“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Eleonora
This is another new small piece that is headed to the West End Gallery this weekend. I am finally hitting some responsive chords in my work and feeling a new creative flow building which is reassuring. This recent work has felt great coming out, free and easy without having to stuggle, and I think it shows in the work itself.
It’s all work that appeals to my own sense of what I want to see.
Maybe what I need to see right now.
That I can’t answer. But this feels good and right so I am pretty happy in the moment.
I am calling it Hold Back the Night after a favorite song from the 70’s, a cover by Graham Parker and the Rumour of the song of that title which was originally recorded by the Trammps a few years earlier. Very upbeat which matches my current view for my work in the near future.
As I said, pretty happy in the moment.
Of course, tomorrow might be a different story. So, for today, I am going to take in the colors and forms and sing along with Graham. Hope you’ll do the same. Have a good one but be careful out there.
Artistically I am still a child with a whole life ahead of me to discover and create. I want something, but I won’t know what it is until I succeed in doing it.
–Alberto Giacometti
The short statement above from the late artist Alberto Giacometti perfectly captures a feeling that has been with me for a long time now.
Now well into middle age, I have been a professional painter now for over twenty five years and have did okay with my career in art. I do what I want basically, earn a decent living, get some recognition here and there and have established my own little niche with my work.
It’s a decent place to be at this point in my career and a lot of young artists would love to be in my position.
But most days, even when I feel the tiredness from the wear and tear of the years weighing on me physically, I still feel new to this whole art thing, like I have just scratched the surface with my work. As Giacometti points out, I feel like there is a whole life, an endless horizon, ahead of me that is filled with all sorts of new possibilities.
New forms, new expressions, new inspirations, new voices and more– all yet unseen and unknown. Just something.
And again like Giacometti, I feel a huge gnawing desire to find that something but don’t have a clue as to what it might yet be.
That was the same feeling that I had when I was first experimenting with painting years ago. I had a hazy vision in the recesses of my mind that I wanted to pull out but didn’t truly know what it was or what it might look like until it had emerged. When it did finally come out, I instantly recognized it for what it was and what it could mean for me. I ran with the inspiration from it for many years.
But at some point during these years, I began to sense that another vision of the same sort resides somewhere down there in my mind, one that had yet to be found. One that I won’t know until it comes out.
So, though I am a sometimes tired middle-aged guy, I know that I am still a child artistically, one who still sees the whole wide world and all its potential before him.
I work and wait in anticipation that this child’s voice will someday be heard.
“Its was one of those events which at a crucial stage in one’s development arrive to challenge and stretch one to the limit of one’s ability and beyond, so that thereafter one has a new standard by which to judge oneself.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day
This large painting, something like a 18″ by 42″ oil on wood panel, has been hanging in my studio for quite some time now. It’s become like a permanent fixture on a wall in one of the rooms here in the studio, to the point that it sometimes surprises me when I take a moment to stop and take it in.
It’s called Challenger which came from my memories of the Challenger explosion in early 1986. I was ill with salmonella poisoning, laying on my couch in a feverish state with severe stomach cramping. I was in kind of a haze watching that day which added to the horror of the whole tragedy. I remember the brightness of that day with the light of the winter sun streaming through our windows. It just seemed too bright and positive a day for such a thing. That memory of the light still remains with me.
When first painted fifteen years later, I didn’t mean for this piece to represent that day, wasn’t looking to make a tribute of any kind. There was just something in the light and sky of this painting that brought me back to that day. I began to see the Red Tree and its posture as a sign of fortitude and determination, a symbol of the continuance of our journey even after taking such a hard blow.
Our own challenge.
We may very well be at our best when we face challenges. Any challenge, whether it is one which is taken on voluntarily or one which is forced upon us, requires us to call on all our strengths and creative powers in order to succeed because if we know beforehand that our success is guaranteed, it’s not really a challenge, is it?
I am pretty sure I have never shown this painting here before. It’s one of those paintings that I can’t judge objectively. It’s certainly not a great piece based on some standards but the inherent meaning in it makes it a memorable piece for me, at least.
It’s one of those pieces that I am glad never found a home outside this studio. I see it as a reminder to continue to push myself to set new and higher standards, to accept the failures when they come and not be too satisfied with any successes.
To face every day as a challenge to be overcome.
And in the times, when it’s so easy to fall prey to the paralysis of angst and worry, I can use the push it provides.
Good luck in facing your own challenge today.
PS: My memory is fading, obviously. I actually did write about this painting before, back in 2016. However, that post focused on the piece’s strengths and weaknesses and didn’t go into the meaning behind it for me.
“In normal life we hardly realize how much more we receive than we give, and life cannot be rich without such gratitude. It is so easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements compared with what we owe to the help of others.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison
Thanksgiving 2020. Not a year that we want to really celebrate, is it?
There were lots of tough days this past year for many people and there are certain more to come in the next few months.
But Thanksgiving, perhaps more so for this year, is a day of pause. Today, we get to take a brief moment to reflect on our past and present because that is where gratitude and love reside. Our fears and worries for a harsh near-future are temporarily set aside and we express our thanks for those folks who have made our lives possible, who have lifted us up, who have enriched our world.
This year we must make sure to include those often overlooked doctors, nurses, and all other healthcare workers. They are doing tough and remarkable work right now while putting their own health at risk every day. They are being asked to give so much right now and deserve our thanks and appreciation.
I have a long list of other folks that I could list here. My life, like all others, is the result of the assistance, guidance, encouragement, and love given to me by others.
Without these people and the many things they have given me, my life would no doubt be like an empty and dark room without windows. With them, it is a bright and airy room filled with windows that open to new and wondrous landscapes. The gratitude I feel now in the present moment for what they provided me in the past gives me greater hope for the future.
And maybe that’s the lesson of thanksgiving, that by recognizing our gratitude and debt for what others have given us up to now we can then see that we have the ability to get through anything the future holds for us.
“How can it be that I’ve never seen that lofty sky before? Oh, how happy I am to have found it at last. Yes! It’s all vanity, it’s all an illusion, everything except that infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing – that’s all there is. But there isn’t even that. There’s nothing but stillness and peace. Thank God for that!”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
Yesterday was one of those hard days in the studio. Nothing seemed to work. I felt like I was breaking in a new sets of hands and eyes and my mind was bouncing off the walls instead of locking in on the surface on which I was working. It was frustrating and I found myself early in the afternoon with a burning ball of anxiety in my gut, exactly the opposite feeling that my work normally produces in me.
It was just a slog. It reminded me of some of those days when I worked in construction and things weren’t going well. I remember standing in mud and falling snow early in the morning with a day of hefting chimney blocks up a ladder ahead of me. I was filled with a tired kind of dread.
I wanted to be anywhere but there but that wasn’t an option. So, I just put down my head and slogged onward and upward. God, what long and awful days those sometimes were. Cold. Wet. Aching and tired with a simmering anger of dissatisfaction just below the surface.
My life is different now. I am not cold and wet. Well, most days, at least. And I ache in different ways and my tiredness is different as well. But I still have days of simmering dissatisfaction and anxiety.
Yesterday was one of those. A log, as I said.
I took a break in the afternoon and took a walk in the cold wintry air. Walking among the trees of the local cemetery under a slate colored high sky changed my focus. It took a while but after some time it got better. Cleared the debris that was cluttering my mind. Then, it wasn’t a matter of trying to force something out of me now.
Just being alive under that the air of that infinite sky among the silence of the graves.
Just a small thing but it changed so much. It settled me and made me feel more connected to the world.
And that’s a good thing. It’s always good to put a slog day behind me.
Makes me look forward to being at work today.
The painting at the top is a 12″ by 12″ canvas from several years back called Placidarium. I chose it because its feeling, for me, represents what I am shooting for in my days in the studio. A placid place with color and space for the mind to explore. The fact that it it here in the studio is a mystery to me. It’s one of those pieces that felt right from inception to completion. Even now, it brings me a great deal of satisfaction to take it in. But that’s how it is sometimes– the pieces that resonate most with me are often the last to leave me now.
And that’s okay because it means I get to live with them a bit longer.
President-elect Joe Biden is on a path that will show him winning close to 51% of the votes with what will most likely be a margin of over6 million votes. It is, objectively speaking, the largest electoral rebuke of a sitting president since FDR unseated Hoover in 1932.
It seems that the people have clearly spoken. Even so, with a sitting administration that seems more hellbent on undermining our democracy than even pretending to address the pandemic that is now fully out of control across the country, it seems like a lot of folks need reassurance that the will of the people will be carried out. To that end, I felt that this post from a few years back, written at the time of the damaging government shutdown of early 2018, still applies.
Plus, I was needing to see some Rockwell Kent paintings this morning. That always does me some good.
Believe in reason and have a good day.
Rockwell Kent- The Trapper
Force against reason: reason, because it has the power of enlisting forces to fight for it, will win. From the recognition of that truth has come democracy.
-Rockwell Kent
There are a lot of things that could be said this morning, especially with a governmental shutdown taking effect overnight. This shutdown is the symbolic culmination of the political attitudes of the past twenty years that have led us away from compromise and reason as a means of governance. I am not going to go into my own grievances here.
I’ve done that enough.
But I will say that for all the anxiety this government produces as it tries to force itself closer and closer to some form of autocratic authoritarianism, I am somewhat optimistic. And that may be because I agree with the premise of the quote above from one of my favorite artists, Rockwell Kent.
I do feel that we are in struggle right now between force and reason, that the direction in which we are being directed via deception and fear-mongering– the force here–goes against the ideals and virtues that we have long professed as the basis for our democracy– reason. The idea that reason is enduring because it has the ability to enlist those who will fight for the truth of it is reassuring to me and seems to be backed by history.
What we are experiencing is reminiscent of the way other empires have ended, when the beliefs that grew these empires are set aside by rulers who see themselves as being above those ideals and virtues. But I believe we are still a nation with enough reasonable people to resist the forces of greed and nativism that have descended upon us.
And that gives me hope, even on these days that seem so dark.
So, thanks for reminding me of that, Mr. Kent. Here’s a video of some of Kent’s landscape work, primarily of some of my favorite landscapes from the Adirondacks, Vermont and Greenland. The format of the video is a little cutesy for my taste but it shows a lot of great work from Kent and features the music of Edgar Meyer and Joshua Bell. Can’t go wrong with that combo.
Part of the problem with the word ‘disabilities’ is that it immediately suggests an inability to see or hear or walk or do other things that many of us take for granted. But what of people who can’t feel? Or talk about their feelings? Or manage their feelings in constructive ways? What of people who aren’t able to form close and strong relationships? And people who cannot find fulfillment in their lives, or those who have lost hope, who live in disappointment and bitterness and find in life no joy, no love? These, it seems to me, are the real disabilities.
― Fred Rogers, The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember
I think the hardest part of the last four years has been the lack of unified joy in this country. This void comes from the top where we have a president*** who lacks whatever gene is responsible for finding joy in this world. The closest thing to joy is the pleasure he finds in the obsequious praise of toadies. In fact, he is annoyed by the joy of others. Have you ever heard him praise anyone without somehow trying to take part of their success for himself?
He is, as the late Mr. Rogers might have said, disabled in that way.
And while our joy should not be incumbent on his behavior, it sets a tone that has seeped through our society. His way of crudely dismissing the joy and potential of others is becoming the prevailing sentiment. He doesn’t look at a person and see their story of what they have went through or what they may become. He see’s only what they can do for him. Those voters in their red hats and American flags with his face adorning it are only valuable for the time being as voters and a fawning chorus.
They will never find joy through him or his hollow lies. Only his bitterness and his eventual dismissal of them as well when they are no longer useful.
His disability will become theirs.
The poet Elaine Griffin Baker put it very well with her observational lines below on the last few years of this president***. As she writes: We are rudderless and joyless.
Below it is an effective reading of a large part of it by Bruce Springsteen.
Have a good day.
Vote. Vote so that we might someday soon find joy again. Just vote.
“I’ve been wondering why this entire country seems to be under a cloud of constant misery. Why we all seem to be Russians waiting in line for toilet paper, meat, Lysol. Hoarding yeast and sourdough starter “in case we can’t get bread”, Buying stamps so that one of our most beloved institutions might survive. Why we all look like we are in bad need of a haircut, or a facial or a reason to dress up again and go somewhere. Anywhere There is no art in this White House. There is no literature or poetry in this White House. No music. No Kennedy Center award celebrations. There are no pets in this White House. No loyal man’s best friend. No Socks the family cat. No kids science fairs. No times when this president takes off his blue suit-red tie uniform and becomes human, except when he puts on his white shirt- khaki pants uniform and hides from Americans to play golf. There are no images of the first family enjoying themselves together in a moment of relaxation. No Obama’s on the beach in Hawaii moments, or Bushes fishing in Kennebunkport, no Reagans on horseback, no Kennedys playing touch football on the Cape. I was thinking the other day of the summer when George H couldn’t catch a fish and all the grandkids made signs and counted the fish-less days. And somehow, even if you didn’t even like GHB, you got caught up in the joy of a family that loved each other and had fun. Where did that country go? Where did all of the fun and joy and expressions of love and happiness go? We used to be a country that did the ice bucket challenge and raised millions for charity. We used to have a president that calmed and soothed the nation instead dividing it. And a First Lady that planted a garden instead of ripping one out. We are rudderless and joyless. We have lost the cultural aspects of society that make America great. We have lost our mojo. Our fun, our happiness. The cheering on of others. The shared experiences of humanity that makes it all worth it. The challenges AND the triumphs that we shared and celebrated. The unique can-do spirit Americans have always been known for. We are lost. We have lost so much In so short a time.”
Elections belong to the people. It’s their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.
― Abraham Lincoln
The US Elections Project anticipates that this year’s election could see a turnout of 65% of eligible voters casting ballots. That would be the highest turnout in well over a hundred years, going back to 1908.
That’s great news.
But it raises a burning question: Who are those 35% who won’t cast a vote?
Think about that. We’re having a crucial election that could well dictate our whole way of life in the coming years. The pandemic has shown that who leads this country can make a crucial difference in our everyday life, in how we react and recover from adversity. Or how we avoid it altogether.
Yet a third of the citizens of the nation don’t care enough who heads our government and won’t vote. They are willing to let others make that choice for them, willing to go with whatever the others want.
Do these people live their whole lives this way?
Voting is literally the least a citizen can do to participate in the affairs of the nation. It can make the difference between leading a nice, quiet life or furiously fighting an out of control fire for years to come.
Heed old Honest Abe’s words: Don’t turn your back to the fire.
Do your duty.
Vote.
Oh, and my personal suggestion is that you VOTE BLUE.
“To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities—I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not—that one endures.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power
I paused a little bit before using this quote from Nietzsche this morning. The use of anything from a philosopher whose work, and the book from which this excerpt has been taken, had been appropriated and distorted to justify their own ends , by the Nazis is a little risky, especially in this time of rising authoritarianism here and around the world. For many of us, just the title, The Will to Power, immediately conjures up imagery of invading Nazis goose-stepping through conquered cities in their quest for more and more power.
People naturally assume that that the power to which he is referring is ultimate power, ruling power to be exercised over others. That is how the Hitler and his ilk interpreted it. But Nietzsche was talking about two separate forms of power which are expressed in German as the words Kraft and Macht. Kraft refers to brute force, both physical and mental, while Macht refers to true power. Kraft is the animal force, that primal element that is possessed in all of us. Macht, on the other hand, is the power to control one’s own kraft and use it in positive ways.
Macht is the overcoming and controlling of the kraft within us.
And that’s where we are now. We have two elements within this nation, one who see the power of this nation as pure animal power, and another who recognizes our power– our kraft— but understands that it cannot solely guide our actions and future. It is unsustainable. History shows that clearly.
So, the question is how do we emerge from this? Do we have the fortitude to endure this tug of war between these two concepts?
Though I have my doubts on some days, in the long run I think we do have the ability to endure, actually.
And as Nietzsche expresses above, perhaps this struggle is just what we need to really move forward. Maybe we need some real hardship and suffering to understand the responsibility of our power. Maybe we need it to finally recognize that we must at some point sacrifice something of ourselves to a greater good, that our bounty does not come without a price.
Many of us have never had real hardship. I am not talking about normal loss and suffering that comes with being a human being. I am talking about widespread hurt that runs through the nation and touches most every citizen. Most of us have never had to sacrifice much for anyone.
Maybe we need the hurt and the humbling. While nobody wants to willingly take on great suffering, there are lessons to be learned from it. Perhaps that one can overcome and endure great hardship is the greatest of these. That and allowing more of us to develop a greater sense of empathy with those who continue to suffer around us.
Maybe we need to simply learn that we can endure.
Maybe then we can cross the divide between us and work together for some greater good.
Let’s hope, okay?
Hey, here’s some old Canned Heat from about 50 years back with a fitting message for any time. It’s Let’s Work Together. Now, have a good day.
I was tempted this morning to comment on the horror show taking place in the people’s white house. Every day reveals even more new lows. It’s like an unending fountain of plain badness. So it’s understandable that I might want to say a few words about yesterday’s revelations that began with the discovery that government lawyers admit that they can not locate the parents of 545 migrant children separated from their families at the border, effectively making them orphans. Or that I might want to discuss the uncovering of a bank account in a Chinese bank that was not disclosed on his public financial forms, one that saw $15+ millions flow through it in 2017. Or the fact that he paid tremendously more in taxes to China over the last few years than he did in America while his daughter raked in multiple Chinese trademarks that were fast-tracked in the same year.
I was also tempted by his backhanded insult to the people of Erie, PA last night, when he said at a rally there that he wouldn’t have come or even have to be there if it weren’t for the pandemic. I have been fortunate to know the people of Erie for over twenty five years and know the great pride they take in their hometown so I could easily riff on the absolute hurt in those words.
But I can’t this morning. The awfulness that is currently in place is all too self-evident and becomes even more apparent with each new day.
Hell, with each new hour.
So, today I just want to share a beautiful couple of paragraphs from an essay by the great poet/essayist/environmentalist Wendell Berry. I was looking for something to go along with the painting at the top and as soon as I came across his essay I knew it was a perfect fit for this piece and what I see in it.
The painting is Solitude and Reverence, a 24″ by 36″ painting that was painted in 2015. It’s one of those pieces that have a sense of completeness and fulfilled purpose that often make then standout for me. I know this has been a favorite since I put my brush down after finishing it. For me, the message is that this world, this life, is a gift and we have stopped treating it as such. We show little appreciation for the bounty that this planet has gifted us while allowing us to spend our short time upon it.
We treat it like we were spoiled children with no awareness of the advantages and good fortune bestowed upon us. We only feel entitlement.
Gosh, sounds like I am getting around to criticizing the president*** again, doesn’t it?
Well. maybe that’s why I am so drawn to this piece this morning. It is the antithesis to the ugly attitude that has swept across the nation in recent years, the same that elevated him* to office.
It is peace. It is cooperation. It is shared sacrifice. It is humble. It is reverent.
It is understanding.
It is all I ask of my place in this world.
Is that too much to ask?
Here’s a bit from the Wendell Berry essay. Have a good day.
“We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. And this has been based on the even flimsier assumption that we could know with any certainty what was good even for us. We have fulfilled the danger of this by making our personal pride and greed the standard of our behavior toward the world – to the incalculable disadvantage of the world and every living thing in it. And now, perhaps very close to too late, our great error has become clear. It is not only our own creativity – our own capacity for life – that is stifled by our arrogant assumption; the creation itself is stifled.
We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and to learn what is good for it. We must learn to cooperate in its processes, and to yield to its limits. But even more important, we must learn to acknowledge that the creation is full of mystery; we will never entirely understand it. We must abandon arrogance and stand in awe. We must recover the sense of the majesty of creation, and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For I do not doubt that it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it. ”
― Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays
Redtree Times 