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Archaeology: The Silence of the World

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 2, 2026| 4 Comments »

Archaeology: The Silence of the World— Coming to Principle Gallery

I can imagine the silence when the world
will have stilled itself—no more poems tossed
off the tongue, no more screams
of raven lugging entrails of porcupine,
no more tales of the Navajo, or Louisiana black man,
or old-time Vermonter,
no more breathing in the ear of last lover…

The Silence of the World, Galway Kinnell

These are the opening lines from the first poem I encountered from Galway Kinnell, who I briefly wrote about t a few days ago. That idea of the world being without the hive activity of humans, forever cast in silence, stuck in my mind. It was just kind of hovering there for several weeks but came back to the surface in the past week as I worked on the new painting shown above.

It’s from my ongoing Archaeology series which first came about in 2008, after I returned to an exercise from a 5th grade art class when I was feeling deeply blocked creatively. I have only painted a handful of these Archaeology pieces in recent years, despite the fact that I do enjoy the process of painting them and that they have always been well received, both here and abroad.

Why that is, I don’t know. I suppose it’s as simple as the heart and spirit having to be in just the right place. Recently, I found that working on this piece and another in the same series have forced me to focus on the small moves that create the artifact fields in both. I needed to bring my mind back into the work and this really seemed to serve that purpose.

As I was working on this particular painting, that Kinnell poem–and its title specifically– began to haunt my thoughts. While many of the Archaeology paintings deal with the world beyond the time of man and how our existence will be reduced to buried artifacts, this piece brought other thoughts and questions to mind.

The primary question was: When humans are no more, does that mean that heaven no longer exists? Are heaven and hell attached to humans and will therefore cease to exist when the last human returns to dust?

I wasn’t bothered by either a yes or no answer to these questions. It will be what it will be without my opinion, fears, or hopes. Just wondering.

Yes or no, it will be a quieter world, filled with more silences. And that pleases me somehow. Humans seem to have a need to fill every empty space with sound and noise. And I think– without any evidence, of course– that this somehow throws the world out of equilibrium. That it seeks more silence.

And that is what I see in this painting. I chose to fill the artifact field mainly with chairs that represent the passing of man. For some unknown reason, I resisted making them Red Chairs. The upper part is painted in shades of blue that have a unifying silence in them. No noise from the contrast of colors or lightness.

Just a placid blueness.

And the tree in the foreground might be expressing in its twists the slightest delight in finally regaining the silence the world desired.

It’s a piece that fills me with a variety of feelings. I am saddened to see in it the end of our time and all that the human mind has produced that is good. Music, art, poetry, literature, and so on. But the idea of a reign of real silence along with the world returning to a greater equilibrium somehow satisfies me.

Don’t ask me why.

It’s given me a lot to both focus on and think about in here the studio. And I am grateful for that.

We all need things that make us think about things other than the things we think about. If you followed that, you’ve got a quicker mind than me.

Of course, I borrowed the title for this painting, Archaeology: The Silence of the World, from Kinnell’s poem which I have included below in its entirety.  I am also including a wonderful piece of music from composer Samuel Barber, his Adagio for Strings. This is performed here by the Berliner Philharmoniker conducted by Simon Rattle. The composition is built around beautiful silences that I feel reflect well on the painting.

Lovely music for a quiet Saturday morning, even if those damn humans are still out there making noise.

I can imagine the silence when the world
will have stilled itself—no more poems tossed
off the tongue, no more screams
of raven lugging entrails of porcupine,
no more tales of the Navajo, or Louisiana black man,
or old-time Vermonter,
no more breathing in the ear of last lover,
no more angelic beings left to be kissed
into the claustrophobia of flesh,
no more temples giving light
from open doors into bitter winter nights, no more
curious weasel who leaves
her black ring frozen in the air,
no more tooth that gnaws through gum and bones into
the cathedral of the mouth.
No more splat when singer spits
mouthwash into the washbasin after the concert,
no more “Quit yer bawlin!”
from punk principal to slob schoolboy
when sore mother hauls
small boy into classroom by sore ear.
No more young woman in large hat in profile
in afternoon light saying, “So what, darling?
I don’t hate you. I love you. So what?”
No more flutesman trudging through snow
on 125th Street on the last Sunday morning of his jeopardy.
No more husband saying, “Snack bar’s the other way.”
No more wife replying, “You aren’t going to eat again, are you?”
No more husband replying, “I don’t want to eat,
I was just telling you where the snack bar is.”
No more wife replying, “For Chrissake! I know where it is.”
No more caesura or else everything one endless caesura,
no more feminine rhyme such as “lattice” and “thereat is,”
no more parallelismus membrorum panting in one ear,
no more Neruda’s slowly deepening voice saying,
“Federico, te acuerdas, debajo de la tierra . . .”
From across the valley the thud of an axe
arrives later than its strike
and the call of goodbye slowly separates itself
little by little from the vocal chords of everything.

– The Silence of the World, Galway Kinnell, The New Yorker, May 13, 2013

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Uncle Walt

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 16, 2026| 4 Comments »

Eye to Eye

I resist anything better than my own diversity,
And breathe the air and leave plenty after me,
And am not stuck up, and am in my place.

The moth and the fisheggs are in their place,
The suns I see and the suns I cannot see are in their place,
The palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place.

These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me,
If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing,
If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing,
If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.

This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is,
This the common air that bathes the globe.

–Walt Whitman, Song of Myself (1855)

I was reading Mary Oliver‘s book of essays, Upstream, and her essay on Walt Whitman really resonated with me. As a young woman, Whitman became a close friend, the caring uncle, and the brother she had never had. He is Uncle Walt to me, a wizened and understanding being who accepts you as you are because he knows that what is in you is in him as well.

Her essay, in which she cites the short section above from his Song of Myself as a guiding light for her own relationship with nature and the world:

The moth and the fisheggs are in their place,
The suns I see and the suns I cannot see are in their place,
The palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place.

Her writing made me pull out my old beat-up copy of Whitman’s work. I needed a fix from Uncle Walt and went to the section from which this passage came just to put it into better context for myself. Glad I did.

Shown above, it says so much about how he saw himself and the world. He proudly claimed his diversity of self, that messy mass of contradictions that is within us all. He also saw clearly that he was in place in the role that he had to play in the grand opera that is life, just as the moths and fisheggs and the sun high up in the sky were. I especially liked that he made mention of the suns he cannot see, given my propensity for sometimes showing multiple suns or moons in my skies.

To Uncle Walt, the natural world, which included him and you and me, was, and still is, just as it should be.

He then goes on to point out that his thoughts are nothing new, that they are simply echoes of thoughts that have come down through time. It is our purpose to ask questions and attempt to find answers of some sort, though our efforts will be forever futile.

Our attempts at solving the riddle that is life often create even more complex riddles.

That, too, is just as it should be. As he writes, This the common air that bathes the globe.

This short section from his grand poem says so much about how I have come to see the world, as well.  I imagine much of that comes from having an uncle like Walt. Or a brother or friend or simply an old man with a white beard who says a few words in passing.

Just as it should be.

Here’s a song that I thought I had recently shared here only to find that it has been 16 years. I guess for some of us that is recent. The song is another from Mermaid Avenue, an album featuring unrecorded songs written by Woody Guthrie set to music and performed by Billy Bragg and Wilco. This is Walt Whitman’s Niece.

I think I might have seen her at one of the family reunions.

Or not.

Who knows? It is, after all, a riddle, right?

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Pimples

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 6, 2026| Leave a Comment »

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

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The Scarecrow’s Daydream

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 14, 2026| 5 Comments »

The Scarecrow’s Daydream– Coming to West End Gallery

I strongly wish for what I faintly hope;
like the daydreams of melancholy men,
I think and think in things impossible,
yet love to wander in that golden maze.

–John Dryden, The Rival Ladies (1693)

I’ve been steadily working in the past week or so.  I mentioned earlier that it felt awkward, that the mental and physical processes were really rusty and way out of sync. This past week has been like boot camp, even more so because I am primarily working with the transparent acrylic inks with which I began my career. It is more of a watercolor-based process though mine has a few quirks of its own.

Though it felt rocky at first, I have been pleased with the results thus far and am feeling the inklings of that old feeling where one piece creates the inspiration and opening for another. It is the beginning of a groove. I’ve been there and recognize it. And am excited to find it still nearby.

This inspiration that pushes toward the groove might come in the form of a color appearing that has slipped from the front of my mind, one that has special properties of its own even though it doesn’t seem far removed from other shades of the same color. Or it might be an element or form you have eased away from or only employ once in a while.

When these things appear it’s like running into an old friend and realizing after a few minutes how much you enjoyed their company and have missed them.

I’ve ran into a few old friends this past week or so. It’s a good feeling to not be alone out there on that empty painting surface. Their input is invaluable to me.

One of the new pieces is the small painting at the top, 4″ by 6″ on paper, that is going to be included in the annual Little Gems show at the West End Gallery that opens on February 6. The Little Gems show, which is now one of the most highly anticipated shows of the year for the West End, began in 1995. That first show also marked the first public showing of my work. I’ve been fortunate to show new small work in all the shows through the 30+ years and in this, its 32nd edition, I am once again a happy participant.

Like some of the colors and forms I mentioned above, the Little Gems show is like an old friend.

And this year, perhaps more than ever, I am even more glad to have such an old friend.

This painting is titled The Scarecrow’s Daydream. There is a yellow in the field that is one of those old friends, one that thrilled me when I saw it again for such a long time. It is a mixture of a couple of yellow shades, a bit of red, and sepia. When it works– it sometimes does not– it bangs the gong loudly for me. I don’t exactly know what that means, it just sounded good when I wrote it. I guess I could have simply said I really like the color. But that’s not how I roll, is it?

The Scarecrow is another old friend that periodically returns. I am still trying to understand what it is about scarecrows that holds my fascination. Maybe it stems from Ray Bolger‘s character in the Wizard of Oz? There’s something in that affable, kind character singing If I Only Had Brain that connected deeply with me as a kid.

There was also an episode of The Wonderful World of Disney from 1964 that sticks firmly in my memory. It was titled The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh and was about a group of Brits rebelling against the onerous taxation of King George III in 1763. They are led by Dr. Syn who dons a scarecrow outfit to terrorize the British troops. The song and imagery of its opening shown below are another scarecrow figure that is embedded in my mind.

There is something enigmatic in the form a scarecrow as an avatar for a human being. It’s like a primal form of robotics where we create a figure in our own image to do tasks for us. Yet, because they have our somewhat human form, we begin to attach more human qualities to them than we first intended. They sometimes end up scaring us as much, if not more, than the crows.

There’s probably a lesson or commentary in there somewhere about our relationship with advanced robotics and the unintended consequences of AI but it will have to wait its turn on another day.

As for the daydreaming scarecrow here, I do see it as being analogous to the human experience of mindlessly biding time, tethered in time and place. That sounds somewhat sad and melancholic and I suppose there is an element of that in it. But there is also something beyond that in it for me. While we do spend an ample portion of our lives doing sometimes mundane and mindless tasks, like that scarecrow in that field, there is something in the scarecrow here that is almost celebratory and appreciative for having the opportunity to simply serve a purpose and play a part, however small it might seem, in the human drama.

That’s all we can ask for ourselves, isn’t it?

Now get out of my field. Shoo! I got work to do and daydreams to think on. You heard me– git!

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Wanderlust

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on July 3, 2025| 3 Comments »

To the Main Road– At Principle Gallery

I knew that I had ample room in which to wander, since science has calculated the diameter of space to be eighty-four thousand million light years, which, when one reflects that light travels at the rate of one hundred eighty-six thousand miles a second, should satisfy the wanderlust of the most inveterate roamer.

–Edgar Rice Burroughs, Pirates of Venus (1932)

Still feeling a bit off kilter and definitely not feeling celebratory in any way for the Fourth of July tomorrow. In fact, I am a little crotchety this morning. Writing that makes me wonder about the origins of the word crotchety. One of the numerous benefits of the instant information of the InterWebs– we won’t go into its equally numerous pitfalls — is that one can answer questions like this within seconds. No more finding and dragging out the dictionary or encyclopedia or whatever reference book you have stacked on your shelves. I accumulated a bunch of compendiums of knowledge, both general and odd facts, over the years that sometimes answered such queries. Not always which meant writing it on a list to be looked up the next time I went to the library. Information moved much slower then and usually by the time I got an answer I had lost interest.

FYI, crotchety is derived from the word crochet which refers to the craft and hook used in it. The term came to represent someone who was hooked by peculiar thoughts, resulting in a brusque, rude attitude towards others.

Yeah, I fall into that category this morning. Crotchety old man shaking my fist at the sky.

Anyway, the theme today is wanderlust. Maybe by the description of searching for info that should be changed to wonderlust. Is that even a word? I guess I will have to take to the InterWebs once more.

While I am doing that, here’s a tune called Wanderlust from the immortal Duke Ellington and sax legend Coleman Hawkins. This came up on my playlist earlier setting this whole fiasco in motion.

Now, either listen or get out. I got things to do. Like I said, I am crotchety this morning and wonderlust  calls…

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Self-Consciousness/ Ray Bradbury

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on July 1, 2025| 1 Comment »

Betwixt and Between— At Principle Gallery

Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things. 

— Ray Bradbury

I ran a post featuring a Ray Bradbury quote the other day which reminded me of another of his quotes and a favorite blog entry from the past that employed the above quote. It’s a refinement of a quote from a 1962 essay, The Queen’s Own Evaders, in which Bradbury wrote about his time in Ireland writing the screenplay for the 1956 John Huston film, Moby Dick.

Never wanting to be a screenwriter, Bradbury adapted only his work for movies or television but made an exception when offered the chance to adapt the Melville classic. He struggled for months and months trying to adapt the novel then one day realized he was being too self-conscious, overthinking every word and element. He began anew and, at the end of an epic eight-hour writing session, finished the script.

The original quote was:

Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself, which is the greatest art of all. 

Ridding one of self-consciousness was a subject that popped up in many of his essays and interviews over the next 20 years or so as he refined the message. I well understand his view since I feel that I am least self-conscious when I am painting. My paintings are my world much like Bradbury’s world was that of Mars or the October Country or the strange, animated skin of the Illustrated Man.

Bradbury also stated over the years that an artist should not attempt to explain an artwork while it is being created. That’s how I feel about painting, as well. You do it. Then you think about it. As a result, that is why I seldom even begin to think about what the painting is about or what it might be called until it is done or at least well into its process.

Bradbury’s words on creativity are worthwhile for anyone, not just writers or artists. As he said, living is the greatest art of all. Here’s that earlier blog post, last shared here in 2018:

I came across this quote from famed sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury on an online site with quotes on creativity. This struck close to the bone for me as I have proudly not thought for years now. I have long maintained that thinking usually inhibits my work, making it less fluid and rhythmic.

It’s a hard thing to get across because just in the process of doing anything there is a certain amount of thought required, with preliminary ideas and decisions to be made. I think that the lack of thought I am talking about, as I also believe Bradbury refers, is once the process of creating begins. At that point you have to try to free yourself of the conscious and let intuition and reaction take over, those qualities that operate on an instantaneous emotional level.

I can tell instantly when I have let my conscious push its way into my work and have over-thought the whole thing. There’s a clunkiness and dullness in every aspect of it. No flow. No rhythm. No brightness or lightness. Emotionally vacant and awkward. Bradbury’s choice in using the term self-conscious is perfect because I have often been self-conscious in my life and that same uncomfortable awkwardness that comes in those instances translates well to what I see in this over-thought work.

So, what’s the answer? How do you let go of thought, to be less self-conscious?

I think Bradbury hits the nail on the head– you must simply do things. This means trusting your subconscious to find a way through, to give the controls over to instinct.

And how do you do that? I can’t speak for others but for myself it’s a matter of staying in my routine. Painting every day even when it feels like a struggle. Loading a brush with paint and making a mark even when I have no momentum or idea or at hand. Just doing things and not waiting for inspiration.

You don’t wait for inspiration– you create it.

So, stop thinking right now and just start doing things.

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The Passing Parade

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on June 3, 2025| 5 Comments »

The Passing Parade— Included in Entanglement at the Principle Gallery

Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away… and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast…. be happy about your growth, in which of course you can’t take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don’t torment them with your doubts and don’t frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn’t be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn’t necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust…. and don’t expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.

― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

There is something in this new painting, The Passing Parade, from my upcoming Principle Gallery exhibit that just fills me up. It would be easy to simply say that there’s a joyfulness in it and let it stand at that. It does have an unmistakable sense of joyous verve, after all.

But that feels more on the surface, almost like it is the painting’s mask. No, there’s something more beneath that, something deeper and more internalized. Not joyful but not sad nor remorseful.  

A feeling of apartness.

Don’t take that to mean loneliness. It’s an altogether different animal. 

I went looking for a something that might better describe it than my impoverished words and came across the passage at the top from Rilke, one that I shared here a number of years back. It seemed to capture exactly what I was feeling in this piece, about how we change internally and how we express these changes to the outer world.

Some become more solitary and, in their solitude, grow away from people in general. I count myself among this group. But as Rilke advised, I try to not display that outwardly when dealing with people, understanding that not everyone will understand or desire this apartness. Or care, for that matter.

You might think that since I write about my work and perhaps too much more here on a daily basis, that I would easily talk about the doubts, uncertainties, and beliefs I possess and write about. That’s not the case at all. I will answer questions honestly and openly but still try to keep my apartness somewhat hid.

And that’s what I see in this piece– an inward-looking solitude that outwardly watches the passing parade of life from a distance.

I understand that to some that might seem sad. Of course, I don’t see it that way since I know that my apartness is often filled with the joy and love that you see on the surface of this painting. It is not sad at all except when sadness is present, as it sometimes is in every life.

It is hard to explain in words. Maybe that’s why I paint. A painted image transmits and translates itself to others in ways that they alone understand.

Much better than my words. In this case, I hope my meager words haven’t garbled your translation of this painting.

Now, leave me alone and get back into the parade. As Garbo said– I vant to be alone. Actually, I need to be alone. Still lots of work to be done for the show and I can’t get anything done if you’re still hanging around…

The Passing Parade is 12″ by 24″ on panel and is part of my annual solo exhibit — this year marks my 26th show at the Principle– of new paintings, Entanglement, that opens on Friday, June 13 at the Principle Gallery with an Opening Reception from 6-8:30 PM. The work for this show will be delivered to the gallery on Sunday and will be available for previews, though the show will not be hung until later in the week.

The day after the show’s opening, on Saturday, June 14, I will also be giving a Painting Demonstration at the gallery. The demo, my first there, should run from 11 AM until 1 PM or thereabouts.

 

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The Solitude Hoarder

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 17, 2025| 1 Comment »

Peak of Solitude— At West End Gallery

Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.

–May Sarton, Mrs. Steven Hears the Mermaids Singing (1965)

Some of the most serious problems with our society stem from the hoarding of great wealth by the ultra-rich. Their constant need for more and more can only be fulfilled by sapping the wealth from those economically beneath them. But I’m not here to bitch about the super-wealthy today.

After all, there are problems that come with one hoarding anything. As it is with wealth, this drive to attain and hold on to more and more of anything generally causes a deprivation of something else. Everything we choose to do or attain has a cost of some sort.

We give up one thing for some other thing. If I do this, I won’t be able to do that. This might result from the cost in time, comfort, money, attention or almost any other thing. Time and money tend to be the biggest factors, or at least it seems so as I write this now. I will probably think of other examples moments after I post this.

I am a hoarder of solitude.  It is my precious in the same way the Ring of Power was for Gollum. I hold greedily onto it and am always seeking more and more. And also like Gollum, when I am without it, I am frantically seeking to regain it.

And I am willing to pay almost any price for it. I have paid for it with the relationships and time I might have with others or loss of opportunities and income for my work, among many other things. 

And the older I get, the more precious it becomes because solitude’s main currency is time, an ever-decreasing asset.

That may sound pretty sad to many of you. Maybe even a bit crazy. I get that and I can offer little if any defense or rationale to sway your opinion. Because when I am in the midst of my gathered solitude, what others think seems inconsequential. 

I think only another hoarder can understand that.

Here’s a lovely guitar version of Astrud Gilberto’s Corcovado also known as Quiet Night of Quiet Stars

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Night Karma

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

Night Karma (2002)

For the keynote of the law of Karma is equilibrium, and nature is always working to restore that equilibrium whenever through man’s acts it is disturbed.

–Christmas Humphreys, Karma and Rebirth (1948)

I came across the quote above from a book on Buddhism from a Brit named Christmas Humphreys. I had never heard the name but agreed the sentiment that nature is a continuously bringing the world into equilibrium despite our best efforts to disrupt and destroy its balance. Turns out that Christmas Humphreys was a famous British barrister as well as a judge at the Old Bailey later in his career.

But the more interesting part for me was that he was, in his lifetime from 1901 to 1983, one of the highest profiled Buddhists in Britain, having founded the London Buddhist Society and authoring a large number of books on the religion. After his death his home in St. John’s Wood became a Buddhist temple.

His involvement in a number of famous trials led to him being portrayed in several films, including a recent one (it’s on the streaming service BritBox now) concerning the Ruth Ellis trial, in which he was the prosecuting barrister. Ruth Ellis was convicted of murdering her abusive lover and was subsequently the last woman executed in the UK, hanged in 1955.

I guess that’s some sort of karma, right? Probably depends on your perspective.

Humphreys was also mentioned with a line– “I went home and read my Christmas Humphreys book on Zen“– in the 1982 Van Morrison song, Cleaning Windows. I thought that make a good final addition to today’s triad alongside Humphreys’ quote and the 2002 painting at the top, Night Karma. which is one only a few pieces that remain with me from what I call my Dark Work, those pieces painted in the period of about 18 months immediately after 9/11. It’s been a longtime favorite of mine here in the studio.

Now here’s Cleaning Windows from Van Morrison.

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Yellow and Blue, a la Rothko

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on March 2, 2025| 1 Comment »

Mark Rothko –Untitled (Yellow and Blue) 1954

“You might as well get one thing straight. I’m not an abstractionist… I’m not interested in the relationships of color or form or anything else. I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on. And the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures show that I communicate those basic human emotions… The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their color relationships then you miss the point.”

― Mark Rothko, 1956 Interview with Selden Rodman

I used a representation yesterday of the colors of the flag of the Ukraine that was actually a detail, shown above, taken from the large Mark Rothko painting shown at the top. I had used this detail before in a post around this time in 2022, one which drew a lot of attention yesterday. Enough so that I went back to check out that post which I am sharing again today as the quotes in that post from Rothko speak so clearly to a lot of things that I have been focusing on recently, on both this blog and in my work.

And since it is Sunday, I am also sharing some Sunday Morning Music at the bottom. In light of what is taking place in this country, the calming effect of Gnossienne No. 1 from Erik Satie seems like the right choice to accompany Rothko as Satie’s work followed similar paths of deep expression and silences. The version I am sharing is a mesmerizing performance from celebrated Finnish guitarist Otto Tolonen.

Busy morning ahead with painting and plowing from what I hope is the last snowfall of this winter. But I thought I would share a Mark Rothko painting (the image at the top is only a detail of its lower section- the whole painting is shown here on the left) and a video on it from Sotheby’s auction house (where it sold for $46.5 million in 2015) along with several Rothko quotes.

Rothko (1903 -1970) was a big influence on my early work. The idea of expressing the big human emotions through simplified forms and color really spoke to me because I never looked at painting as a craft but more as a means to express those forms of emotion that well up inside because they are sometimes too difficult to express in words and voices.

Another aspect that attracts me to Rothko is that he, like Kandinsky, was often eloquent in speaking about his work and art in general. And in those words I found that my own already developed perspectives often largely meshed with and echoed both of these artists’ words and views.

For example, in the quote below the idea that a picture lives by companionship is one that is central to my work.

“A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer. It dies by the same token. It is therefore risky to send it out into the world. How often it must be impaired by the eyes of the unfeeling and the cruelty of the impotent.”

Here a few more that also speak to me, things I have often written about here, about the need of emotional expression in art and of the searching for silence.

“It is the poet and philosopher who provide the community of objectives in which the artist participates. Their chief preoccupation, like the artist, is the expression in concrete form of their notions of reality. Like him, they deal with the verities of time and space, life and death, and the heights of exaltation as well as the depths of despair. The preoccupation with these eternal problems creates a common ground which transcends the disparity in the means used to achieve them.”

“When I was a younger man, art was a lonely thing. No galleries, no collectors, no critics, no money. Yet, it was a golden age, for we all had nothing to lose and a vision to gain. Today it is not quite the same. It is a time of tons of verbiage, activity, consumption. Which condition is better for the world at large I shall not venture to discuss. But I do know, that many of those who are driven to this life are desperately searching for those pockets of silence where we can root and grow. We must all hope we find them.”

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