Philip Glass

I am without musical ability or understanding- something I hope to address in the next few years. My folks tried, piano and guitar lessons, trumpet in grade school band. But I never got past Every Good Boy Does Fine. It never clicked. As I've gotten older I've wondered about it- am I just not wired for it? I suspect that's it. I don't remember music, I can't seem to hear lyrics in the midst of it. But I haven't given up yet, and hope to try lessons again before long.

Last night on NPR, Terry Gross interviewed Philip Glass. I had only fleeting memories of his work, music that seemed impenetrable to me. Memories that were wrong. I loved so much of what was broadcast of his work, and look forward to hearing more.

And the conversation about his new memoir, Words Without Music, struck me as strongly as his music. At 78 it's easy to see him as a hugely accomplished and successful, and just assume it was always like that. But he drove a NYC cab up until his mid or late 40's. He worked all kinds of jobs, plumbing, electrical, moving company, studio assistant for his longtime friend, the sculptor Richard Serra (who's work I love). And finally the cab. All things I can appreciate, and to an extent, identify with, having done carpentry, laid tile, poured concrete, and built canoes further into my 40's than I had hoped. I tell young folks all the time that multiple income streams is the key to an early art career, maybe made easier by Starbucks new education policy, if you can embrace your inner barista.

Near the end of the interview, Terry Gross asked (something like), Don't you ever want to write a simple melody and a lyric to go with it? And he responded that of course he did, he was always struggling to simplify, to be more direct, but he had to follow where the music took him. Or something like that…. or is that me mixing my own struggles with his answer?

It seems that the struggle is a constant. Lately I've been feeling like painting is really hard. Damn hard.  Maybe another similarity with music- the level of concentration required. But if I look at it honestly I realize it's my own fault, turning from what I know how to do, to trying new things, new ways of handling paint. New ways of thinking about making pictures. It's where the work is taking me.

Inertia

Inertia- as defined by Websters- "physics : a property of matter by which something that is not moving remains still and something that is moving goes at the same speed and in the same direction until another thing or force affects it."

I've always had it, or felt like I did. Certainly not first thing in the morning, but once I was up and running, I could always just keep going. When I was younger it wasn't unusual for me to work 12 or 14 hours a day. 16. I didn't need to. I wanted to. 

The last 14 months have been a lesson in the other side of it. An object at rest stays at rest. In December of 2012 I was diagnosed with cancer in my vocal chord. What? Me? C'mon, obviously a mistake. Never a smoker, moderate drinker, damn near vegetarian, lots of exercise…… c'mon!

Nope. Doctor Haben was right. Two surgeries later…. and what? It appears that the good doctor got it, auguring my throat with his trusty laser. Turns out my system does NOT like morphine. Or much of any drug. And my head…. well my head spent a lot of time thinking about life and where I was. I don't think it's possible to have cancer associated with yourself and not spend time contemplating your mortality. My momentum came to a halt.

When Darby told a friend of hers, the friend responded, I thought he was unstoppable.

I did too.

After a couple months of that it was enough- enough of the depression, the mortal questions. I knew where I was, where I was trying to go. But still, I couldn't shake off the inertia. I felt like I plodded through last year. 

Muddle-headed and stuck in first gear, I ground through the year. I read very little, one of my favorite pastimes and the driver of much of my thinking. About the end of November, Darby read an article about the side affects of Prilosec (I'd been taking it as a potential preventative for acid reflux for the cancer in my throat). It can interfere with the body's ability to process B12 and protein, which interferes with short term memory. Muddle. I talked to Dr Haben about it, and he suggested after getting past my next adventure we try dropping it.

So, that next adventure? A year later, almost to the day of the first cancer surgery, I went in to have my knee replaced. Something I've been putting off for a long time- I destroyed it in highschool. While on the blood thinners and pain killers for the knee surgery, I forgot to take my Prilosec. A couple weeks after the surgery I'd had enough of the side effects of the painkillers and dropped them. And a few days later, it felt like a fog lifted. 

I've been sidelined by the need for rehab of my knee, but it's coming along really well. I'm back in the studio for two sessions every day, held up as much by the brutally cold winter and poorly insulated studio as my swelling joint. But the inertia is changing, from a body at rest to a body in motion. I have a dozen or so pieces underway, and several big canvases waiting for paint. I'm part of a three person show that opens in a couple weeks at The Oxford Gallery here in Rochester.

The muddle is gone. I'm healthy. I'm rolling again. 2014 is looking pretty damn good.

Artifact

ar⋅ti⋅fact - a handmade object, as a tool, or the remains of one, as a shard of pottery, characteristic of an earlier time or cultural stage, esp. such an object found at an archaeological excavation.

Molly's footprint. She's our 70 lb. lab/hound princess.

I don't know when I first made a cast- maybe a project in Cub Scouts, maybe in school. But the process always fascinated me, and I've made a few over the years.

A wolf track, the cast made along the Ivishak river several years ago.

A lot of people have the impression that wolves are like big dogs, like 100 lb. German Shepherd. I did, til my son and I saw them in Yellowstone a few summers back. They are like shepherds, just way bigger. Like a shepherd and a half. The track is almost 4 inches wide. Measure your hand. Wilderness makes you feel small. Vulnerable. I like to think it puts me in my place.

While I was in Alaska, I saw several grizzly tracks, and each time, my hair was on end, a queasy stomach. Lots of tracks, but none sharp enough to cast. Yes, I did have enough plaster, despite the weight limit on the bush plane. Not so many clean clothes, but I had the plaster. Just no sharp, well defined tracks.

The Lamar Valley in Yellowstone. Between here and the Hayden Valley, tough to say which is my favorite place in the park. Last year I fished the Lamar River too late into the evening. Til dark. The Lamar Valley, home to wolves, black bear and grizzlies.

I tried to be very quiet back to the van. A walk on wobbly legs, a sinking feeling in my stomach. Turned out fine.

But when I opened a package the other day, in the warm, safe confines of my studio, the sinking feeling was there instantly. I didn't make the cast, but I guess as a post-modernist, I'll appropriate it.

What's with the casts?

It's taken me a while to get here, I don't want to spill it all in one post.

Letchworth

I started paddling white water at Letchworth State Park. The Genesee River runs north through the park, over a series of waterfalls, then through a couple miles of class II rapids - at the right water levels maybe even light III's - as it winds through a spectacular gorge. It's a great place to start paddling, both kayak and canoe. I taught canoeing and kayaking classes there with my friends at Pack, Paddle Ski, canoed with my kids, and took my wife on our second paddling date, (that's Darby in the bow; it may have been bit more than she was expecting). We have hiked in the park, snowshoed and skied. But other than a few sketches I've never done any serious painting of the landscape there, despite the fact that I've spent far more time there than the rest of the river combined, (hey, it has the only stretch of whitewater).

So last fall I called my paddling buddies and we had a couple fossil floats, (we're not kids anymore). We paddled and surfed til we were ready to drop, and on the way out of the park, as I looked over the edge into the gorge, I thought, Why haven't I ever painted this? That's when I made my big drawing board.

I had already been thinking maybe I needed to do some work on location again. That maybe I needed more information from my sketches, more than I've been putting down in my quick thumbnail sketches. And somewhere in the last several years, something has shifted in my mind - the way I see, or think about, or think about seeing, (all very different), the landscape. How much of the landscape is observed and remembered, or is in my head and becomes something more than a memory, a remembered landscape. I've had the good fortune to travel to and through some amazing wilderness landscapes, and I am often too overwhelmed by the spectacular beauty of the land to find any painting in it.

So, I headed back to the park with my board and a nail apron full of charcoal. I use to hate being spotted by people and confronted. But that's when I thought rendering was art. That depiciting something just the way it looked was the goal. People would stop for a quick look, it would turn into a critique, and I would quit. I felt like I wasn't - what, delivering what was expected?

But again, things had changed. I grew up? Became .......... more confident? Confident isn't right. Something. More sure of what I was doing and why. Anyway, when people would see me along the gorge and stop and say, Oh, an artist, can I see what you're doing? I'd step back and say, Sure. And they's look and say, Ohhhhh.......... yes. Thank you. And they'd be off and I'd be back to work. Letchworth is a big fall tourist location. I got my picture taken with two busloads of tourists. And they weren't impressed, and I didn't care. I was happily left to my drawing.

The drawings are about 34 x 44 inches. More information than I get in my quick thumbnail sketches- is that good or bad? We'll see. I am juggling a number of paintings right now- we'll see if I can juggle another one. Or two.

Landscape and Memory

Several years ago, after having painted plein aire landscapes for a few years, I received a grant from the Genesee Valley Council on the Arts, to paddle the Genesee River from Pennsylvania to Lake Ontario. I spent seventeen days on the river, and another four hiking and doing relief prints with a naturalist and 4th grade students, at Letchworth State Park. While on the river, I paddled, sketched, fished, camped, read, thought........ and got more and more frustrated. Not with the paddling, fishing, camping and reading. Just the sketching and thinking.

I worked as an illustrator for years, working in several different mediums, in several different styles, never really worrying about too much consistency or what I was saying. I was saying what the client needed said. Or often just being a smart-ass, a genetic predisposition. Illustration is solving a problem for someone else. Give me some input, I give it some thought, define the problem, draw up a solution, deliver it, get paid. Hey, what's not to like?

I can make a problem out of anything, or nothing. I enjoyed parts of the process - brainstorming, working with a variety of people, playing around with different mediums. But, ultimately, it just wasn't satisfying to me. I felt like I was going through the motions.

Art versus illustration- an ongoing debate with many (mostly illustrators, I think). Art is about solving your own problems, or realizing you have one.

So there I am, paddling, fishing, sketching along. I'm having a blast, right? Well, OK, I was paddling and fishing, and I have to admit, I always have fun on the water, especially moving water. But gnawing away at me was this feeling of wasting my time while I was sketching. What was I going to do with the sketches? Paint from them? Do larger versions of them? Would I care anymore about them than I did the sketches themselves? And the whole time I'm sketching, I'm realizing I'm not making any headway down the river, and I'm never going to get to the lake.

The problem I've always had with plein aire painting - when I'm outside, I'm not compelled to paint. I want to go see stuff. Explore. Hike, paddle, fish, stalk, camp. Discipline - that's what I need - stick with the painting. Yeah, and cleanliness is next to Godliness.

What a load of crap. I paint way better in the studio when I'm not distracted by everything else I like to do. And I work too much. I need to be more disciplined about goofing off once in a while. Don't get me wrong- I love to paint, but it's not the only thing I love to do.

But there is another aspect to all of this, the part that is most fundamental to being an artist. It is the chance to get to know yourself, what makes you tick, what are your strengths and weakness, where do you fit in the world. My real intention in paddling the Genesee was not to fill a sketchbook. I was trying to fall in love with the place I live. Western New York, the Finger Lakes, there are many beautiful places here, and I've lived here since high school. There are places to hike, fish, paddle, ride horses. And I've never loved it. And I live here, and need to for now, and I really wanted to love it. So I hoped if I spent a concentrated length of time outside, doing some of the things I love, maybe I'd begin to appreciate the area on a more subtle, personal, intuitive level.

And it didn't work. It is beautiful here, and I find things to paint all the time now, but I don't love where I live. I may never. I am forever a child of the west. But it gave me the chance to figure myself out, on a deeper, maybe even primitive level. What is the process we go through growing up, imprinting on your family, and for some, maybe on a place? Why do those memories, of growing up, remain so strong when I have long periods of time from which I remember so little?

We celebrated my folks fiftieth anniversary last year- a wonderful celebration of a great event. Amidst all the family and friends, my folks played a dvd they had put together of several home movies. Once we watched the first half chronicling the life of my older sister Ann Marie, the other six of us were squeezed in from clips of home life, vacations, and family adventures. And I was stunned to see so many rivers and barns- the bulk of my subject matter. Many of the clips I had no immediate recollection of, but when you see your self running around with all your best friends, in a wonderful place, it's hard to see how that wouldn't set in pretty deeply.

But then why am I the one in the family that is maybe not quite domesticated? Why do I carry landscape in my head - moments, places? Why are we so similar, but so different?

I have ideas about it, but hey, this is a blog, not a therapist's couch. I'll figure out my life, you can have fun figuring out yours.

But it was while paddling the Genesee I realized I was more interested in the memory of landscape, rather than recording it. How much do I need in an image to convey what I remember from a place, from an event, a slice of time? I've just recently started painting the Genesee, some from older sketches, some from more recent.