Comes a Wind— Now at Principle Gallery
That man’s best works should be such bungling imitations of Nature’s infinite perfection, matters not much; but that he should make himself an imitation, this is the fact which Nature moans over, and deprecates beseechingly. Be spontaneous, be truthful, be free, and thus be individuals! is the song she sings through warbling birds, and whispering pines, and roaring waves, and screeching winds.
—Lydia Maria Child, Letters from New York (1843)
Be spontaneous, be truthful, be free, and thus be individuals!
Is there any better advice than those words from Lydia Maria Child way back in 1843? She is best known for writing the famous Thanksgiving poem, Over the River and Through the Woods. But more than that, she was a forward thinker in her time– an abolitionist, women’s rights and Native American rights activist, journalist, poet and novelist whose work often took on white supremacy and male dominance, issues that plague us to this day.
She would no doubt be a forward thinker in our time. Her words certainly ring true, then and now.
I am using her words today to accompany the new painting above, Comes a Wind. It’s one of the larger pieces, 30″ by 48″ on canvas, from my Principle Gallery show that opens tomorrow night. I chose her words because I felt they somewhat described how I view my landscape work. I never have tried to imitate the reality nature, never wanting exactitude or even a representation of a single real location.
I just wanted to capture the feel and rhythm of the landscape. We live in it and with it. We are part of it, carrying that same feel and rhythm within us. At least, that’s the hope. I believe we sometimes lose that feel and rhythm that connects us to the land. We fail to see the grace and inevitability of nature. When left to its own devices, the landscape achieves an organic perfection.
It is as it should be and only as it can be.
I think this piece is a great example at my attempt to capture that feel and rhythm. It has an organic quality in the curves and lines of the landforms that calms me in much the same way that I feel looking at a panoramic landscape in reality. Like much of my work, there is an area somewhere near the center of the landscape where the landscape’s layers go down then rises up, creating what I call the saddle or easy chair (taken from an old Dylan song) of the painting. I don’t know exactly why I do that, but it feels like it acts as place for the eye to settle in and rest, like one might in a saddle. Or easy chair.
When I first finished this painting, I saw it as being about some forewarning brought on the wind. I still see that somewhat but I now also see the wind as pictured as being about letting ourselves go with the rhythms of nature, about reconnecting to our place within the greater forces.
Or as Ms. Child may have put it: Be spontaneous, be truthful, be free, and thus be individuals!
Here’s that Bob Dylan song with the easy chair reference, You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere. From1967, it was part of his Basement Tapes and more famously recorded by the Byrds in 1968. This is a newer version that I like very much from Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. It’s a great tune. Worth a listen.
Comes a Wind is included in Continuum: The Red Tree at 25 which opens tomorrow, Friday, June 14, at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria. The opening reception runs from 6-8:30 PM on Friday. I will be there so please stop in and check out the show. Maybe have a chat.
Redtree Times 