This is another small painting that is part of the Little Gems exhibit opening this coming Friday at the West End Gallery. This is a little 3″ by 5″ piece on paper that I call The Blue Cool. I guess that it arose from the current frigid temps that we are in here in the Northeast. The sky here is in three blocks of an aqua blue color that has a transparency that makes them seem like thin slabs of ice. I don’t know if this quality shows up on the computer screen but when this piece was in the studio I always felt like holding it up to the light to see light shine through the ice that I felt like I was seeing.
It’s a simple meditative piece, what I like to typically see in these small works. The small scale lends itself to simplicity. Maybe this built-in restraint is one of the reasons why I enjoy painting these small pieces and why I feel they often work so well.
I don’t know for sure. And I think that uncertainty or puzzlement is sometimes a good thing. It creates a sense of wonder and surprise and that is always a good thing.
I thought for this week’s Sunday music I would stick with the Blue theme and some blue cool jazz from one of my favorites, the late great Chet Baker. The song is Born to be Blue which is also the title of a film currently in production about Baker’s life with Ethan Hawke portraying the gifted but tragic trumpeter. His story reads like a screenplay– Golden Boy of jazz with movie-star looks loses everything to drug addiction and violence and tries to find redemption. I’ve thought for years that it was meant to be a film and now it is, hopefully one that does the story justice.
When I listen to Baker’s music, I hear it with that same sense of uncertainty and puzzlement I alluded to above. There’s just something natural and right in it that can’t be, or shouldn’t be, defined. It just is. Give a listen and have a great Sunday.
Redtree Times 