Better than it Has to Be

A couple of weeks ago I got a call from a friend in Charleston, a member of the Coburg Dairy family, who wants a funky, cool painting of …. wait for it …. the Coburg Dairy sign! The original is for her, and then we are going to make prints for family members. The sign is iconic in the area, and although it’s changed over the years, most Charlestonians …. at least those who have been on the scene for a while …. consider it a treasured landmark … sort of like the statues of pigs adorning Piggly Wiggly owner Buzzy Newton’s Battery home.

As I settle in this evening, reviewing the photos she sent, I’m getting more and more excited. This will be too much fun … eventually. But right now I’m swimming in a sea of compositional elements and perspectives and palettes and scale and abstraction and yak yak yak. This is the time of unmoulded potential, the unconditioned about to take form …. known as the Fool in the Tarot deck. Pure potential is uncomfortable in a way because it’s just a bunch of ideas buzzing around with no organizing construct. But in that moment when the unifying idea emerges …. it feels like magic …. better than it has to be.

Christmas Morning in StudioKitchen

So so so excited to have received my new shipment of art tools and materials. With all the upcoming work, my rag-tag assortment of brushes and paints simply had to be replenished, so I bit the bullet, as they say. I don’t even want to tell you how many hundreds of dollars have just been unpacked. People really have no idea how much good art tools cost …. just like any other endeavor, I guess. But as Ben Long used to say, '‘you’ve got enough to overcome as an artist without having to work with inferior tools.”

Nineteen brushes … all filberts (that’s really all I use now) …. these are the smaller sizes 0 to 10 because (given my technique) the big brushes last vastly longer than the smaller ones. Robert Simmons Sapphire for finish work, Windsor & Newton Monarch for that time between the underpainting and the delicate top glaze layers, and Princeton Dakota, a new brush for me, with long firm bristles and a sharp edge … want to test drive these for outlining, on the rare occasions I do that.

And Williamsburg paints. My uncontested favorite. I remember Ben always hated them because they can be unpredictable …. which is precisely why they are perfect! Riding the wild horse.

Here’s a no-accidents-in-art story about Williamsburg Paints. My friend Bucko Brandt advised me on several occasions to connect with a friend of his, a well respected Charlotte Art Czar named Larry Elder. I tried to connect, but Larry had just sold his gallery, and I wasn’t finding an easy path to him. Some time later I stumbled into him at a gallery in South End … in fact, someone I didn’t even know said, “I think you should meet Larry Elder, and took me upstairs to his office.” I told him about my connection to Buck, a little about my art pedigree, and showed him some work. He closed the office door and offered me some cookies. “Let’s talk a little bit.” (They were really good Christmas cookies … I think his wife made them and he didn’t want to eat too many so he brought them to the office to share.)

Somehow I mentioned Williamsburg paint … I have no idea why because it’s not something that would normally come up. So it turns out … here we go … the company had been founded by a New York artist named Carl Plansky. Great painter. After his death in 2009 the entire collection of his work went to one dealer — Larry Elder. When asked if I knew Carl, I said no but I love his work. Larry smiled … “come here.” Outside the office … up and down several halls were all of Plansky’s paintings. I was spellbound. Still am, actually …. it was Larry’s guidance that led me to my new gallery situation … not the traditional business model … rather a design center filled with all sorts of creatives … and art.

So for this Christmas morning in May, it’s only Williamsburg paints for me … in gratitude.

The Siege in the Room

With the new Charlotte gallery opening in August, I’m reeling with a sort of edgy electricity — four paintings underway, three new commissions to start, and a multi-layered research project — one which will require, because of the times, complete openness to new realities. I’m feeling what Samuel Beckett referred to, when embarking on a period of intense creativity in his life, as “the siege in the room.” Sitting with the blank canvas for “Hanna” and working out details of the composition since very early this morning, I’m trying my best to get lost in one project at a time, while keeping the others organized and airborne.

Honestly, I truly love these times of barely controlled creative fever … riding the wild horse … a time to, as my father always challenged me, see what I’m made of. Never has a life of rural isolation served me better and I’m so thankful for that: the reclamation of StudioKitchen, while not finished, has settled into a comfortable place; the garden is in; my loved ones are safe; there’s food in the pantry; recently re-stocked studio supplies; and probably enough money to keep the lights on …. hell, this summer I’ll even have the luxury of air conditioning …. so here we go!

I’m ready to lose time for a while (an antisocial work schedule untethered to the clock or calendar) … actually, that’s already happened. There was a time I worried about such weird work habits and rituals, but not anymore. All that matters in the end is the work. We were put here to create, and I have finally digested the red pill — success has absolutely nothing to do with validation, or security, or conformity, or anything else on the material plane — to create is simply why we are here. And as scary as it is for us to trust, doing what we are here to do is all the sustenance we need, and then some. Samadhi, as Buddha said … “when you realize how perfect everything is you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky.”

A while back I found a book about the work habits of artists, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work. An easy read, it’s REALLY interesting, and it also makes me feel better about living an unconventional life among mostly conventional people. In fact, reading about other creatives’ daily lives and peculiar relationships makes me feel almost normal.

… About painting while listening to a book or television … I’m in good company. Chuck Close:

Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. [He likes to have the TV or radio on in the room.] I like a certain amount of distraction. It keeps me from being anxious. It keeps things a bit more arm’s length.

… About the angstie start of a new project, Joyce Carol Oats:

Getting the first draft done is like pushing a peanut with your nose across a very dirty floor.

… About the overwhelming compulsion to get back to the studio, Ernest Hemingway:

You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again. When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty and filling, as when you have made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through.

Love is Meant to be Shared

I’ve taken a few weeks off from the studio to work in the garden … and this morning as I’m having coffee with Orchid-and-Buddy, my aching back, sore knees, and sunburned shoulders remind me that it’s time to get back to work in the studio … well … guess I’m also compelled by two new commissions, work-in-progress for the gallery, and a fun research project …. an embarrassment of riches in these threshold times.

All beauty gives us joy, of course … and for me, the beauty of my garden growing is absolutely sublime … it is to swim in a living sea of color and architecture … one co-created with the nature. Like mother’s milk, it is everything we need. My highest aspiration is to capture even the tiniest bit of that energy with paint on linen, and to codify it in the color layers and the forms so that the viewer FEELS something. Love is meant to be shared.

Orchid-and-Buddy came to me this time last year … both were birthday gifts. For some reason, I’ve always kept them together … forever touching. In fact, from time to time over the past year I had the notion to separate them … but I couldn’t … it just felt …. WRONG. You should know, I love love love orchids. All flowers are beautiful, but orchids have magical architecture …. like spaceships. Painting them is trancelike. And … this is crazy … but I’ve never had one re-bloom. Never … and not for lack of trying.

Until now. I have absolutely no idea why this orchid is different from countless others … but maybe it’s a good idea to give an orchid a little buddy … maybe true love is meant to be shared.

Orchid-and-Buddy

Dreams of My Brother

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been having remarkable dreams during this pandemic time. I’m always an active dreamer, but these are particularly vivid and powerful. Probably my subconscious is busy busy trying to make sense of these times … and help design my new future. From night to night some of the same characters and constructs appear in the story … not advancing the same plot line … just the same elements appearing here and there … much like in my paintings. (Right now, in fact, the image of tulips I’m using for a dragon piece has showed up in two previous paintings.)

One recurring construct is that I’m living inside my computer, moving around the universe via programs and portals. And the cast of characters — the archetypes — are the Yellow Dragon, Michael the archangel, various talking animals of unrecognizable species I’ve come to call the mixed-mammals, and my big brother. The brother archetype is not the dreaded Orwellian “Big Brother” … mine is a buddy, a confidante, and a protector …. the brother I’d always wanted as a kid because he would play sports with me. And unlike other members of the circus, he’s just a normal person. Except that he looks a lot like my father. Fair hair, blue eyes, fine features, and thin lips.

In the mid 90’s I was conducting marketing research by day, and madly hacking away at portraits and figures by night. I had just begun to paint when my father died. From the time of his cancer diagnosis to his death was a year. I had been expecting this most of my life …. but that’s another story.

It took him two weeks to die. My mother, sister and I rarely left his bedside. Although we all lived in Charlotte at the time, he was in the Wake Forrest teaching hospital in Winston Salem. He did not die from the illness or surgery. In a small room crowded with medical students and Dad’s surgeon, one student asked “Why are his systems are shutting down; this is not the result of his illness?” The answer was “He has chosen to go.” His girls already knew that, of course. No one had to say it. My father always walked his own path.

As he lay dying, he moved in and out of the here and now. He’d come back from time to time to report on his wanderings across the universe … visiting all the places a dying rocket scientist dreams of. He wouldn’t let us take his glasses off, saying “I want to see everything.” Always a lover of the moon, and avid numerologist, he kept telling me, “don’t worry … it will be 7 or 8 … it will be 7 or 8.” None of us could decipher that, but we figured it had meaning. Turns out he left at exactly ten minutes before midnight on December 7th. Seven or eight. The night of the full moon. He was 62, the age I am now … or will be in a couple of days.

During those two weeks I was in the middle of a huge research project — the wide ranging public opinion study that would guide development of Charlotte’s ten year plan. A total of 22 focus groups, two per night, had been scheduled for months in advance. All sorts of community stakeholders. There was no way to reschedule, and there was no way to replace the moderator. So I drove to Charlotte every evening to conduct the groups, and then returned to WinstonSalem to sleep on a chair in Dad’s hospital room.

With the groups finally completed, I relaxed in his room while my sister and mother popped out to shower and eat. I watched him dreaming and longed to freeze that exact moment forever. I had not started drawing at the time, only painting, but my hand was twitching and moving … so I found a tiny note pad and one of my treasured Sailor fountain pens. (Always loved the feel of painting words and numbers on the paper with sepia, green, or lamp black ink. ) This is the only rendering I’ve ever done of my father from life. It was his last day.

Last night I dreamed of my brother again. We bumped into each other in a grocery store, then stood and faced each other for a while. We reached out both hands, touched all ten fingertips, wove our fingers together, and held hands.

There Are No Accidents In Art

Guess I am a bit focused on dragons these days. In fairness, the connection predates our pandemic. But not by much … in some mythical place maybe the dragon showed up with a mission …. born at the right time. The Yellow Dragon, in Chinese mythology, is an earth deity. Protection and good fortune. And that’s a good start.

Tracking the course of these recent lock-down paintings, when Charlotte empty street Angels morphed into Dragons, I finally began to connect the dots … to understand how these powerful archetypes are working on me. The angel symbolizes our linkage with God energy, of course. But not in that limp, woe-is-me sort of way, gripped by fear and crying ‘oh, help me, I’m so powerless’. No way …. not as I read the texts.

If you believe, you can do these things I do and even greater.

Enter the Dragon (and Chinese …. interesting accident). He expresses what is best in all of us — what is brave and smart and creative and compassionate. When he showed up in my studio, with the recent work on “Garden,” I felt he represented our separation from the earth. Now, even more than that, he stands steadfast in contrast to Wetiko — a mind virus that separates us from each other. Superficially, as social distancing. Symbolically as mask wearing. And systemically, as zero sum, material thinking …. disunity on a global scale.

He sees the Spiritual everywhere translucent in the material world, and he does not want to escape the responsibility of being a Dragon.

I don’t think the dragon phase is quite finished. Hell, with one painting on the easel upstairs, another on the easel downstairs, and a third on the drawing table in layout …. evidently not. It’s such a great force to work with in threshold times. For these last few weeks all I could do was paint these images …. not even really understanding the story they were telling. I couldn’t write about it, or even talk about it. I just dreamed and painted, and dreamed and painted … knowing in my heart that things are not what they seem.

Springtime vs the Coronavirus

There will be two of these … maybe more. This one is Huanglong (Yellow Dragon) vs Wetiko (Soul Virus). The background is gold leaf, which has a wonderful luster. The companion piece to this one has (my favorite) purple tulips and some white poppies … same gold background and window boxes. And of course a yellow dragon. All the pandemic paintings have a slightly more painterly style, which is an evolution for me …. unintentional … it just started happening … mainly because I’m trying to work faster. My good friend and mentor, Michael Kampen-O’Riley used to say that one day my formal and sketchy approaches would merge into one highly energetic style …. and that it would be my best work. Still not sure what I think about that, but these recent paintings are certainly a new, synthesized hand. It will be interesting to see if this development plays out in portraiture …. guess we’ll see later this week.

Wells Fargo Plaza

Spirit Square

Dead Soldiers in the Snow

John Singer Sargent is one of the truly great American painters. He, along with Grant Wood, have been huge influences on me … Sargent for his beautiful portraits, and Wood for his Voice.

Quickly … I have two favorite Sargent stories. Here’s the first — Sargent was a few years behind Whistler in his portrait career, and for a time, when they were both working in London, Whistler was by far the more prominent. (Plus, Whistler was a crazy public character, and Sargent was shy and private.) Anyway, Whistler was commanding big fees for his work … and no doubt about it … his work was magnificent. But so was Sargent’s! In fact, I think his portraiture was better than his older contemporary’s because Whistler’s work was about Whistler — and Sargent’s was about his subject. So what would happen frequently, as the story goes, is that a potential Whistler client, when unable to afford his so-spendy work, would be referred to Sargent because “his fees are half mine, and the work is decent.” Believe me, Whistler’s cast-offs came out better in the end.

Another Sargent tale is about something else I aspire to understand — Beauty. He saw beauty everywhere. Period. Case in point: during WW1 Harpers Magazine hired Sargent as a wartime painter. He was sent to the front lines to render scenes of horror and devastation, in watercolor, and he did. But ultimately Harpers had to let him go … his paintings were too beautiful. Even confronted with the ultimate ugliness of dead soldiers in the snow, he surrendered to the spell of beauty.

I know more about that process — feeling only the beauty of a thing — than I did a few weeks ago. As of my last post, on 17 March, I was unable to carry on with studio-business-as-usual given our monster at the gate. I went into my beloved Charlotte to sketch empty streets. But here’s the rub: it’s spring. The world is blooming, and delicious color is everywhere. I could feel the underlying menace, but I couldn’t see it.

In the sketches I found myself rendering the scenes with a warped perspective … linear perspective I mean. It’s the way you make objects appear to recede into the distance. We typically use linear perspective (object size) and atmospheric perspective (the lightness of the hues) to create the illusion of receding shapes. So anyway … with this first painting … the colors were beautiful, but the perspective was all wrong. I moved the vanishing points for the skyscrapers way, way down … to create structurally impossible angles … at first just to turn the sky area into a triangle (I always construct things in triangles) … but somehow the result was an ominous “sky-is-falling” feeling, without the accompanying “she just doesn’t know how to draw” concern (hopefully).

This is the first of several … 1 of 19 … maybe 19. Angel versus Coronavirus. Or some variation on that idea. My mother has warned me that, “Not everybody wants an angel in their painting … and NOBODY wants a coronavirus in their painting!” She may be right … guess we will see.

Street Easel

In the past few days the world has become a very different place. Isolation, now mandated by Covid-19, has never been a problem for me. In fact, my only problem with isolation is that I like it too much … probably more than is healthy. But yesterday, after my two research projects froze, I got back to work on Garden … or … I tried to.

This is a big painting for me … literally big … and also significant in a way I’m struggling to articulate. This painting has been on pause for five years … like the world is now. I didn’t finish it because I wasn’t artist enough … until now. You may like this painting … or you may dislike it. But I don’t think people will be indifferent to it. Garden puts a stake in the ground. It defines a specific artistic ideology and style for me. It will be the lead painting in an upcoming solo show later this year at my new home — 811 Gallery … soon to be open in Charlotte.

There’s nothing wrong with pouring emotion into a painting … I believe it’s the difference between merely competent art and GREAT ART. The emotion built in to the architecture of the work comes back out to the viewer. But the emotion I felt yesterday in the studio was some kind of crazy. Every time I picked up a brush I started to cry. Finally I gave up and binged on space movies and meatball curry.

…. this is the morning after. And just like avoiding a person who has hurt you … I don’t want to see Garden today … or any other painting in the studio. The beast that’s making me cry is in the streets, the stores, the office buildings, the parks … and I have to go out there and take a look at it. Before you learn to paint, you learn to see. And you don’t see a thing unless you look at it … look at it in a way that you cease to feel separation from it.

So I’m packing up my field easel … here we go.

Grant Wood Fan Girl

Sometimes people ask me if I have a favorite painter. That’s impossible of course … like having a favorite color. Oddly (given my training) Americans make a good showing on my “favorites” list. Cecilia Beaux, Whistler, John Singer Sargent, all the Ashcan guys, particularly Hopper, Andy Warhol ….. So I can’t say who ranks at the top of the list. However, I can say with absolute certainty who was there first — Grant Wood. In fact, the first piece of art I ever had framed was a poster of “Dinner for Threshers”. I actually saw this painting as some point in my early twenties … not absolutely certain where, but it must have been in Minneapolis at the “Regionalist Vision” exhibition in 1983 … or some subsequent location of the show …. NY or DC.

Here’s work in progress for Garden. The Dragon is basically finished. Have to admit: I’m crazy about my Dragon!!!! … have already started another (small) one …. portrait of Dragon surrounded by spring flowers. Taking today off from studio painting (house painting instead) …. but will work on Adam and Eve tomorrow. Every artist has a secret … something forceful, not always obvious … the evidence of which is hidden in their work. So if you feel an “American Gothic” reference in Adam and Eve … that’s no accident.

Dragon Love

Those of you who know me know I’m a big fan of love. I’m guessing most of you have never been to a Christian Science church … but if you have, you’ve surely noticed three words behind the alter — God Is Love.

Love is a feeling, yes … and a delicious one! But moreover, it’s a force … the most powerful force in the universe. Love is creation itself … in the language of my faith, it is the energy that expresses Mind in matter. So Valentines Day is always a Big Day for me, and I try to spend it creating … expressing Mind in matter.

Working everyday this week on Garden, specifically … my Dragon … I’ve kind of fallen in love with him. He’s a warrior … so he’s got some menacing teeth … and lots of fluid movement … like beautiful plant underwater, moving with the current. He’s the protector of the planet.

Today I’m so thankful to be able to paint him … his anatomy has been established, and his head is pretty far along … today he gets his golden scales … a mesmerizing repetitive process that will leave me completely exhausted. Lots of numerology in my Dragon, but not to worry … I’m won’t count the scales. Like Adam and Eve, he has a magic pearl, three, of course … and I’ll work on those too. Yes, Dragons have Magic Pearls … which gives me a perfect excuse for putting spheres on paintings … gotta love Magical Realism …. aka Unseen Architecture. I’ll listen to Cloud Atlas while working …. my favorite love story.

Painting Dragons

Have to say that today was one of the most otherworldly I’ve ever had in the studio. Dragon painting.

I’ve been working on Garden, and today was the time to advance our Chinese Dragon. Crazy, but I want him to FEEL real in this painting. Given the source materials at hand, I can either reproduce a sculpture of a Dragon, which won’t feel like anything but a sculpture,

Or I can extract an essential feeling from all the sculptural forms I’ve seen, and launch into DragonWorld. Sounds Nuts … right … but that’s what I did … I thought, ‘if these sculptural forms depicted something alive …. how would it feel?’

Never done that before …. here’s the product so far …

"The Garden" by John M. Williams

I just love my writer-friend Johnny’s interpretation of Eden mythology. I can’t find a photo of Johnny, but he modeled for me for the Creepy Auntie character, so here’s a drawing of him … sort of. Thankfully, it doesn’t look much like him …. but he did turn out to be a great Auntie! Here’s the link to his blog, and the story, “The Garden”:

https://johnmwilliams.net/the-garden

Everybody always asks me about the Garden.

It was real. I guess. No way to prove that now. And very beautiful, of course. I didn’t know that then—you have to know what not-beautiful is first.

The best part of it, I would say, was the part—and I honestly don’t know how long it lasted—before I met your mother, because the best part of anything is anticipating it, and believe me, in those days I shivered with anticipation constantly. Of what, I didn’t know, but that was the joy of it—not just that something was missing, but deliberately missing, and it was up to me to fill that hollow place with whatever I could devise. That was how I knew the Garden wasn’t all, and I went looking. Since there was for me no way to distinguish between finding and inventing I found myself looking for something I already knew within me. I imagined her, or felt her, can’t say which, but I could say her now, because whatever I was in pursuit of had calved from me, or me from it, and we were entities. I could have poured my energy into realizing that part of myself. But I chose not to. One thing you can say, she got me up and looking around.

In my forays through the secret ways of the Garden I could always sense when I was near her, but it was a long time before I saw her, or materialized her—how can I know?—and then that moment: when I came around a curve in the path and saw her standing there, waiting. Nothing I have ever seen in my life could rival that first vision. She was as real as me, this exact, perfectly other thing, and I could see my own wonder reflected in her eyes, and could sense her wonder at whether she was imagining me.

I had never felt, and will never feel again, anything like the feeling when our bodies first touched, and interlocked like two halves of a whole. I wish I could, and not merely remember it. But you can’t ever feel anything again, even Paradise, only know that it had its time. You will have noticed this yourselves. It is our fate.

People have made up stories about a snake, but if there was a snake it was the one within us: our leaving the Garden was inevitable and foreordained the moment we faced each other. And the best thing that ever happened to us. I welcomed it—the chance to define what I was through challenge and toil—to develop the higher powers, ingenuity, creativity. Not that life, especially in the early days, was easy. It was not. Looking back, I don’t know how we survived. I’ll spare you accounts of what we ate in those early days. We made shelter for ourselves, and learned to find and grow good food, and had many years—long years, some of them. We saw you children grow up, and really didn’t know how to proceed in finding you mates—never mind that. We multiplied. We submitted to time, and after so much of it I could barely see the woman I had first seen that radiant day in the Garden in the woman before me now who had shared my life. As always, I could see the reflection of the same thoughts in her eyes, and of course there was no way to see ourselves but in those mirrors.

Love? Well, yes, love, but it took a while for that word to crystallize, for the need of it to be clear. And now we have taken love to its very end.

All these knowledges—of love, of time, of loss—and now the greatest of them all, just ahead.

The blessing inherent in us from the start.

Beauty. The Superpower.

I’ve been sketching, and thinking, and reading, and thinking, and yak yak yak all day about beauty. I believe it is powerful, yes. And I say that all the time. But that’s all rubbish if we can’t say why …. what is it that beauty actually does to make the world better?

I have a thought that seems …. well …. it seems to be possibly a useful step in the right direction. Here it is: Beauty is so pleasing to us that it opens our hearts. It transforms us just enough to allow us to see something new … or hear something with fresh ears … or consider a new perspective. It unravels our architecture just enough to let in a new ray of light.

This is a sculpture of a dear friend … Meg Winston … I’m envisioning one for myself here in Lockhart.

Art in a Time of Catastrophe

It’s exhilarating to be lost in symbolic thinking woven into the painting I’ve been calling “Garden” over the years of on-and-off work on the project. An admittedly ambitious undertaking, the Garden of Eden metaphor in this painting has to do with the fall of man, of course … but building on the separation of man from God, is the crisis of separation of man from nature … our disunity with the earth. Always intended to be a comment on our damage to the planet, Garden expresses the potential destruction caused by human supremacy … perceived and irresponsible supremacy …. over the earth. I want to tell this story, and also call on beauty to save the day … reunite us with nature … to grip us and reawaken our divine connection to the natural world. For me, this is the role of art — to bring out our better angels.

Using the auspicious Chinese Dragon symbol, rather than an evil interpretation of the serpent, is intended to convey hope … and faith in the superpower that is beauty. I’m using the Huanglong Dragon, which is yellow, and symbolizes both divinity and the earth. I’m hoping to use the butterfly floral pattern in Eve’s dress, and the plaid structure of Adam’s shirt to connect to a sort of wallpaper construct for the background. The figures and the Dragon will be rendered realistically, and the unifying nature pattern will be more abstracted and stylized, symbolizing our unity with nature, and even though it has dropped beneath the surface of our consciousness, it is woven throughout all creation … as the fabric of life. Well, at least that’s the plan … I’m only a little bit comforted by knowing that our reach should always exceed our grasp ;-) ;-) ;-)

The essay called “Art in a Time of Catastrophe” by Peter Reason and Sarah Gillespie does a wonderful job of expressing this idea — that art has a giant role to play in this time of transition. https://www.kosmosjournal.org/kj_article/the-place-of-art-at-a-time-of-catastrophe/

At such a time, are the arts irrelevant, a luxury? To the contrary, they have an essential place both in grieving for what is lost and in imagining new human possibilities. Facts and figures don’t influence people directly—all science has told us about climate change has had little impact. It is the stories we tell ourselves, the metaphors we draw on, that create our world. The mess we are in reflects the stories that have dominated Western culture: stories of human supremacy, stories that separate humans from Nature, that emphasize economic growth at the expense of human and ecological wellbeing. Stories that we ‘rational’ creatures no longer need stories. Whoever can change these pervasive narratives can change our core beliefs—for better or for worse. Visual art, prose, poetry, music, drama can all help provide space and imagination for new stories to emerge and artful means to express them.

Then, there is art as beauty. Beauty can rip the fabric of the taken-for-granted world, create an opening to a different experience. And art may also offer us a place of beauty that can sustain us through darkness, even make beauty out of that darkness. This is what the poet John Keats was pointing to when he celebrated ‘negative capability’: “being in uncertainties, Mysteries and doubts, without any irritable reaching for fact & reason.”

So that’s the plan for Garden. Here we go …

Winston ... Maybe

Went to bed last night thinking this pet sketch of Winston was finished … signed it and all that … but as I look at it now in the light of day, something …. not sure what … isn’t working. Oh well, it will come to me.

The Great Chinese Dragon

A fascination with using a Chinese Dragon in an allegorical Garden of Eden painting emerged about this time of year in 2015 … over these five years the concept has been incubating, moving on and off of my to do list. So as work on the Garden is well under way again, I’ve been studying early notes and sketches. The composition has now drifted way off the early concept, which focused only on Eve and the Serpent. Now Adam is on the scene as well. But this early sketch still draws me in … maybe there will be more than one Garden. Ferlinghetti’s iconic Chinese Dragon poem was part of the process back then, and I’m studying it again this morning over coffee … ironically it’s my escape from the morning news, to an apolitical place … of which the great poet and painter would not approve …. certainly not in these times!

Cecil-luck

This story is a little bit longer than usual … sorry for that …. it just took more words to tell ….

People sometimes ask how I came to study with Ben Long. Like so many of these stories, it pivots on something my family calls Cecil-luck. What’s that? Think Forrest Gump: in a walk-about naivete he bumbled in to something huge … innocently proceeded along …. and, amazingly, everything turned out fine … over and over again. Another apt metaphor is the classic Elvis movie: Elvis is a busboy at the swanky ski lodge, and the dashing nightclub singer breaks his leg so there’s no one to perform for The Big Show! YIKES! Someone happens to mention, “you know, I heard that busboy singing in the club the other night after everyone had left” ….. the reliably aw-shucks-ma’am cheesy Elvis movie plot line. You know, now that I think about it, Cecil-luck generally shows up in the arc of every cheesy Hollywood movie.

The House. I had moved back to Charlotte in my mid-thirties, and was doing public opinion research in an unusual affiliation that allowed me to be both partially employed and a freelancer. It was a very Cecil-luck arrangement. Michael Kampen O’Riley and I, absolutely mad about each other at the time, decided to move in together. Michael lived in a moldy-rented-trailer-just-off-the-highway. Believe me, it was dreadful, but he wasn’t overly concerned about things like that. And obviously, he wasn’t the house buying type. But I was, so I purchased a little bungalow on Club Road. The seller was my college friend, Michael Rouse, an architect who wanted to move to Asheville. He wasn’t quite ready to relocate so the three of us decided to occupy Club Road for the transition. It was mostly a lot of fun, like an episode of Seinfeld. However, I came with a lot of stuff, and on top of what MR already had, things were just too cluttered.

The Yard Sale. I had lived, during my 20’s and 30’s, to make money and shop. But now in the bungalow with two artsy roommates, I was very ready to be sans-stuff ….. and to embark on a post-stuff life. So sister Terri and I, neighbors in Charlotte’s Plaza Midwood, decided to have a BIG yard sale. Since we did BIG signs (ridiculously attention grabbing with the headline Surrender Dorthy) and put them up all over the place, many many many people showed up. I’m not kidding … it was a happening … our first and only yard sale was a grand success. Oddly, I remember that spring morning vividly. I stood under the arch on the front porch looking out over the tables … drinking coffee before the sale started. I remember being a little angstie … and feeling like an actor on an empty stage looking out over an empty theater … right before The Big Show …

The Meet. One of our shoppers was Ben Long; he had recently arrived in town to begin the multi-year work on two major frescoes. He came inside to see a yard-sale loveseat in the back. As he walked through the house he saw my at-home-after-day-job art work …. paintings, mostly portraits and figures … hanging all over the place. At one point in the stroll, he stopped to look at a nude sketch — of Michael. Michael was … hmmmm…. not so impressive as the painter … but fabulous as the art historian and writer. He did studio studies at Tulane, but then came to his senses and did art history and archeology at Penn and Yale. What a brilliant guy …. I’m so blessed to have known him. At any rate, he insisted that I paint from life, and was a really good sport to model for me. One of these sessions produced the piece that stopped the Maestro that day. It’s hanging in StudioKitchen with me now, and is pictured below.

The forever-remembered conversation with Ben in front of that homespun painting still makes me cringe and laugh today.

You painted this?

Yes.

Who are you working with? [note to reader: he meant studying with]

Rawle Murdy. [note to reader: I didn’t understand ‘working with’ so I named my employer. When Ben looked puzzled I clarified] I’m Research Director for an ad agency in Charleston.

Have you ever studied art before?

No.

I’m leading a drawing group, and taking a few students for the summer, Monday thru Friday. Would you like to join?

A drawing group? …. No.

NO? [note to reader: Ben didn’t ask that question very often, and he certainly wasn’t accustomed to hearing no.]

I want to paint, not draw. [note to reader: first of all, how amazing that Ben Long just ask me anything, right?!!! Secondly, I was so incredibly stupid to not even know that drawing is the proper foundation for all art!!!]

Well, why don’t you think it over … (with emphasis) Ask Your Friends … and call me if you change your mind. We start Monday morning. [note to reader: on the way into the house Ben had seen Michael and Michael, so I guess he figured one of these guys would talk some sense into me before Monday. He laughed, and handed me his card. Needless to say, I called him Sunday morning, and showed up for my first drawing class the next day.]

The Gallery. It looks like I may be represented in Charlotte soon. This is a positive development for me … a well established gallery that feels like a good fit. Since we have yet to formalize the arrangement, I don’t want to say more. But I will tell you this: Cecil-luck was involved. Last week I was meeting friends in South End, and had some time to kill before dinner. Every artist knows you NEVER walk into a gallery with your portfolio, no appointment, and ask if they want to represent you. It’s terrible form, and very likely to irritate the gallery owner. But for some reason, that’s exactly what I did. And as Cecil-luck would have it, everything seems to have turned out fine.

The gallery is talking about a solo show in the spring. Of course, I’m still struggling, but I know in my heart I’ve arrived at the very end of the hungry years … I can feel the final lap. So these next months will be a time of immense joy … delicious solitude … creative lust … maybe even faith for dinner. Spring sounds like a long way off, but in a painter’s world it’s next week. And I am N. O. T. hanging a solo show with old work. So stay tuned…

I drove by the Club Road bungalow this past week. From the outside it looks mostly the same. The current owners are in mid-remodel. My guess is they are are finishing the attic … or maybe putting an addition on the back. But the arch on the front porch is still there … still framing an empty stage right before The Big Show.