I was going through my files, looking at some work from several years ago. It’s something I do on a pretty regular basis as a way to charge my batteries. I see things in these older pieces that reignite ideas that have been swept away to the folds of my brain. Sometimes an idea, like a new composition, comes in a flash that seems exciting, something that tells me that I need to followup on it. Then hours later it is gone or has turned hazy, replaced by the work at hand.
Oh, sometimes I write them down, rough sketches on loose bits of paper but more often than not they go into that heap that resides somewhere deep inside me. Sometimes they come back on their own, happily for me. Other times, they need a little coaxing, a prod of my memory that sometimes takes place when I revisit older work. Seeing this earlier work in sequence, grouped together, kicks off memories and these older ideas sometimes jump forward. Old friends.
I had that feeling just this morning. I wasn’t going to write anything, was just going to get to work on some things that needed finishing and maybe start a new piece with the hope that the work would create its own inspiration. That is often the case. But I came across a piece from a group of work that I did back in 2011, sepia toned interiors with landscape seen distantly through windows. It excited me on many levels to see the whole group together and I had flashes of other ideas that had either been hiding or were newly forming. It energized me greatly.
Here’s one of those pieces from back in 2011 and what I wrote at the time:
This is a painting I recently finished, a small piece, only 4″ square on paper. It’s a mix of landscape and very uncomplicated still life with stark but distinct elements throughout. There’s a simplicity that runs through this scene that covers a depth of feeling, a pang from the heart.
I sat this aside for a day or two after finishing it and found myself coming back to it. There was a familiar tone to it that reminded me of something that I couldn’t quite identify until this morning when I walked into the studio. I looked at it as I sat down and instantly said to myself, “Far From Me.”
It was the old John Prine song from his first album which came out forty years back, in 1971. There was something in this piece that filled me the feeling of Prine’s lyrics of gradual loss:
And the sky is black and still now
On the hill where the angels sing
Ain’t it funny how an old broken bottle
Looks just like a diamond ring
But it’s far, far from me
This piece will probably always be that song now for me, a personal avatar for a song buried deep inside and often forgotten. Funny how things work…
I have a square cardboard box in one of the rooms of my studio. It’s not much to look at it and it certainly doesn’t have any significance attached to its exterior appearance. But for me it’s a treasure chest, my secret bounty. You see, this rather plain box holds hundreds of small pieces from my earliest forays in paint from twenty some years ago.
One of the things in my paintings that is often commented on and asked about is the Red Chair. Sometimes hanging in a tree, sometimes alone on a hilltop or in a field or sometimes on its side on winding path, it is one of those recurring images that I use as a symbol. It has come to represent ancestry and memory as well as acting for a symbolic stand-in (or sit-in) for humanity’s place in the landscape.
It’s the New Year and I am finally back at work. I’ve started working on some pieces that have been brewing in my mind for a while, some that are out of my comfort zone. I don’t know how they will turn out and there’s a good chance that most of this work will never see the light of day. I have found that quite often work that is too idea based or thought out never gets into any kind of natural flow or rhythm, at least for me. I have plenty of examples from over the years that I won’t show here.
Redtree Times 