The work has been hung and all that remains is to head down to the DC area a little later for tomorrow’s opening for my show Native Voice at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA. My friends at the gallery sent me a few shots of the show in the minutes after they finished the hanging yesterday and I am pleased at the way the work presents itself.
With the salon-style hanging, with the paintings presented densely packed and filling the wall , there is a real concentration of color and the work comes off the wall in a manner that might befit stained glass windows. And that is a comparison that I don’t mind at all. You can see it well in the photo above with Jessica hard at work at her desk in front of the paintings.
Native Voice is my 16th show at the Principle Gallery‘s Alexandria location and it opens tomorrow, Friday. June 5. The reception runs from 6:30 until 9 PM and is open to the public. It’s a casual affair so please stop in and say hello. I look forward to seeing you there.
This is the painting, a 24″ by 48″ canvas, that spawned the title of my show, Native Voice, that opens this Friday at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria.
I’ve been struggling to describe what I mean by the term native voice. I think we all have a native voice, a quality that reflects the true self that comes out of us naturally, unguarded and without thought. It is in the way we speak with family and friends, in the rhythm and manner of our words. It is in our local accent and vernacular.
It reflects the people and places and events that shaped us, all blending together in one unique package that bears our unique fingerprint and signature. We might be able to mask these things temporarily but our native voice is always near the surface, ready to emerge.
Applying this to painting, I see this native voice as being the way an artist naturally fashions a painting, in how they perceive the world and describe it to others through their work. It is that state of being when pretense is put aside, conscious thought diminished, and the process becomes intuitive and reactive, each reaction coming naturally. I would describe it in the way a child might paint when left to their own devices– pure and expressive.
I think this show bears this title well. I know that it feels natural and true to myself. I tried to not focus on concepts or themes as I painted, just let the work fall out as it would. As a result, when I delivered the show this past Saturday, I had a hard time describing much of it to the folks at the gallery. How do you describe something that is just a part of you, something that just is?
Now I doubt that this comes anywhere close to expressing what I see in that term Native Voice. But like talking to friends or family, if you are attuned to what I do with my work you’ll probably understand my native voice. If not, you’ll most likely think I’m that strange guy walking down the street muttering to himself.
This is a short video previewing some of the work that is part of my Native Voiceshow that is opening this Friday, June 5, at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA. The opening reception runs from 6:30 until 9 PM and is open to the public. This is a show that has some real visual oomph in its colors and textures and while I think the work shows well on the computer screen, it definitely comes across better in person. So if you’re in the DC/Alexandria area on Friday evening, please stop in and see the work in person and say hello.
This painting, a 16″ by 40″ canvas, is another piece from the Native Voice show and is titled Nova Harmonia. That loosely translates as New Harmony but it doesn’t really anything to do with the short-lived 19th century Utopian community of that name in Indiana although the utopian aspect might apply.
The feeling and theme of the piece is very much about the concept of living in harmony with the forces of the world around us and that might seem like some far-fetched utopian concept to some. And that’s a shame because this coexistence we share with the earth should be something that we naturally accept and make part of our lives. Far too many think of the earth as being something that we dominate, a servant– no, a slave– that provides us with a never-ending supply of fuel, food and everything else we can strip from it.
But that is so wrong in so many ways, mainly in its hubris, greed and short-sightedness. We are temporary tenants here on a world that has seen many species and civilizations come and go before us. one that will be still revolving around that sun long after we are but a distant memory.
Instead, it should be viewed as our partner or our ward, something that we watch over with care and respect in exchange for the great bounty it has provided. Perhaps it will allow us to inhabit its richness for a bit longer that way.
That’s the message I glean from this painting. It has an optimism and unity that I find reassuring and hopeful. In short, this painting makes me feel good.
As I said above, this piece is at the Principle Gallery for my Native Voice show which opens Friday, June 5.
It was a good trip down to Alexandria yesterday. I was there to deliver the the work for my show, Native Voice, which opens this coming Friday, June 5, at the Principle Gallery there on historic King Street.
It’s always a good feeling to get the work safely into the gallery for any show. There’s a sense of relief in this step in the process of letting the work move on to their new lives but there is also a bit of excitement in seeing the work in the gallery environment, to have the staff get their first look and to see how the work itself looks within the space.
For the entire time I have shown with the Principle Gallery, in my 19th year now, the walls of the main gallery space were painted in a burnt orange color, one that really highlighted and complemented the color of my work and may have even, in some small way, influenced the direction of my work’s color palette over the years. But a freshening makeover of the space this past year brought a new wall color, a slightly warm shade of white.
At my first look at it in September, I was fearing that the color would be too cool, too stark. But seeing it again yesterday, alleviated those concerns and it seems to have gained warmth and I am excited to that the new work, mostly deeply colored with a number of larger pieces, will definitely pop on the new walls. In fact, the wall color is not to far removed from the wall color of the Fenimore Art Museum gallery where my work hung in 2012 and I was very pleased with how that worked out.
One of those pieces is the one shown at the top, a 24″ by 24″ painting on linen that I call À La Mer which translates from the French as To the Sea. I like the mix of motion and stillness in this piece with its sky that could almost be an extension of the sea’s movement with ripples of color running through it. There’s just something tranquil in the way the eye moves toward the sea in this piece, a feeling that very much reminds me of the tone of the old French song La Mer (The Sea) which is better known here in the US by the wonderful version in English from Bobby Darin, Beyond the Sea.
So, of course, for this Sunday’s musical selection I have chosen a version of La Mer, this one by French Canadian singer Chantal Chamberland. I hope you’ll enjoy it and take that feeling into the rest of your day. Have a great Sunday!
I was going to take a day off from the blog. After all, it’s the final day in the studio for the work in my solo show, Native Voice, that will be heading down to the Principle Gallery in Alexandria tomorrow. This is always both a day filled with stress and great relief. There is still much to do on this day but in what seems like an instant it is suddenly done and I let out a great sigh of satisfaction in that the task has been completed, which is always easier when I feel good about the work that I am doing and that is the case with this show.
So the idea of taking the day off on this busy day was appealing. But I wanted to really show this piece, a 24″ by 30″ canvas that I call Clair de Luneafter the famous DeBussy piece. I was searching for a title for this painting and was stuck, wanting to steer it away from references to the blue hues in it, when this song came up on the Pandora station to which I was listening. It was a version by pianist Michael Dulin. As the music played , I could almost see it meshing with the colors of this painting, the calming tones of the music resting easily in the blues and greens of it.
It just felt right. It fit. So give a listen and take a look. Maybe you’ll see what I saw. Now it’s back to work for me– much to do before I travel tomorrow.
I am in the final days of prep work for my upcoming show, Native Voice, at the Principle Gallery, which opens next Friday, June 5. This will be my 16th show at the Alexandria gallery so my routine in finishing up in these few last days is pretty set. Even so, it’s a hectic rush to get everything done. For instance, even as I am framing I am still finishing up my final photography of the work.
For instance, just this morning I shot the 24″ by 30″ painting on canvas shown at the top. I had photographed it before but the lighting coupled with the blue tones made it a less than desirable photo, not really representative of the actual painting. But this one seems to hit the mark, capturing the blues in their actuality.
I call this painting Eureka. The word is from the Greek, meaning “I have found it ” and was most famously attributed to Archimedes who upon sitting in a hot bath noticed that his body displaced an equal volume of water which meant that the volume of irregular objects could then be accurately measured. That was not an easy thing to do around 250 BC.
But over the years, the word eureka has come to signify any great moment of discovery. California uses it as their state motto after its use in the gold strikes of the mid 19th century.
In this painting, the bursting light which forms a corona around the Red Tree signifies a moment of great recognition of some heretofore hidden truth, a discovery that forever alters one’s perspective of the world and their place in it. It was not painted with this intent but the fact that the light is bursting from out of the blue of the sky is no small coincidence. That is how these eureka moments normally reveal themselves– unannounced with little forewarning.
I’ve been fortunate to have one or two of these moments. Well, one for sure. And in that instance, I certainly felt like I was suddenly standing ablaze in the darkness that had surrounded me. This piece really captures that instance for me.
I am in the last stages of preparation for my solo show at the Principle Gallery that I will be delivering at the end of next week. As I’ve documented here many times in the past, it’s a very hectic time as I put the finishing touches on the last few paintings as I simultaneously begin the process of making the work show-ready. That entails photographing and varnishing paintings, staining frames, cutting mats and glass then putting it all together so that each piece shows itself at its best.
It is a sometimes daunting task, one that has a much different tempo and thought process than the actual act of painting. With painting there is an almost meandering journey taking place as the mind drifts during the act, sometimes sharply focusing and sometimes going blank as intuition takes over. There are pauses and rests along the way as the painting takes shape.
But preparing the work to leave the studio is straightforward and far less cerebral. Just put your head down and power through the task in front of you then on to the next and the next. Drone work.
But one of the gifts in doing this is being able to handle and spend time with each painting once more, to stop for a few moments and really look deeply at each for what might be a last time. There’s something very fulfilling in this part of process as each piece takes on a sense of completeness and acquires its own voice, becomes an entity beyond me.
That’s definitely the sense I got when I was photographing the painting above yesterday. It’s a 16″ by 40″ canvas that didn’t have a name but looking at it closely yesterday it reminded me of a long and arduous journey, one that winds through mountains and across seas in search of home. And there on a prominent peak was the Red Tree, looking patiently out to sea like Penelope scanning the horizon for the return of Odysseus. In an instant that was the voice of that painting for me.
I call this piece Odyssey.
And now, like Homer’s travelers, I must return to my own odyssey. There is must to do before I rest…
In the new June issue of American Art Collector, there’s a nice preview of my upcoming solo show, Native Voice, which is opening June 5 at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA.
It’s a brief overview of the show and my career as well as the significance of the show’s title to me. Most pleasing to me is the fact that the three paintings they chose to display in the article show themselves very well , giving what I think is a good indicator of the look and feel of this show.
Another pleasing aspect is a short paragraph, written by a couple from the Bay Area of California who collect my paintings, which describes their views on the work. As an artist, it’s always interesting to get a view of how people honestly react to what you’re doing. And for myself, it’s great to get affirmation that the belief I have in the reality of the internal world I am trying to express in my work has translated successfully and is coming across as a similar reality to others. That’s very heartening and inspiring to me in the studio.
That being said, it’s time I get back to work. There’s still much work to be done before the show is complete.
Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle.
-Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
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I think the lines above spoken by Lewis Carroll’s Alice fit this new painting very well. In the book, she has has just grown to a very great size and frightened away the White Rabbit which has her suddenly realizing that Wonderland is a very puzzling place. But even more puzzling is how the changing perspectives of herself she encounters in Wonderland have left her questioning her own identity, her own sense of self. The solution to navigating her way through Wonderland is in finding out her own identity.
And that is a truth for almost anybody, anywhere.
And that’s what I see is this painting, a 30″ by 30″ canvas that I call Breakthrough.
The foreground with the cryptic forms of its fields sets the tone for piece with darker tones and tempting colors. The path runs through these labyrinth-like segments toward a sky that has a burst of light from the sun pushing forward, symbolizing the breakthrough alluded to in the title. And at the furthest inward point is the Red Tree. Like Alice, it is attempting to shed the many differing perspectives of itself it has run across to get to this moment, a moment in which it feels it has reached a solution to the puzzle of who or what in the world it truly is.
The path forward is much easier to travel once you have solved that great puzzle, as Alice called it.
This painting is part of my annual solo show, this year titled Native Voice, at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria VA which opens on June 5, 2015.
The work has been hung and all that remains is to head down to the DC area a little later for tomorrow’s opening for my show Native Voice at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA. My friends at the gallery sent me a few shots of the show in the minutes after they finished the hanging yesterday and I am pleased at the way the work presents itself.
Redtree Times 