Moment of Pride— At West End Gallery
Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.
It is easy to display a wound, the proud scars of combat. It is hard to show a pimple.
–Leonard Cohen, The Favorite Game (1963)
I am not sure why I chose this passage from a Leonard Cohen novel to pair with this painting, Moment of Pride. Maybe it is because I just discovered, even though I have been a fan of his music for a very long time now, that Cohen had been a poet and novelist for ten years before finding his way into the world of music.
During that time in the 1950s up through the mid 60’s, he experienced a variety of ups and downs with varying degrees of success, as is the case with any artist. But he did have quite a bit of acclaim. In fact, in 1966, a critic for the Boston Globe in a review for his novel Beautiful Losers compared him favorably with James Joyce. There was even a 1965 film, Ladies and Gentlemen… Mr. Leonard Cohen, produced by the National Film Board of Canada on the work and life of the author/poet, a couple of years before he set out for what was to be a legendary career as a singer/songwriter.
I was kind of surprised that I didn’t know this upon discovering it this morning. Adds a layer of interest to what was already an interesting and unique figure in the world of music. Coincidentally, a song of his just came on the station I listen to each morning.
But it was his words on a pimple that struck me and how we proudly display our wounds and scars but try our best to conceal our natural flaws., often viewing them with shame, fearing that we will be somehow judged on them. This observation resonated me personally, as it probably does for most of you, as well.
Been there. Done that.
As with everything, I immediately equated it with my work. After all, I do think of each piece as having a life of its own and like all living things, each has its fair share of imperfections. When I first began to paint, I viewed these little flaws in much the same way that each of us does our flaws, trying to hide them. To somehow deny that they were present and part of the painting.
But time taught me that these little flaws and glitches were the thing that made them unique, that gave them depth of flavor, to use a culinary term. After a while I began to celebrate these pimples in my work. Don’t get me wrong here. I don’t try to create them nor are they planned beforehand. It’s just that I know that sometimes burst through the surface, like pimples do, but do nothing to detract from what is beautiful in the painting.
If anything, they validate its humanity.
How this applies to this painting is kind of circumspect. Oh, it has little flaws throughout. I am sure I can find plenty if I want to concentrate on them. I like this piece as it is, no matter how many little blips I could find.
How it came about might apply. I don’t know, maybe it doesn’t. No matter. Consider this a pimple in this blog, okay? A couple of years ago, some friends and their daughter stopped in and I gave them a quick tour of the studio, something I seldom do. While they were here, I gave them a quick demo of my wet painting style. I opened the container of some sepia ink and its stench filled the space.
There’s a longer story about the ink but the short one is that I have been working off of a number of 5-gallon pails of ink for about the last 17 years now. Some have organic elements that cause them to almost ferment in the buckets. The black and sepia are most susceptible to this. When I open these buckets there is often a skim of mold on the top of the ink and along with it, a pungent stink that hits you in the face like a punch.
It’s not quite so bad when I open the smaller containers in which I keep the ink for use on my painting table but it still bites pretty hard sometimes. On this occasion it was enough that it caused their teenage daughter to immediately run from the room in revulsion. Laughing a bit, I proceeded to paint the top block of color as Ebba, the daughter, watched from a considerable distance. It started with sepia which I then diluted. I then removed most of the sepia and replaced it with a red that I washed down to the shade you see.
That ended the demo for that day. I set this little block of color aside for a long time, always chuckling at Ebba’s response to the smell of the sepia whenever I would pull it out to consider it. I didn’t know if it would ever be another other than an anecdote.
But there was some latent potential in it that spoke to me. Something well beyond a mere anecdote, though that is part of it now. I think it was the idea that the many elements that go into creating beauty often seem less than beautiful in themselves.
That is where the title, Moment of Pride, came from. The fact that it takes effort and stink, sweat and sometimes blood, to create something that transcends its parts and its inherent flaws is a point of pride for me. I sometimes stand in front of a piece, unshaven and unwashed in grubby, paint-covered clothes with the stench of acrid paint in the air and feel a sense of awe for what I am seeing. I sometimes wonder how something possessing even a small degree of such beauty can come from such a person as I. How can such a thing seem to dispel all my flaws, hide all my pimples?
I don’t really know. And to be honest, I don’t really care. So long as it keeps me with that small sense of pride and awe, I will live and die a happy man. Pimples and all.
Amen.
This piece, by the way, is included in the Little Gems show opening tonight at the West End Gallery. The Opening Reception is from 5-7 PM.
I guess we should have a Leonard Cohen song, right? The natural pick is Anthem, a song that I have shared here a few times. Let’s go with that. This is a live version from 2008 which opens with Cohen speaking the song’s famous lyrics which applies to this post: Ring the bells that still can ring / Forget your perfect offering / There is a crack, a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in
Redtree Times 