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Posts Tagged ‘Principle Gallery’

Trip the Light Fantastic— Coming to Principle Gallery, June 2025



Come, and trip it as ye go
On the light fantastick toe…

–John Milton, L’Allegro, (1645)



Trip the light fantastic. From Milton’s 1645 poem, it originally meant to dance nimbly. But for some reason, perhaps its phrasing or the derivations of the term over the centuries, it’s a term that summons up all sorts of images in my mind. But for the purpose of the new painting shown here, nimbly dancing might well fit as a description.

Using the phrase as its title definitely came to mind as the painting took on its final form. With the lively, rhythmic spirals and bright undercolor in the sky along with the rolling undulations of the sea, there is a feeling of a dance of sorts in piece for me. Of movement and countermovement, of rhythm matching rhythm and the joy that comes when that movement seemingly becomes effortless.

As though the two rhythms have become one.

As you may know, I am not a sailor. So, I can only imagine that there are those magical moments when the sea, the winds, and the sailor feel as one. I would imagine that would be an exhilarating feeling of unbridled joy and freedom.

That’s what I see in this piece. I feel lightened and brightened by it. But that’s just me…

This painting, Trip the Light Fantastic, is 15″ by 30″ on canvas and is from my annual solo exhibit at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA. This year’s exhibit, my 26th there, is titled Entanglement and opens on Friday, June 13. Much of the work in this year’s show deals thematically with the bands and tangles of energy that make up everything, including us in our human form.

Much of it entails representing that energy in the sky of these pieces in a variety of ways– as twisting knot-like ribbons without beginning or end or cacophonous bands that interweave over and under one another. There are also some, such as this painting, that employ colorful rhythmic spirals.

It all makes for a striking look in each piece, one that make me really stop and consider each. The skies are often the central figures in this work, as much as the boat or the Red Tree or the house, and it’s hard to not dwell on finding some sort of meaning in them. There’s an almost meditative, therapeutic feel in many of these pieces for myself, both in the painting and the viewing.

Does that translate to other viewers? I don’t know. And maybe that doesn’t matter in the long run. It felt like I didn’t have any choice but to paint these pieces.  In some weird way, they demanded to be painted at this point in time.

Maybe I needed them for some reason. Some purpose.

I haven’t figured out the why of this. I only have the what at this point. And maybe, like so many things, I will never get the answer I seek. Maybe I am supposed to only ask the question.

If that’s the case, so be it. I am satisfied in continuing my search without answers if every so often I get to trip the light fantastic…

 

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Gaining Understanding— Coming to Principle Gallery, June 2025



“Accustom yourself every morning to look for a moment at the sky and suddenly you will be aware of the air around you, the scent of morning freshness that is bestowed on you between sleep and labor. You will find every day that the gable of every house has its own particular look, its own special lighting. Pay it some heed…you will have for the rest of the day a remnant of satisfaction and a touch of coexistence with nature. Gradually and without effort the eye trains itself to transmit many small delights.”

–Hermann Hesse, My Belief: Essays on Life and Art



I am going to take a short break from the blog to try to catch up on painting and other preparation for my June solo show, Entanglement, at the Principle Gallery. I feel like I am behind schedule but can’t tell if that is reality or just a feeling, maybe a by-product of pre-show anxiety. I just get the sense at the moment that I at least need to feel like I am caught up.

I didn’t want to leave without sharing a new painting from the Principle Gallery show. The piece at the top is one of the smaller paintings, 10″ by 10″ on wood panel, from the exhibit. I call it Gaining Understanding.

I thought the passage above, especially that first sentence, from Hermann Hesse was appropriate for this painting. It also pretty much describes my early morning walk through the woods to the studio, usually in darkness. So often I stop along the way and look through the trees at the sky. The bracing coolness of the forest air on my skin, which is still warm from sleep, is refreshing.

I find that I feel closer to some kind understanding on those days when I start them in this way. I feel sharper, more in tune with something beyond me. It has a calming effect that seems to slow time a bit.

This small painting reflects that feeling for me.

I’m going to leave it at that before taking this short break. Well, I’ll throw in a song as well. This is If I Could Only Fly from the late Blaze Foley. He’s probably not on your radar, unless you’re in Texas or have followed Outlaw Country or Americana music for a long time. Foley died in a shooting in 1989 at the age of 40, never really achieving wider notoriety. But his music lives on, providing a rich legacy, as do the many quirky stories of his life. As the late Townes Van Zandt said of Foley, “He’s only gone crazy once. Decided to stay.” The writing in this song and his enunciation reminds me greatly of the late John Prine which makes sense as Prine recorded Foley’s song Clay Pigeons for a 2006 album.

I’ll be back soon. Thanks!



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The Wisdom Beyond Words– Coming to Principle Gallery, June 2025



There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness. This mysterious Unity and Integrity is Wisdom, the Mother of all, Natura naturans. There is in all things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence that is a fount of action and joy. It rises up in wordless gentleness and flows out to me from the unseen roots of all created being, welcoming me tenderly, saluting me with indescribable humility. This is at once my own being, my own nature, and the Gift of my Creator’s Thought and Art within me, speaking as Hagia Sophia, speaking as my sister, Wisdom.

— Thomas Merton, Hagia Sophia (1961)



I was looking for something to accompany the new painting shown here, The Wisdom Beyond Words, and came across this passage from Thomas Merton. It’s the opening section of his prose poem Hagia Sophia written sometime around 1961.  Though it speaks through the dogma of Catholicism, it matches very well the belief system I somewhat laid out here a week or so back. As it often is with most religions, the underlying structure and belief is very much the same idea but with symbols, stories, and representations that reflect cultural differences. 

In short, this passage captured in words what I see and sense in this painting. It could very well be used to describe the theme of my Entanglement exhibit that opens June 13 at the Principle Gallery, which I have described as being how everything is contained in small part in every other thing. Much as it is in the theory put forward by Stephen Hawking that when a star dies it collapses into itself until it is finally a single tiny point of zero radius, infinite density, and infinite curvature of spacetime at the heart of the black hole formed from the star’s collapse. A single point of immense mass and energy This was referred to as a Singularity

Hawking looked at this singularity and wondered since this was the end point of star’s death could it not also be the starting point for future new universes that might emerge if this singularity were to explode outward– the Big Bang Theory.

The underlying thought is that the universe and all that it is was once a single thing before the Big Bang created all that we know the universe to be now from that single point.

We were all part of one thing. We were that one thing.

And it’s that unity and wisdom of all things, much like that of which Merton wrote, that I sense in this painting. 

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Waiting For the End of the World – At Principle Gallery, June 2025



Someone called from across the water
‘Are you coming off that island soon?’
I hollered back
‘No, not yet—
I’m waiting for the end of the world.’
Then I turned back to watch the sky
As its currents and clouds
Surged and volleyed
In every way we know
And some we don’t know
And I thought to myself
With the sky racing around me
‘What a fine day it is–
Waiting for the end of the world.’



At the West End Gallery painting demo this past Saturday, someone asked when I titled my paintings, if I ever had title in mind as I worked on a piece. I said that generally it came after the painting was complete, when it was fully formed and whatever it was going to say was written on its surface. I didn’t say it quite that way, of course. 

I added to my answer and spoke about the painting at the top, a small 6″ by 12″ canvas, that is headed to the Principle Gallery for my June show there. I described that, while painting this piece, the verse above came into my head and was all I could think of as I worked. Shifting colors and words, it was a strange collaboration of thoughts for me, as I simultaneously edited and adjusted both the painting and the verse as I worked.

It made the words and the image bind one to the other in my mind.

Now, I realize the title may not seem compatible with the painting at first glance. I initially worried that the title was out of step with the theme of my upcoming show, Entanglement, which is about the unity of all energies and the idea that there is no beginning or end.

But what I see in the painting is a kind of tranquil acceptance of whatever hand fate deals in the here and now. An acceptance that allows you to recognize and appreciate the beauty of this moment and place.

A feeling of oneness with the universe, realizing that the end of the world is not the end of being. 

And that thought is completely in line with the theme of the show.

It’s a simple piece that packs a lot into a small space. But sometimes even the tiniest of things contain all that makes up this universe. As do we all.

Here’s song that I shared about five years back. It’s Push the Sky Away from a 2019 performance at the Sydney Opera House by Nick Cave, pianist Warren Ellis and the Sydney Philharmonic Orchestra. The song was originally from Nick Cave with the Bad Seeds.

Okay, that’s the end. No, not of the world– just this blog post.

But glimpsing out the window, it looks like a fine day to be waiting for the end of the world.



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The Communing– Coming to Principle Gallery, June



In the spell of the wonderful rhythm of the finite he fetters himself at every step, and thus gives his love out in music in his most perfect lyrics of beauty. Beauty is his wooing of our heart; it can have no other purpose. It tells us everywhere that the display of power is not the ultimate meaning of creation; wherever there is a bit of colour, a note of song, a grace of form, there comes the call for our love. Hunger compels us to obey its behests, but hunger is not the last word for a man. There have been men who have deliberately defied its commands to show that the human soul is not to be led by the pressure of wants and threat of pain. In fact, to live the life of man we have to resist its demands every day, the least of us as well as the greatest. But, on the other hand, there is a beauty in the world which never insults our freedom, never raises even its little finger to make us acknowledge its sovereignty. We can absolutely ignore it and suffer no penalty in consequence. It is a call to us, but not a command. It seeks for love in us, and love can never be had by compulsion. Compulsion is not indeed the final appeal to man, but joy is. And joy is everywhere; it is in the earth’s green covering of grass; in the blue serenity of the sky; in the reckless exuberance of spring; in the severe abstinence of grey winter; in the living flesh that animates our bodily frame; in the perfect poise of the human figure, noble and upright; in living; in the exercise of all our powers; in the acquisition of knowledge; in fighting evils; in dying for gains we never can share. Joy is there everywhere; it is superfluous, unnecessary; nay, it very often contradicts the most peremptory behests of necessity. It exists to show that the bonds of law can only be explained by love; they are like body and soul. Joy is the realisation of the truth of oneness, the oneness of our soul with the world and of the world-soul with the supreme lover.

Rabindranath Tagore, Sādhanā: The Realisation of Life (1913)



This is a new painting that is included in Entanglement, this year’s edition of my annual solo exhibit which opens June 13 at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA. This painting while modest in size at 14″ by 14″ speaks volumes about the theme behind much of the work in this show, of which I gave a rough outline in a post here on Monday.

This painting is titled The Communing. and it speaks to, as the great Indian poet/philosopher Rabindranath Tagore put it in the passage above: the truth of oneness, the oneness of our soul with the world and of the world-soul with the supreme lover.

This goes back to the concept of singularity, one expounded by Stephen Hawking that theorized that the universe and all that it is was once a single thing, a single tiny point of zero radius and infinite density, before it the Big Bang exploded it and created all that we know the universe to be now.

We were all part of one thing. We were and, for that matter, still are that one thing. A oneness.

That’s what I see in this piece. I see myself as the figure on the rooftop, reaching out to the hidden knowledge of the universe that are represented here by the twists and entanglements of the bands that make up the sky. They create a sense of both mystery and interconnectedness. Of our oneness. They raise questions that can’t be answered while at the same time giving a sense of understanding.

And isn’t that the basis of all belief systems?

This was the first piece that employed these knot-like bands in the sky, and it immediately sparked something within me. It was like I needed to see them and this piece at that point. I have no idea how people will react to this painting and the ones that followed it. But, as I commented to my wife, it doesn’t matter– I needed to paint this now, if only for what I take from it.

It speaks to something needed by me now. And if it speaks or doesn’t speak to others at this time, so be it.

That’s the story of all art, right?

If you like, I’ll see you up on the roof…

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The Entanglement— Coming in June to Principle Gallery



So the universe is not quite as you thought it was. You’d better rearrange your beliefs, then. Because you certainly can’t rearrange the universe.

–Isaac Asimov, Nightfall (1941)


 I have been extraordinarily fortunate to have had solo exhibits at the Principle Gallery in Old Town Alexandria, VA every year since 2000. This year’s exhibit, my 26th solo effort there, opens Friday, June 13, and is titled Entanglement. The painting at the top is the first piece from this show that I am sharing. It is titled The Entanglement.

At my last Gallery Talk at the Principle Gallery this past September, I spoke briefly about my own belief system. I can’t remember exactly how I put it since I pretty much speak off the cuff at Gallery Talks, but I vaguely remember beckoning at my work on the walls behind me and stating that one could observe my entire belief system in those paintings. It was not of any particular religion nor was it a rejection of any other. I pointed out that we all have a belief system of some sort. Even Atheism or whatever else you might call believing in nothing is a belief system. Mine, as shown in my work, was simply how I saw the totality of the world and the universe, expressed in a way that my simple mind could comprehend and accept. 

I don’t know that I was able then to fully explain it in a way that was satisfactory to anyone but myself. Probably not. But I felt kind of freed up by just admitting to a belief system, however unformed and vague it might seem. Thought I had felt this way about the link between my work and my beliefs, saying it aloud made me look at my work in a different way. It became the impetus for this year’s exhibit.

Entanglement, the title of this exhibit, also is perhaps the most vital aspect of what I believe. Over the coming weeks, I will try to explain it a bit more, though my perception of it shifts and moves all the time.

You see, my belief system is not based on any dogma or doctrine or on any sort of demand for certainty. Human uncertainty is a given in my belief system.  I say human uncertainty because I do believe there is some sort of certainty in my belief system. But it’s more in the way of the immutable laws of physics. Well, the laws physics as an ill-educated person sees them.

And that’s where Entanglement enters the picture here. I see us as being manifestations of waves and bands of energy that have merged together to manifest and create flesh and blood beings. These beings, we humans, are temporary, existing for but a limited time on this physical plane. When that time comes to an end, their energy rejoins the bands and waves are constantly in motion around us.

We have free will in my belief system. There is no central figure overseeing and guiding our movements or choices while we in our physical form. Our freely chosen actions either create harmony or disharmony with these bands of energy. Good as we understand it might be seen as being in harmony with this energy while Evil might be seen as being in disharmony, which creates a disruption in the intricate pattern which these energy bands create.

However, it is a self-healing system, one that instantaneously begins to modulate and return itself to a state of harmony. The results of these healing actions within the system are sometimes referred to here as karma. As far as I my limited knowledge of history tells me, though there is always someone using their free will to choose disharmony, the system always comes back to a state of harmony within a reasonably short time. In short, evil seldom prevails for an extended period of time.

Much of what makes up this belief system of energy waves and bands is not inconsistent with other religions or systems of belief. Much of the underlying theology for most religions, once you strip away parochial dogma, is fairly consistent throughout the world. The Ten Commandments, after all, are generally rules which aim to create harmony and discourage disharmony. You needn’t be Christian to see that they aren’t bad rules to live by.

I am going to take a break from this for now. I get a little self-conscious talking about this, imagining someone reading this and rolling their eyes and saying, “What a nutjob!”

Not that I need to defend myself, I will say that it makes this world somewhat tolerable for me. When things are going bad for us as species, it allows me to believe that the system is already beginning to correct itself, aided by those on this physical plane who sense this disharmony and attempt to bring the world back into rhythm with their efforts.

There’s a lot more to it that I will share in the near future.  Actually, if you have read along for a while, you probably know what I believe already.

Now, getting back to this painting, The Entanglement. For me, I see this as being a scene of the harmony of which I have describing. The bands of energy move all around in patterns and directions we cannot sense and will never fully understand while we are here. It also creates a feeling of placidity in the scene as well as a sense of connection to the immense power behind it.

We are, after all, built from that energy, distinct parts of it. Our energy, our spirit, as we might call it, will forever be entangled with those ever-swirling bands of energy.

This connection and entanglement is the focus of much of the work from this year’s show. I find myself staring intently at the swirls and tangles in the skies I have painted for this show. Engrossed by its layers and shifts, I find myself sitting for a long time in front of some of these new pieces, often asking where it begins and where it ends. 

And I know there are no answers to these questions. And that’s just fine with me.

I don’t need an answer from that which I am.



The Entanglement is 18″ by 24″ on canvas and will be part of Entanglement, my annual exhibit at the Principle Gallery, opening Friday, June 13, 2025.

 

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Between Order and Chaos– At the Principle Gallery



Most people live in almost total darkness… people, millions of people whom you will never see, who don’t know you, never will know you, people who may try to kill you in the morning, live in a darkness which — if you have that funny terrible thing which every artist can recognize and no artist can define — you are responsible to those people to lighten, and it does not matter what happens to you. You are being used in the way a crab is useful, the way sand certainly has some function. It is impersonal. This force which you didn’t ask for, and this destiny which you must accept, is also your responsibility. And if you survive it, if you don’t cheat, if you don’t lie, it is not only, you know, your glory, your achievement, it is almost our only hope — because only an artist can tell, and only artists have told since we have heard of man, what it is like for anyone who gets to this planet to survive it. What it is like to die, or to have somebody die; what it is like to be glad. Hymns don’t do this, churches really cannot do it. The trouble is that although the artist can do it, the price that he has to pay himself and that you, the audience, must also pay, is a willingness to give up everything, to realize that although you spent twenty-seven years acquiring this house, this furniture, this position, although you spent forty years raising this child, these children, nothing, none of it belongs to you. You can only have it by letting it go. You can only take if you are prepared to give, and giving is not an investment. It is not a day at the bargain counter. It is a total risk of everything, of you and who you think you are, who you think you’d like to be, where you think you’d like to go — everything, and this forever, forever.

–James Baldwin, The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity talk, 1962



Yesterday’s post was about art enduring times of strife and repression. Today, I am offering a snippet from a 1962 talk author James Baldwin gave at the Community Church in NYC in which he spoke of the responsibility of art and artists to humanity, one in which they were required to reveal and share the truth of our common experience as humans. This would serve as a clarifying light that would diminish the darkness that surrounds us.

I will note here that Baldwin’s talk took place at the height of the Cold War, only weeks after the Cuban Missile Crisis. The war in Viet Nam was ramping up and the struggle for Civil Rights was at a bitter juncture at that same time. It was a dark and scary point in time.

In the here and now, I think we can relate to that feeling of impending darkness.

It is a time in which art– and by art, I include all forms of art: literature and poetry, visual arts, music, dance, theater, etc. — is a necessity. Not as diversion or distraction. But for its ability to reflect the truth and gravity of the moment and cast a bright light against the darkness.

It is a light that allows us to see we have not been alone in the dark as we had feared. It also lets us clearly see the struggle ahead that will require action and sacrifice. And knowing these things focuses our attention which has a calming, centering effect. 

It is then that blind fear is often replaced with clear-eyed courage.

Saul Bellow said a similar thing in a Paris Review interview:

Art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer, too, in the eye of the storm… Art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.

Like Baldwin’s talk, Bellow’s interview took place in 1962 when the world was in crisis. It was a time that made clear that art was a necessity. It illuminated the issues and brought a focus that, in many ways, swayed public opinion that in many ways shaped the future.

It was a floodlight in the dark. 

Though it is a different time with different circumstances and a world much changed via technology, we’re at a similar point in history today. Art remains a necessity in bringing the light. 

Art will bring the light, people.

Let us make sure we focus so that we may see and hear what it is saying.

 

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Student and Master— At Principle Gallery

The thought manifests as the word;

The word manifests as the deed;

The deed develops into habit;

And habit hardens into character;

So watch the thought and its ways with care,

And let it spring from love

Born out of concern for all beings…

 

As the shadow follows the body,

As we think, so we become.

 —From the DhammapadaSayings of the Buddha






I am short on time this morning but wanted to share a passage from the Buddha that I have shared here before. Its message, that we ultimately become what we think and say, has been echoed by philosophers through the ages which speaks to its truth.

I have been thinking about this message of caution recently, seeing the transformation of so many people by their casual acceptance and adaption of the ugliness in both word and deed that comes down from the leaders of our current government. This ugliness of thought and word has transformed into deed and habit and has finally transformed into a character defined by this ugliness.

Though it may not reflect the character of most of us, it is this ugly character that defines us to the rest of the world. My worry is that the rest of us may fall prey to that character, that we allow our words and deeds to alter who we are in ways that are irredeemable.

No answers here on that front, of course, outside of saying that one should be wary of falling into that trap, that downward spiral that leads to a darkened alteration of one’s character.

Think the Light. Speak the Light. Become the Light.

Easier said than done. But it can be done.

Anyway, that’s it this morning outside of a song from powerful final album, You Want It Darker, from the late great Leonard Cohen which very much sends the same message. This is Steer Your Way.



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In Eminence— At Principle Gallery

The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity.

–André Gide, journal entry, November 23, 1940



The journal entry above from Nobel Prize-winning author André Gide very much speaks to me. Though it serves many purposes for me, I tend to view my work as a means of absorbing and acknowledging the anxieties and pressures that this world often presses upon us, dampening their effects, and then moving, to use Gide’s term, toward serenity.

The darker aspects of the world are still there, an underlying presence that creates a contrasting tension, a counterpoint that serves as a starting point from which serenity and other aspects of light can build.

I am talking about the emotional tone of the work here, but it also roughly describes my actual painting process. Much of my work starts with a dark surface on which light and brightness is built.

Even my work with transparent inks that is more watercolor-ish in nature employs a process where a darker layer of ink is first applied. almost as a dark puddle on a light– usually white and prepped with layers of gesso– surface. This layer, this puddle of ink, is then little by little removed, each deduction revealing more and more light from the underlying surface.

From darkness comes light…

Let’s have a tune this morning. The song is I See a Darkness. It’s one I have played a couple of times over the years, once by Will Oldham (aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy) who wrote and originally recorded it and the other as covered by Johnny Cash, from the American Recordings period late in his life. His work from this time, when his scarred voice carried his age and emotion so eloquently, is potent stuff.

Light coming from darkness…

 I think this part of its chorus fittingly applies to today’s post and to life in general:

Oh, no, I see a darkness.
Did you know how much I love you?
Is a hope that somehow you,
Can save me from this darkness.


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Too Many Moons — At Principle Gallery

Madness is a special form of the spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life, since life itself is full of craziness and at bottom utterly illogical. Man strives toward reason only so that he can make rules for himself. Life itself has no rules. That is its mystery and its unknown law. What you call knowledge is an attempt to impose something comprehensible on life.

–Carl Jung, Liber Novus



An attempt to impose something comprehensible on life

That sounds like a pretty tall task, given the sheer lack of logic and reason it so often displays. It also sounds like the way artists and writers often describe what they are trying to find in their work– an understanding of what is and isn’t. A revealing of the possibility of that which we cannot see and a new perspective on that which we can.

And in doing so, make their own rules while discarding others. Whatever it takes to make sense of the insensible. Using the illogical to find some sort of logic.

That makes sense in a world that seldom moves in a straight line.

Where that takes us, I don’t know. As an artist– if that is what I am– following that twisting and turning line to some sort of end is the mystery and the thrill of it.

Pretzel logic.

And like a pretzel, following its line always brings us back to where we began. Do we know any more at that point?

Who knows?

Maybe that’s the whole point, to let us know that we can’t know what we can’t know. That we must embrace the mystery.

Sounds good. But, of course, that is the result of some pretzel logic.

Okay, that was a long way around the pretzel to get to this week’s Sunday Morning Music. Here is Steely Dan and Pretzel Logic.

But, of course, you knew that, right? Can’t fool you guys…



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