Redtree Times

Idyllica– Part of Continuum: The Red Tree at 25 at Principle Gallery

Rhythm, symmetry, and a happy combination of elegance and utility – a blend often desired in later days of hope and struggle – these have been fully attained, and with them a delight in quiet communion with Nature, expressing as she does the sense of beauty in orderliness.

–Marie-Luise Gothein, A History of Garden Art (1913)

Well, all the work for my 25th solo show at the Principle Gallery is prepped, framed, and sealed up.

Done.

Always a great sense of relief when it is completed, like a deeply drawn breath finally being released. But this relief is short-lived, unfortunately. It quickly transforms into the anxiety of how well the work will be received, which is something that I cannot predict with any accuracy at all.

Early on and in my first solos shows, I could often accurately tell immediately how people would react to a new piece. Over the years, I have seemingly lost that ability. How people react, whether they connect with the work in any way, seems like a mystery to me now. Sometimes the paintings with which I most deeply connect and demand my eyes’ constant attention here in the studio get overlooked in the galleries and are slow to find new homes.

That is vexing, causing me to question my own judgement of my work. Can an artist really judge their own work, outside of it achieving whatever purpose it serves for them personally?

I don’t know if there is a one-size-fits-all answer to that question. I have found that the stronger I felt about a show, the more crushing it was when it didn’t see the hoped-for results that I felt it deserved.

Maybe it’s just superstition but I have begun to worry whenever I feel too good about a show. Using that as a guideline, I am absolutely terrified for this show at the Principle Gallery.

Mortified.

As satisfied as I have felt about prior shows, this group of work feels like it has everything I have been desiring and aiming for in my exhibits for some time. Like a culmination, like an endpoint that I didn’t realize was even there. It is a group of work that checks so many boxed for me, having great continuity throughout, in content, feel, color quality, and presentation. And size and weight. It feels strongly unified.

I stated earlier that my goal for this show was for it to have real visual impact on the walls of the Principle Gallery. Maybe I am jinxing myself by saying this, but I really think this might be the most visually impactful show as a whole that I will have done there in quite a while. And I say that without diminishing any of the earlier shows. They were all strong shows in my eyes but this one feels like it has its own distinct and singular sense of fullness and purpose, one that runs like an electric current from piece to piece.

I think this show is among my best and that scares the hell out of me.

Take for example, the painting, Idyllica. It’s a large piece, coming in at 30″ high by 48″ wide on canvas. For me, the words at the top from Marie-Luise Gothein, who in 1913 wrote what is still considered the bible for formal garden design, fit this painting perfectly– Rhythm, symmetry, and a happy combination of elegance and utility… in quiet communion with Nature, expressing as she does the sense of beauty in orderliness. 

It is a piece that has an elegant simplicity and rhythm that speaks to some deeper inner emotion within me. I felt a sense of catharsis, a genuine emotional reaction, on finishing this painting. It’s something that occurred with most of the work from this show, as well. 

I would like to say that this means something, but I don’t know that it truly does for anyone but me. That’s okay. It does everything I need it to do for me.

And that’s all I can ask of any piece.

Continuum: The Red Tree at 25  opens Friday, June 14, 2024 at the Principle Gallery in historic Old Town Alexandria, Virginia. Idyllica and I will be at the opening reception that evening. Hope to see you there.

Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.

—Alexander Graham Bell, Bell Telephone Talk (1901)

In the final days and stages of prepping work for my upcoming Principle Gallery show, Continuum: The Red Tree at 25. It feels like there’s been a lot more work for this show than most of the many shows I’ve done in the past. I can’t say if there truly has been but every day this week has felt like a marathon session. I thought I’d be close to done by now but I have at least two more full days before packing them up for delivery on Sunday.

So, this morning I am going to be short and just share the image at the top with two new paintings, a song, and the words of Alexander Graham Bell. I am aiming to get to work and focus in just a few minutes. Hopefully burn like the sun’s rays, as he wrote.

The song is fittingly titled Work Song. It was written by the brother of jazz great Cannonball Adderley, who originally performed the song as an upbeat jazz piece. But it has been interpreted by a number of artists over the years, some to great effect. Others, not so much to my taste. But one of my favorites is from one of my guilty pleasures, Tennessee Ernie Ford.

He certainly doesn’t seem like a “cool” choice if you remember his public persona in the 50’s and 60’s as the goofily naive but affable hick from Bristol, Tennessee. He was hilarious as Cousin Ernie on I Love Lucy. I enjoyed that caricature as kid but it was his music that hooked me. He had a deep and mellow voice and a knack for choosing songs and arrangements that fit him perfectly. His series of country boogies were great and his 16 Tons is a classic. His version of this song is a great interpretation, spare and deep felt.

Now, leave me be. I got a lot to get done and you’re holding me up. Git!

Proclaim the Day— Coming Soon to Principle Gallery

By the side of the everlasting Why there is a Yes–a transitory Yes if you like, but a Yes.

― E. M. Forster, A Room with a View

I don’t know how many of us actively wonder why we are here or if we have any special purpose in this life. I think many, the lucky ones, just accept the deal as is and go on about their daily lives without giving it a thought. Maybe whatever purpose they possess is so unquestionably ingrained in them that they don’t have to think about it.

I envy those folks some days, as much of my life has been filled with uncertainty and questioning. Constant wondering and restlessness about the why and who of myself in this world. I felt like I must have some purpose, something that would potentially allow me to bellow out my eternal Yes. A proclamation of my existence much like Whitman’s barbaric yawp.

Fortunately, painting, and subsequently the Red Tree, showed up for me, giving me some small sense of purpose. Or at least the vehicle that I could ride to it. Purpose, it seems, is a fair distance out and many folks get tired, turning back before reaching it. For me, the Red Tree served as a private plane to my purpose, one fueled by imagination.

It gave me a means of symbolic expression that allowed me to proclaim my existence, my eternal Yes, now and in the future. And the fact that many folks see their own eternal Yes in this symbol is deeply gratifying, making me think that my purpose is in sight.

That’s much of what I see in this new painting, Proclaim the Day. It’s about holding true to your sense of purpose and self-identification though the winds may sometimes rattle your limbs and make you feel unsteady.

Even in the face of howling adversity, your eternal Yes can still ring out over the hills and rivers of the land.

The day is yours.

Proclaim the Day is 20″ high by 30″ wide on canvas. It is included in Continuum: The Red Tree at 25 which opens Friday, June 14, 2024 at the Principle Gallery in historic Old Town Alexandria, Virginia. There is an opening reception that evening which I will be attending so stop in and bellow out your eternal Yes.

Speaking of the eternal Yes, here’s a classic song from Neil Diamond that directly addresses that in a very existential way. This is I Am…I Said. The Red Tree could very well be singing this song in the painting at the top.

Land Alive– In Continuum at Principle Gallery, June 14

Watch for the high tides of yourself and flow up with them; when the inevitable low tides come, either rest or meditate. You cannot escape rhythm. You transcend it by working with it.

–Elsa Barker, Letters From a Living Dead Man (1914)

I was looking for some bit of writing to open this post when I came across this passage from Elsa Barker. I liked what it was saying because I saw this painting, Land Alive, as being about the rhythm of a landscape. The land around us seems static but it is always changing in small ways, imperceptible to the casual glance. These changes mold the earth and leave a visible record that shows the rhythm of its evolution. And when you see that, the static scene takes on a sense of movement and life.

This was first brought to my attention when an elementary school teacher in telling us about the indigenous tribes of our area had viewed the landscape as being alive and how they identified certain landmarks such as hills and valleys by their human attributes. This changed the way I looked at landscapes and from then on, I looked at the curve of a distant hilltop as the curve in a human back and the gentle rhythm and roll of fields as the surface of the human body with all its curves and rolls.

The landscape became a living, breathing entity.

And that’s what I see in this new painting, Land Alive. It is a 12″ by 36″ canvas that is included in Continuum: The Red Tree at 25 which opens June 14 at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA. It has a rhythm and organic quality that gives it that sense of being alive for me.

There is a sense of rightness in it, another quality that I look for but can never fully explain. It’s either there or it’s not. I think is present here.

As for the passage from Elsa Barker, though I was intrigued by her words, I had never heard of her. I always like to know a little about the writings I cite here just so I know we’re on the same page, as far as meaning and intent. I can’t say Elsa (who lived from 1869 until 1954) and I (still living) are on the same page but the books she wrote are kind of weirdly interesting.

The book the passage above is from her 1913 book, Letters From a Living Dead Man. It was written via automatic writing which is basically dictation taken from a dead spirit that comes through a living person. I can’t say I put a lot of credence in this but I am not in any position to debunk her claim. Who is? There was an author, Jane Roberts, who lived here in Elmira who gained quite a lot of fame from her books in which she channeled a spirit being called Seth. I wasn’t aware until years later that the house on Water Street I went by thousands of times had once hosted lively conversations with the dead in the early 1960’s.

Neither Elsa Barker, Jane Roberts nor their methods or experiences have anything to do with this painting. But Elsa’s words (or was it the person she was channeling?) on living in the rhythm of the world feel right.

And that’s good enough for me this morning.

Watchful Presence– Part of Continuum at Principle Gallery, June14

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.

–Helen Keller, Let Us Have Faith (1940)

Sunday morning and I am more than a little tired. The past few weeks have been grueling as I prep the work for the Principle Gallery show that I will be delivering a week from today. Part of it is in just the sheer amount of work for this show as well as changes in certain processes. For example, there were a couple of days during the building and finishing of frames that seemed to yield little progress as most of the time was spent in experimenting and refining the process. Trial and error with plenty of emphasis on error until I settled into a process that was efficient, consistent, and satisfied the same sense of rightness that I apply to my paintings.

It just seemed like a lot going on while little was getting done.

This has produced a higher level of anxiety than is normal. If you have read this blog for any amount of time, you might know that my normal level of anxiety is way up there. Always has been, even as a kid.

I was reminded of this while attending a memorial service and reception yesterday for my recently deceased friend, Brian, who I have mentioned here in the past. There was a nice turnout of Brian’s family, friends and colleagues, including a group of us who had went to grade school and high school with Brian. I hadn’t seen some of these guys in well over forty years. As we traded those tales of schoolboy antics that bore the hell out of our spouses, I was reminded of when I first met them after moving into the school district. It was a time of high anxiety for me, with my hair falling out in bunches which greatly alarmed my mom.

Settling in and becoming friends with this group, I learned to cope, often masking my anxiety with either a frozen form of stoicism or reckless behavior, some of which I was reminded of yesterday. Maybe that’s not really coping but it got me through the years. It was great seeing these guys and catching up, but I left feeling worn out. Like the past few weeks– and forty-plus years– had caught up with me at that moment.

It made me a bit melancholy. Maybe it was the clash of memories, the changes in us that occurred over those years and the awaiting fate that Brian’s death represented which hung over us all.

But that’s life, isn’t it?  Early on, you recognize that fate and you learn to deal with it. Cope in any way you can to the multitude of changes and shifts you will encounter in your life, some good and some not so much.

To be honest, I don’t know where this thing is going right now. While it was meant to be about the painting at the top, it feels more like a diary entry than a blogpost. Maybe I just needed to write it for myself. Who knows?

But it does fit the feel of the painting for me. There’s something in it that speaks to enduring the changes and shifts of life, to being able to stand back and take an overview of life as it passes. I call this painting, a 9″ by 12″ canvas which is one of the smaller pieces from the show, Watchful Presence.

Let’s finish off this Sunday morning with some music, as is the custom here. I looked through the archives and see where I have only played this version of this song once before. That’s surprising because it almost always make me a little teary eyed. It’s In My Life from Johnny Cash, his rendition of the Beatles classic.

This version is from the American recordings of Johnny Cash, done in the final months of his life. You can easily hear that age and ailments changed his delivery and imbued the songs with real heart-felt emotion and purity. It’s a powerful group of music. This version of the Beatles’ song is not so different from the original, but it has his own personal meaning which makes it his own. It’s one of those songs that lends itself easily to such a thing. I certainly can see my own life in it.

Most likely, you can, as well.

Watchful Presence is included in Continuum: The Red Tree at 25, my 25th annual solo exhibit at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA. The show opens with a reception on the evening of June 14, 2024. I will be there to do whatever it is that I do.

Time Reverberation— Included in Continuum: The Red Tree at 25

Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.

–Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths (1962)

This is another new painting that is part of my Continuum show at the Principle Gallery which opens in just under two weeks. This piece is titled Time Reverberation and is 36″ high by 24″ wide on canvas.

Time Reverberation (featured prominently in the preview of the show in the June issue of American Art Collector) is indicative of the underlying theme of this show which, as I see it, is about our relationship with time. Some things seemingly remain constant yet everything continuously changes as time carries us along. It is so subtle that it often goes unnoticed.

Things seems the same but it never truly are. What we thought was is often but an echo from the past.

And, like time, the river keeps flowing.

That all sounds pretty cryptic, I know. But it’s early and I’m tired. I will try to explain it all more fully some other time. In the meantime, here’s a lovely piece from the great Bill Evans about that some other time.

Seems right for this moment.

Continuum: The Red Tree at 25, my 25th annual solo exhibit at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA. opens with a reception on the evening of June 14, 2024. Time Reverberation and I will be there.

Diamond in the Moonlight– Coming to Principle Gallery, June 14

Baseball is the most perfect of games, solid, true, pure and precious as diamonds. If only life were so simple. Within the baselines anything can happen. Tides can reverse; oceans can open. That’s why they say, “the game is never over until the last man is out.” Colors can change, lives can alter, anything is possible in this gentle, flawless, loving game.

–W. P. Kinsella, Shoeless Joe (1982)

While the Red Tree is the focus of my upcoming June exhibit at the Principle Gallery, I couldn’t resist including a pair of new paintings in the show that feature the baseball diamond.

Deep Right Field- Coming to Principle Gallery, June14

I produce a handful of these pieces every year and they are always among my favorites to paint. I think it might be from the associations formed in my mind from a lifetime of following the game, of rooting for teams and players, of reading about the history of the game, of memorizing stats, and just being captivated by the game.

Even now, while I sometimes struggle to remember details from a week ago (or yesterday!), I still easily remember that Ty Cobb ended his career with a .366 batting average, that the 1941 season featured both Ted Williams achieving the last .400 batting average for a season and Joe Dimaggio having an incredible 56 game hitting streak. 83 years later and both still stand.

Or maybe it’s that Walt Whitman put it in an interview near the end of his life: Baseball is the hurrah game of the republic!

Or maybe it’s the timelessness of the game. While there is now a pitch clock for individual pitches, it is still an untimed game. You go until the last out is called. As the late great baseball writer Roger Angell wrote:

Since baseball time is measured only in outs, all you have to do is succeed utterly; keep hitting, keep the rally alive, and you have defeated time. You remain forever young.

There might something to that. Angell lived until the age of 101, recording his last out in 2022.

That timeless quality also connects us to tradition and history in a very tangible way. While the game has changed in some ways, it remains the same game played by generations of our ancestors. I found a box score in an old newspaper from a game played in a local industrial league in 1905 where my grandfather was listed as playing outfield. The idea of the guy I knew only as old man roaming the outfield on some diamond as a youth sparked my imagination and made me see him in other ways. Made me wonder what he was thinking in that time and place. It was a connection that I might not make without baseball.

Again, more eloquently put from Roger Angell:

Baseball’s time is seamless and invisible, a bubble within which players move at exactly the same pace and rhythms as all their predecessors. This is the way the game was played in our youth and in our fathers’ youth, and even back then… there must have been the same feeling that time could be stopped.

These pieces capture that feeling of timelessness for me.

And that’s good enough for me. More than I could ask.

These are from Continuum: The Red Tree at 25, my 25th annual solo exhibit at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA. The show opens with a reception on the evening of June 14, 2024 that I will be attending.

The painting at the top of the page is Diamond in the Moonlight and is 16″ high by 8″ wide on canvas. The one below is Deep Right Field which is 20″ high by 10″ wide.

First Peace (Wakan-Tanka)— Coming to Principle Gallery, June 2024

The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this. The second peace is that which is made between two individuals, and the third is that which is made between two nations. But above all you should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is known that true peace, which, as I have often said, is within the souls of men.

—Black Elk, The Sacred Pipe (1947)

This is another new painting headed in June to the Principle Gallery for my 25th annual solo show. This is a 24″ high by 48″ wide canvas that is titled First Peace (Wakan-Tanka).

The title is taken from the passage from Black Elk, 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.

His words above spoke to me as to what I was seeing in this painting. I saw it as a deep meditation, a finding of some vast inner peace which reflects outward to the world. And in response, the world reflects back in kind. In short, there is beauty and tranquility in this world for those with beauty and tranquility in their souls.

This piece might well represent my own version of Wanka-Tanka, which translates from the Lakota as Great Spirit. Or at least, recognizing that first peace within myself.

It certainly feels that way.

First Peace (Wakan-Tanka) is included in Continuum: The Red Tree at 25 which opens with an evening reception on Friday, June 14, 2024, at the Principle Gallery in beautiful Old Town Alexandria, Virginia. I will be attending the opening. Hope to see you there.

Anchor- Soon at Principle Gallery, Alexandria

Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.

–Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

I look at this new painting a lot here in the studio. It’s 30″ by 24″ on canvas that is headed soon to the Principle Gallery in Alexandria for my annual June exhibit there. It’s a piece that gives me great satisfaction. It has a stilling effect on me.

It feels like a piece of Craftsman-style furniture– its beauty not in adornment but in its simplicity, strength and stability. For me, it has the feel of one’s home, no matter how humble it might be, serving as an anchor for their life.

A place of refuge and safety. A place of contentment.

I suppose that is the reason behind the title of this new painting– Anchor.  The Red Tree here serves as a symbolic pillar of strength for the little community of Red Roofs that represent home. The anchor for the anchor.

I thought the passage at the top from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World was fitting for this piece, especially that last line: Happiness is never grand. We so often look past the happiness that is at hand and seek it in other places, envisioning how happy we would be if we only had a magnificent house and yachts and planes and all the other trappings of wealth. We don’t just look past the contentment that is available to us at any time– we deny it as we spend our time desiring more and more.

This piece is about recognizing our own contentment in where we are and what we are. About identifying that anchor. It’s a piece that has made me realize how happy I have been in recent days when I took a minute from being busy to simply look at the trees I pass by every day. They often become an unnoticed background as I pass by throughout the day. This piece serves as a reminder to stop and notice them so that I might realize how fortunate I am to have such beauty around me to serve as an anchor.

And I am content in that moment.

All I can ask.

Anchor is included in Continuum: The Red Tree at 25 which opens Friday, June 14, 2024, at the Principle Gallery in beautiful Old Town Alexandria, Virginia. I will be at the opening on the evening of the 14th so I hope you can make it into the gallery so that we might chat.

Another Memorial Day weekend. The day we remember our fallen soldiers, those who gave their lives to serve and protect this country, this democracy. I’m no historical anthropologist so I can’t be completely certain when I say that I don’t believe there is any one group of people on this planet who have not been touched by war in some significant way.

The history of this world has been written in the bloody ink of war.

A few years back, when I began doing genealogy for the families of my wife and myself, I was surprised at the many, many generations in each of our lines who had taken part in the wars of their times, putting their lives aside to give so much of themselves– in some cases, their very lives– for causes that often might have been mere abstractions to them. I was surprised at the number of our relatives who had died in combat on the soil of this land. In some cases, some were buried far from their homes near the battlefields of the American south.

Part of me is proud that these people have answered the call to be a small part in something bigger. But another part of me is simply sad to think that they were called on to give so much in order to satisfy or deny the baser motives of those in power. War has usually been about greed and acquisition, nationalistic pride or ethnic and religious hatred– in each instance proposed with the greatest conviction and certainty by the leaders of each side of the cause.

And on Memorial Day, we remember the people who actually fulfilled the pleas of these leaders, be they right or wrong. These citizens did what they were asked and what they felt was necessary in their time and place.  And I have nothing but respect for that.

For today’s image, I chose the daguerreotype of the Civil War soldier at the top because there was something in him that seemed to show the sacrifice of war. Maybe it’s the steely stare of his eyes. Or maybe it was his belt that is cinched in to what looks to be a ridiculously tiny diameter, showing how emaciated he appears to be. I’m not exactly sure but there is something in him that seems contemporary, less dated. He looks like he could be the guy behind you in line at the local convenience store.

And for today’s Sunday musical selection, I have chosen the song Ben McCulloch from Steve Earle. It tells the story of two brothers — the guy above was no doubt like them– who enlist in the Confederate Army in the Civil War and discover the hard realities of war as they serve under General McCulloch, who was a real person who died in battle in 1862. The chorus probably echoes the sentiments that many soldiers through time held for their commanding officers as they face overwhelming odds.

I hesitated when choosing this song because I didn’t want it to be seen as glorifying the Confederate dead. I read a couple of Frederick Douglass speeches given in the 1870’s and in that time, there was a growing movement to create an equivalency between the two sides of the Civil War, an effort that continues, unfortunately, to this day.

Douglass pointed out that it was acceptable to honor the courage of the fallen Confederates but it should be forever remembered that they were trying to destroy everything this nation had stood for since its formation and that it should be clearly noted that there was no equivalence between the two sides. Morally, there was a right side and a wrong side.

As Douglass put it:

It was a war of ideas, a battle of principles and ideas which united one section and divided the other; a war between the old and new, slavery and freedom, barbarism and civilization; between a government based upon the broadest and grandest declaration of human rights the world ever heard or read, and another pretended government, based upon an open, bold and shocking denial of all rights, except the right of the strongest.

We should never become a country where the rights of the strongest outweigh those of the weakest among us. Hopefully, fewer folks will have to sacrifice their lives to ensure this. So have a good Memorial Day, hopefully one filled with some appreciation of what the day really encompasses.

I run this post every few years on Memorial Day. I thought that Frederick Douglass’ words had added relevance for our current political and cultural moment.