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Posts Tagged ‘West End Gallery’

Deepen the Present

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 26, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Natural— At West End Gallery

Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.

–Thomas Merton, The Ascent to Truth

I had something in mind yesterday that I wanted to write this morning. It was a sort of vent. I won’t even mention the subject of this proposed diatribe but there is enough horrific crap floating around that won’t have to strain your imagination if you guess.

But when I finally plopped in front of my laptop, I had lost the desire to vent. It wasn’t a moment of exhaustion or dejection. I just wanted to sit in peace for a little bit this morning. Wanted to simply take in the quiet of the darkness around me.

Wanted to deepen the present, to steal a phrase from the Thomas Merton quote above. As he implied, you can’t hope or wait for solitude to arrive. It’s here in the present, always near and waiting to embrace you if only you can slow your mind enough to detect it.

That’s seems simplistic and much easier said than done. After all, it’s a hard task to slow the mind given the speed and anxiety of life today. There’s even a little guilt in doing so, especially for a compassionate and caring person. It might feel selfish for some to feel peaceful solitude while others suffer.

But solitude often brings clarity. And clarity of thought often brings decisive action. and that is what is needed in this world right now.

So, for this morning I am guiltlessly seeking the clarity that comes in solitude. I know it’s in here somewhere.

Here’s Across the Universe from the Beatles. It seems right for the moment, with its refrain of Jai Guru Deva Om which literally translates from the Sanskrit as glory to the shining remover of darkness. And looking out my window just now, I see the tall trees as dark bony silhouettes against the emerging light…

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Unlock the Secret?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 25, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Burning Secret– At the West End Gallery

As I thought of these things, I drew aside the curtains and looked out into the darkness, and it seemed to my troubled fancy that all those little points of light filling the sky were the furnaces of innumerable divine alchemists, who labour continually, turning lead into gold, weariness into ecstasy, bodies into souls, the darkness into God; and at their perfect labour my mortality grew heavy, and I cried out, as so many dreamers and men of letters in our age have cried, for the birth of that elaborate spiritual beauty which could alone uplift souls weighted with so many dreams.

—William Butler Yeats, Rosa Alchemica

In this passage from the beginning of Rosa Alchemica, Yeats describes the driving force behind his search for that driving force of alchemy that has not only the purported ability to transform lead into gold but can also in the same manner transform and elevate the human spirit above that of the ordinary and mortal. A search for the essence of the spirit. The alchemy within ourselves.

Though humans have searched diligently for such a thing since ancient times, I don’t know that such an ability truly exists. But as Yeats’ words indicate, one long look into the night sky makes it easy to see why one would want to believe that such a thing is possible.

With the sky filled with a universe of wonder and the promise from distant stars and worlds, why wouldn’t we think we had the ability to transform and elevate ourselves and our lives? Or our world?

Maybe that’s the driving force behind the creative arts, an attempt at some crude alchemical transformation of the ordinary into something more, something greatly enriched with the essence of the human spirit.

Maybe. I look out the window at the morning light beginning to filter through the trees and think to myself: Why not?

It’s time to get to work on my own small attempts to achieve an alchemy of some sort. Perhaps today is the day that unlocks the secret?

Who knows? Why not?

This morning, I am sharing a video of an acoustic instrumental cover of I’d Love to Change the World, originally from Alvin Lee and Ten Years After. This is from a musician, Johnny Thompson, busking with his guitar on the street in Costa Rica. His YouTube channel has covers as well as his own originals. Though there are a few spots of wind noise, I like this performance very much.

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Morning Uncertainty

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 24, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Dawn’s Return–At West End Gallery

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one.

–-Voltaire, letter to Frederick II of Prussia in 1767

It’s one of those mornings. I am filled with uncertainty and the idea of focusing on writing something seems like an unbearable burden. I would rather get to a painting I am working on that will be included in my annual June solo exhibit at the Principle Gallery. That’s where the uncertainty sets in.

I am in the midst of a group of new work that is really hitting the mark for me on all levels. Oddly enough, that’s where the problem begins. My strong positive reactions are triggering equally strong feelings of doubt. It sounds crazy, I know, but the idea of certainty– my own or others– almost always raises my anxiety levels, especially when it comes to my work. 

Trying to balance these two polar opposites– doubt and certainty–results in times when one prevails. This morning, doubt wins the day. After I begin to work, certainty will make a mighty comeback. And after my painting day is done, the two will wrestle until I drift off to dreamland. 

All in all, it’s often an uncomfortable existence bouncing between the unpleasant and the absurd conditions, as Voltaire called them. 

I sometimes wish for absolute certainty. It seems like it would be satisfying to believe that your every word, action, opinion, and belief were absolutely correct. But we’ve seen where the extreme nature of that kind of certainty has taken us. I sometimes think the great divide between people is one of those who sometimes feel doubt and those who always feel absolute certainty.

Well, for someone who didn’t want to write this morning, I seem to have done quite a bit when all I wanted to do was write few words to share the post below that first ran here in 2014. FYI, I am not ready to share my new work yet but will start showing it in the coming weeks–on a day when I am more certain of things.

Much of my work seemingly has a journey or a quest as its central theme. But the odd thing is that I don’t have a solid idea of what the object is that I am seeking in this work. I have thought it was many things over the years, things like wisdom and knowledge and inner peace and so on. But it comes down to a more fundamental level or at least I think so this morning. It may change by this afternoon.

I think I am looking for an end to doubt or at least coming to an acceptance of my own lack of answers for the questions that have often hung over us all.

I would say the search is for certainty but as Voltaire points out above, certainty is an absurd condition. That has been my view for some time as well. Whenever I feel certainty coming on in me in anything I am filled with an overriding anxiety.

I do not trust certainty.

I look at it as fool’s gold and when I see someone speak of anything with absolute certainty–particularly politicians and televangelists– I react with a certain degree of mistrust, probably because I see this absolutism leading to an extremism that has been the basis for many of the worst misdeeds throughout history. Wars and holocausts, slavery and genocide–they all arose from some the beliefs held by one party in absolute certainty.

So maybe the real quest is for a time and place where uncertainty is the order of the day, where certainty is vanquished. A place where no person can say with any authority that they are above anyone else, that anyone else can be subjugated to their certainty.

To say that we might be better off in a time with such uncertainty sounds absurd but perhaps to live in a time filled with absolute certainty is even more so.

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Looking For a Mooring

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 21, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Anchor— At West End Gallery

It is a strange freedom to be adrift in the world of men without a sense of anchor anywhere. Always there is the need of mooring, the need for the firm grip on something that is rooted and will not give. The urge to be accountable to someone, to know that beyond the individual himself there is an answer that must be given, cannot be denied.

–Howard Thurman, The Inward Journey (1961)

I wrote a couple of weeks back about how part of my response to the veritable dismantling of this country that is taking place was a feeling of grief for something lost. I think that lost something could be defined as many things– a loss of belief, loss of security, loss of trust, loss of respect, loss of pride, loss of honor, loss of community, and on and on.

So much has seemingly– and perhaps irrevocably– been lost by so many that there may not be a single definition that covers our loss.

For me, I define my grief as being for the loss of bearings, of losing a sense of having an anchor that I could rely on at any given time, one that let me know who and where and what I was in relation the world at that given moment.

A sense of place. Of home.

It makes me ache to write about this feeling of loss. It is one of feeling unmoored and adrift in a fast-moving current. Looking back, I can catch a brief glimpse of that place, but it fades further into the distance with each successive glance.

Can I escape this current? Can we? And if I do and somehow find my way back to some of that same sense of home, will these feelings of loss subside?

Can it ever be the same anchor that I once thought it was?

I don’t think anyone really knows that answer. I sure as hell don’t. And I don’t think speculating on it matters. Because if we cannot escape that rushing current, the path back is gone forever.

I know this sounds too stark, too grim. Grief is like that. Even so, it not without hope.

Hope has not been completely lost.

I can still look back and see home, as I define it, in the distance. It’s there and, therefore, a way to it must exist.

We just got to get back to it, one way or another, because where we’re at now ain’t home.

Here’s a favorite song, one of many, from Talking Heads. This is This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) from their great 1984 concert film Stop Making Sense.

FYI– Howard Thurman (1899-1981), who is quoted at the top, was an American author, philosopher, theologian, Christian mystic, educator, and civil rights leader. He was considered a mentor to MLK and other civil rights leaders.

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Hold Back the River

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 20, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Nightbloom— At West End Gallery

The melancholy river bears us on. When the moon comes through the trailing willow boughs, I see your face, I hear your voice and the bird singing as we pass the osier bed. What are you whispering? Sorrow, sorrow. Joy, joy. Woven together, like reeds in moonlight.

–Virginia Woolf, A Haunted House, and Other Short Stories (1921)

What do I have to say this morning? Is there anything that needs to be said? Any grievances, worries, sorrows, joys, that need to be expressed if only to feel as though they have been released from within, even in this little forum?

There’s a desire to say much this morning. But the will to do so is not there.

Maybe that’s the melancholy river bearing on us? I don’t know but that feels right this morning, sitting here in a darkened studio with the glow of my computer screen serving as moonlight.

And in it is sorrow and joy, woven together.

I am going to let the river flow by this morning. Here’s a song, Hold Back the River, whose title and lyrics says something quite different, about not allowing time and tide to wash away the moment. I don’t know if that’s absolutely correct but, as they say, you get what you pay for. This song written and performed by James Bay is from about ten years back. I have to admit that even though it was a platinum record at the time, I was unaware of it before this morning. It’s hard enough keeping up with old music, let alone everything new. But I liked the song and this performance and felt it kind of fit.

Give a listen them step aside– you’re blocking my view of the river.

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Imagination or Headache?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 12, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Sea of the Six Moons– At West End Gallery

A great wind is blowing, and that gives you either imagination or a headache.

–Catherine the Great (1762-1796), Letter to Baron Friedrich von Grimm (29 Apr 1775)

Doing a quick search this morning, I couldn’t find the entirety of the letter from Catherine the Great that contained the quote above, so I don’t know the exact context. I don’t know what was that wind to which she referred. It might have been the stirrings of the American Revolution or, more likely, the spread of the progressive ideas of the Enlightenment that she was trying to introduce to the Russian people.

Whatever the case, when the great winds of change come, one can choose to see the new possibilities that lay beyond and navigate toward this new horizon of opportunity. That’s the imagination part, I dare say.

Or one can just see one’s resistance to the winds be pummeled into acceptance. To finally let the wind blow you wherever it wants to take you and do whatever it will regardless of one’s desires. Hopeless and powerless, to end up as flotsam on the never-ending waves.

I would venture that this might be the headache. It sounds like a headache to me.

That’s all I am going to say this morning. Just liked that quote from the Empress Cathy and thought it might fit with the painting at the top. Or maybe not. Does it matter?

The painting by the way, Sea of the Six Moons, is currently hanging at the West End Gallery as part of their annual Little Gems exhibit. The show ends tomorrow, Thursday, March 13, so if you want to catch this always wonderful show, please get in today or tomorrow.

Here’s a song that may or may not fit alongside today’s painting and quote. I played it here four years back and it just hit a chord with me this morning. It’s The Dolphins from Fred Neil, who was best known for writing Everybody’s Talkin’ that was made popular by Harry Nilsson and its prominent connection to the film, Midnight Cowboy. I was going to play one of the covers of it that have been made, such as those by Linda Ronstadt, Tim Buckley, or Harry Belafonte, but I find that Neil’s original suits me best.

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Heading to the Clouds

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 7, 2025| 5 Comments »

Cloud Flyer— At West End Gallery

It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are, if indeed you cannot get it above them, than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.

–Henry David Thoreau, Letter to Harrison Blake, April 1853

This morning, I spent a few minutes looking intently at the image of the painting above. It’s a small piece that is part of the Little Gems exhibit now hanging at the West End Gallery. Something in it captured my attention this morning. Not one thing that I can spell out in words. Just a brief flash of feeling that for that moment held me happily spellbound.

Maybe it was just a quick escape from things in this world that have been harassing my mind as of late. I don’t know and, for that matter, I don’t care. We all need to climb into the clouds for dreaming and introspection every so often so that, like Thoreau wrote in a letter to an old friend above, we know where we truly are. We can sometime be deceived or misled, by others and ourselves, so that we don’t clearly see our placement in this world clearly.

We might think too much or too little of ourselves. We might respect the opinions of others while ignoring our own. We might place too much trust in the wisdom of others and too little in our own.

We sometimes need to get up above it all, to place ourselves in and above the clouds. Oh, we can’t stay there, much as we might like, but the clarifying effects of a short sojourn there are mighty.

It centers one’s soul.

The paragraph from Thoreau’s letter from which the passage above was taken also makes the point about that if we trust and respect ourselves, we have the ability to elevate our lot in life and live a fulfilled existence:

It is worth the while to live respectably unto ourselves. We can possibly get along with a neighbor, even with a bedfellow, whom we respect but very little; but as soon as it comes to this, that we do not respect ourselves, then we do not get along at all, no matter how much money we are paid for halting. There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself; but I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life. It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are, if indeed you cannot get it above them, than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.

That was very much in the same spirit of what I saw in that brief flash I felt while looking at the image at the top this morning. Feet-on-the-ground-head-in-the-clouds kind of satisfaction. Or should I say, Hand-on-the rudder-head-in-the-clouds?

Not sure on that one.

Here’s Joni Mitchell and her classic song, Both Sides Now. This is a favorite version of mine from her 2000 album, Both Sides Now. It is different in tone and sound to her original. Deeper and more world-weary. As you would expect. I read that it was as though the 24-year-old Mitchell wrote this song specifically for her 57-year-old self to sing.

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Demigods: The Dream Eater

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 6, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Dream Eater

The human mind is inspired enough when it comes to inventing horrors; it is when it tries to invent a Heaven that it shows itself cloddish.

–Evelyn Waugh, Put Out More Flags (1942)

King of the Night Forest 

I had two pieces in this year’s Little Gems show at the West End Gallery that were a bit different than my typical work. The liberty to experiment and show work that is a little out of your normal lane is one of the things I love about this particular show, which ends a week from today.

These two distinct outliers, King of the Night Forest and Eye of the Trickster, were featured here. They were representations of beings or demigods from a not fully formed mythology that only existed in my mind. I am not sure this mythological world will ever be more defined than it is in these paintings.

Eye of the Trickster

And maybe that’s as it should be. Maybe they should exist only to serve as a jumping off point for someone who might stumble across them someday in the future when they are deciding what should be saved and what should go in the dumpster. Maybe they will inspire that person’s imagination, playing to their fears and dreams.

Maybe. Maybe not, Who knows for sure?

After doing these first two Demigods— I decided just now that is what I am calling them– I felt I wasn’t through. I wanted to explore and expand this world a little more. I did three more pieces, all 14″ by 18″. a bit larger than the first two from the Little Gems show. The last of these three, The Dream Eater, is shown at the top.

The Dream Eater is a being that does just that– takes away and devours your dreams. Greedy and cruel, he is never satisfied. Even when all the dreams and hopes are sapped from his victims and they have been pulled down into his hellish pit in the netherworld, he is already hungering for his next target. 

That sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Perhaps that’s why I felt the need to paint this creature. I don’t know for sure. When I start these things, I have no idea where they will go or what I will see in them when they are complete. They obviously represent some other thing that is rolling around in my mind as I work.

I doubt these last three Demigod pieces will ever see the wall of any gallery and I imagine the first two will join me soon after the end of the Little Gems show. I’m fine with that. In fact, these pieces and those from other years that share this same sort of difference give me a special sort of pleasure when I experience them here in the studio.

Maybe it’s because I know they are those parts of me that I’ve wanted to, but have failed to, withhold from eyes other than my own. There’s something freeing sometimes in letting the outside world get a peek at your inner world. 

I’ll show the other two Demigods sometime soon. But for now, I am just going to try to keep this thing from feasting on my dreams while I listen to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road from Elton John. It’s a song about the loss of dreams, one that loomed large in my youth and somehow got lost in the hubbub of the intervening years. I can’t remember the last time I pulled out the album or consciously listened to it in any other way. Probably decades. But I recently watched a reaction video of the song and was instantly reminded of all it was and is. Felt a bit foolish for taking it for granted for all these years.

We sometimes do that with great things, don’t we?

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Hello in There

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 5, 2025| 2 Comments »

Summerdream (1995)– At West End Gallery

The creative action is not voluntary at all, but automatic; we can only put the mind into the proper attitude, and wait for the wind, that blows where it listeth, to breathe over it. Thus the true state of creative genius is allied to reverie, or dreaming.

–Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

Many of us walk a fine line between remaining engaged with the outer world with all its chaotic madness and escaping into the dreamlike quietude of our inner world. I think we need to keep the two somewhat in balance, to never reside fully in one.

For as much as the inner world nourishes our souls and dreams, we can’t reside in that place entirely. And try as we may, we can never fully retreat from intrusive reality of the outer world. It is always lurking nearby and must be dealt with.

But we need to maintain that inner world, that place to dream and expand. A place where we can float on a warm breeze, unburdened by the weightiness and gravity of the real world.

I am not sure what brought this on this morning. Maybe I felt the need to avert my eyes from the outer world for a moment? Nobody could be blamed for that in this strange moment. We all need to visit that inner world for at least a short time every now and then, if only to be reminded of what we are looking for in the outer world.

The question is: Can the dreams of our inner world ever come to reality in the outer world?

That’s a big philosophical jumping off point that I am not willing to leap from just this minute. Like most people, I have outer world needs to which I need to attend. But in doing so, I will bring my inner world along with me.

Maybe I’ll ponder that question at some point while I am floating on a breeze. Maybe not.

Here’s a song from the late John Prine that I’ve loved for a long, long time. It still gets to me after hearing it countless times. It’s a live performance of Hello in There from 2001. It’s a song about aged folks who live in an outer world that has passed them by and now ignores and they have retreated into their inner world which is filled with more memories and images from the past and fewer dreams for the future. But in those remaining dreams, they might sometimes be floating on a summer breeze. And this line from the song’s chorus surely might be echoing there as well:

Ya’ know that old trees just grow stronger
And old rivers grow wilder ev’ry day

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Art’s Refuge

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on March 4, 2025| 2 Comments »

Island Getaway– At West End Gallery

The power of the good has taken refuge in the nature of the beautiful; for measure and proportion are everywhere identified with beauty and virtue.

— Plato, Philebus (ca. 350 BC)

Philebus is a fictional work presenting a conversation between Socrates and two young Athenians on the value of pleasure in relation to the highest level of Good. The two younger men see pleasure as being this Absolute Good.

As might be expected, Socrates, disagrees. He points out that there are different forms of pleasure. Some are of little value and some, such as pleasure for pleasure’s sake, are harmful to man and which should be avoided.

Just before the line at shown here at the top. Socrates points out the harm in such pleasure:

That any compound, however made, which lacks measure and proportion, must necessarily destroy its components and first of all itself; for it is in truth no compound, but an uncompounded jumble, and is always a misfortune to those who possess it.

This passage sure feels like it was written around 2500 years ago for such a moment such as we are experiencing here in this country. It seems to be an uncompounded jumble that is set on destroying itself and all of which it is comprised. It without measure, proportion, and reason. It has become a land governed by beings that appear to be soulless and artless, devoid of any measure of Beauty or Absolute Good.

When I read this, it made me think of the value and necessity of art as a refuge from this world. As Socrates pointed out, there is goodness and virtue in those things by which we define beauty. We are on the brink of an artless and ugly world. Engaging with art or creating art in times such as these serves a valuable purpose. It reminds us that these is and will always be goodness and virtue in that which appears beautiful to the human spirit.

Art is our refuge.

It comes in the literature and poetry we read. In the music we play and in the movement of our dances. In the films we watch, and in the statues and paintings that we experience.

As difficult as times may be in the near future, we must remember that Art is a both a refuge and a repository for Good, as well as a link, a path, to the world and future we desire.

Take refuge in your art.

Here’s song I last shared about four years ago. It fittingly titled Shelter and is from Lone Justice from back in the mid 1980’s. Led by vocalist Maria McKee, they were very hot for a few years but they couldn’t hold together long enough to reach the potential that so many saw in them. They disbanded in 1987 and Maria McKee went on to a solo career. I thought their two albums were very good and they were regulars on my turntable back in the day. The chorus from this song pops into my head every now and then. It was produced and cowritten with McKee by the multi-talented Steve Van Zandt, who was the subject recently of a wonderful documentary, Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple, that centered around his efforts that were instrumental in using his art to cast light on apartheid and end it.

Such is the power and refuge of art.

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