Redtree Times

Farewell, my dearest sister, fare thee well:
The elements be kind to thee, and make
Thy spirits all of comfort! Fare thee well.

–William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

Lousy day yesterday as I lost my longtime studio partner, Hobo. Her hyperthyroidism, high blood pressure and the sheer weight of what we figured were her 18 years of age finally took their ultimate toll. She was in rough shape and I hesitatingly made that awful final decision to take her to the vet for the last time. It was a quiet and easy end. Fitting, since she was always quiet and easy to care for. Easy to live with. Easy to love.

She had been reduced over the past few years to a frail bag of bones. At her death she was just over 6 pounds, in stark comparison to her at her peak when she was a vibrant and powerful 13 pounds. Back then, when I would call for her and she would run to me on the path through the woods, the sound of her footfalls on the trail sounded like those of a running horse.

Hobie (her real name is officially Hobo Joe From Idaho but I called her Hobie) showed up as a stray about 15 years ago. She kept her distance for the longest time. It wasn’t until she chased our housecat, Zsa Zsa, up a pine tree and on to the roof of the studio that we really engaged. Zsa Zsa allowed me to climb a ladder and retrieve her from the roof. Hobie remained, calmly watching me as she sat at the peak. I put another ladder beside the first and ran a board between the two. I told her to watch and moved my hand from the roof to the board then down the ladder rungs. Moving away, I stood at a safe distance for her as she calmly made her way to the edge of the roof then hopped on the board and down the ladder just as I had showed her.

She trotted away that day but soon showed up again. Finally, a few weeks later, I spied her peeking at me from the corner of the studio. I slapped my leg and yelled to her, “Well, come on!” She ran right up to me, demanding to be petted for several minutes.

From that moment on, she was my girl. She was soon spending her nights in the studio though she preferred to prowl the woods and lawn during the day. In the studio, she was never a problem at all, outside of shredding the edge of one of my kitchen cabinets, which I never really minded because they are pretty horrible to begin with. Plus, she took such relish in it, especially when I came into the studio first thing in the morning. But she never showed any interest in scratching a painting or a frame. Never a problem of any kind. Even in these last years when she received meds several times a day, she was easy to deal with.

For the past 12+ years she had been solely an indoor cat, after an incident when she came flying into the screen room off the back of the studio with another large cat hot on her tail. She came in that day and had never strayed outside again, outside of one incident where I inadvertently left the door open. She went out and sniffed around on the sidewalk until I walked over to her. She willingly allowed me to pick her up and her ever effusive purr started immediately as I climbed the steps to bring her in.

She knew she had good gig.

And while she may have felt fortunate after spending years outside, I was the true lucky one in having received such loyal and unconditional love from her for so long. I could go on and on about how great she was in so many ways, but I will leave it at this. The studio certainly feels empty and a little colder this morning. Hobie will be missed but I suspect she remains here in some way. And that’s a good thing. Comforting.

There are three cats in my basement now, the feral family that have been my outdoor mates for the past three years, waiting to make the transition to being studio cats. They have been in the basement for most of the winter, mainly at night and during the day in poor weather. It has been kind of an audition, knowing that Hobie was not long for this world. So far, they seem to be doing well and haven’t destroyed anything down there. They are great, loving cats and will no doubt be fine studio cats. When I call them, they come running through the woods but even though they are equal in size, they don’t make the same pounding sound that Hobie.

They will have to make the space their home in their own unique way because they never replace Hobie.

Thank you, Hobie, for all you gave me. Fare thee well, my good girl.

In Eminence— Coming to Principle Gallery, June

I never climbed any ladder: I have achieved eminence by sheer gravitation.

—George Bernard Shaw, preface to The Irrational Knot (1905)

Shaw wrote his novel, The Irrational Knot, in 1880 and wrote a preface for it in a new American edition 25 years later. It’s a comic introduction but has many interesting lines including one near the beginning in which he says that the book was written by someone other than himself as he was now, in 1905.

As Shaw explains:

At present, of course, I am not the author of The Irrational Knot.
Physiologists inform us that the substance of our bodies (and consequently of our souls) is shed and renewed at such a rate that no part of us lasts longer than eight years: I am therefore not now in any atom of me the person who wrote The Irrational Knot in 1880. The last of that author perished in 1888; and two of his successors have since joined the majority.

This made me think about my upcoming solo show at the Principle Gallery in June. This year’s show is my 25th solo exhibit at the Alexandria gallery which makes me wonder if those paintings from that first show in 2000 were painted by the same person who is feverishly working on these new ones scattered around my studio.

They certainly look different in many ways. The techniques and the media employed have certainly changed and evolved. The surfaces are different with more textures and layers and even deeper colors. More elements have been added to the compositions.

Maybe there is not a single atom remaining from the previous me who painted those earlier paintings.

However, though every atom might be gone from that progenitor in 2000, the subsequent generations of myself possess the same DNA. The emotions rendered are much the same. The Red Tree remains, like some genetic physical trait that spans multiple generations in a family– always the same but slightly different in its time. And though there are more layers and elements now, the basic compositions remain simplified.

I think of this when I look at this new painting, In Eminence, from the upcoming show. It is a painting that would have looked much the same in some ways when the me of 2000 (or the great-great grandfather me if you go with Shaw’s premise that we are new beings every 8 years) might have painted it.

You would recognize the family resemblance, but it would also look very different. This piece feels to me as though it took the lessons passed down from one ancestral me to the next and incorporated them into a statement that fully describes the state of being that exists now in the Red Tree family line. It’s a piece that brings me great satisfaction in viewing it.

Let’s call it family pride. I think the me that was in 2000 would be happy with it.

But we’ll never really know, will we? That dude is long gone.

But hopefully, the me that might one day be my grandson, if my time here on this spinning rock allows that to occur, will feel the same.

I have a feeling he will feel much the same about it as his old granddad did back in the day.

Just a hunch on my part but who knows what he will really think about it?

Crazy kids…

In Eminence is 30 inches high by 15 inches wide on canvas. It is included in my solo exhibit, Continuum: The RedTree at 25, which opens June 14, 2024 at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA.

David Levine– Thomas Hoving

To appreciate a work of art, is it okay to like what you like, and the heck with the art critics and experts? Absolutely.

–Thomas Hoving

I came across this quote from the late Thomas Hoving and thought it would be a good opportunity to show off an illustration of him done by the late David Levine, the famed illustrator/artist whose distinct caricatures adorned the New York Review of Books for many years, along with many other publications. The original drawing now hangs in a corner of my studio, obtained from the estate of Thomas Buechner who was friend to both Levine and Hoving.

Thomas Hoving wore a number of hats but was primarily a museum director. Now that sounds pretty blasé on its surface but he was a rock star among his peers, writing bestselling books and using his flamboyant showman skills to usher the Metropolitan Museum into a renaissance of sorts as its director. He was big personality in what is often a low-key position.

His words above definitely ring true as good advice to anyone who has ever felt anxious about purchasing or even sharing their opinion on a piece of art. Feel free to buy and admire work that speaks to you, regardless of what critics might say. Art is based on an emotional elicitation, and nobody can dictate how anyone should respond to any one piece of work. A critic may have a response to a work of art and write effusively about that work, perhaps even making cogent points about the validity of the work. But if I don’t feel that same emotional response, all the eloquence in the world telling me why I should like it cannot make me suddenly adore that work.

In short, we like what we like.

I’ve seen people in high powered positions, people who normally ooze confidence, suddenly turn to jelly when trying to decide whether they should buy a piece of art. Art is such a nebulous and subjective thing that many of these folks feel a bit lost and out of their depth. They are afraid of making a mistake and lose all trust in their own opinion. They forget that they should simply like what they like and trust that feeling.

So, if you see something you like sometime, don’t be shy about showing your admiration for it. Maybe that means purchasing it or maybe it’s just letting the artist know that it moves you somehow.

Both are appreciated by every artist I have ever known.

There is a lot on my plate this morning so I am reposting the above from several years back. Being an artist working in my own idiosyncratic niche, I have often run up against this distrust of one’s own response to a piece of art. We all want to judge things against other things and a piece of art that doesn’t pose an easy comparison can be vexing.

So, trust your feelings when you look at art. If you like something, don’t be afraid to admit it. It’s art– there is no absolute right or wrong.

For this week’s Sunday Morning Music let’s go with a song that speak directly to this– I Like It Like That. The problem is that there are two (actually probably more than two) songs with that title. The two here are very different but very distinct in their appeal. The first is a 1967 tune from the late Bronx-based bandleader Pete Rodriguez whose genre they put in the category of Latin Boogaloo. I never heard that term before. But it’s a great tune and one you may have heard before since it’s been in a lot of movies and has been covered many times.

The same can be said for the second song from New Orleans-based R&B singer/songwriter Chris Kenner in 1961. You might recognize one or the other immediately. Or not. Doesn’t matter–I think both are good tunes.

I like them and am not afraid to say it.

Call of the Blue Moon– Coming to Principle Gallery, June 2024

He who Doubts from what he sees
Will neer Believe do what you Please
If the Sun & Moon should Doubt
They’d immediately Go out

—William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

My annual solo exhibit at the Principle Gallery opens in 6 weeks, on June 14.  One of the first pieces I completed for this exhibit, my 25th such show at the Alexandria, Virginia gallery, is this larger painting, a 36″ by 36″ canvas called Call of the Blue Moon.

It’s a piece that has been catching my eye for several months here in the studio, one that always seems to calm and center me when self-doubt seems overwhelming.

It possesses a coolness and clarity that is a balm for my doubts.

I’ve been needing to look at it quite often recently.

And an air of certainty. It seems to me like a place where there is no room for doubt. It depicts a cold and barren landscape where any doubt could be lethal. Yet it has a beauty and underlying warmth that transcends its harshness.

Maybe that is its simple message, that life is often harsh and dangerous yet still offers us beauty and tenderness. And hope.

Perhaps hope is that blue moon.

It just might be but you may well see it differently. As it should be.

Here’s a song to go along with this piece, though I am not sure it fully syncs with it. It’s a song I like that I was listening to this morning as I began writing this.  I came across the music of the Yoshida Brothers a few years back. They are a duo playing the traditional Japanese shamisen, a three-stringed that sort of looks like a square banjo which is played by plucking or slamming the strings with a plectrum that looks kind a scraper. The Yoshida Brothers have a very eclectic sound that mixes traditional Japanese music and sounds many other musical influences. I sometimes hear Celtic or Bluegrass influences in some of their pieces and hard rock and electronica in others. This is Overland Blues.

String theory has the potential to show that all of the wondrous happenings in the universe – from the frantic dance of subatomic quarks to the stately waltz of orbiting binary stars; from the primordial fireball of the big bang to the majestic swirl of heavenly galaxies – are reflections of one, grand physical principle, one master equation.

—Brian Greene,The Elegant Universe

[From October 2014]

I’ve done several paintings through the years using textured surface that has bands or strings that twist and turn throughout. It’s an extreme texture, more pronounced on than my typical surfaces, and, as a result, takes center stage in these pieces. They become the driving force in the painting.

These bands that run through these paintings always spur something in me, some sense of wonder at the great unknowns of our world and universe. The painting shown here, Here There Everywhere, certainly does this for me. Looking at it, I am filled with questions about the world or worlds that lie just past our perceptions. Are there other dimensions, other pasts and futures swirling around us at any moment? And if so, are we connected in some way to this web of chaotic energy or are we merely physical beings, unwitting bystanders in the great dance of the universe?

In this painting, the Red Tree serves as the questioner, living in the moment but recognizing the forces that permeate everything and give that moment a discernible depth and meaning beyond the simple beauty it can physically observe.  I know that I have had that feeling.  I might be out driving and see a certain curve of a field, a bend of a tree or the filtering light from the sun and suddenly feel an intense emotional response that seems to have no basis of origin in my past, one so strong that I find myself asking why and where it came from.

Perhaps this indefinable emotional is a brush with these other worlds, these energy forces?

I certainly don’t know. Part of me wishes it to be so but part of me simply wants to savor that moment and emotion without questioning it. Something to ponder on a gray autumn morning.

Or something to ponder on a damp spring morning nearly ten years later. I was looking at this painting this morning in the studio for a few moments. It is one that made the gallery rounds and came back here years ago. I only used that sort of whirling texture in a handful of pieces around that time in 2014. They were all quite striking, as is this piece, but I never really employed that texture after those pieces.

This piece has a sort of elegant feel to me, almost regal. It certainly doesn’t feel like an orphan painting that never found a home. Maybe it’s more like exiled royalty than orphan.

But beyond its feel, it serves as a constant reminder of string theory which I roughly described in another post about another painting from around that time:

It reminded me of one of the supposed byproducts of the string theory which is a very speculative area of quantum physics. Without going into the scientific basis for the theory (which I couldn’t do very well anyway), string theory basically creates a platform where extra dimensions– it is speculated that there may actually be at least nine dimensions– could and may exist alongside the dimensions that we know and dwell within, without our knowledge of their existence. A simplified example of how this might work is the way we are surrounded by radio signals all the time without our knowledge but with the proper receptor, a radio, they become apparent. With string theory, perhaps there are also parallel dimensions around us without our knowledge, dimensions that contain others forms of energy, other forms of existence.

People have used this as theoretical basis for many things such as time travel, the existence of UFOs, and things supernatural such as ghosts and other spectral occurrences. The string theory has been a very fertile field for science fiction writers to work.

Perhaps it also provides a place where the soul, the source of energy that animates the body, ultimately dwells. Perhaps there is the energy of souls all around us in these alternative dimensions. Maybe the photons we see are also the part, a facet, of something unseen. That’s how I see the sky in this painting, as masses of disparate energies that we only see partially in the dimensions we can detect.

None of this has much to do with anything this morning. At least not here, in our meager world of limited dimensions. But it gives me something different to think about and that’s got to be worth something, right?

Here’s a lovely song whose title sort of inspired the title for the painting above. It’s the Beatles and Here, There and Everywhere.

Now, listen then leave quietly without disturbing my strings…

Echoes of Time— Coming to Principle Gallery

I said that the world is absurd, but I was too hasty. This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart.

–Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays

The new painting shown here is titled Echoes of Time and is 40″ tall by 20″ wide on canvas. It is included in Continuum: The RedTree at 25, my annual solo exhibit at the Principle Gallery which opens in June.

In recent years in my work, I have occasionally employed a sky comprised of a series of continually expanding concentric rings moving out from the sun/moon.

I don’t know what I would call it. I don’t really call it anything. It just is what it is, without a label. Maybe a spiral sky? Or perhaps an echo sky since that describing a reverberation from the past is what immediately comes to mind whenever I finally examine and try to interpret one of these pieces after they are completed.

But what is it an echo of? Is it a message from the past? If so, is it a warning of what is to come, something that has taken place once and seems ready to occur once more? Or is it something more encouraging, that humanity has endured the past and will continue to echo forward in time?

I surely don’t know. Maybe every echo has its own personal message, one that can only be recognized by only a few who are continually looking and listening for such things. Searchers, I guess you would call them though I don’t know that they even know what thing it they seek.

I often write of seeking something in my art so maybe I am looking for something from the past, my own and that of all mankind, that makes this world make sense. Maybe it that longing for clarity in an irrational world of like that in the passage above from Albert Camus?

That sounds right to me. Though I live and work in the gray areas of life, I do appreciate clarity.

But then again, maybe this sky of echoes is simply saying what goes around, comes around.

And there is a sense of clarity in that.

Here’s song that is titled Echo from the British folk trio Talisk. It has a building intensity that feels like an expanding echo. Good stuff.

Inner Perception, 2011

And the sky is black and still now
On the hill where the angels sing
Ain’t it funny how an old broken bottle
Looks just like a diamond ring
But it’s far, far from me

–John Prine, Far From Me

One of those mornings. Busy, with plenty to do, and everything seems out of rhythm. Everything, especially electronics, is acting glitchy this morning. Tried photographing some new work and the flap where the batteries and SD card are inserted broke. Had to hold it in place with masking tape.

Finally took a few images then tried editing them with Photoshop which acted glitchy, as well. Took much too long for a simple task.

Frustrating. Too frustrating for a Sunday morning.

Let’s just listen to this week’s Sunday Morning Music selection. It’s an old favorite from the late John Prine‘s 1971 self-titled first album. Here’s the bittersweet classic, Far From Me. This is a fine live version from a number of years back.

Feels right this morning. Now let me be. I have to get back in rhythm before it’s far, far from me…

Moon Listening— At West End Gallery

The day was when I did not keep myself in readiness for thee;
and entering my heart unbidden even as one of the common crowd,
unknown to me, my king, thou didst press the signet of eternity upon
many a fleeting moment of my life.
And today when by chance I light upon them and see thy signature,
I find they have lain scattered in the dust mixed with the memory of
joys and sorrows of my trivial days forgotten.
Thou didst not turn in contempt from my childish play among dust,
and the steps that I heard in my playroom
are the same that are echoing from star to star.
Where Shadow Chases Light
This is my delight,
thus to wait and watch at the wayside
where shadow chases light
and the rain comes in the wake of the summer.
Messengers, with tidings from unknown skies,
greet me and speed along the road.
My heart is glad within,
and the breath of the passing breeze is sweet.
From dawn till dusk I sit here before my door,
and I know that of a sudden
the happy moment will arrive when I shall see.
In the meanwhile I smile and I sing all alone.
In the meanwhile the air is filling with the perfume of promise.

—Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali 43, 1916

Don’t have anything to say this morning. Well, anything worth putting down on paper or online. Nothing you want to hear or read.

Thought I’d share a triad of image, word and song anyway.

The song is Idle Moments from the late jazz guitarist/composer Grant Green, who died in 1979 at the age of 44. It’s a sauntering, easy tune that I think links well with the painting and the poem from Rabindranath Tagore, which is also known as Signet of Eternity.

See for yourself. Now let me be, okay?

The Welcome Tree–At the West End Gallery

Between two worlds life hovers like a star,
‘Twixt night and morn, upon the horizon’s verge.
How little do we know that which we are!
How less what we may be! The eternal surge
Of time and tide rolls on, and bears afar
Our bubbles; as the old burst, new emerge,
Lash’d from the foam of ages; while the graves
Of Empires heave but like some passing waves.

—Lord Byron, Don Juan

I chose the stanza above from Lord Byron’s Don Juan to kind of describe this painting because it seemed to fit so well what I was seeing in this piece.

When I look at it, the Red Tree seems to be an intermediary between differing worlds– between the solid ground of earth and the airiness of the heavens, between a life in civilization and the wide-open spaces of the fields and hills beyond, between the now and eternity, between the visible and the invisible.

Standing with one foot in either world, it becomes a moment of contemplation on the temporary nature of our existence. Standing there before the suddenly visible and unrelenting power of nature and the universe– the eternal surge of tide and time— the Red Tree recognizes its own smallness and insignificance–How less what we may be!

This idea of insignificant beings living but for a short time may seem like a dreary prospect to some. But I don’t see it that way. If anything, I see this as a celebration of just having the opportunity to bear witness to the grand spectacle of life set before us each day, to have a chance to play a part, albeit small, in the machinations of the universe.

Maybe this is too much for a simple painting such as this to bear. Maybe you will not see it in the same way, only seeing a tree, a lone figure and a house on a mound beneath an ominous sky. That’s fine because in its simplest terms that is what it is.

But even the simplest moments and images can have greater depth and meaning if we only choose to look more closely, to choose to perceive our place in the world in a different manner.

Well. that’s what I think anyway…

As I ready work for my annual solo show at the Principle Gallery in June, which is my 25th there as well as the 25th anniversary of the RedTree, I’ve been thinking about all the roles the RedTree had played in my work over the years. I often describe it as a greeter that invites the viewer into the painting or as a symbol for the individual. There are several other examples, but I like the role described in this post for a different painting, as an intermediary between differing worlds and dimensions, written back in 2016.  The interesting thing is that it might well serves all these different roles at the same time.

Speaking of intermediaries between different dimensions, here’s Yo-Yo Ma playing the Prelude to Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major. That’s a mouthful but you will most likely recognize this lovely piece.