Redtree Times

This Place, This Life— Now at West End Gallery

Every soul is engaged in a great work—the labor of personal liberation from the state of ignorance. The world is a great prison; its bars are the Unknown. And each is a prisoner until, at last, he earns the right to tear these bars from their moldering sockets, and pass, illuminated and inspired into the darkness, which becomes lighted by that presence. We can only escape from the world by outgrowing the world. Death may take man out of the world but only wisdom can take the world out of the man. As long as the human being is obsessed by worldliness, he will suffer from the Karmic consequences of false allegiances. When however, worldliness is transmuted into Spiritual Integrity he is free, even though he still dwells physically among worldly things.

–Manly P. Hall, The Lost Keys of Freemasonry (1923)

Manly P. Hall was only 22 when wrote the book The Lost Keys of Freemasonry. In fact, he was not even a Freemason at that point. That didn’t happen until 1954. Hall was an interesting character, the head of a church in Los Angeles when he was also still 22 who went on to a 70-year career as a prominent lecturer and author of over 150 books, essays and volumes dealing mainly with world mythology, secret societies, and esoteric philosophy. He believed that all world religions, mythologies, and philosophies point to a single, underlying spiritual truth and that service to others, unselfish living and a mastery of our emotions was the key to attaining universal truth.

To be honest, I had not heard of Hall before encountering the passage above and don’t know much about him outside of a quick and cursory search.  Not sure if his teaching were controversial or have been widely discredited but the passage above felt right for this new painting which I call This Place, This Life.

It’s a painting that seems to brim with mystery and symbolism. I see the Red Chair here as being the stand-in (or should I say, sit-in?) for the soul that is engaged in its great work of freeing itself from its inborn state of ignorance.

The trees represent the bars of the soul’s prison, those things Unknown that keep the Red Chair trapped in darkness.

The path symbolizes the passage from darkness past the prison bars into the presence of the moon’s light which serves as the symbol for the illumination that comes with wisdom.

The Red Roofed house represents the soul that has been liberated– free though it still dwells physically among worldly things.

As for its title, This Place, This Life, it was anointed that long before I came across this passage. But even that title seems to fit Hall’s words. We are put into this place at birth, emerging from the darkness in a state of ignorance and with no choice in the matter. Our life then becomes a labored journey on the path from darkness and ignorance to light and wisdom.

That pretty much sums up what I was seeing in this painting when it came off the easel.

Or in the words of Manly P. Hall: We can only escape from the world by outgrowing the world.

Of course, you may not see that in this painting at all. It might not appeal to you in any way. That’s fine. That’s art.

This feels like one of those paintings that might be for me alone, though I can never be sure of these things now. I have pretty much lost the ability to predict how others will react to my work. That’s okay, too. Being able to predict how people will react would make it feel too much like a manipulation rather than an honest expression.

And I believe this is an honest expression. So, who knows?

This Life, This Place is included in The Jubilee Dance, my 25th annual solo show at the West End Gallery. The show is now hanging and is available for previews and presales. I saw the show the other day and I think it looks great but then again, what do I know?  Plus, I also am more than little biases in my opinion on this subject.

The show officially opens this coming Friday, October 16, with an opening reception that runs from 5-7 PM. Hope you can make it.

There is also a Gallery Talk accompanying the show that takes place on Saturday, November 7, beginning at 11 AM. Details forthcoming though I have to hint that there will be some major giveaways.

Here’s a song that, like most of the songs I share here, has only the most tenuous connection with the painting or words of that day’s post. The song is The Mercy Seat, a Nick Cave song performed by Johnny Cash. It is from Cash’s final years when he produced what I consider to be a group of work that was nothing less than art. The Mercy Seat in the song is the electric chair and the narrator is a prisoner on Death Row about to be executed.

As awful as it is in itself, at least it doesn’t descend into the barbarism of being livestreamed as some sort of bloodthirsty spectacle.

That being said, perhaps the Red Chair here is in some way the Mercy Seat and that we are all eventually condemned to leave this earthly plane. Of course, I could be grasping at straws here. Doesn’t matter. I just felt it was serious song that I wanted to share with what I consider to be a serious painting.

Oaky, I’ve been trying to cut back on saying this but, seriously, you got to git…

Found Grace— Now at the West End Gallery

Life, raw life, the kind we lead every day, whether it leads us into the past or the future, has the curious property of not seeming real enough. We have a need, however illusive, for a life that is more real than life. It lies in the imagination. Fiction would seem to be the way it is processed into reality. If this were not so we should have little excuse for art. Life, raw life, would be more than satisfactory in itself. But it seems to be the nature of man to transform—himself, if possible, and then the world around him—and the technique of this transformation is what we call art. When man fails to transform, he loses consciousness, he stops living.

—Wright Morris, The Territory Ahead (1958)

Art as a transformation of the self and then of the world.

Amen to that.

This pretty much mirrors what I wrote a couple of days ago in reference to the words of Henry Miller, that art is not an escape as it is often described. I most likely have said that in the past but, then again, I say a lot of stuff that is subject to change.

If art is an escape, it is not from the reality of the world around us. N0, it is an escape from the limitations and unreal nature of this life into the absolute reality that exists in our creative imaginations.

The real world exists within us, not outside ourselves.

That sounds a bit crazy, I know. To many, reality is only what we see and hear and touch and taste. The sensory world. For them, the world of dreams and imagination is the province of the weak-minded and the unserious.

I believe the opposite to be true, that the world created in our imagination is for those of strong will, those too strong to be cowed by the false reality that is pushed upon them every day. Those who inhabit the inner world– the dreamers and creators– have an absolute belief that the outer world is transformable, that there remains a possibility that the outer world of unreality will someday align with the reality of the inner world.

The outside world is only changed when our inner world transforms.

That only then will all people have consciousness and be truly alive.

Phew. That’s a lot to think about. Certainly more than I expected when I sat down this morning. I never quite know what the hell is going to come out. I guess that this not knowing, this uncertainty, is where I find the appeal.

It’s kind of like painting– if I knew what was going to come out, why would I even paint?

As Morris wrote above, there would be no need for art in a world that satisfied all realities. And as of this moment, at 6:02 AM on Tuesday, October 13, the outside world is failing to do just that.

Sorry for running on this morning. That does a certain disservice to the painting, Found Grace, featured at the top which beautifully captures, for me, the potential for grace, light, and beauty that exists in the inner realm.

It represents the world transformed.

I like the sound of those four words. I think that whenever anyone in the future asks me what a particular painting means I will utter those words–it represents the world transformed.

At the moment, I can’t think of a painting of mine where that wouldn’t apply. But then again, I could be wrong. It is early and I’m tired and achy.

Found Grace is where I live for now. You can see it at the West End Gallery as part of The Jubilee Dance, my solo exhibit there that opens this Friday, October 16. This year’s show marks my 25th solo effort at the West End, something of which I am kind of proud. I sure didn’t think it was in the cards for me back in 1995 when I first started showing my little paintings.

But I was transformed and hopefully, in some very small way, so was the world.

The Jubilee Dance is now hanging and is available for previews and presales. The show officially opens this coming Friday, October 16, with an opening reception that runs from 5-7 PM. Hope to see you there.

There is also a Gallery Talk accompanying the show that takes place on Saturday, November 7, beginning at 11 AM. Details forthcoming.

Here’s a song from Ben Harper about the power of transformation. This is With My Own Two Hands.

A good vibe to say good-bye.

On the Flats (1995)– Now at West End Gallery

May the countryside and the gliding valley streams content me. Lost to fame, let me love river and woodland.

–Virgil, Georgics (29 BCE)

In my solo show at the West End Gallery that opens Friday, there is a group of five paintings from my earliest days as a painter. I call them my vintage work. I have shared all of them here on the post in the past month or two except for this particular piece, titled On the Flats. I have it listed as being from 1995 but in fact it was painted in November of 1994, several months before my work began showing publicly at the West End.

However, it did show briefly back in 1995. I can tell not from records or anything written but from the awful matting that adorned it for decades. It was obviously one of my first attempts at presenting my work. I was totally unaware how to mat and frame the work that needed to be under glass and didn’t yet realize that a simple white cotton mat was the best way to show my work without distracting from it or even negatively affecting it. The mat I had on this was a textured gray one with a maroon border around the image. Unflattering in every way.

For years, I looked at this painting in that surrounding mat, not fully realizing how it affected my own judgement of it. Only when I finally removed the mat recently did I truly recognize the quality of this piece. The sky, for example, was a perfect example of the coloration I was seeking in my work, a complex blend of hues achieved by adding and subtracting the pigments in a way that let the white surface glow through.

The sky in this piece is exceptional, and I doubt that I could replicate it now. It is a unique product of its time. That actually can be said for a lot of my work. My process continually changes as does my color palette and even my surfaces. This was painted on watercolor paper without the gesso that became the preferred base for my surfaces.

I actually look at this piece with a bit of envy now because I know how attuned I was then o the particular process that created it. My work has grown and widened in its scope but, in the process, some things are lost along the way and most likely will never be recovered. When I painted this piece back in late 1994, I thought it was beyond me, as both a painter and a person. Looking at it now, I no longer think it is beyond me as a person. It took years for me to catch up with it. But as a painter, it is still beyond me, though for different reasons.

Another thing I like about this piece is its tangible sense of place and its feel. I am a hill person by nature and live in an area marked by valleys of varying sizes. Some are very narrow, running at the base of two hills alongside creeks that carved their tight little valley. Others are broad and airy, as though they exist in a dome of clear air. One local town is named Big Flats for very obvious reasons.

This wide valley flatland was exactly the sort of place that made me give up writing years before. When I aspired to be a writer, I found that my work always gravitated to descriptions of wide spaces and silence, with little narrative. Hardly the stuff that made for great reading. I don’t know that I made a conscious decision then, but it showed me plainly that I had to find a better outlet to express myself, one that made wide open space and silence more palatable to myself and the viewer.

Luckily, I fell off a ladder and ended up as a painter.

That’s the whole story this morning.

Here is the immortal Otis Redding with Down in the Valley. Doesn’t get much better than this.

As I said, On the Flats and four other vintage paintings (shown at the bottom of the page) are included in The Jubilee Dance, my 25th solo exhibit at the West End Gallery. The show is now hanging and is available for previews and presales. The show officially opens this coming Friday, October 16, with an opening reception that runs from 5-7 PM. Hope to see you there.

There is also a Gallery Talk accompanying the show that takes place on Saturday, November 7, beginning at 11 AM. Details coming in the weeks ahead though I am pretty sure there be things given away. If you know, you know.

Bottle Factory (1994)

Factory View (1994)

The Heights (1994)

Eldridge Park (1994)

If you are an artist, that means that you are denuding yourself more and more, that by the time you die you are stark naked and your bowels turned inside out.

— Henry Miller, Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

This new painting, The Tree at Time’s End, is somewhat of an anomaly in the body of my work and in my West End Gallery show that opens Friday. I say somewhat because it fits but has a dimension to it that makes it feel apart.

I have always had a warm spot in my heart for such anomalies. I think some of that goes to the sentence above from Henry Miller. While the vast majority of my work is biographical in some way or at least representing my feelings and emotions of this world, the anomalies often give an even deeper glimpse into the psyche. They seem to pull down the barrier that have been put up to protect our (my) deepest emotions.

I believe my work is overwhelmingly honest for the most part but these anomalies seem to me to be even more honest. Sometimes painfully so.

That is where the denuding come into play. That is just another way of describing the transparency I have often mentioned here and in gallery talks in the past. I believe my work and my writing about it have become increasingly more transparent over the years. I still have some layers protecting parts of me like a fig leaf, but I often feel as though I stand before the world naked through my work and words.

I worried about that years ago, wanting to keep my barriers high enough to only afford those outside them the smallest glimpse. But I soon realized that my work was who I was and when I tried to pretend it wasn’t, the work suffered. I quickly learned that I was mistaken in thinking I could escape by pretending to be something other than what I was and began to feel more comfortable in exposing that person, even when I show my less than flattering aspects.

Art is, in itself, is not the escape we sometimes think it is. I know I have glibly described it as such. But that is a defensive response, one that keeps my protective barriers up. In fact, art is a deeper dive into reality, going to the crux of it in an effort to make sense of our existence here.

Art is not an act of running away. No, it is a confrontation with who and what we are.

This painting feels like that for me. I have been open about my health issues over the past year and there are times when I feel much closer to my own time’s end than I would like. It has certainly felt that way in recent weeks, but thankfully, this morning I feel like that time is further away. But when of comes, as it must for us all, this is how I am envisioning that time. A point where we transcend time. A point where light and dark, coldness and heat, all converge so that we become part of the greater everything.

Now, that might seem sad to some. I don’t see it that way. I think that our time’s end is simply part of our lucky journey into this life, this privileged dimension of being. When I am that Red Tree at the end of time, hopefully many years in the future, I believe I will be there happily and without fear, knowing that I knew what I needed to know of this life.

I had known what love, beauty, and belonging is in this world.

And I’ll be there with a stupid grin on my face. Well, whatever the tree equivalent of a face is.

See? Denuded. And without shame.

This little piece of my nakedness is part of The Jubilee Dance, my 25th solo exhibit at the West End Gallery. The show is now hanging and is available for previews and presales. The show officially opens this coming Friday, October 16, with an opening reception that runs from 5-7 PM. Hope to see you there.

There is also a Gallery Talk accompanying the show that takes place on Saturday, November 7, beginning at 11 AM. Details coming in the weeks ahead.

Here’s a song for this week’s Sunday Morning Music that deals with, in a way, with the end of time. This is the Cowboy Junkies cover of the David Bowie classic, Five Years. It’s line, I never thought I’d need so many people, resonates this morning.

Okay, you best leave. I have to put some clothes on…

Memories of Moons Past – At West End Gallery

“Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.”

― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

I don’t have time this morning to explain the theory of all points of time existing simultaneously that the aliens, the Tralfamadorians, who populated Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. except to say that for them time is time is liquid with every moment ever-present and accessible. They can move effortlessly through time. We humans however are stuck in our time and circumstance, mere witnesses who are unable to affect the flow of time.

Like bugs encased in amber.

I read this book over fifty years ago and have read it several times since. It no doubt has informed some of my own thinking. It sometimes pops up when I am working on a painting that ends up with multiple moons, making me wonder if they represent those points in time that are always present but unattainable by we humans, trapped as we are in the amber of our own time.

I think that could apply to this new painting that is part of my new exhibit at the West End Gallery. I think it could also represent our own attempts to escape the amber and somehow traverse time though our memories. I know there are moments when the particular way in which the moons is shining instantly sends me hurtling back through time to moment with that same quality of light. I am at once in that moment, experiencing all that it held for me then– the emotional and the sensory.

It might be as close as I ever will get the Tralfamadorian way of moving through time. And even that is encased in its own amber, since I am limited to my memory of what has been before. The future only exists in my imagination.

But maybe imagination is in its own way a form of time travel. Maybe the future already exists in a Tralfamadorian way, always there and instantly accessible. Our imagination may be telling us what already is and we simply can’t yet access it.

Or not.

For myself, this piece both intrigues my curiosity and soothes my soul.

I am going to let you chew on what I’ve written now. Maybe you’ll swallow or spit it out. That’s your call. If this painting, Memories of Moons Past, makes you think a bit, then I am satisfied.

Memories of Moons Past is included in The Jubilee Dance, my 25th solo exhibit at the West End Gallery. The show is now hanging and is available for previews and presales. The show officially opens next Friday, October 16 with an opening reception that runs from 5-7 PM. Hope to see you there.

There is also a Gallery Talk accompanying the show that takes place on Saturday, November 7, beginning at 11 AM. Details are forthcoming, but I will say that if you plan to attend try to get there early as seating is limited. That is actually one of my favorite parts of the talk, getting to chat with folks as they sit waiting for the talk to begin. There will, of course, be a bunch of other stuff including a free drawing for one of my paintings at the end of the talk.

For those who have been following my recent health issues, I did receive the results of this week’s PET scan and they are positive for the most part. There has been no progression of my cancer and the severe pain in my ribs was not caused by a broken rib. It was instead the result of a nodule on the pleura between my lung and ribs. Just have to figure out what is causing it and how to resolve that issue. Hopefully, that is small potatoes compared to what we feared it might be. Though the pain is still pretty intense, I am relieved.

Here’s a song that has little to do with this post except that hearing it sends me hurtling back through time to the first time I saw Bruce perform it nearly 50 years ago. This is his Blinded by the Light. This is an acoustic version that really accentuates the density of his lyrics.

I got to git. I am time traveling and off to another point in time. Meet you back here again sometime soon– if I come back.

In the Gardens of Glory– Now at West End Gallery

If thou follow thy star, thou canst not fail of a glorious haven.

–Dante Alighieri, Inferno (c. 1306-1310)

This line from Dante’s Inferno might be the first iteration of that bit of advice so often given now that it has lost the pristine brilliance of its words: follow your passion.

I’ve been fortunate to have been able to identify my passion then follow it. It took a while. It gave me clues every so often in my early years, but I was too dense or distracted to understand it was to which I was being directed. Eventually, my star shined too brightly for me to ignore anymore, and I’ve been following it ever since.

I would like to think that the show I delivered yesterday to the West End Gallery shows that I chose the right star to follow. And I would like to also think that this painting, In the Gardens of Glory, is a fine representation of both Dante’s words and the path I took in following my star.

It certainly feels to me like a glorious haven.

My personal reading of this is that I am under that Red Roof and those gardens that surround it are the product of my labor and imagination. They are my work, my paintings.

Their colors and kaleidoscopic feel translate perfectly to how I see my work. It sometimes seems that my work is a kaleidoscope with a certain number of forms and ever-shifting colors and textures. When I paint it is like I am turning that kaleidoscope. When I am done turning it and everything settles, what remains is a painting that feels much the same while also feeling very different. It has its own completeness and uniqueness within the scope of its elements and colors.

In the Gardens of Glory definitely has that feel of a kaleidoscope for me, with the bright clarity of its colors that seem as though they illuminated from behind.

And if I am under that Red Roof on that small hill surrounded by those patches of colors, I am very content in being there, glad that I found that star to follow many years ago.

Might my sun/moon represent that star?

I can’t say for sure bit it sounds like a pretty darn good guess.

The Jubilee Dance, my 25th solo exhibit at the West End Gallery opens next Friday, October 16. The show is being hung today and will be available for previews and pre-buys tomorrow. The opening reception for the exhibit runs from 5-7 PM on Friday, the 16th. Hope you can make it.

There is also a Gallery Talk accompanying the show that takes place on Saturday, November 7, beginning at 11 AM. Details are forthcoming, but I will say that if you plan to attend try to get there early as seating is limited. That is actually one of my favorite parts of the talk, getting to chat with folks as they sit waiting for the talk to begin.

Here’s a favorite tune, Get Off My Cloud, from the Rolling Stones that has been living in the crowded space of my mind for nearly 60 years yet never gets old. I might very well be singing it under that Red Roof on that small hill.

Heed its words. That means git...

Joy in Every Dimension— Coming today to the West End Gallery

Every human being is tried this way in the active service of expectancy. Now comes the fulfillment and relieves him, but soon he is again placed on reconnaissance for expectancy; then he is again relieved, but as long as there is any future for him, he has not yet finished his service. And while human life goes on this way in very diverse expectancy, expecting very different things according to different times and occasions and in different frames of mind, all life is again one nightwatch of expectancy.

–Søren Kierkegaard, Patience in Expectancy (1844)

Nightwatch of expectancy…

I can guarantee you that will show up as the title on some future painting of mine.

When I came across this passage from Kierkegaard— a little light bathroom reading– it struck close to my heart.  My whole career as an artist has been a constant cycle of expectancy and fulfillment. Each show is a project of expectancy that tries me in many ways–mentally, physically, and artistically. When the work for each show is completed and out the door on its way to the gallery, there is tremendous relief in the fulfillment of that expectancy.

But as Kierkegaard points out, as long as there is any future for him, he has not yet finished his service.

The next project, the next expectancy, is already taking shape in the mind even as the first deep sigh of relief from the last is still hanging in the air. And if the next project, the next show or whatever, is not yet in place, the search for it starts immediately.

The nightwatch of expectancy begins.

That is where I am right now. The work for my annual solo show, The Jubilee Dance, is finally complete and ready to head to the West End Gallery later today. The expectancy has been fulfilled and a sense of relief sets in. The fulfillment of this show has been perhaps the most trying of my career, one that consists of having gone through cycle some 70+ times. Every single one has presented its own set of challenges but the ones from this year make the relief even a bit sweeter than any of the others. The fatigue I have been experiencing from the treatment for my cancer has been on hyperdrive which has made even the simplest tasks seem like a Herculean effort. And in the last two weeks a mysterious rib pain jumped into the fray. It was like I was in the ring fighting one guy and suddenly another jumps in and begins whopping on me. To continue the boxing metaphor, I had to take a standing 8 count yesterday to get an unexpected PET scan.

But I was not knocked out. I continued the fight and surprisingly was able to finish up the show late yesterday.

Sweet relief as the final bell rang on this one.

I am a bit more tired and beaten up after this one. And while I am enjoying the contented feeling of relief this morning, I am already working in my head on what comes next. The nightwatch of expectancy is on high alert. It has to be because I don’t believe I have finished my full service of expectancy.

I still have things, projects and shows, that must and will be done.

But that is the future. This show is about what been done. I am really pleased by the show I am taking out to the West End today. If this had to be my last show– and it is definitely not going to be– I would be absolutely satisfied. It’s a richly colored and visually impactful group that I believe will look great on the gallery walls.

But then again, that’s just my opinion. Can you really trust the opinion of a tired and beaten-up fighter on how they did in their bout?

Ultimately, you’ll have to be the judge.

Hope you’ll bring your scorecards out to The Jubilee Dance, my 25th solo exhibit at the West End Gallery that opens next Friday, October 16. The opening reception at the gallery runs from 5-7 PM on Friday. I’ll be there. Look for the clown in the dunking booth.

There is also a Gallery Talk accompanying the show that takes place on Saturday, November 7, beginning at 11 AM. Keep an eye out here for more details in the coming weeks. You know, the normal stuff, like drawings for paintings and such.

I chose the painting shown at the top from this show, Joy in Every Dimension, simply because it makes me happy for some reason. And though I am tired and beaten-up today, I feel somewhat joyful. Nothing better than that on any day.

Here’s a song that I think goes well with this painting. This is Art Garfunkel and his performance of the Van Morrison song, I Shall Sing. It was recorded in 1973 at Grace Cathedral, New York.

Joy in every dimension…

Blue Moon Mystic-– Soon at the West End Gallery

Every true artist does feel, consciously or unconsciously, that he is touching transcendental truths; that his images are shadows of things seen through the veil. In other words, the natural mystic does know that there is something there, something behind the clouds or within the trees; but he believes that the pursuit of beauty is the way to find it; that imagination is a sort of incantation that can call it up.

–G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (1925)

This new 20″ by 20″ painting, Blue Moon Mystic, is headed to the West End Gallery in the next day or so for my solo show there that opens next Friday, October 16. I spent well over an hour writing about this painting than decided that the words I had written did no justice to it at all. They were not up to what I was seeing in this piece and, in fact, seemed to diminish it.

It’s sometimes hard to write about paintings that strike a deep chord in me. You would think they would be the easiest subjects on which to expound. Maybe it is that there is something in these pieces that are not so evident, that seem beyond the surface.

A transcendental truth?

I don’t know. I would like to believe that I am touching such truths with my work, but how do you know such a thing?

I would say it is just an innate feeling, a belief or certitude, that rises in you but that doesn’t really count for much. After all, the wild-eyed guy on the street corner with the tinfoil hat yelling about the invisible little people following him has that same level of belief in what he is saying.

But then again, maybe he is touching on transcendental truths and we just can’t see it. It might be a thin line beyond delusion and absolute truth.

I guess the best you can do is just make work that strike a chord of authenticity within yourself and hope that that is something that others will see and react to. Maybe along the way you’ll be fortunate enough to stumble onto a transcendental truth every so often.

Once in a blue moon.

That’s all I am going to say about it. It may not seem like enough for this particular painting but at the end of the day this is a painting that has much to say in its own way to those who can hear it.

Let’s leave at that, shall we?

Here’s Into the Mystic from Van Morrison. Take my word, it fits.

Blue Moon Mystic is included in The Jubilee Dance, my 25th solo exhibit at the West End Gallery that opens next Friday, October 16. There is an opening reception at the gallery on October 16 that runs from 5-7 PM.

There is also a Gallery Talk accompanying the show that takes place on Saturday, November 7, beginning at 11 AM. Keep an eye out here for more details in the coming weeks

The Moon’s Secret Garden– Soon at the West End Gallery

“Sometimes since I’ve been in the garden I’ve looked up through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being happy as if something was pushing and drawing in my chest and making me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden – in all the places.”

― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden (1911)

This is the painting that graces the postcard for my upcoming solo show at the West End Gallery that opens next Friday, October 16. It is titled The Moon’s Secret Garden and is 30″ by 40″ on canvas. I am going to miss this piece when it leaves the studio in a couple of days.

It has a feeling of mystery– or maybe I should say mysticism or the magic that Francis Hodgson Burnett described in The Secret Garden— that both rouses my curiosity and soothes me. As though the mystery I am encountering is meant to remain unrevealed. Just simply sensing that mystery and finding a question in it is all the answer I will receive or need.

Sometimes the answer is the question.

This is a painting that I could go on and on about it, but I think I will let it stand as is. It has stories to tell that I don’t know, stories contained in the eyes and minds of others.

I will add that there was another passage from The Secret Garden that I almost chose for the opening here. It speaks of us being part of the mystery that I see in this painting. It’s a lovely description that easily complements this painting.

“One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands out and throws one’s head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one’s heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun–which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so. And one knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries. Then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with the millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in someone’s eyes.”

I know that feeling well, of looking up at the movement of the sky’s light at sunrise or watching sunlight magically shift and glisten through the trees. In those moments, I feel less connected to my physical self that has an expiration date and more in tune with whatever unknown part of me continues on past that date into eternity.

It’s a lovely moment.

Okay, here’s a song that probably has little to do with painting outside its mention of flowers. But then again, it might apply. Who knows? I just wanted to hear it this morning so here it is. This is Cross of Flowers from Jeffrey Foucault.

The Moon’s Secret Garden is part of The Jubilee Dance, my 25th solo exhibit at the West End Gallery that opens next Friday, October 16. There is an opening reception at the gallery on October 16 that runs from 5-7 PM. Hope you can make it to the gallery so we can chat for a few minutes.

The Natural Life— Coming to West End Gallery

Are we more vitally conscious than an Egyptian 3000 years B.C. was? Are we? Probably we are less. Our conscious range is wide, but shallow as a sheet of paper. We have no depth to our consciousness. A rising thing is a passing thing, says Buddha.

–D.H. Lawrence, Apocalypse (1931)

I wasn’t sure how to write about this new painting, The Natural Life. There are a lot of things in it, obvious strengths, that could send its meaning in a number of directions for anyone viewing it.  My own perception was that it represented the Red Tree as being not only part of the natural world; it was the natural world in itself.

I don’t know that I can fully explain what I mean by that or what I am inferring beyond it.

One analogy would be that there are musicians who play music, often at the highest skill levels. Then there are musicians who are music. Their instincts and understanding of music are part of their being, ingrained in them, so that nothing that is music is alien to them.

The music is them and they are music just as nature is the Red Tree and the Red Tree is nature.

Does that make any sense at all? It’s just after 5 AM and I am sore and tired, so it might just be a jumble of words. I did point out at the beginning that I wasn’t sure how to write about this painting. You were warned.

That thought sort of glides into the passage at the top from D.H. Lawrence’s final book, Apocalypse. The Red Tree, being nature and part of it, has a consciousness of all those things in the natural world that surround it. It deeply understands its purpose, knows how it fits and harmonizes within the natural world.

A harmony of being.

To Lawrence’s words, we were once like the Red Tree, enmeshed in and part of nature. In effect, we were nature.

But over the ages we have become less and less part of nature. Harmony has been lost. Our knowledge of the world has grown exponentially but the average person is less conscious of the natural world around them. It is knowledge without understanding.

I often think that the ancient cultures and even those farmers working small farms in the 1800’s had a greater understanding and consciousness of the surrounding natural world than we do in our time with all its advances in technology and science. Their very existence depended on this knowledge and their ability to find harmony with the land, water, and weather. We, on the other hand, give little thought to the natural world outside of how it sometimes inconveniences us with bad weather that knocks out our cable or internet connections.

This is beginning to sound like an old man rant.

It’s not, say the ranting old man as he stops shaking his fist at the sky. I am disengaged from nature as well, sitting here at 5 AM writing this in front of a glowing computer monitor, listening to streaming music. To be honest, I didn’t even look up at the night sky as I walked over here. Couldn’t tell you if it was clear and starry or cloudy. I can tell you that it was not raining and that I did hear the distant hoot of an owl far into the woods. I don’t think either of those qualifies as a consciousness of my part in the natural world.

Yet I aspire to have that consciousness. To understand my place and purpose in nature. To be nature, even in the smallest of ways, if that’s possible.

In short, it’s that aspirational aspect that this painting represents to me, even if I gave a tortured explanation in getting to this point. The elemental feel in its representation of water, land, and sky make me desirous of finding the sort of harmony I find in its lines, forms, and colors that allow me a glimpse of what once was and what might one day be again.

But then again, that’s just the opinion of the old guy out shaking his fist at the sky.

Not sure if any of this makes sense. Take it for what it’s worth. Here’s song as reward for sticking with me this long today. This is a favorite that I last played here in 2009. Guess I can play it again now without feeling that I am overdoing it. This is People Got a Lotta Nerve from Neko Case. It may or not have anything to do with this post. It’s your call.

 The Natural Life is 18″ by 24″ on canvas and is included in The Jubilee Dance, my 25th solo exhibit at the West End Gallery that opens Friday, October 16. There is an opening reception at the gallery on October 16 that runs from 5-7 PM. I will be there. Just look for the uncomfortable looking gray-haired guy ranting and shaking his fist.