This is another new painting that is headed to the West End Gallery for my annual show which opens in a couple of weeks, on July 20. I call this piece, a 24″ by 36″ canvas, Out of the Loop, a title that seems to fit this piece quite naturally. Fits me, as well. I’ve always felt a bit of the outsider, sometimes despite my own desires but most often by my own choice. Maybe it’s like Groucho Marx explained when he resigned from the Friars Club: “I do not care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.” Or maybe it’s a personal view that being in the loop sometimes feels a bit restraining, in the way a noose restrains you from breathing.
In this painting, the houses with the Red Roofs really take on a sense of anonymity with their doorless and windowless sides giving them the feeling of faces without eyes or mouths. They seem completely alien to the patterned fields which rings them as well as to the Red Tree which stands just outside on the crest of the hill. Or the edge of the world, depending on how one views this.
I’m making this painting sound darker in nature than it actually seems to me. I think it’s a very upbeat and hopeful painting, a celebration of the individual. The sunlight breaking over the horizon is filled with the optimism of the future and the color and rhythm of the fields are like the petals of a flower with the houses of the inner loop as the centerpoint.
As you can see, I see this piece in many different ways, which I like. It’s always nice to have a piece give you something different with each view. Hopefully, others will see it in this way as well.
Redtree Times 