Redtree Times

Absorbed– Now at West End Gallery

When you paint, you forget everything except your object. When you are too much engrossed in it, you are lost in it. And when you are lost in it, your ego diminishes. And when the ego diminishes, love infinite appears.

–Meher Baba, The Answer: Conversations with Meher Baba

Meher Baba was an Indian spiritual master who died in 1969 at the age of 74. He claimed to be the Avatar– the human representation– of God for the age in which he lived and maintained silence for the last 44 years of his life, only communicating with an alphabet board and gestures.

I don’t know a lot about him but when I came across the passage above, I totally understood what he was saying. It’s something I have attempted to describe many times here. As I am working, most of my thoughts– my worries and concerns included– seem to fade into a distant point. They are there still but every other facility is involved in trying to create something on the surface before me that takes on a life of its own.

As he points out, with such immersion there isn’t room then for the ego. The painting is its own entity, free of my ego, free of my conscious thoughts.

It becomes a matter of instinct and intuition rather than intellect.

Too much thought muddies the surface and the message.

I think the painting shown here is good example of this idea. In fact, its title, Absorbed, came from that feeling of being engrossed and lost in the process. The painting itself feels like a perfect representation of the concept for me.

Absorbed is currently at the West End Gallery as part of Eye in the Sky, my annual solo exhibit there. The show is hanging in the gallery until next Thursday, August 24.

Below is an update from the West End Gallery on the upcoming Gallery Talk, at which the painting shown below will be given away in a drawing for those in attendance:

Hope Rises– Win This Painting at the Gallery Talk!!

All seats are filled for the GC Myers Gallery Talk on Saturday, August 19th from 11am-Noon. Any remaining availability will be STANDING ROOM ONLY, up to the point of maximum building occupancy.

WAITING LIST: Please use our Contact Form, if you have not already done so, if you would like to be added to the WAITING LIST for a chair in the event another attendee cancels. Link provided below. On the form, please provide your full name, contact information (where we can reach you on the day of the event), and the names of any guests that may accompany you. You should receive a Confirmation Email to be added to the WAITING LIST within 24-48 hours after you have filled out the form: https://westendgallery.net/contact/

In the Eye– Now at West End Gallery

The infinite wonders of the universe are revealed to us in exact measure as we are capable of receiving them. The keenness of our vision depends not on how much we can see, but on how much we feel.

–Helen Keller, Inward Visions, 1908

How often do we see something yet not have any feeling for it nor any understanding of it? Is it a rare thing or a common thing?

I tend to think it’s a common thing. Perhaps seeing without feeling is the most common part of our vision.

I certainly fall prey to this quite often. I can’t tell you how often I find myself stopping and remarking on something I have passed innumerable times as though it were the first time I had seen it. I can’t recall exactly what it was but this happened just the other day. I glimpsed a tree that I could not recall seeing before.

That doesn’t sound too bad but it was within a hundred feet or so of my studio and I had literally walked by it thousands of times over the years.

It made me wonder how many other things and people I had overlooked in this same way in my life. Or how many times I was the one being overlooked. I know that the idea of having my work overlooked was a motivating force in its development. Seeing folks walk by my paintings in early group shows without giving it a first let alone a second glance made me want to yell out for them to stop and see the work. Feel it.

Of course, I would find out that the connection between the viewer and the painting is a private matter, a private conversation to which I am only tangentially connected in a small way.

I am not saying here that our lack of sight and feeling for all things is a bad thing altogether. It would be impossible to see and feel all things. Not sure we could bear it. But we need to see and feel and understand many things if we are to maintain our humanity.

Phew. Wasn’t planning on writing anything this morning so I can’t vouch for the reasoning or presentation this morning.

Below is the classic Who song, See Me, Feel Me from Tommy. Seems right this morning.

Here’s an update from the West End Gallery on the upcoming Gallery Talk:

All seats are filled for the GC Myers Gallery Talk on Saturday, August 19th from 11am-Noon. Any remaining availability will be STANDING ROOM ONLY, up to the point of maximum building occupancy.

WAITING LIST: Please use our Contact Form, if you have not already done so, if you would like to be added to the WAITING LIST for a chair in the event another attendee cancels. Link provided below. On the form, please provide your full name, contact information (where we can reach you on the day of the event), and the names of any guests that may accompany you. You should receive a Confirmation Email to be added to the WAITING LIST within 24-48 hours after you have filled out the form: https://westendgallery.net/contact/

The Elevating Eye– Now at West End Gallery

Though my life is low, if my spirit looks upward habitually at an elevated angle, it is as if it were redeemed. When the desire to be better than we are is really sincere we are instantly elevated, and so far better already.

–Henry David Thoreau, Journal

The mind will follow where the eye takes it.

Trash in, trash out, as they say.

Hmm.

This idea of aspiration through visualization is a concept that appears in a lot of my work. It might even be the most prominent of the ideas that I see in it. Maybe I use it as a reminder to not fall into the trash in, trash out mode of thinking. To keep my spirit habitually at an elevated angle as Thoreau put it.

This idea is definitely the engine that drives the painting above, The Elevating Eye. It is included in the Eye in the Sky exhibit of my new work that hangs at the West End Gallery until August 24. The Red Tree certainly rises above its surroundings and declares its newly found elevation plainly and boldly. 

It reminds me of a few lines from Walt Whitman and his Song of Myself: 

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

These lines have been echoing in my mind for much of my adult life, since long before I ever considered being an artist. They were a constant rejoinder to myself that I wanted something more from life, wanted to be better than I was. That I wanted to sound my own barbaric yawp.

Remember that. It may come into play later.

This week’s Sunday Morning Music is a perfect fit for today’s theme. It’s Lift Me Up from Moby, the Dance music artist who took his stage name from his familial relationship (he’s a 3rd great nephew) to Herman Melville. The song was written as a protest to the rise of the worldwide intolerance and fundamentalism that he saw taking place in 2004 and which has only grown in the years since. I am playing two versions of the song here. The first is the original version with the normal Dance music instruments– drum machine and synthesizers– while the second is performed with orchestral and choral arrangements. I find it always interesting to see artist’s interpretations and variations on their own work. Both are the same here yet very different.

I invite you to hear for yourself.

IMPORTANT UPDATE FROM WEST END GALLERY:

All seats are filled for the GC Myers Gallery Talk on Saturday, August 19th from 11am-Noon. Any remaining availability will be STANDING ROOM ONLY, up to the point of maximum building occupancy.

WAITING LIST: Please use our Contact Form, if you have not already done so, if you would like to be added to the WAITING LIST for a chair in the event another attendee cancels. Link provided below. On the form, please provide your full name, contact information (where we can reach you on the day of the event), and the names of any guests that may accompany you. You should receive a Confirmation Email to be added to the WAITING LIST within 24-48 hours after you have filled out the form: https://westendgallery.net/contact/

Hope Rises– Win This Painting at the Gallery Talk!!

The manner of giving is worth more than the gift.

–Pierre Corneille, Le Menteur (The Liar) (1643)

My annual Gallery Talk at the West End Gallery is one week from today. It takes place next Saturday, August 19, beginning at 11 AM. It’s an hour of conversation about art and often much more that comes to an end with what has become a tradition before the four-year hiatus caused by the pandemic – the drawing for an original painting to awarded to someone in attendance.

I have written in the past about how I sweat over the selection of the paintings for these drawings. I really want these paintings to be meaningful for myself so that it feels like I am actually making a sacrifice in letting go of the piece. I think that an element of self-sacrifice makes for a true and meaningful gift.

I know that by giving those paintings away that I cherish, they most likely will have more meaning to those who receive them. And that is important to me even though I sometimes experience regret at letting go of certain paintings. Looking back, I have given away paintings with so much personal meaning in the past that I sometimes wish that I had held on to them. 

Take for example the choice I have made to give away next Saturday, shown at the top. It is a painting called Hope Rises, a 12″ by 24″ painting on canvas from back in 2018. I have watched this piece make the rounds of the galleries with great interest over the past several years because I felt from the beginning that there was something special about it. It has, for me, a deep sense of pondering that comes through in the deep blues of the fractured sky. There is just something in it that speaks to me.

Seeing a piece with which I had such a strong connection constantly back to me was frustrating. After a bit I determined that it should stay with me and for the past several months it has hung where I see it all the time. It was sort of a test to see if there was something in it that I wasn’t seeing that made it less appealing to others. I haven’t seen it yet and, if anything, I have become even more convinced of its strength and durability.

Actually, its underappreciation made it appeal to me even more. I can relate to that. Feelings of being underestimated, overlooked, and unheard may well have been the primary driving force in pursuing my art.

Don’t we all want to be seen and heard and appreciated?

That’s what I see in this piece and part of what makes it special for me.

It deserves to be seen, deserves to be part of someone’s life.

Maybe part of your life.

Next Saturday I will part with this painting and it will begin a new life somewhere outside my studio. I am excited by the thought that this painting might take on new meaning for someone else who will give it the appreciation it deserves. Hopefully, it will make them appreciate better those who give them such things in their own lives.

I make my living and get great gratification in selling my work but the simple act of transferring a meaningful painting in these events is a special moment for me. There’s a surge of emotion in this act that comes from expressing my gratitude to the folks who have both given their time and supported me over the years. The fact that they have made me feel heard, seen, and appreciated is as much a gift for me as the painting might be to whoever receives it.

Please come on out to the West End Gallery next Saturday, August 19 for the Gallery Talk and a chance to make Hope Rises part of your life. Plus, there are some other little surprises so definitely try to make it. Take note that the Gallery Talk begins at 11 AM and, since seating is limited, we are asking thatyou contact the West End Gallery to reserve your seat as soon as possible.If you get there early, maybe we can have a pre-Talk chat!

Monde Parfait— At West End Gallery

It is a pity indeed to travel and not get this essential sense of landscape values. You do not need a sixth sense for it. It is there if you just close your eyes and breathe softly through your nose; you will hear the whispered message, for all landscapes ask the same question in the same whisper. ‘I am watching you — are you watching yourself in me?’ Most travelers hurry too much…the great thing is to try and travel with the eyes of the spirit wide open, and not to much factual information. To tune in, without reverence, idly — but with real inward attention. It is to be had for the feeling…you can extract the essence of a place once you know how. If you just get as still as a needle, you’ll be there.

― Lawrence Durrell, Spirit of Place: Letters and Essays on Travel

I have used a portion of the above passage from Lawrence Durrell here before. But witnessing from afar the devastation of Lahaina from the Hawaiian wildfires, made me think about it again this morning. It was on that island and in that place that I first recognized that I was looking for something intangible in my life, something that couldn’t be quantified or easily demonstrated.

Home. A sense of place and belonging. Where you feel embraced in the landscape and it takes on an almost human quality, becoming a fleshed-out character in your story.

I felt this first there on that island. It was much like Durrell describes. Well beyond experiencing the normal touristy things, being an early riser in a place many time zones behind my own, I was often up at 3:30 or 4 AM and out exploring the island in the early morning hours. I would drive for hours, sometimes circling the entire northern part of the island along the remote coastal road. I was usually the only car on the road and could take my time, watching the first light break on the ocean and against the rough coast and the west Maui mountains.

It was unhurried, silent, and reverent watching. Eyes and mind open. It was an intimate conversation with that place, one that left me feeling as though I understood the spirit of that place. And with that came a sense of belonging. Of home.

We had planned to move there for a number of years after that, but things in one’s life happen and it never came about. But those embracing conversations with an entity of place resonated forever with me. I think that’s why the landscape is and will remain the preferred subject of my work.

I paint landscapes and they are, to be sure, travels of the spirit and conversations with place, one where the painted landscape asks the viewer, as Durrell wrote: I am watching you — are you watching yourself in me?

Lahaina Waterfront, Maui

It makes no difference where I turn
I can’t get over you and the flame still burns
It makes no difference, night or day
The shadow never seems to fade away
And the sun don’t shine anymore
And the rains fall down on my door

— It Makes No Difference, Robbie Robertson/ The Band

Sad day yesterday. Watching the news reports from the Hawaiian Island of Maui was shocking. The wildfires ravaged the island and more specifically, the historic town of Lahaina. The town has seemingly been burnt to the ground and 36 lives have been lost thus far. What a tragedy.

We spent quite a lot of time on that waterfront in Lahaina years ago on several trips to the island. Many memories from that place of many great meals and good times. I was even offered my first job in the field of art there. Didn’t take it, of course, but it may have been the impetus for me becoming an artist several years later.

All those places gone now.

My heart aches for that place and its people. It will take years and great effort to rebuild the town. But it is a place with wonderful people that is worth the effort.

Yesterday also brought the news of the death of Robbie Robertson, the guitarist for The Band. who wrote many of their best-known songs. It sounds sophomoric, but in my mind, he might have been one of the coolest people on this planet. I don’t think about being other people often, if ever, but more than once I told myself I would give anything to be that guy.

We lost another good one.

Here’s one of my favorite of his many great songs. This is It Makes No Difference which he wrote specifically for bassist Rick Danko‘s voice. The song’s opening verse, shown at the top, seems fitting for the day. This is their performance of it from the Martin Scorsese film, The Last Waltz, which documents their legendary final concert on Thanksgiving Day in 1976.

Silent Crossing— At West End Gallery

Unicorns and cannonballs
Palaces and piers
Trumpets, towers, and tenements
Wide oceans full of tears
Flags, rags, ferry boats
Scimitars and scarves
Every precious dream and vision
Underneath the stars

Yes, you climbed on the ladder
With the wind in your sails
You came like a comet
Blazing your trail
Too high
Too far
Too soon
You saw the whole of the moon

-Mike Scott/The Waterboys, The Whole of the Moon (1985)

Have a lot to do this morning but felt like sharing a painting from my current West End Gallery show and a song that I feel works with it. The painting is Silent Crossing, an 8′ by 16″ canvas and the song is The Whole of the Moon from the Scottish band, The Waterboys.

The painting, for me, is about pursuing a larger objective and the solitary toil it takes to move toward that objective. Here the moon represents that goal and the ferryman the singular toil.

The song, from 1985, is about how people have differing perceptions and aspirations. One might have no expectations for themself from the world while another might grander desires. One might have limited vision of the whole that is before them while another might see the larger picture and well beyond.

As the song says: I saw the crescent/ You saw the whole of the moon.

Or this line: I saw the rain-dirty valley/You saw Brigadoon. They are a Scottish band, after all.

Good stuff.

Narrow Passage– At West End Gallery

I have said many times here that I am not a religious person. Oh, I have my own personal beliefs that are both vague and concrete in their formulation.

They may not align with other organized belief systems, especially not to the dogmatic and politicized forms of most religions that abound at the moment.

My beliefs are mine alone. They may not line up with yours. Or anyone, for that matter. And that’s okay–I am not asking you to understand or share them. So long as I am not hurting you or telling you that you must live your life based on my beliefs, that should be acceptable to anyone. In much the same way that you should not expect me to live my life based according to only your beliefs.

But I do respect theology in its purer form, where there is a study and comparison of the multitude of religions, striving to reveal the many commonalities that exist between the belief systems of peoples.

I mention this today because I wanted to share a short essay from C.S. Lewis. Most of you no doubt know him from his wildly popular Narnia books and films. He was also a lay theologian of the Anglican Church who wrote numerous books and essays dealing with his faith, often in a way that was accessible to those whose belief systems might be outside his Christian faith.

The essay below is from his 1940 book The Problem of Pain. It is titled The Signature of the Soul and deals with the uniqueness of each individual and how each of us often seek something we can only define in the vaguest of terms. It very much speaks to aspects of that which I seek for myself in my work.

It’s a lovely piece of writing, even for one as irreligious as myself. I may not completely share his belief system, but he makes clear the point that we– all of us, not just me– share much more than that.

There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven; but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else. You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that…

Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it — tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest — if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself — you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say ‘Here at last is the thing I was made for.’ We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds….

This signature on each soul may be a product of heredity and environment, but that only means that heredity and environment are among the instruments whereby God creates a soul. I am considering not how, but why, He makes each soul unique. If He had no use for all these differences, I do not see why He should have created more souls than one. Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you. The mould in which a key is made would be a strange thing, if you had never seen a key: and the key itself a strange thing if you had never seen a lock. Your soul has a curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the Divine substance, or a key to unlock one of the doors in the house with many mansions. For it is not humanity in the abstract that is to be saved, but you — you, the individual reader, John Stubbs or Janet Smith. Blessed and fortunate creature, your eyes shall behold Him and not another’s. All that you are, sins apart, is destined, if you will let God have His good way, to utter satisfaction… Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it — made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand.

Let us be thankful that God loves us as individuals and that we can have a personal relationship with Him.

— C.S. Lewis, The Signature of the Soul, 1940

The Steadying Light– At the West End Gallery

We work in the dark — we do what we can — we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.

–Henry James, as quoted in The Middle Years (1893)

I’ve had sixty-some solo exhibits over the past quarter century and, without exception, the weeks following the shows’ openings are among the most difficult to endure in this artist’s working year.

These weeks are inevitably filled with anxiety and self-doubt. I find myself wondering if the work was as good as I had thought or if I had done enough or given enough of myself. Had I curated the show well enough, choosing work that fit the show? Will the show well enough to satisfy the galleries and pay the bills?

It is one the few weeks in the artist’s working year where the focus is not on the creation of the work but on results, on how it is received and sold. The rest of the year is seemingly done under a shroud, away from intense scrutiny and the pressure to perform in the sales column.

It is much as author Henry James spoke of above during one of the low points in his career, when he had ceased being the favored flavor of the moment. You do what you do and give all that you have in relative darkness, all the time fighting to reveal some sort of truth that lay beyond all doubts, inner and outer.

What becomes of it is out of our hands and is left to, as James puts it, the madness of art. That madness — recognition, sales, critical acclaim, etc.– is something far beyond our control, try as we might. You do the work and let fate do the rest.

Time has taught me that lesson. But even that lesson etched in my mind does little to alleviate the doubt and anxiety that arise in these post-opening weeks.

I sometimes make the analogy in my mind that during most of the year I am an ant working in the darkness beneath a big flat stone. Out of sight and unharried. But a couple of times year some little kid lifts that big flat stone and exposes me suddenly to the harsh light. I, as an ant, am suddenly in panic mode, racing madly around, all the time trying to get back to the shaded security of my flat stone.

If you ever lifted a big flat stone as a kid, you know what I am talking about.

It’s a hard thing to describe, this weird aftereffect that takes place in what should be a time of celebration. I can’t say that all artists experience this. I expect this is not unusual among artists, with maybe the exception of those with greater self-confidence than my own. But, in reality, I just don’t know.

Like I said, most of my time is spent in the darkness under my big flat rock.

A Private Word— Now at the West End Gallery

There is no privacy that cannot be penetrated. No secret can be kept in the civilized world. Society is a masked ball where everyone hides his real character, then reveals it by hiding.

–Ralph Waldo Emerson, Worship

I am going to just hide out today. Maybe you want to do the same thing. Long as you’re not hassling me, not my business what you do or don’t do.

And vice-versa. Just as it should be.

Here’s a song from Taj Mahal. It’s a live version of Ain’t Nobody’s Business from 1971. There are a couple of songs with kind of the same title perfformed by a host of artist with many variations that I believe are all derived from a tune from the early 1920’s.

I could be wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time.

That’s enough. Take a hint. Or to quote W.C. Fields: Get away from me, kid, you bother me.