Redtree Times

Restored, a bicycle fleshed
With power, and tore off
Up Highway 106, continually
Drunk on the wind in my mouth,
Wringing the handlebar for speed,
Wild to be wreckage forever.

—James Dickey, Cherrylog Road

Looking around for a song to play this week’s Sunday Morning Music, I realized I wanted to hear 1952 Vincent Black Lightning from Richard Thompson. It’s a wonderfully written and performed song. Doing a quick search I found that I hadn’t played it here in well over a decade. Time to break it out again. Listening to it again reminded me of a post from back in 2009 about a childhood memory about a hill climb. Here’s that post followed by the song:

It was in the mid-60’s and I was no older than eight years old when I accompanied my uncles and father to a hill climb on a steep hillside outside of Corning. The whole idea of a hill climb is to see who could conquer the sharp rise of the hill while staying aboard their motorcycles without flying off and sliding (or rather, tumbling) back to the bottom of the hill. It seemed kind of crazy and dangerous, even to a kid.

It was a hot summer day filled with sun and the field at the base of the hill was littered with all sorts of bikes, mostly pared down iron monsters from the 50’s. There were Lincolns, Indians and BSA’s, all having that throaty sound like chainsaw noise filtered through a big cardboard tube, making it echo and somewhat rounder in sound. I don’t know if that description makes sense but the sound was so different that the high squeals of modern bikes racing down the highway.

It’s a sound that makes my skin crawl now but was pleasing to a kid enthralled by the sound and fury of the spectacle of that day.

One after another guys in leather pants and armless  denim jackets, most without helmets, would get a running start at the bottom of the steep decline and fire upward, trying to find the line that would take them to the top. Dirt flying, undulating back and forth as their bikes belched fire, they climbed higher and higher above the crowd only to come to an even steeper point in the hill.

Gunning it, they  would dive into the rise. Many would suddenly flip to one side or another, their bikes stalling out as they dug their legs into the ground trying to not start rolling down the hill. An unfortunate few didn’t get to do this instead flipping over backwards and tumbling a good portion of the way down the hill.

Believe me when I say that it was pretty cool thing, speaking as a kid.

But the part that remains with me most from that day were the motorcycle gangs that were all through the crowd watching. I was awestruck watching these people. They were unlike anything I had seen at this point in my life. The group next to us was gang out of Detroit, the name of which had evaded my memory over the many years. Scorpions? I can’t quite remember the image on their jacket backs.

Most were bearded and filthy, dressed in black leather or grimy denim covered with writing and patches. Some had bike chains worn like military braids. The thing that caught my eye were the animal paws that hung like medals from their jackets. Were those dog paws? One looked like a lion’s paw, for chrissakes!

This was in the days before pop-tops of any type on beer cans. To open a can you had to use a can opener that tore a triangular hole on the can top.  They would open a can with can openers that hung from many of their jackets and would drink the beer by holding the can at arm’s length and let the beer sail through air to their waiting gobs. Nobody I knew drank beer that way so it caught my attention.

But perhaps the most vivid memory from that day was of a biker lady. She had hair that was bleached to a pale yellow-white, a color I had never seen before. She fascinated me as I stood staring at her from about eight feet away. She was wearing worn leather pants and a black and only a black bra with white polka dots as a top. She wore dark rimmed sunglasses and held a can of beer as she looked up at the hill. It was, again, a new look for me and I took advantage to register the memory.

There was no trouble that day and I didn’t leave with bad memories of those people, although I was still a little worried about those paws. Over the years whenever I’d see a biker wearing his colors I flash back to that summer day in ’66 or ’67 and that biker lady in her polka dot bra.

Wonder what she’s up to these days?

Fortune’s Smile— At Principle Gallery, Alexandria VA

Give fools their gold, and knaves their power;
Let fortune’s bubbles rise and fall;
Who sows a field, or trains a flower,
Or plants a tree, is more than all.

For he who blesses most is blest;
And God and man shall own his worth
Who toils to leave as his bequest
An added beauty to the earth.

— John Greenleaf Whittier,  from A Song of Harvest

As one gets older, worries pop up about what becomes of those things we have accumulated once we are no more. They might have meaning or value for us but mean little, if anything, to others. Will they continue to have the same meaning and value once they are left behind?

Are they a legacy or a burden? A gift or garbage?

The thought made me think of the old Aesop’s Fable of the Old Man and the Three Young Men. It’s a parable that is present in similar forms in the stories of many cultures, one that points out that when we seed the future with flowers and trees, we do it as much for the future that exists without us as we do for ourselves in the near future.

It’s something to keep in mind. It’s never too late to work on that legacy.

Here’s the Aesop version of the tale followed by Pass It On from Bob Marley & The Wailers. Good stuff…

AS AN OLD MAN was planting a tree, three young men came along and began to make sport of him, saying: “It shows your foolishness to be planting a tree at your age. The tree cannot bear fruit for many years, while you must very soon die. What is the use of your wasting your time in providing pleasure to others to share long after you are dead?”

The old man stopped in his labor and replied: Others before me provided for my happiness, and it is my duty to provide for those who shall come after me. As for life, who is sure of it for a day? You may all die before me.

The old man’s words came true; one of the young men went on a voyage at sea and was drowned, another went to war and was shot, and the third fell from a tree and broke his neck.

Moral:
We should not think wholly of ourselves, and we should remember that life is uncertain.

Helen Frankenthaler- Savage Breeze

There are no rules. That is how art is born, how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules. That is what invention is about.

–Helen Frankenthaler

I remember reading about Helen Frankenthaler, the famed Abstract Expressionist, when I was first beginning to really paint with purpose.  In an article that I read but can’t locate now, she spoke of how she came to her trademark stain paintings where very thinned oil paint is applied to unprimed canvas.  She said it was almost by accident that she first experienced the absorbing of the paint by the raw cotton canvas and how that it caused a reaction, a breakthrough, in her thinking about how she wanted to express herself within her work.

Helen Frankenthaler -Sirocco

She felt that all artistic breakthroughs were the result of a change in the way one saw and used their materials.  It could entail changing the type of material used or using them in a more unconventional manner, as her above quote stating there are no rules infers.

This immediately clicked with me at the time I read it.  I had been trying to shape my way of thinking to fit the materials I was using at the time. Unsuccessfully. What I needed to do was change the materials to fit the way I was thinking. To allow my thought process greater free rein and not cater to the restraints of materials.

That may sound kind of abstract but it allowed me to start working with my paints and grounds in a much different way, forming my own process that worked well for my way of thinking and has become entrenched in my thought process. Even though it may be outside more traditional forms of using these same materials, this process has over time become as rigid in my use as the techniques used by the most steadfast adherent of the most traditional school of painting.

You reach a certain point, a mastery of your materials, where there are few accidents, few surprises in the materials’ reactions and, as a result, fewer surprises in your own reactions.

You have reached an endpoint, a culmination.

For most, this is the goal. But I want that surprise, that not knowing exactly how the materials will react and that need to solve the problem presented by the need to express with the limitations of the materials used.

So, I try to continually tweak, to create a little tension and uncertainty in how the materials react to my use of them, to create a sense of surprise.

Because that’s where the breakthroughs dwell…

This post first ran back in 2010. I ran it again a few years later when I had the honor of having my work hang alongside Frankenthaler’s work in an exhibit at the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait. Though my work didn’t echo hers in any way– her breakthroughs were hers alone as were mine–her words certainly shaped how I viewed my work.

BlueMoonWatch– Now at, West End Gallery

Once in a blue moon
Somethin’ good comes along
Once in a blue moon
Every thing’s not goin’ wrong

— Van Morrison, Once in a Blue Moon

Have lots on my plate this morning so wasn’t going to post anything today. But I thought I at least needed to note that today is February 29th.

Leap Day.

That odd extra day that pops up every four years, offering us hopes that it will inject some special oomph into the doldrums of winter. It usually doesn’t meet our expectations but the anticipation and hope it offers are its real thing. It’s up to us to take advantage of the opportunity given by this bonus day.

For some reason, I equated Leap Day with the idea of a Blue Moon. I guess it’s that both are relatively rare occurrences that offer us a chance for something new. Whatever the case, let’s listen to a Van Morrison tune, Once in a Blue Moon, from back in 2003. I am somewhat torn about Van Morrison. I have long heard accounts of him being an egomaniacal dick but his descent into the world of conspiracy theory in recent years had me wondering if I could indeed separate the art from the artist. Personal feelings aside on his conduct and opinions, his work has often been marvelous throughout a very long career.

Give a listen and enjoy your bonus day.

John Ruskin- Near Interlaken

Hitherto I have used the words imperfect and perfect merely
to distinguish between work grossly unskillful, and work executed with
average precision and science; and I have been pleading that any degree of unskillfulness should be admitted, so only that the labourer’s mind had
room for expression. But, accurately speaking, no good work whatever
can be perfect and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art.

This for two reasons, both based on everlasting laws. The first, that no
great man ever stops working till he has reached his point of failure: that
is to say, his mind is always far in advance of his powers of execution,
and the latter will now and then give way in trying to follow it; besides
that he will always give to the inferior portions of his work only such
Inferior attention as they require; and according to his greatness he
becomes so accustomed to the feeling of dissatisfaction with the best he
can do, that in moments of lassitude or anger with himself he will not care
though the beholder be dissatisfied also. I believe there has only been one
man who would not acknowledge this necessity, and strove always to reach perfection, Leonardo; the end of his vain effort being merely that he
would take ten years to a picture, and leave it unfinished. And therefore,
if we are to have great men working at all, or less men doing their best, the work will be imperfect, however beautiful. Of human work none but
what is bad can be perfect, in its own bad way.

The second reason is, that imperfection is in some sort essential to all
that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say,
of a state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or can be,
rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent. The foxglove
blossom, — a third part bud, a third part past, a third part in full bloom, —
is a type of the life of this world. And in all things that live there are certain
irregularities and deficiencies which are not only signs of life, but sources
of beauty. No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side,
no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they imply change; and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality. All things are literally
better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been
divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be Effort, and the law
of human judgment, Mercy.

–John Ruskin, On the Nature of Gothic Architecture: And Herein of the True Functions of the Workman in Art

I have written many times here about the importance of imperfection in my work, about how perfection is a false state of being as far as art is concerned. The wonderful passage above from John Ruskin very much summarizes many of my thoughts on the subject. There are a number of lines in these paragraphs that resonate with me, especially that imperfection in some sort is essential to all that we know of life. and the idea that every organism is in a transitory state of constant decay and rebirth.

The perfection is in the imperfection.

Don’t know if I have ever mentioned him here before but John Ruskin (1819-1900) was one of the most influential people of the 19th century. He was a writer, philosopher, art historian, art critic and polymath, as well as a highly talented painter. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy. His writings on art and architecture have resonated for generations, exerting great influence on artists, writers, aesthetic movements, architects, critics, etc.

Art historian Kenneth Clark summarized Ruskin’s writings on art and architecture into the streamlined list of eight features shown below. I always felt, based on the era in which he worked and from reading some of his earlier writings, that Ruskin’s thoughts on art might not fit in with my own views. But the more I read on and from Ruskin and the scope of the creators influenced by Ruskin, I was pleasantly surprised. Most of the items on this list very much align with my thoughts and he even describes, in a way, the need for the organic feel in a work, that idea that I often refer to as a ‘sense of rightness.‘

If you’re interested in art, it’s worth taking a few moments to read.

1. Art is not a matter of taste, but involves the whole man. Whether in making or perceiving a work of art, we bring to bear on it feeling, intellect, morals, knowledge, memory, and every other human capacity, all focused in a flash on a single point. Aesthetic man is a concept as false and dehumanising as economic man.
2. Even the most superior mind and the most powerful imagination must found itself on facts, which must be recognised for what they are. The imagination will often reshape them in a way which the prosaic mind cannot understand; but this recreation will be based on facts, not on formulas or illusions.
3. These facts must be perceived by the senses, or felt; not learnt.
4. The greatest artists and schools of art have believed it their duty to impart vital truths, not only about the facts of vision, but about religion and the conduct of life.
5. Beauty of form is revealed in organisms which have developed perfectly according to their laws of growth, and so give, in his own words, ‘the appearance of felicitous fulfilment of function.’
6. This fulfilment of function depends on all parts of an organism cohering and co-operating. This was what he called the ‘Law of Help,’ one of Ruskin’s fundamental beliefs, extending from nature and art to society.
7. Good art is done with enjoyment. The artist must feel that, within certain reasonable limits, he is free, that he is wanted by society, and that the ideas he is asked to express are true and important.
8. Great art is the expression of epochs where people are united by a common faith and a common purpose, accept their laws, believe in their leaders, and take a serious view of human destiny. 

Moment of Pride— At Principle Gallery

Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore it if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.

–Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

I came across an article that discussed the parallels between Ralph Waldo Emerson’s description of self-reliance and the music of Prince. As odd as it sounds, it was a convincing argument, stating that the freedom needed to create requires the type of non-conformity and self-reliance that Prince possessed.

And that probably holds true for any artist. The artist has to be willing to stand alone, eschewing the impositions of society and going where they need to go in order to reach their artistic vision. And, in doing so, not needing the affirmation or approval of others. 

Emerson put it this way:

We are such lovers of self-reliance, that we excuse in a man many sins, if he will show us a complete satisfaction in his position, which asks no leave to be, of mine, or any man’s good opinion.

I am not going into this very deeply. Just a quick thought that made sense to me this morning. Let’s listen to a song from Prince that very much lines up with Emerson’s words. You see it in this verse:

Don’t talk if it’s against the rules
Just walk away and be a fool
That’s what they want ya to do
So you got to walk like you want to make it
Don’t walk like you just can’t take it
Go on and walk on any side you like
Don’t walk wherever they tell you to, psyche
The sun will shine upon you one day
If you’re always walkin’ your way

Give a listen if you’re so inclined. Not a bad way to kick off a Tuesday morning. Good stuff…

Mystic’s Way- At the West End Gallery

And if you can’t shape your life the way you want,
at least try as much as you can
not to degrade it
by too much contact with the world,
by too much activity and talk.

Try not to degrade it by dragging it along,
taking it around and exposing it so often
to the daily silliness
of social events and parties,
until it comes to seem a boring hanger-on.

— Constantine Cavafy, As Much as You Can

Constantine P. Cavafy (1863-1933) was a Greek poet who lived his entire life in Alexandria, Egypt. His work often captured the sensual and exotic cosmopolitan feel of that city and that time. Readers of Lawrence Durrell and his Alexandria Quartet, in which Cavafy appears as a character, will well know that feel of which he wrote.

Though Cavafy was known for his poetry among the Greek community in Alexandria he spent most of his life working as civil servant. He didn’t actively seek widespread acclaim, turning down opportunities to have his work published while often opting to print broadsheets of his poetry that were distributed to only a few friends. His work didn’t realize wider acclaim until later in his life (and afterwards) when his friend, novelist E.M.Forster, wrote about his work, describing him as a Greek gentleman in a straw hat, standing absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the universe.

I think that’s a marvelous description– standing absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the universe. It gives an image of one being slightly askew from the rest of the world. And that is what the poem at the top is somewhat about– in not contaminating the uniqueness of yourself are by overexposing it in meaningless ways.

As someone who often feels a bit askew, this sounds like sound advice to me. That being said, I will now leave before I become too much of a boring hanger-on.

Winterglide— At Little Gems, West End Gallery

You can go to the moon or walk under the sea, or anything else you like, but painting remains painting because it eludes such investigation. It remains there like a question. And it alone gives the answer.

–Pablo Picasso, Picasso and His Art, 1975

It was cold and clear last night under a full moon last night. There’s a certain power in its appearance on such nights. Not Lon Chaney, Jr. in The Wolfman power though I guess it does have that sort of power as well. No, it’s more life-affirming, more indicative of our connection to everything.

Illuminating. I guess that would be the right word here. The moonlight takes away the deathly darkness that envelopes most nights, creating new forms and shadows that gives permission for your imagination run wild.

It’s much like Picasso said about painting, it remains there like a question and it alone gives the answer.

Maybe the question is the answer on such nights.

I don’t know. You probably don’t know either. And that’s as it should be.

Some questions need to be unanswered, to just hang out there like the moon.

Sigh…

Okay, here’s this week’s Sunday Morning Music. Its title, The Moon, is on point for today’s subject. It’s from The Swell Season which is comprised of one of my favorites, Glen Hansard, and Marketa Irglova. You might remember them as the young couple in the wonderful film Once. This a lovely and fitting tune.

Student and Master— At West End Gallery

“I sit in the chair and think about the word chair. It can also mean the leader of a meeting. It can also mean a mode of execution. It is the first syllable in charity. It is the French word for flesh. None of these facts has any connection with the others. These are the kinds of litanies I use, to compose myself.”

― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

Reading this passage from author Margaret Atwood made me chuckle a bit because it reminded me of how my mind often operates in the morning. Just bursts of things with the vaguest of connections to each other, somehow finally leading to something tangible. I think it’s a necessary trait for writing this thing and maybe for my painting as well.

The fact that she chose a chair also made me think about the Red Chair that has appeared sporadically in my work for the past 20 years or so. Maybe I chose it because, like Atwood’s litany of thoughts on the chair, it can spur many thoughts and interpretations. It certainly spurs on curiosity about it. During the openings for most of my shows, I inevitably get a number of questions about the meaning of the Red Chair.

Dawn of Memory

The empty chair itself is a simple and powerful symbol of respect in many cultures for past ancestors or someone loved who is absent. Many folks have told me how they see their own deceased family members in those chairs. It can represent grief or loss. I personally see the chair as a symbol of personal memory, seeing the chair as a representation of myself in the memory of past experiences. These are just a couple. I am sure it is symbolic of other things as well.

The questions about the Red Chair increase when it’s suspended in a tree such as in the painting shown above on the left, Dawn of Memory, which is at the West End Gallery now as part of the ongoing Little Gems exhibit.

How the Red Chair came to be aloft in the tree is a story that began when I was a kid. I’ve told it innumerable times at openings and Gallery Talks over the years but here it is again:

Growing up, we lived in the country in an isolated old farmhouse with an old barn across the road. I happened to drove by the old place about ten years back and snapped this photo of the old barn, now in a much more advanced stage of decay than when I was running around there. It was pretty solid and complete at that earlier time, though seldom used. In front of the barn, to the left of it here and just out of the shot, is a large and old stone chimney, all that remains from the home of an early settler to the area, a coach driver who was killed there in an Indian raid in the late 18th century. A small cemetery with old slate stones from that family and a few others was nestled in the edge of the forest nearby. For a kid, it was a place filled with memory and myth, a great place to play and let your imagination run wild.

One summer when I was 8 or 9 years old, I came across a dead woodchuck lying next to the barn. I don’t know how he died. He didn’t appear to have been shot or attacked in any way. He was just there– dead.

As the summer progressed and he decayed and dried out, a vine passed through his body and by summer’s end was suspended a foot or two in the air. To the eyes of a child this was something magical. I was struck by the power of the earth to reclaim its creatures. Everything, our whole existence, seemed very ephemeral after that…

The idea of a tree growing through and lifting an object such as a chair, which is very representative of human existence, is a continuation of that early fascination. It wasn’t until I had painted several pieces with the hanging chair that I began to also see the symbolism of the empty chair, which in some cultures represents the recently deceased. That is what I often see now in that hanging tree– the family members and ancestors who have passed on.

Again, this is my interpretation of this work.  I am sure others see things of their own in these pieces. It means something has clicked between them and the painting.

And that’s a good thing. All I can ask of it.

This is a post from 2014 that has been reworked and added to. I thought I would make it into my common triad by adding a song. The song is Norwegian Wood from the Beatles and their Rubber Soul album. This song isn’t really about chairs outside of the line:

She asked me to stay
And she told me to sit anywhere
So I looked around
And I noticed there wasn’t a chair

So, in fact, it is about an absence of chairs. Aah, it doesn’t matter. It’s a song that I like, one that rests in the chair of my memory, and that good enough for me this morning. Give listen if you’re so inclined:

The Fulfillment– At West End Gallery

As for me I am neither happy nor unhappy; I lie suspended like a hair or a feather in the cloudy mixtures of memory. I spoke of the uselessness of art but added nothing truthful about its consolations. The solace of such work as I do with brain and heart lies in this — that only there, in the silences of the painter or the writer can reality be reordered, reworked and made to show its significant side. Our common actions in reality are simply the sackcloth covering which hides the cloth-of-gold — the meaning of the pattern. For us artists there waits the joyous compromise through art with all that wounded or defeated us in daily life; in this way, not to evade destiny, as the ordinary people try to do, but to fulfil it in its true potential — the imagination.

–Lawrence Durrell, Justine, The Alexandria Quartet

Without sharing it, the other day I wrote about this passage from author Lawrence Durrell which had set me off thinking about the power of the imagination. Or, at least, the purpose of the imagination.

People have been attempting to define the meaning and purpose of art forever. This passage, for me, is as close to my own inner understanding of the meaning and purpose of art as I have ever come across. It speaks of the silences required in order to rework the reality of this world in order to make visible the underlying patterns that move us. I can certainly agree with that.

But the part that captivated me most was its assertion that art is not a distraction or diversion from life. We don’t turn to art to get away from life.

No, we turn to art in order to confront life.

Art allows us to heal our wounds, understand our defeats and hopefully achieve catharsis, which Durrell describes as a joyous compromise. Most of us react most intensely to work that speaks to own wounds and defeats. In it, we recognize the underlying pattern and, by doing so, can understand the source of our pain then deal with it.

Okay. That’s enough. I have work yelling at me to get to it. Besides, I could go on and on about this and probably say less than I have already said. Writing is often, like painting, about leaving space for the viewer to insert their own meaning and experience.

That space, that silence, is where it becomes art.