Placidarium— Now at Principle Gallery, Alexandria VA
Are you distracted by outward cares? Then allow yourself a space of quiet wherein you can add to your knowledge of the Good and learn to curb your restlessness. Nowhere can a man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul. Avail yourself often, then, of this retirement, and so continually renew yourself.
–Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
This painting, Placidarium, a 12″ by 12″ canvas, is currently at the Principle Gallery for its annual Small Works show.
The title came from the feeling it gave me as though the scene existed in some sort of terrarium or aquarium, separate and apart from the worries and troubles of the outside world. It’s a piece that has long been a favorite since it has lived with me and it has never failed to elicit that same feeling of placidity for me.
It has a secure and serene stillness that often evades us here in the outside of the placidarium.
Here’s this week’s Sunday Morning Music to go along with this painting and Marcus Aurelius‘ advice. It is the Rhiannon Giddens performance of the Dolly Parton classic first released in 1969, the beautifully written Don’t Let It Trouble Your Mind. It’s a lovely version and I could easily hear this song playing in my own placidarium.
Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.
–-John Updike, Self-Consciousness: Memoirs (1989)
It’s another Small Business Saturday, that Saturday after Thanksgiving when people are urged to go out into their communities and shop in locally owned small businesses. It’s one of the best ways to keep your local community vibrant and alive. The money spent for the most part stays local and multiplies many times as it radiates out into the community.
It can be a huge economic engine for the small businesspeople in your local area.
But it is also something more– it is the sustaining lifeblood for a multitude of dreams. Every local small business represents the fulfillment of a dream of someone in your area. It required that someone believed in an idea or ability that they possessed and then risked something– often everything– in putting themselves out there in front of their friends and neighbors.
It can be a gigantic gamble where failure can sometimes mean financial ruin, public humiliation, and lifelong dreams being forever crushed.
But you can look at that risk as the only chance you might get at following your dreams. A chance to finally be the person you once imagined yourself being. Even the humblest small business is the realization of a dream for someone.
And anyone’s dream is a big deal, in my opinion.
I am an artist and a small businessperson, as is every working artist and artisan. We don’t like to talk about it as a business, of course, but after the making of the art it is that thing that keeps our dreams alive. Our dreams and our livelihoods depend on people dealing with us or the local shops and galleries that carry our work– all small businesses.
Small but consequential.
Every gallery I work with provides income for at least 50-80 artists and artisans. That’s 50-80 dreams fulfilled in each gallery.
And, again, that’s a big deal.
I’ve been extremely fortunate to have my dream kept alive for the past 28 or so years. And I have those dream-enablers at the galleries that represent me as well as the many of you out there who have supported my work to thank for that. As much as I might like to think I achieved anything on my own, my dream has been dependent on so many people.
Like anyone with a dream of following their passion, it has meant the world to me. I would love to see many others achieve their own unique dreams in the same way.
So, help them out if you can. I am not asking you to buy locally as a charitable act. View it as more of an investment in your neighbors and your community and an act of humanity in that you are feeding someone’s dream. Whatever you might purchase from a small local business — be it a painting, a cup of coffee, a piece of clothing or pottery, a cupcake, or any of the many things made and sold in your area–is your first dividend on that investment. It is money well spent.
And to those of you out there with a dream who have yet to find the nerve to take the leap, I urge you to follow your dreams. Sure, it might be hard and you might fall on your face. That’s a given. But keep in mind that there is always the possibility of achieving your dream only if you take that leap.
You don’t want to be one of those people who go through life saying, “What if?” At least if you fail, you have the chance to chase another dream.
That is, of course, a perfect segue into a song from Bruce Springsteen. In the early 1980’s, Bruce often performed his take on the Elvis Presley title song from his 1962 movie, Follow That Dream. He slowed the tempo and it was barely discernible as the same song. A few years later, he altered it even more, changing the lyrics and chorus to the point that it basically a different song that he still performs occasionally. But in both, he still delivers the same message from the original in a potent way. The rendition below is from a live performance at Wembley Stadium in June of 1981.
FYI: The painting at the top is titled Endless Possiibility. I think it goes well with today’s subject of following your dreams. It is available at one of my favorite small businesses, the West End Gallery. If you’re in Corning on this Small Business Saturday, please stop in and take a look around.
Carnival is not a spectacle seen by the people; they live in it, and everyone participates because its very idea embraces all the people. While carnival lasts, there is no other life outside it. During carnival time life is subject only to its laws, that is, the laws of its own freedom. It has a universal spirit; it is a special condition of the entire world, of the world’s revival and renewal, in which all take part.
–Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (1965)
This is a new small painting, 4 by 6 inches on paper, that is now at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA. It is included in the upcoming Small Works show, which opens next Saturday, December 2.
After I had finished this little guy, I struggled with its title a bit. It has a feel that can take you in a lot of different directions. I finally settled on highlighting the joy I saw in it, that feeling of simply celebrating one’s existence and unique place in the universe.
That brought me to Carnival.
Carnival is, as most of you know, the celebration of earthly pleasures that takes place before the abstention of such things during Lent. It is a time of revelry when social standing, profession, caste, age– any identifying title that separates us into narrower slices– is set aside. Masks and costumes are donned to maintain an anonymity that separates one’s regular life from one’s life in the Carnival. The unity of the crowd is part of Carnival.
We’ve applied the term Carnival to other non-religiously aligned celebrations. However, the traveling carnival with its midway filled with sideshows, games of chance, burlesque and plenty of food and drink is very much in the same spirit. One sheds their outside status once they enter the carnival grounds and they simply become part of the surging crowd.
I can see this applying to this painting. We stand on the mounds we build or find ourselves on. But there are moments of clarity and joy when we realize that, while we celebrate our individuality, we are forever an equal part of something far greater and more powerful than ourselves– a spiritual state of universality where all the titles, status, accumulated wealth and notoriety of this world are worthless.
I would like to think we need to maintain our individuality and uniqueness while still recognizing the meaning we find in shedding that identity to be part of the Carnival every so often.
That’s a lot of weight for a small and simple painting. But I think it can carry the weight.
Here’s a song from The Band, that seems to be ready-made for this painting. With lines like: We’re all in the same boat ready to float off the edge of the world, how can it not fit? Here’s their Life Is a Carnival.
Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs. –Joseph Stalin
I was looking at a selection of quotations with a Thanksgiving theme when I stumbled across this lovely item from that great inspirational speaker, Joseph Stalin. It was so much in contrast with the rests of the lovely platitudes that it made me laugh. Stalin would probably not be the guy you would want as your guest on Thanksgiving, especially if you expected him to say grace. He would no doubt our holiday as a foolish expression of sentiment, a day for sick dogs to howl in thanks to their owners.
You know, even though it comes off as cruelly insensitive at first, I think Stalin’s comment might actually make sense. Though I doubt that this was the intent of his words, Thanksgiving is a day where we can recognize that we are no better than our pets, that we are as dependent on others as our pets are on us for love and support. We should do like our dogs and show our gratitude to those we love without condition.
And that would be okay with me. You can call me a sick dog on this day because I am nothing if not grateful for so many people I have encountered in my life from my family and friends to the many good people who I don’t even know who have offered kindness when I was in need of it.
Here’s a reply to Stalin from a real human being, Elie Wiesel:
“When a person doesn’t have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity.”
So, whatever you might call today, be it Thanksgiving or Sick Dog Day, be thankful for those you know and love.
Be a dog today. It’s the human thing to do.
This post ran back on Thanksgiving of 2012. I liked it then and I like it now.
Simultaneous contrast is visible depth – Reality, Form, construction, representation. Depth is the new inspiration. We live in depth, we travel in depth. I’m in it. The senses are in it. And the mind is too.
–Robert Delaunay, Simultanism, 1913
I don’t know that the depth that French Modernist/Cubist painter Robert Delaunay (1885-1941) describes above is the same as I am talking about today but I liked how he expressed it and it could fit– if you squeeze it a little here and push it a bit there. He was talking about simultaneous contrasts, about seeing two differing representations in an abstract painting. Well, I think that’s what he was talking about. Not totally positive on that and will do some research on it later. For now, it doesn’t matter.
My interest in depth comes from a recent visit to the West End Gallery where Jesse Gardner, the gallery owner, handed me a pair of cardboard framed 3D glasses. It seems that a glass artist with an interest in optical illusion from the Corning Museum of Glass had been in that week, wearing the glasses as he went from painting to painting. He pointed out to Jesse how well the 3D effect worked on many of my paintings. She put on a pair and was wowed by how much the paintings seemed suddenly have that extra depth and how the Red Tree seemed to jump to the forefront and had an almost sculptural feel to its crown.
These glasses were not the old ones with one lens red and the other blue. These were ChromoDepth glasses which push the colors Red and Orange to the front of the picture and organizes the depth of the remaining colors according to their position within the rainbow’s color spectrum– ROYGBIV which is Red,Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet.
Without my knowledge and quite by accident, quite a few of my paintings follow that order of color, at least somewhat loosely. And since the focal point of many is the Red Tree, some of my work seemed a perfect fit for the 3D effect.
Lake Troubadour
When I visited the gallery, Jesse and I went around the gallery and some seemed to jump out at us, especially those with a darker sky in blue or violet. It felt like it added a new dimension to those pieces where it really worked, such as Garden of Delight, above. In the piece shown here on the right, Lake Troubadour, the mound and field with the guitarist were pushed way in front of the background. It seemed to glow and created what I can only call a deep shadowbox effect, giving the scene a fuller sense of the depth that it represented.
I went back to the studio and ordered some of the glasses. When they came, I went around the studio and wasn’t able to get quite the same results. For one thing, some of the paintings here didn’t have the correct arrangement of colors. I also found that you need enough light to allow the colors to react. But on those pieces where the colors were in place and the light and angle was right, the effect was fascinating. The lines formed by the black base of the painting that separate the colors turned into what appeared to be shadows behind the forms, further enhancing the 3D effect. And, a I pointed out, the Red Tree seemed to take on a fuller sculptural form, even more prominent int he picture, if that is possible.
Seeing the work in this new way has been most interesting and I have began thinking of ways in which I can employ the effect. But overall, I doubt that it will change the manner in which I paint or how I choose the colors for each piece. I sort of believe that if I began to think too much about how to employ it, it would become contrived and lose whatever organic quality it possesses. That is normally what happens when I try to force an idea or concept into a piece. But having the idea appear on its own is another thing, especially when it has a fresh and natural feel.
When it just is. Maybe that’s why it was such a thrill to see the pieces in the gallery and the studio take on that extra depth and life– they were already alive and existing on their own.
If you get a chance, stop into the West End Gallery soon and take a tour with their 3D glasses. You might see some of the work in new ways.
Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues but the parent of all others.
– Marcus Tullius Cicero
From 2018:
The great Roman orator Cicero certainly has it right. When you think of the great virtues– honor, courage, loyalty, honesty, compassion, respect, and grace along with so many others– you can easily place gratitude as a contributing factor to each. These virtues are often just gratitude set in motion.
If gratitude is not the parent of all virtues, it is at least a conjoined twin.
I am not harping on gratitude now just because it is the week of Thanksgiving. No, it has become painfully obvious that there is a lack of gratitude, and by extension, the absence of accompanying virtues, being shown by many of our public leaders. This includes one person in particular. [Mind you, this was 2018. However, we are still dealing with that one particular person]
Simply put, this lack of gratitude trickles down (much more so than any tax cuts!) from the top to the general population. As a result, we end up with ugly attitudes permeating our daily life.
Gratitude transforms into a sense of entitlement.
Humility becomes boastful self-aggrandizement.
Respect is replaced by insult and denigration.
Courage becomes cowardice.
Loyalty becomes a temporary transaction where one’s loyalty is given only for as long as the other person remains useful.
Empathy devolves into a mocking of the shortcomings and weaknesses of others.
Responsibility is replaced by a need to place blame on others.
Honor becomes disgrace.
Trust turns to deep skepticism.
Grace transforms into insolence and coarseness.
And honesty?
Honesty has turned into a sort of mythological creature, like the Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster–- seldom seen and so shocking that when it finally shows itself, we don’t believe what we are seeing with our own eyes. Dishonesty becomes the accepted norm, and we lose the ability — or even the will–- to distinguish between what is a lie and what is the truth.
Without gratitude, we then become a nation of amoral liars, a land without virtue or honor that can no longer be trusted.
It doesn’t have to continue in this way. We have long believed that we are a nation based on its virtues, always moving towards doing what is right, no matter the cost. We can reclaim that. We can be a country of virtue.
It all starts with simple gratitude.
Be thankful for all that you have. Express it in your words and, more importantly, in your actions.
I thought I would rerun the post above about gratitude that I posted a couple of times several years ago around this time, during the week of Thanksgiving.
I am a firm believer in the words of Cicero at the top, feeling that, if it is fully embraced, gratitude permeates everything we do in a positive way.
I also believe that nobody achieves anything solely on their own, that everyone owes someone something for getting them where they are. Someone along the way taught them something, pointed them in a direction or opened a door that greatly helped them move along.
As much I would like to think I have done everything on my own, even the tiny amount of success I have achieved is the result of lots of help and encouragement from hosts of people. Without them, I am nothing.
A sense of gratitude makes everything it touches better. And as I wrote above, a lack of gratitude debases everything.
Here’s a song that I play every so often around this time of the year. It’s a favorite, one of those songs that I find myself singing to myself for weeks at a time when I hear it again. It’s William DeVaughn and his Be Thankful For What You Got.
Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays
I didn’t really need confirmation of the fact that I have been doing this for a long time but am sometimes reminded of it in the oddest ways. For instance, I was surprised when I recently came across a listing on Ebay for what the seller describes as being “vintage” and “a real nostalgic piece of ephemera” with my name on it.
It was, of all things, a page from a 2001 magazine (I think it was American Art Collector) with three advertisements. The ad from the PrincipleGallery for my then upcoming 2001 show there was at the top of the page.
I had no idea that such things were considered collectibles in any sense of the word. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since I have seen, on more than one occasion, gallery postcards from my past exhibits framed and for sale in antique shops.
It felt kind of odd being described as vintage or part of anything nostalgic, as though I was looking at a different facet of reality that didn’t exist in my own world. That area beyond your own sense of self-awareness where the world perceives you in ways you can’t recognize.
Adding to the oddity was the fact I didn’t remember this ad and the painting featured on it was not as familiar to my memory as other pieces. It was from a pre-digital period where most of my paintings were recorded on film or slides. As a result, I am not able to easily revisit much of this work from around 1995 to early 2001. And when I do, I am usually dismayed at the pitiful quality of the images.
Back then, if you photographed the painting you had to wait for developing before you knew if came out good enough for use. I would sometimes get my slides back and find that there it was slightly out of focus or there was glare or shadow on the piece that I hadn’t noticed when taking the photo. It’s so easy now with the instant feedback of digital cameras. But back then I would either have to reshoot and go through the time and effort of developing the new film again. Or live with it if the painting had already made its way to a gallery. Which often occurred.
This particular piece, a mixed media of oil and acrylic on paper, must have turned out well since the image seems okay. Even so, I would bet that it looks much better in person than on the page.
I guess being part of something called vintage or nostalgic isn’t that bad. At least I haven’t yet entered the realm of antique.
I may be called an antique at some date in the future, but I hope the work never reaches that point. I hope it always lives in the present, except in old magazine ads.
Cowards are cruel, but the brave love mercy and delight to save.
–John Gay, Fables, 1727
Ain’t that the truth?
And it applies in so many ways today. The bullies who bluster and threaten and prey on those with little power are in great abundance. We see evidence of this in the constant cruelty being exhibited by public officials who hide behind the cloak of their offices and titles and by online trolls who hide behind their anonymity. People who only want to punish and harm those who are different than themselves or those with less power. People who are forever taking for themselves and seldom giving anything to others.
Not money nor compassion and not a hand up or a way forward.
Certainly not mercy.
I guess it’s always been that way. A bully in 2023 is most likely little different than a bully in 1727.
And now, as it was then, the solution to bullies and wannabe tyrants is to cut through the sound and fury of their threats and hold them accountable. To make them finally understand the importance of mercy in this world.
I’m talking in vague terms here, of course. There are some bullies who will never understand mercy and will see it as a weakness to be exploited. These bullies will always claim to be victims. Such people deserve little mercy until they are brought low enough to feel truly chastened and accept the responsibility for their words and actions.
Is that possible? I don’t know.
Maybe I am just blabbing this morning for the sake of hearing my own voice. That’s always a possibility. Actually, I had the quote at the top from John Gay, best known for writing The Beggar’s Opera in 1728 which introduced the world to MacHeath or Mack the Knife as we know him.
I also had this week’s Sunday Morning Music which is Her Mercy from Glen Hansard. I chose his version performed in what appears to be an Irish alley somewhere because I am always impressed by his commitment to his performances, even in a not perfect environment like that alley. He gives the same level of effort whether he is performing for a full arena or an empty alleyway. I love that type of commitment. It most likely comes from his years as a street busker.
I wasn’t sure what image to set beside these two other elements that deal with mercy. I finally settled on one of the paintings from my Ring of Fire series. Five of these pieces are headed down to the Principle Gallery for their Small Works show that opens in early December. These are pieces that are meant to be spare in their rendering while expressing a depth of angst, though that came as an afterthought. The characters in this series are all haunted from which they are seeking some sort of relief.
In big cities, on farms, in remote places, throughout the countryside, people are moving busily. Why? We are all motivated by desire to make ourselves happy. To do so is right. However, we must keep in mind that too much involvement in the superficial aspects of life will not solve our larger problem of discontentment. Love, compassion, and concern for others are real sources of happiness. With these in abundance, you will not be disturbed by even the most uncomfortable circumstances. If you nurse hatred, however, you will not be happy even in the lap of luxury. Thus, if we really want happiness, we must widen the sphere of love. This is both religious thinking and basic common sense.
–Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, How to Expand Love: Widening the Circle of Loving Relationships
Much to do this morning so I am keeping this short and sweet. Emphasis on the sweet, as we ease into the next week with Thanksgiving and all that it brings. It’s a good time to think less about those things we want or expect from others and focus on those things we have to offer– love, compassion, and concernfor others as the Dalai Lama states above.
Things without monetary value but more valuable and meaningful than piles of cash or stock portfolios.
Things that make worth living. For ourselves and others.
Just a thought.
Here’s a song in that vein. It’s the old early Beatles hit Can’t Buy Me Loveas performed by Paul McCartney from a 1992 concert at the Ed Sullivan Theater that was recorded for MTV. This is a really nice reinvention of the song in a bluegrass/country style.
Gino Severini- Red Cross Train Passing a Village, 1915
Philosophers and aestheticians may offer elegant and profound definitions of art and beauty, but for the painter they are all summed up in this phrase: To create a harmony.
–Gino Severini (1883-1966)
I am always a little hesitant to feature Italian Futurists such as Gino Severini or Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who authored the Manifesto of Futurism which was a rejection of the past and celebrated the speed, machinery, violence, youth and industry of modernity. It was a document that caused the movement to be forever associated with the growth of Fascism in Italy.
And, as we all know, fascism can be a touchy subject. Then and now.
But let’s put that aside for the moment and focus on Severini’s words above. It very much reflects my own feelings on creating a work. For me, the artist’s purpose is to create or find the harmony and rhythm of their subject.
I think any effective piece of art demonstrates this. I could be wrong, of course, but it works for me.
Let’s just leave it at that this morning and look at some of Severini’s work.
Gino Severini– Le Boulevard 1910
Gino Severini– The-Pan-Pan at the Monico, 1959
Gino Severini- The north-south, 1912
Gino_Severini, Dynamic Hieroglyphic of the Bal Tabarin, 1912
Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs.
Redtree Times