sordid objects, an act of truth or heroism seems at once to draw to itself the sky as its temple, the sun as its cradle. Nature stretches out her arms to embrace man, only let his thoughts be of equal greatness.

–Ralph Waldo Emerson, Beauty

I was going to write about the new painting above, New Day Rising, this morning and still am, in a way, but in the historic context of what has taken place in the past 24 hours. I thought this painting was well summed up by the words of Emerson above with the sky as the temple and the sun as the cradle with the Red Tree representing truth and heroism. The landscape seems to be rising up around the Red Tree as if embracing it and providing validation that its purpose is just and right.

That’s what I see in this painting and I can easily transpose that same feeling to what we have witnessed in President Biden’s decision yesterday to step aside in the presidential race. I think anyone with any inkling of history will recognize what a historic and heroic moment we were experiencing. The understanding and willingness to set aside ego and power is a rare thing in any human under any circumstance and even more so when it takes place at the level of the President of the United States, arguably the most powerful position in the world. And even more so when that President had so many times, throughout his life and in his time as President, been underestimated and counted out only to eventually prevail. 

Though he felt he was still the best person to fight against the darkness of the moment and had a list of accomplishments perhaps unmatched in presidential history, the President came to recognize that he was no longer the best chance to move this country forward and defeat the threat of authoritarianism from the other side. 

Make no mistake about it, to step aside in this moment was a historic act of heroism.

But only if we finish the job and stem the tide of impending autocracy. Only if we act with the same level of purpose, empathy, and devotion that are embodied in President Biden.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t worship at the altar of Biden. He certainly is not perfect. Nobody is, despite what the nutjobs in the cult that now makes up so much of the GOP think of their criminal, immoral, self-serving candidate. 

At the end of the day, President Biden is a decent and caring human being who has always been willing to step up for others.

And sometimes that’s all you need to perform great acts of heroism.

Now it is up to us to do the same. Starting now…

Here’s one of my all-time favorite songs that I have shared here several times. It’s Heroes from David Bowie. This semi-acoustic performance is from the 1996 concert to benefit the Bridge School.

We can be heroes just for one day…

And the River Flows– At West End Gallery

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of the intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the beauty in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that one life has breathed easier because you lived here. This is to have succeeded.

― Mistakenly Attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson

To be honest, I didn’t feel like writing anything this morning. But it is Sunday and I wanted to at least share a song. I pulled up the post before from three years back from another day in which I didn’t want to write anything and somehow came up with something that I still like. Plus, it has a fine version of a song that plays well along with the new painting at the top, And the River Flows, from my current show at the West End Gallery. It’s a painting that deserves more words than I am giving it this morning but I will rectify that at some point in the future. And many thanks to all who came out on Friday evening and extra thanks to the West End Gallery for displaying the work so effectively. It is appreciated more than you will know.

Anyway, here’s that post :

I wasn’t going to write much this morning then came across the passage above supposedly from Ralph Waldo Emerson. It fit well with the little bit I was going to write. I didn’t doubt the origin but decided to find out which of Emerson’s writings contained it. Turns out this was another example of someone making an unfounded claim and it gains popularity and becomes accepted as fact.

Sounds like social media today, right? Unfortunately, it’s been going on for a while now, though usually not with the malicious intent we see associated with such things today.

The faux-Emerson passage at the top began circulating around 1951 from an attribution in a syndicated newspaper column. It basically paraphrased a similar sentiment that was published over 45 years earlier in a 1905 Kansas newspaper, the Emporia Gazette. It was an entry from a Kansas woman, Bessie Stanley, in an essay-writing contest whose aim was to provide an answer to the question: What constitutes success?

Here’s Mrs. Stanley’s answer, which earned her $250 which was a considerable sum in 1905:

He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much; who has gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has left the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who has never lacked appreciation of earth’s beauty or failed to express it; who has always looked for the best in others and given the best he had; whose life was an inspiration; whose memory a benediction.

I am glad to give the credit for this short essay to Mrs. Stanley. Emerson gets enough credit for the sentiments he actually expressed let alone those he never said or wrote. But I guess it doesn’t really matter who said it. It’s a nice simple blueprint for living.

Live a life that doesn’t harm but instead seeks to help others. Leave this planet better in some way for you having spent your time here.

It’s easy but not always as easy as it should be. Sometimes we head down paths that stray away from that simple goal and we find ourselves in need of recalibration. This sometimes leads to forms of redemption. This is most often associated with a religious reawakening in the individual. For others, redemption comes from changing their way of life out of the desire to live a simpler, uncluttered life free of regrets and guilt. One free from darkness and filled with light.

That leads me to the song I was originally going to share without much fanfare, River, from Leon Bridges. This is a song that is definitely about redemption.  While I am not religious, I understand the concept and the idea of anyone changing their lives for the better, regardless of the reason behind it, has an undeniable grace. This song has such a grace.

Releasing the Fire— Included in Persistent Rhythm at West End Gallery

We cannot control the Future by fearing it, howe’er much we may believe we do so. Anticipation and Worry are, in fact, quite as useless to affect our Fates as a Fortune Teller’s Predictions; but, alas, that doth not prevent our Indulgence in ’em.

–Erica Jong, Fanny (1980)

My annual solo exhibit at the West End Gallery opens tonight with an opening reception that runs from 5-7 PM. This year’s show is titled Persistent Rhythm and is one that I believe has to be seen to be fully appreciated. I hope you can make it to the reception tonight or into the gallery at some point in the coming weeks to judge for yourself.

As with any show, as regular readers know, I am filled with great trepidation in the days before any opening. You want your show to do well especially when you have invested so much of yourself in the work. And this show definitely represents that sort of investment. I feel that this show has my sweat and blood in it, figuratively and, in some cases, literally. I believe this is

After many, many solo shows– this is my 23rd at the West End Gallery since first showing my work there in 1995 and somewhere in the vicinity of my 64th or 65th show overall– I have found that the more I feel invested in a show and the more strongly I feel about the work, the more I worry.

And this is definitely a show that I feel strongly about, from the first to the last piece of it.

So, I worry.

And I know from experience that there is nothing I can do now. All my anxieties change nothing. It is out of my hands. I have put in the time and done the work. Have sweated and bled.

It’s in your hands now. Do what you will with it.

Releasing the Fire is a 10″ x 20″ painting on canvas that is included in the show. Hope to see you there tonight.

The Omnipresence— Now at West End Gallery

The conceptions which developing science gives of the grandeur of creation, as well as the constancy and irresistibleness of its Omnipresent Cause, make all feel the comparative littleness of human power…

–Herbert Spencer, Essays, Scientific, Political, and Speculative (1891)

I was looking for something to open this post and came across the words above from Herbert Spencer, the Victorian era philosopher/biologist/psychologist best known for coining the phrase survival of the fittest. I was going to write about the political hypothesis Spencer provided in his essay containing this single sentence but I think I will let it pass. Instead, I will focus on how I read this in relation to the new painting at the top, The Omnipresence.

I read this and thought that it was implying that the more knowledge we gained, the more we would recognize the sheer magnitude of Nature’s power and reach as well as our own smallness in relation to it. Our relative tininess in the face of Nature’s immensity is a theme that often shows up in my work so this interpretation came easily to me. I could see it in this painting.

I saw the two Red Trees as being aware of their small presence in a much larger scenario. The Sun compass and the other rays in the sky represent for me the great powers surrounding us that are visible to us only in rare instances. Normally, they flow around us undetected. This painting might well depict one of those rare instances.

You might think that acknowledging our smallness would be deflating to our human egos. And maybe for some, it is. I tend to think better of myself and others when I keep this in mind. I think that’s why I see this painting as upbeat, almost joyous in its revelation.

I know I am not doing this painting justice with this post. I am a bit tired and there are so many other things that I get from this painting that are beyond my use of language. The bit of writing above is only a small part of that. I would suggest you come to the West End Gallery to see this 36″ by 24″ canvas personally. It is in my solo exhibit, Persistent Rhythm, that opens tomorrow, Friday, July 19. The opening reception runs from 5-7 PM and I will be there to field any questions or comments you might have.

Time Patterns– Now at West End Gallery

Fate loves to invent patterns and designs. Its difficulty lies in complexity. But life itself is difficult because of its simplicity. It consists of a few things only, whose magnitude is not measurable by us. 

–Rainer Maria Rilke, The Journal of My Other Self

The painting above, 24″ by 36″ on canvas, is titled Time Patterns. It is included in Persistent Rhythm, my annual solo exhibit at the West End Gallery that opens Friday.

I have no idea how other people look at this particular type of painting of mine, landscapes with undulating fields filled with patterns and colors. I don’t know if they like them any more or less than other the motifs employed in my works. I can never really tell what people will like or dislike in any piece. It remains a mystery to me.

But I do know that I like this painting and this type of work, both in painting them and in taking them in afterward. Painting them is a bit like juggling. It entails balancing disparate individual colors, forms, and rhythms while keeping an eye on the composition as a whole. It takes both intuition and problem-solving skills, requiring that I keep my attention intensely focused. I have found that if I get distracted or bored in doing these types of pieces, they begin to fall apart, losing any cohesiveness I might have built beforehand in them.

Time Patterns has come through the process unscathed. It does what I hoped it would do. It has a comforting warmth and the patterns in the fields of the foreground take on an abstract quality that feels both simple and complex. I see myself in the Red Tree in the character of the Questioner here, trying to decipher the patterns I detect in the world around me as I try to make sense of the world and my own place in it.

Can one ever truly make sense of this life? It seems so simple at times and so difficult at other times. Problems that seem complex often have simple solutions and situations that seem simple on the surface are unsolvable, more entangled in complexity than we can ever imagine.

So, I stand as the Red Tree looking over this landscape that I know and love, always questioning why as I wonder where the road will take us.

I have come to know that I will never know those answers.

Yet I still persist.

All I know is that this is simply my part in a pattern that may or not be part of another pattern. And that of another larger one after that.

Who knows?

Here’s a song that pretty much says it all. It’s called I Don’t Know and it is from French record producer Wax Tailor. It consists of a large number of samples taken from music and older movies set over a rhythm. I spotted Cannonball Adderley’s spoken introduction to his Mercy, Mercy, Mercy at the beginning and a DeNiro line from Casino later in. I also caught a bit of Edward G. Robinson from The Stranger. Listening is kind of looking at this painting, trying to find how the pattern fits together while still exploring at its individual segments.

Time Patterns is 24″ by 36″ on canvas and is part of my annual solo exhibit, Persistent Rhythm, now hanging at the West End Gallery in Corning, NY. The exhibit officially opens this coming Friday, July 19, with an opening reception that runs from 5-7 PM.

A Gallery Talk for this show will take place at the gallery on Saturday, August 10, from 11- noon. Stay tuned for further details.

Between the Sea and the Sun— Now at West End Gallery

Grandfather, Great Spirit, you have been always, and before you no one has been. There is no other one to pray to but you. You yourself, everything that you see, everything has been made by you. The star nations all over the universe you have finished. The four quarters of the earth you have finished. The day, and in that day, everything you have finished. Grandfather, Great Spirit, lean close to the earth that you may hear the voice I send. You towards where the sun goes down, behold me; Thunder Beings, behold me! You where the White Giant lives in power, behold me! You where the sun shines continually, whence come the day-break star and the day, behold me! You where the summer lives, behold me! You in the depths of the heavens, an eagle of power, behold! And you, Mother Earth, the only Mother, you who have shown mercy to your children!

Hear me, four quarters of the world–a relative I am! Give me the strength to walk the soft earth, a relative to all that is! Give me the eyes to see and the strength to understand, that I may be like you. With your power only can I face the winds.

Great Spirit, Great Spirit, my Grandfather, all over the earth the faces of living things are all alike. With tenderness have these come up out of the ground. Look upon these faces of children without number and with children in their arms, that they may face the winds and walk the good road to the day of quiet.

This is my prayer; hear me! The voice I have sent is weak, yet with earnestness I have sent it. Hear me!

–Black Elk, Black Elk Speaks, The Offering of the Pipe

I was looking for something to begin this post on this new painting, Between the Sea and the Sun, which is part of my show of new work that opens Friday at the West End Gallery. when I came across the words above. I had featured a passage from Black Elk in a post a few months ago, describing him then as “the Oglala Lakota medicine man who died in 1950 after a most interesting life that saw him taking part in some of the important events in the history of the Native American people. As a youth, Black Elk fought at Little Big Horn then later survived the Indian Wars that took place in the aftermath of Little Big Horn as well as the Wounded Knee Massacre, in which he was wounded. He also performed with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, traveling to Europe to perform for Queen Victoria. After his time with Buffalo Bill, he later converted to Roman Catholicism though he still embraced his Native American beliefs and the visions that made him a medicine man. He was able to rectify the seeming differences between the two in such a way that a case for his beatification (sainthood) has been opened by the Catholic Church in recent years.“

This passage was from the beginning of the book Black Elk Speaks when he offers a sacrificial offering in the form of a pipe to the Spirit of the World before starting to tell the narrative of his life. He does this so that his words shall truthfully describe his life. 

In reading it, I began to see that this painting represented a form of invocation or prayer for me. We live our lives in this vast yet tiny space between the great waters of the world and the immensity of the heavens above. We often feel that it is not enough. We long for more than this world offers us. However, if we could tamp down our impetuous desires for more and more, we would see that the world is as it should be.

It has given us all we will ever need. This narrow strip of soil, of life, trapped between the sea and the sun is perhaps the only heaven we will ever know. Or need, for that matter. It is of us and we are of it.

Yet we often don’t view it that way. We often act like ungrateful, selfish children who don’t see all that Mother Earth– Mother Earth, the only Mother, you who have shown mercy to your children— has provided for us.

Hear me, four quarters of the world–a relative I am! Give me the strength to walk the soft earth, a relative to all that is! —I can see these words from Black Elk in this painting. I see it now as an invocation not unlike that of Black Elk’s.

And I like it that way…

Between the Sea and the Sun is 40″ by 30″ on canvas and is part of my annual solo exhibit, Persistent Rhythm, now hanging at the West End Gallery in Corning, NY. The exhibit officially opens this coming Friday, July 19, with an opening reception that runs from 5-7 PM.

As I noted yesterday, a Gallery Talk for this show will take place at the gallery on Saturday, August 10, from 11- noon. As has been the case in the past, the talk will include serious questions and sometimes serious answers along with some laughs, some surprises, and some goodies. Maybe a painting is awarded to some lucky person? Who knows? Stay tuned…

Anywhere Everywhere— Now at the West End Gallery

I am restless. I am athirst for faraway things. My soul goes out in a longing to touch the skirt of the dim distance. O Great Beyond, O the keen call of thy flute! I forget, I ever forget, that I have no wings to fly, that I am bound in this spot evermore.

—Rabindranath Tagore, The Gardener (1915)

The title of the new painting shown above is Anywhere Everywhere. It is a larger piece coming in at 20″ high by 40″ wide on canvas. The title refers to the fact that the roads and waters of the world will take you anywhere and everywhere.

For me, it speaks of the desire to be engaged in the world, to know far flung places and things. The sun here serves as a compass showing all the many directions in which the traveler can go. The purple hills in the distance take on an exotic quality, something unknown to us yet familiar. There is a lot of what I would call dynamism in this painting. It feels like it is brimming with potent energy underneath yet it maintains a tranquil stillness. 

As though it is saying one can find contentment here or there. Anywhere and everywhere.

The compass-like appearance of the sun was not intentional when I first began employing this motif in some of my paintings. It started simply as a compositional element, something that added visual interest within the mosaic-ish blocks that make up the sky. At first, I began to see it as representing the invisible energy of the sunlight breaking through darkness into our awareness in a visible manner. It transformed over the years to appearing more as a sort of stylized compass.

However, I still often see it as the sun’s beams breaking through. And sometimes, I think it is neither that nor the compass. It sometimes feels more like something that I can’t quite identify or put a name to.

Maybe it just is what it is. 

And I guess, for most things that is just as it should be– content in being as one is, here or there, anywhere and everywhere…

Anywhere Everywhere is hanging now in my Persistent Rhythm show at the West End Gallery in Corning, NY. The exhibit officially opens next Friday, July 19, with an opening reception that runs from 5-7 PM. A Gallery Talk for this show will take place at the gallery on Saturday, August 10, from 11- noon. There will be more details forthcoming on this because there are always details, aren’t there?

Passing Through Blue– Now at West End Gallery

May the countryside and the gliding valley streams content me. Lost to fame, let me love river and woodland.

–Virgil, Georgics (29 BCE)

As the events of yesterday proved, we are going through a tense and dangerous time in this country. All is uncertainty. I know it and you know it. So, I am not going to dwell on it this morning. We all need a break, something to transport us away from this aspect of our reality if only for a short while.

For me, that transport comes in the form of art and music or in the forest surrounding my home and studio. Like sandpaper on wood, it smooths the edges that have been roughened up by the darker realities of this world. 

Or to use another metaphor, it clears the stream ahead for me so that I might flow easily once more.

In the new painting at the top, Passing Through Blue, I am not sure if I see myself as the Red Tree or as the river. Maybe both? Perhaps there is a force between natural beings and things that binds them as one.

Hmm. I don’t know, of course, but the thought is distracting while the feel of the painting soothes me. 

Transports me.

And that’s all I can ask on this Sunday morning, to be moved to a place filled with color and solitude as the stream flows easily by. Or is it me flowing easily by?

I forget.

Let’s move on to this Sunday Morning Music, this is a little-known cover I just came across of a favorite Beatles song that has been shared here several times in the past. This is the late bluesman Junior Parker from 1971 (not long before his death in November of that year) performing the transcendent Tomorrow Never Knows. Junior Parker is best known for writing and performing the original version of Mystery Train, a song which Elvis later popularized. His rendition here is smooth and austere– like a river flowing easily through.

 Passing Through Blue is a 24″ by 24″ painting on canvas included in Persistent Rhythm show at the West End Gallery in Corning, NY. The exhibit officially opens next Friday, July 19, with an opening reception that runs from 5-7 PM. Flow on in if you’re so inclined and we’ll talk. Or not. Your call.

Treasure Moon– At West End Gallery

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

–Henry David Thoreau, Walden

I was breezing through some older posts this morning and came across the one below that is just a couple of years old. I decided to use it to accompany the image here on the right, Treasure Moon, that is part of my upcoming exhibit, Persistent Rhythm, at the West End Gallery. This is my 23rd solo show at the Corning gallery since I started showing there back in 1995. I figure that my relationship with the West End, this show and this painting represent the living actualization of a castle I built in the air nearly 50 years ago. Foundations have been built.

This is a well-known quote from Walden. Maybe the most well-known. It basically states, in my opinion, that we are meant to dream, to imagine better things and circumstances for ourselves. But there comes a time when we have to put the work in to make these dreams a reality.

Pretty sound stuff. The value of work and dreams is not lost on me. My life as it is, as simple and humble as it might seem from the outside, was once a castle in the air. I was leafing through an old journal from when I was 16 or 17 years old and came across a list of goals for my future.

I was surprised at how closely it matched the life I now live. I was pleased at first for it validated this idea that you somehow eventually reach destinations for which you set a course. Then I began to wonder what might have happened had I built my castles even further up in the sky.

Were the goals of an unexceptional and naive 16-year-old too restrained and self-limiting? Or did that 16-year-old know itself better than I currently think it did, that it already recognized its own core strengths and deficiencies?

I don’t know the answer to that question. But I can say that I don’t regret placing the foundation under the castle that I first built in the air when I was young. It suits me.

My one wish is to have time enough to put other foundations under a few other castles that float in the air above me. We shall see.

As it is with most f the quotes I use here, I like to seek out the context in which they appear in their original form. I felt that the paragraphs that end with these words from Thoreau should be shared in full.

There’s still a lot of meat on this old bone:

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.

I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

Treasure Moon and the rest of the Persistent Rhythm show is now hanging in the West End Gallery in Corning, NY. The exhibit officially opens next Friday, July 19, with an opening reception that runs from 5-7 PM.

Under the Compass– Now at West End Gallery

Inward is not a direction.  Inward is a dimension.

-Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev

This is a new piece from my show, Persistent Rhythm, that opens a week from today at the West End Gallery. The painting is one of the smaller pieces from the exhibit, 10″ by 10″, on wood panel and is titled Under the Compass.

The words above from contemporary Indian Yogi Jaggi Vasudev came to mind when I was looking at this painting in the studio because as much as the perceived compass in the sky suggests an outward journey, I saw it more as being about an inward one, about aligning the who and what and why that defines us individually with the direction and energy of a greater universal power.

We can search and expand outwardly all we want but until we truly know our way around our inner selves, that search will prove fruitless. We will be the same dissatisfied beings, just in a different setting.

I am seeing the Red Tree here in a moment of this realization that the inward journey has a dimension all its own. And that dimension has rhythms and movements that can take one in all the directions of the known compass.

And then some.

Can I explain that further right now?

No. I could try but I would probably just muddy the waters even more. Sometimes you get caught between these inward and outward dimensions and you appear a bit confused to others. Words can’t describe nor keep up with the ribbons of thoughts and sensations that whirl around that vast inward landscape.

See? Muddier.

I suggest we just be quiet for bit and look at the painting without thinking. Here’s a composition, Floe, from Philip Glass off of his 1982 Glassworks album that seems to capture the rhythm and movement of those inner sensations, at least to my ears. You might hear and see it altogether differently.

This painting and the rest of my Persistent Rhythm show is now hanging in the West End Gallery in Corning, NY. The exhibit officially opens next Friday, July 19, with an opening reception that runs from 5-7 PM. If you can make it there, look for me– the confused looking guy.