No reason not to follow your heart. Vincent Van Gogh, Steve Jobs

Brittany Coast #16

 16" x 20"  oil on canvas

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart. 

I am still far from being what I want to be..."

Vincent van Gogh

"Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. 

There is no reason not to follow your heart."

Steve Jobs

This is the last of the paintings based on my time in Brittany. I need to get back there to continue and there is so much of that coast I haven't yet seen. In the meantime, it is vital to keep these two quotes in mind in the face of whatever difficulties present themselves, there can be no better thing for one to pursue what they love. I feel that the works from Brittany reflect my own seeking; my own striving. Enjoy!

Art and Life Become One, George Braque, William Shawn

Brittany Coast 14

 oil on panel  11" x 14" 

"Falling short of perfection is a process that never stops."

William Shawn

"With age, art and life become one."

George Braque

When teaching, I found that the students that had the toughest time progressing and the most difficulty getting started, were those who held too dearly to the idea of perfection. Perfection or the idea of absolute adherence to a preconceived notion of 'perfect', is an awful beast to confront. It smacks of machine made and engineering to a standard. I have learned that the human touch, in all its glorious imperfection, is absolutely necessary to making art and even recognizing what art can be.  What I think William Shawn was speaking to was the seductive nature of the process of pursuing a personal vision every day, understanding that it always remains just out of reach. But the pursuit brings us forward and brings us back the next day, and all the days beyond.   As the habit of daily work along this path builds over time, we one day realize that art and life have become one - 

a most joyous discovery.

Reason To Paint, Hopper and Rilke

Brittany Coast 5

  oil on panel  11" x 14"

"If we could say it in words there would be no reason to paint."

Edward Hopper

Brittany Coast 8

 oil on panel   9.75" x 16"

"... the work of art brings to the life of one who must make it - that it is his epitome;  the knot in the rosary at which his life recites a prayer."

R. M. Rilke

A pair based on the idea of the heaving, roiling sea - completely absorbed in the task as they evolved and without care for time or endings - perhaps this 

is what Hopper and Rilke refer to.

The Finistere, The Edge of Beauty

Brittany Coast 8

 oil on panel  11" x 14"

"Denn das schone ist nichts als des schrecklichen anfang, den wir noche grade ertragen."

For beauty is only the bearable edge of a knowing we could not endure.

R. M. Rilke

The coast where this painting was inspired is called the Finistere, or translated, the end of the earth. In medieval times it was believed to be the outcropping at the end of the knowable world by the people living there. It's easy to see how they believed this when one confronts the power of the sea and sky and rocky coast - all seeming to crash together. It is a magical place, one that conjures up questions of immense beauty and edges or limitations to what might be mortally possible. So to grab hold of some part of the effect of such a place one must go back to the basics of value and shape and space and form. Within this basic approach lies the poetry of the place, the visual impact of  elemental powers colliding.  Maybe it the only way we can find a window into understanding a small bit of the awe-filled experience of being in this world, at this time.

Into The Mystic

Brittany Coast 3

  oil on linen panel

  12" x 16"

"Hark now hear the sailors cry,

smell the sea and feel the sky,

let your soul and spirit fly

into the mystic."

Van Morrison

        There is something about the coast of Brittany, something elemental and lyrical in the huge scale of space and rock and sea and sky. I was there only a short time this spring but I am determined to get back and explore and paint. The Van Morrison song kept reverberating in my memory as I walked around these rock formations and tried to absorb what I was seeing. Building a painting one must early on decide on placing the darkest values and the lightest - while interpreting or discovering the mood and designating what will be dominant or subordinate; the light or the dark. When painting this coast, one must first reckon with the sea and what role it will play. In the painting offered here the sea surrounds and carves into the massive rocks, its colors echoed in shadows - the sunlight stands against the sea as it falls on the rocks. This is the essence of that place on that day, I hope you will agree.   

Wonder and Serenity

Farm Track Near Wheat Fields

  oil on panel   14" x 18"

"The purpose of art is the gradual, lifelong construction 

of a state of wonder and serenity."

Glenn Gould

"Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time."

Thomas Merton

One writer called it "absorbedness" and maybe that is the perfect description of those moments when one's process eliminates awareness of time or self. Those feelings are addictive because the artist escapes from the abstract, man-made constructs that cause concern (measured and limited time and self-ish concerns) and enables an existence of almost childlike exploration and acute sensory awareness.  When coupled with dedicated and focused practice and an understanding of appropriate method and material, this state of "absorbedness" is a powerful pathway. I've always thought the true measure af art may well be its ability to bring about the same experience for the viewer - something to be measured slowly. Enjoy!

"Far from being merely decorative, the artist's awareness is one of the few guardians the inherent sanity and equilibrium of the human spirit we have left."

Robert Motherwell

The Exquisite Struggle

Cut Wheat Field

oil on panel  8" x 10"

"We shall not cease from exploration / And  in the end all our exploring / will be to arrive where we started /And know the place for the first time."

T.S. Eliot

"And I will have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

and evening full of the linnet's wings."

William Butler Yeats

The act of making a painting depends on a happy and difficult alignment of heart and occasion - earth and sky and place thrown against physical frailty and limitation; mixed with hope and memory and a vision born of recognition. This is what Eliot writes about and Yeats experiences (and where the difference in their poetry lies) - the exploration that strives to see and recognize things familiar made new. This exquisite struggle has another seductive aspect, as one becomes lost in the exploration, an awareness of having "some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow" - descends around the painter - like the light across a cut field as the day approaches a glorious end.  Enjoy!

Witness to Splendor

Afternoon Trees

  oil on panel

"Poets write for a single reason; to give witness to splendor."

William Carlos Williams

"Each venture 

is a new beginning ...

... what there is to conquer

By strength and submission, has already been dis-

covered

Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one

cannot hope

To emulate - but there is no competition - 

There is only the fight to recover what has been lost

And found and lost again and again..."

T.S. Eliot

Anyone who has ever attempted to make a painting from direct observation in the outdoors understands that "each venture is a new beginning' - sometimes painfully so. But it is the splendor of finding oneself immersed in the visual/physical chaos that is our surroundings that drives a painter to constantly look for form and understanding and fight to recover and capture some small evidence of the attempt.  It is the best we can hope for and worthy of our full embrace. Offered here is a golden afternoon amongst friends all involved in the same fight Eliot refers to and every one of us awe-struck at the splendor Williams spoke of. Enjoy!

Homecoming

The Bridge

  oil on panel  7" x 9"

Homecoming

by W.S. Merwin

Once only when the summer

was nearly over and my own

hair had been white as the day's clouds

for more years than I was counting

I looked across the garden at evening 

Paula was still weeding around

flowers that open after dark

and I looked up to the clear sky

and saw the new moon and at that

moment from behind me a band

of dark birds and then another

after it flying in silence

long curving wings hardly moving

the plovers just in from the sea

and the flight clear from Alaska

half their weight gone to get them home

but home now arriving without

a sound as it rose to them

I was looking at this painting and wondering about the appeal of the place where I painted it. Something my sister observed about it, that it looked welcoming - kind of the idea of a house on the hill beyond the gateway, I think. Then, this morning, I was reading an email I get every day that always starts with a poem and there was "Homecoming", by the American poet W.S. Merwin. Though written in a different place and of his personal experience, the poem and maybe my little painting, speak to what connects us all as humans - the love of arriving where we're welcome; the artists' acute observations of small things that build up a larger pattern; the way art can show us these things while allowing us to recognize them for ourselves. Guess that's what it is supposed to be all about - making art and living attuned to such moments. Enjoy! 

The One True Thing

Along A Road Above Quinson

  oil on panel  "7 x 9"

"There is only one true thing; instantly paint what you see. When you've got it, you've got it. When you haven't, you begin again. All the rest is humbug."

Edouard Manet

I especially like the "all the rest is humbug" part and Manet has hit the essence of painting right on the nose - without mincing words. This one was done in the high country in eastern Province where I traveled in mid-May. The country was so beautiful that I wavered toward trying to capture too much in any one panel - but I've taught myself a valuable habit over the years: at the outset, before one makes a single mark on the panel - step back and ask yourself what visual incident or poetic moment triggered you to choose to paint this scene? 

The answer cannot be about things or names of things (roads, fields, trees, and so on) - it must be about shadow and light, space, shape, pattern, and color. Therein lies your "one true thing" for that moment and that work - to hold fast to that visual poetry at the expense of all else, all unneeded detail, all color or value foreign to your intent. If you can do this - if you can allow the poetry of the visual incident to guide your process - you will know "you've got it."  The incredible thing about immersing and abandoning one's self to this process is it becomes something quite addictive and joy-filled. 

Glorious Day, Provence

  oil on panel  6" x 8" 

Hearts that watch and receive

Edge Of A Vineyard

  oil on panel  8" x 10"

This one was done a little less than a mile from la Madelene - Simmone and Gary and I had hiked down right after a quick breakfast and set up along a view toward the mountains. As we went at our paintings,  the vineyard across the road had three workers stringing new guide wire along each row of grape vines, a woman and two men. As we painted, we soon realized the workers had come across the road to admire our efforts and chat - luckily, Simmone could speak french well and a lively and friendly exchange followed amidst smiles and gestures. They and we went back to work and a little later, I turned around for my second small painting of the morning and did this one of a corner of their vineyard, defined by a copse of trees and distant hills. 

That morning brought to mind the poem by William Wordsworth, "The Tables Turned", which ends with the line,

"Come forth, and bring with you a heart

That watches and receives."

Seems to me that line perfectly captures the spirit of the folks I was painting with and the time we had together in Provence. We were there with a painter who, along with his wife, lives and works most closely to those lines. Julian Merrow-Smith's paintings and Ruth and his combined kindness and generosity are the evidence given to all who were present at la Madelene those weeks of Julian's workshops. I was blessed to be included by Ruth and Julian as an assistant to all and found my reward far exceeded what I gave. I think maybe that's what Wordsworth was saying - wondrous things come to open hearts 

that watch and recieve. Enjoy!

Astonished

A Thicket in Provence

  oil on panel  6" x 8"  

"It is simply when the eye, the hand, and the heart are in alignment."

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Sonnet

by Bill Knott

The way the world is not

Astonished at you

It doesn't blink a leaf

When we step from the house

Leads me to think

That beauty is natural, unremarkable

and not to be spoken of

Except in the course of things

The course of singing and worksharing

The course of squeezes and neighbors

The course of you tying back your raving hair to go out

And the course of course of me

Astonished at you

The way the world is not

Well, to anyone still paying attention, it has been roughly a month or better since my last post - corresponding to my month and a few days traveling and painting mostly in France with a balky and uncertain iPad that would not allow access to my blog. Those days are gone now and I'm almost over the jet lag.  I will use images from France to cover the blog whilst I regain my working feet here in the mid-Atlantic region of America.

My thoughts these days of course run back to the wondrous time in Provence spent painting and communing with wonderful folks in a slice of paradise. I've been thinking mostly about what is it that makes painting (or the process of any art making) such a magnet for the soul and why it's process is so valuable. I believe it traces a connection for all modern humankind to the shadowed figures making drawings in dim lit caves some ten thousand years ago. The earliest form of asserting our presence in this indifferent world, hoping for a response, maybe even expecting a response. Allowing us some small space for us to be astonished with each other and the small evidence of beauty brought at the end of the day as gifts.

I was so lucky to watch and participate over an extended time as two different groups of strangers came together from many different parts of the world and in the space of a brief few days became friends and allies. Encouraging and helping and laughing and unafraid to show it all - a magic experience. I have a theory how such magic can be possible - we are brought together by two remarkable and generous people, Julian and Ruth. So, the world may well not be astonished at our efforts, at our good fortune or our new friends - I certainly carry a renewed astonishment with me these days.

A Brisk Day at la Madelene

  oil on panel  6" x 8"