I featured an older piece here on the blog last month, a painting that was considered my Dark Work from around 2002. The piece shown above is another of these paintings and is one that I have always considered solely mine. I very seldom consider a painting being for myself only but this one has always felt as though it should stay with me. It is titled Stranger (In a Strange Land) which is derived from the title of Robert Heinlein’s famous sci-fi novel which in turn was derived from the words of Moses in Exodus 2:22.
The landscape in this piece has an eerie, alien feel to it under that ominous sky. When I look at it I am instantly reminded of the feeling of that sense of not belonging that I have often felt throughout my life, as though I was that stranger in that strange land. The rolling field rows in the foreground remind me just a bit of the Levite cloth that adorned Moses when he was discovered in the Nile as an infant, a symbol of origin and heritage that acts as a comforting element here, almost like a swaddling blanket for the stranger as he views the landscape before him.
As I said, it is one of those rare pieces that I feel is for me alone, that has only personal meaning, even though I am sure there are others who will recognize that same feeling in this . For me this painting symbolizes so much that feeling of alienation that I have experienced for much of my life, that same feeling from which my other more optimistic and hopeful work sprung as a reaction to it. Perhaps this is where I found myself and the more hopeful work was where I aspired to be.
Anyway, that’s enough for my five-cent psychology lesson for today. In short, this is a piece that I see as elemental to who I am and where I am going. This one stays put .
Here’s a little of the great ( and I think underappreciated) Leon Russell from way back in 1971 singing, appropriately, Stranger in a Stranger Land…
I don’t think I’ve ever featured any music from NRBQ on this blog which is surprising because they are always rock solid. Consistency is a trait I really appreciate and NRBQ has been just that for over 46 years now, which seems like a crazy amount of time for a group that has went kind of under the radar of the pop charts for most of that time but has built a cult following that counts some of the biggest names in music as fans. They were even on TV as the house band on The Simpsons for a couple of seasons ( see Matt Groening’s drawing of the band above.) They are known as musician’s musicians with a real sense of humor and a huge playlist that enables them to pretty much play anything. I don’t know if they still do this but they used to have a milk crate with question marks painted on it that leader Terry Adams would stand on to take requests from the audience.
Redtree Times 