Category Archives: life

resistance: a value or a trap

It’s a subtle thing, and lately I’ve been pondering my reasons for resisting as I’ve been examining some motivations. There are days when working or when in difficult relationships where I can feel this drag right under my skin. What is that? Time to take a careful look under my hood. And then time to study the manual. I take some care here, for resistance improperly applied can disassemble; it can destroy gradually like rust. Or, it can save lives like the firm pressing on the brake pedal when required. My difficulty (and yours) this side of Eden is discerning when resistance is good (which leads to Good) and when it is bad, leading to worse. Religions set up codes, or rulebooks to follow so one can “stay on the straight and narrow”. But creative life is much more complex than that. And in fact, in my own life there are times when “no, I wont go there” was very good, and other times when “I must face this head on”. Read Solomon on this, his words are in the middle of the Creator’s manual.

Recently I listened to a podcast by a Harvard trained Psychiatrist who now coaches artists. She does an effective job exposing the false ideas that hinder us such as “I cant” “I shouldn’t” “It’s all good” I’m all bad” (there are thousands more and we all have pet ones to which we we resort). Here’s an example “this hurts, it can’t be good for me” and I noticed I was fighting on the inside something I have no control over. Mine was not an active rebellion, but more a passive sulky resistance. Once I saw the potential in the manual for exactly this difficulty turning into something valuable I had very good reason to stop resisting and cooperate.

In my art practice, there’s often a negative resister: “I don’t have what it takes” but when I activate what I do have, little steps taken against my pet resistance can reveal something new.

Complex situations aren’t only black and white. And I’m a free agent who has the opportunity to negotiate through them: to select and to take into action. Time is one of the things I have, and materials, and a drive on the inside that I believe my Creator placed there. I’ll resist wasting these things.

Here you can see some studio exercises this week as I was thinking on all this. I started with ink. And then overlaid with oils in some more subtle values. Each one of these small maquettes could be translated to more formal work. As I still have time, I will.

“Time is what defines our lives” says Paco Seirulo, Leo Messi’s coach, on how the champion soccer player employs his brain and his legs during split second decisions.

words and specificity

We know of Van Gogh’s particularity, his struggles and his needs through the regular letters he sent to his sympathetic brother Theo. Without that written record from Vincent’s own hand, we might have guessed some by simply looking at his images. Like a blind man feeling the walls of a soul with fingers, we could have surmised from the artist’s visual leavings, but never would’ve been specifically sure of the man.

Vincent’s 2D exuberance is evident: his promiscuity with paint and brushwork, his exaggerated sometimes garish color, his bold and roiling sketches, his animated skies, his grasping cypress trees, his bandaged and somber self portrait all suggest much about this emotional man. He’s left an incredible legacy just from this record. But his letters tell more the whole of him, and our guessing gets grounded. I’ve read through the complete collection of his letters twice and referenced it often. My college copy is marked up with highlights, underlines, exclamation marks and turned down pages. I was stunned then and am still– getting close to his motivation through his own often tortured telling. His words anchor the story.

It’s the effort of articulation with words that anchors anyone’s ideas. This is where guessing has to give way. Poetry might give a fleeting suggestion. Painting or photography might allure with a silent witness. But prose leads with particularity. And it was for that reason that I thought it important to leave a record of words beyond the images I craft from my studio. My book Markers; Key Themes for Soul Survival has been out for two years now. The same motivation that moves me to paint is more specifically laid out with words. And like the paintings, my fingerprints are all over it– but it’s ultimately not about me, more about what it is that’s moving me.

for thought

It comes down on Monday, but if you are near Kingsport TN this weekend, there is still time to see a very good show at the Renaissance Center. The Appalachian Art Show for 2019 was juried by the Art Department curator at ETSU. She likes my work so I kind of expected to get in. But only one of my entries made it. The show this year is strong with a number of examples of really fine regional work. I was heartened that I got even one piece in once I took in all that did get selected.

What is striking in this year’s collection is the number of pieces that are ponderous and dark, with titles like “Premonition Destruction”, “A Blood Black Nothingness” and “Beauty Sleeps”. One landscape was a deep roiling sea with a lone raven searching for land. The best in show winner is Michelle O’Patrick-Ollis’ “Stage 4-Ressurecting Mama”. Her mother’s face is heavy with wistful thought, almost pressed right at yours on the picture plane. This is both honest and true, expressed with fugitive materials (coffee, conte and pastel) while recording the depth of hope that lives beyond this vanishing threshold.

Not all the work spoke so confidently. In fact, there is despair in the room. I feel it also out on the airwaves, and in hearts that I pray for. No wonder the artists are showing us this. Our days are hard and there is a foreboding sense, like a gray fog, which is moving in. Only the brave speak of it. Artists are brave ones. And sometimes they are like weather vanes, sensing the change happening before others can articulate it. Many artists seem to know “that the world is an uninhabitable place, temporary at best, the delicate balance between eternities…” as poet laureate Dana Gioia writes in The End.

Search his work and others who are not afraid to speak what they are pondering carefully while still offering the viewer some thoughtful hope, showing “what still matters”.

a live one

This man is Syrian. I met him last month in the sheltering nation of Jordan where he now is raising his family. Jabal* is a brother I didn’t know. I gave him my book as an encouragement for pressing on. But he encouraged me far more with his boldness, his integrity, and his active faith. We were on an adventure together and then the bus our small group was riding in almost smashed into a truck making a u-turn right in front of us, in the dark. I jolted up as we skidded and came to a sudden stop just inches from collision on the desert highway! Our shaken bus driver got lots of well-deserved applause. But Jabal went out and checked on the truck driver to try to determine ‘what in the world…!’

That driver was African, confused and now fearful that Jordanian authorities would be called. Being put in custody with no real way to engage consulate help would have been a hard sentence for that man, and Jabal knew it. We had a policeman with us already on the bus so next steps would have been immediate. But Jabal intervened; spoke to the African about Jesus and the sound/serious reason for being able to offer release. Then Jabal authorized dropping any charge. This was surprising to the policeman. This was rescuing for the African. This was ‘a day in the life’ for Jabal. This was one memory etched in my spirit.

It’s not easy a find a fellowship of earnest believers where Jabal lives, and he spoke of this. That’s another reason why I gave him the last book I brought along in my suitcase. And that’s why I still pray for him. There are active soldiers out there, and this gentle man is a real live one.

I haven’t been painting this month, my watercolor brushes stayed wrapped up in my suitcase. These words are just a sketch.

*his name is a pseudonym as there are enough non-gentlemen

synergy

There is so very often in my own practice what feels like a long incubation period before the bursting out into the open. It always takes longer than I expected to see the fruition. And then I hear this in my head “anything worth doing needs time and thought, planning and prep.” We all kind of get that. But here’s my problem: I’m impatient. I have ‘visions of sugar-plums’ or dreams of resolutions planted deeply. I don’t even know how they got there, but they’re there. Actually, I do know how they got there: lots of Bible reading and then lots of active prayer based on the clear promises I see. I get excited when I sense the glimpses. But then comes another corner to go around, another hindrance, and another disappointment. And these are incubators which take time and thought…I think maybe I just summarized my own internal life. You might see this in my work: for both the good and the bad of it all.

I bring this up for two reasons. The painting here happened quickly last month. It was kind of a surprise as I was working up several panels one day. I stood back and thought “hmmm, I may have just seen this pop to a finish. How did that happen?” The long incubators probably had something to do with it.

I was in Israel this month: a surprise trip, which also happened quickly. It was amazing in so many ways: friendships, learning, sensing the blooming going on there, some puzzles I’ve had suddenly clicking together… it was synergistic. I brought my watercolors, paper pads and brushes. They just took up space in my bag as I had not one minute to sit and use them. But oh my cameras were busy. I caught door frames and the wares of spice sellers. I caught the patterns on ancient marbles, and the blooms on a fig tree. My eyes reveled at the mustard yellows on the close hills and the sweet purply dimness on the far mountains –the planted rows of almond trees and date palms, and then had lunch overlooking the very hills where Abraham grazed his flocks. These things are all incubators. The fruition follows.

near and far

My interest in landscape, or more specifically “what is out there!” began very early. Before I had much language or even any life experience I was captivated and heartened by what I could glimpse out the window from my nursery. Doubt me if you choose, but I have a visceral memory of this. The years have only reinforced this sense of ‘the beautiful bigness beyond’. I recognize, now in hindsight, that this memory is early indication of some kind of spiritual quest.

My mature work is driven by an informed and sorely tested confidence in the promise laid out by the maker of the horizon, the maker of the warming sun, the maker hidden behind all these things. And these ‘made things’ speak forth deeply through their substance.

As the year turns (and 2018 has been such a big one for us) we don’t have much idea at all about what 2019 holds. We can see some near things, but not what follows.

So today I’ll highlight here an oil sketch I did this past May. I love so the horizon in this piece: so dimly suggested but sure — though some distance beyond the entire articulated foreground. That’s why I will keep this one, for the contrast between the known and the yet unknown is a symbol to me. What is just over the next rise is what draws my attention. And because my heart has learned to rest in the capable hands of my maker, I am not afraid.

palettes

“Our summer made her light escape into the beautiful”*

I’ve been collecting notes in a folder — from photographs taken and magazine tear outs — of color groupings. This is simply data, ongoing practice, recently revved up. For, I use these color collections as prompts into paintings. When I don’t know what to do, color seems to awaken. It’s as if my eyes, directed by a still beating heart, lead the way for my hands.

Last night, near the point of retiring for the day, I opened a small poetry book, a gift given to me in Canada. Therein I found an added bit of beauty between the leaves. Pressed in the pages of this lovely booklet was a singular remnant from a maple. I had almost squished this leaf with my shoe on a walk in Vancouver. My eyes must have stopped me then, but I forgot that I had this incredible thing. The re-discovery near a month later was more delight than I even remembered in the initial find.

Look at this specimen simply for its color: The greens have retreated to the background, allowing in that desaturation such quieter tones of olive. The removal of pigment provides a surprising highlight of pales, tans and muddy yellows, like the translucence of aged skin. This, in turn reveals the markings of veins ever more vitally. And the reds! The stars in this symbol, have their chance to shine now: like the bleeding herald of a great King. It’s the victorious finale! Even the stem has turned its signature to alizarin strength.

Any one of these hues could be matched somewhat closely in a paint store. But what would you have in the dissection? A clinical compartmentalization? It is only in the grouping where the colors dance, and play off each other, where they sing their song again. Even a dead leaf plays it. I am so heartened that I did not miss this.

*Emily Dickinson, #1540 Johnson’s Chronology, 1865

marking time

The floor of a red cedar canoe, in the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia quietly testifies to its own story. Once standing tall and alone in a rain forested wood fringing the Pacific, it was scope-ed out then heavily laid down. Done. Cut off from its nourishment; it was then gouged, steamed and stretched by the hands of others. Soon it was deemed seaworthy, buoyant and bearing. It was now a thing, not a living thing. This lovely tree was un-noticed until it was found useful for the ends of others. It is said that the first nation Indians were careful with trees, making only single slits in bark to preserve a tree’s life.

But what of this tree? Are we to consider it a sacrifice? Are some sacrifices worthy? And by whom?

I could show you other photos: of the carved yokes that adorn the gunnels, of the painted designs: the brands of ownership. But to me these whispered lines of life are the most authentic. It’s a silent recording of the lively passing of years. In these is seen the marks of weather and growth of push and pull when the tree was still responding on its own.

Time is a slow and certain mover. It is gentlemanly. It is more reflective of the Maker of trees than are the hands of many men. In this testament of silent marks I take comfort, even as the tree itself has been laid low. Emily Dickinson resolves the sadness by saying “let months dissolve in further months—and years –exhale in years—“*

I will let this be then, except for reminding us here. For in these marks I see a most particular record of days not forgotten.

*poem #690, Source: The Poems of Emily Dickinson Edited by R. W. Franklin (Harvard University Press, 1999)

broken bits and an emblem toward the Restoration

This past weekend our University Art Museum was opened up on an off day so that a grieving family could gather in the space. The woman being remembered, was a unique local artist of incredible talent. She would take found objects, broken discards, scraps of fiber, bone, clay and make assemblages that could reach deeply into your soul. Her work spoke, and I was so privileged to know her. This is an image I shot from a juried show in 2016 where I was first introduced to her.

But in these last months she was not in good health, single, very private, and she sadly died alone. The family and community are heartsick. So, folks brought in things this artist had made and given away: One was a book of mixed media type quilt scraps with words of direction as if these were signs on the underground railroad. A tall wood pillar, with a house top roof, had a book within it and objects depicting Jesus’ story of the parable of the sower. Another set of notes were for women recovering from trauma in which the artist encouraged one “You know when the final piece is complete” she said, “it will result in a thing of beauty…”

I thought of how she herself is complete now, the real her, not what stayed behind. All the material bits found around her were vestiges of the unfinished, but her soul is safe, beautiful and certainly now intact. “for the spirit of man is the candle of the Lord, where He searches all the inward parts” Proverbs 20:27. I thought of words we shared, reminding each other of the promise Peter gave in the 1^st century to believers: assuring that such a developing Jesus follower would not be “useless nor unfruitful”. And I expect she died just as she lived, holding onto the One she was following.

This same week I found a fascinating article about the Japanese method of repairing broken clay vessels. The ancient practice continues where cracks are filled with a lacquer-like glue, then carefully sanded and finally coated with a cover of gold. The resultant piece, with its particular history of brokenness, shines with that same jagged brokenness made beautiful. And I thought again of my friend. And I thought of the broken edges in my own life too. And I thought of what Peter says: that the proof of one’s faith in the promise of Jesus is more precious than perishable gold. And Paul said that we hold these truths in broken vessels that the surpassing greatness might be apprehended as coming from God Himself. “Therefore we do not lose heart, but though the outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.” So the clay pots pieced back together are a sign of something that broken souls long for. If it were not true, it would not resonate.

public/private/public/private

Some recent discussions in our town have highlighted the strategic importance of public and private partnerships. The potential result (after the hard work of collaboration) can be synergistic, meaning, the combined effect can be greater than the sum of the agencies involved. That’s creativity. And I’m reminded of something I witnessed this summer from another place and time that exhibited just this.

Barcelona’s National Museum of Catalonia has a collection of Romanesque murals that is unmatched by any museum in the world! Room after room gives one almost a time-machine opportunity to enter spaces that were situated in humble towns in the Pyrenees Mountains of Eastern Spain. These murals and sculptural pieces were then carefully removed to be preserved in the museum (imagine the public and private involvement to carry that feat out). Arranged in chronological (therefore stylistic) order, the spaces reveal the emerging imagery from small churches of the medieval period (11^th-13^thcenturies). What’s available then is a visualization of homegrown private conviction which was developed then displayed for public engagement. What was once internal became publically shared and what was then public becomes privately better understood. And this then down thru centuries for others to consider. Past into present. Imagine that ripple effect.

Here is a wooden altar panel I especially loved for its graphic punch, simplicity, and pattern. It’s a typical example of Byzantine flatness. Yet the abstraction of forms were rendered with human differentiation and quirkiness. The viewer of the time would have been able to relate. And the viewer now is carried into another world’s way of seeing, even if just catching a glimpse. What was private conviction of the artist became embedded in his public context, what simmered inwardly became visible for others to be able to look and see.

Here is an excerpted contemporary example (from a long but wonderful poem) I just came across from our own time. A. Underwood wrote “A Weight on Each Shoulder” after listening/learning/being in a church space in NYC:

It’s been veiled in plain sight
Big as all of our stories
Deep as mankind’s full plight
And as high as its glories

It’s the “veiled in plain sight” out-calling that keeps me looking/listening/working.

one year out

Today is the 1^st year anniversary of my book: published and seeing the light of day. Pictured here is an analytic that Amazon regularly updates. My little book has a heart beat: alive and doing well. In one search category last week I was #10 among 8 million books! Amazon provides another graphic which shows me where sales are happening. The areas where I’ve lived and know people are best represented, but the surprising thing is that places like New Haven, Minot and Reno (where I know no one) are showing up with sales too. Was the 7 year journey to see this happen worth it? Maybe so.

But books have a short life, I’m told; and marketers keep reminding you of titles because readers have shifting attention spans toward the next jazzy thing. It’s a chasing game, and it can be wearying. I entered this learning curve from its impetus to finished copy for the same reason that I make art: there is something important to get down on paper so others can see. I didn’t write to be a writer. I don’t paint to be a painter. I am a recorder, a responder, a translator of sorts who is hopefully becoming more fluent.

It is an earnest and deep-seated Wonder before the biggest matters that keeps me working. It is needed Humility that keeps me fit. And beyond my own natural chutzpa there is a Courage I count on and ask for from the Spirit who made the world, who made me. Perseverance is the last bit I have to own, and own again. (These 4 aspects–I gleaned out of the Creation account in Genesis–are a sort of working prescription; that’s why they are written big, with growing notes on my studio wall).

When young and spry, I used to be a competitive swimmer and taught lifesaving. Now I’m a grandma with even bigger aspirations. But a lot of days I feel like the water is deep, the shoreline is way out past where I am, and my nose is just above the surface. Am I complaining? No, just taking a tread while I size up my position. Thanks for looking with me.

Mary Barton Nees

Conceptual Landscape