Sunday, June 23, 2024

Painting by William Vaughn Howard, Dated 6/30/1980

William Vaughn Howard, Title Unknown, 6/30/1980
acrylic and graphite on paper

 


William Vaughn Howard was my painting professor when I attended the University of Nevada, Reno in the early 1980s. This painting was a gift from him when I flew from Dallas to Reno in 1986 to see his final show. Although I no longer practice abstraction, his work helped me to see the power of horizon. The span was all that mattered. There was no need to find a focal point or seek an asymmetrical division of earth and sky. Seeing was more than enough. The moment was intelligence beyond design. When you realize that, then you’re entirely free within your surroundings. You can painting anything, from any time of day, or from any place or angle. Seeing reality, you realize that you are no longer boxed in by the agenda of painting. No longer bound by a stage designed for depicting people hundreds of years ago, you can finally embrace the space that surrounds you.


Sunday, June 9, 2024

Texas Outback: Highway Impressions Beyond San Angelo

King Mountain Road

Abandoned Service Station, Grandfalls, Texas

Grandfalls Union Church

State Highway 329, Grandfalls, Texas

 

Just out of college, I moved to Dallas from Reno, Nevada in 1983. In Reno, the presence of the Sierras permeated everything. Because of that fact, errands never seemed routine. Suddenly stuck in a big city, I spent a lot of time on the highway, searching for the exhilaration of mountains. The weekend pursuit of higher places in variations of the Hill Country proved elusive. The vistas found a couple hundred miles out of Dallas, seldom surpassed what could be seen from overpasses and parking lots.  

 

In 1985, my brother Steve and I headed for the Guadalupe Mountains. Examining a map, I realized that an indirect route would enable me to see more mountains. Instead of heading west towards Fort Worth and Abilene, I veered out of town in a southwesterly direction through Midlothian, Cleburne and Glen Rose on U.S. Highway 67. Somewhere before Santa Anna, the ability to see the countryside was enveloped by the arrival of night. We stayed in San Angelo.

 

In the vistas beyond San Angelo, navigation seemed to end. It felt like driving off the edge of Texas. The highway hadn’t lost its way, but the indiscriminate valleys and elongated bluffs and ridges from the previous day were gone. Although the land wasn’t flat, the features of erosion meandered away without incident. Because of that fact, the towns of Mertzon and Barnhart loom large in my imagination. I’d never seen terrain like this before. Juniper and mesquite trees peppered slopes and hollows that aimlessly furrowed away the line of the horizon. Unlike on the plains, or in the mountains, the gravitational pull of drainage had no visual threshold. It was a land without horizons. Without the orientation of a base line, driving was just the emergence of more earth and sky. Although I had never been to Australia, the Outback came to mind. And although I was traveling to see the mountains, the area between San Angelo and Big Lake left an indelible impression on me.

 

Without the consideration of sky, Texas can feel pretty small. While the woods, prairie, hill country and plains are not the same, within each region, the vistas are limited. You can’t see very far. And, there’s not likely to be anything on the horizon to indicate where you are. Navigating by the sight of a distant silo is like shadowing the buoyancy of a cumulus cloud. You’re going to be completely lost without the aid of highway signs and markers.

 

Although my visions of the Outback are tied to the area around Barnhart and Mertzon, on further consideration, the sensibility of feeling lost could apply to almost any place in Texas. Frequently, there is no distinguishing feature on the horizon. If there happens to be a bluff, isolation is the only feature that makes it significant, because so many of the bluffs in the state seem to be so much the same. U.S. Highway 380 wanders through the Brazos River watershed on its way to the horizon. On the south side of the highway, somewhere around Aspermont, Double Mountain comes into view. Stopping at a picnic area for a better vista, Double Mountain quickly becomes obscured by mesquite trees and weeds. Better views almost always prove elusive. Destination lacks satisfaction. It comes without a sense of arrival.

 

In 2010, I was heading home from a family visit in Utah. Exploratory mileage took me all over the place, including Sitting Bull Falls, 40 miles west of Carlsbad, New Mexico. On the way out, I followed gravels roads down and around the western edge of the Guadalupe Mountains. It was dusk by the time Guadalupe Peak and El Capitan came into view. I was glad to see the gravel road graduate to pavement. Traveling south through brush, sand dunes and salt flats, the road terminated at the highway. Out of the valley, U.S Highway 62/180 is a steep grade to the top of Guadalupe Pass. From the other side, it doesn’t seem like a pass at all. There is a reason for that. Although Carlsbad at 3,127 feet above sea level, is lower than the 3,730 foot elevation of Salt Basin directly below the summit, coming from Carlsbad, it takes 57 miles to scale the 5,424 foot pass. Within that mileage, the land and mountain range gradually ascend in a southerly direction. It is only at the tail end of the range that the Guadalupe Mountains eclipse a riddle of rolling hills and shallow canyons. Initially, there is little to separate the range from the erosion of the elevated plains, which drain the eastern flank of the Sacramento Mountains. But the head, which is also the termination of the range, ascends with such force, that the remaining peaks frame an absolutely amazing national park.

 

Near the New Mexico state line, RM 652 came into view. Since it was dark, I couldn’t really appreciate the nearly 60 mile drive to Orla, Texas. Other than the stars, there wasn’t much I could see. The restricted vision of headlights, seldom outshines the lines on a highway. Outside, the night was a mystery of crickets. On Texas backroads, the letters FM on a highway sign signify Farm to Market. However when the land turns desolate, grazing replaces the rotation of crops. Through vistas of mesquite, cactus and brush, the letters RM stand for Ranch to Market. Because I’d been this way before, I knew what the land was like even in the night. The road rolled through erosion and low lying hills. A pale spectrum of greens, mesquite, creosote, yucca and cactus, partially concealed the bleached surface of the earth. Pump jacks and cattle foraged under the flank of continental sky. Far west Texas is the atmospheric divide between brilliant skies and the muted blues that dominate much of the country. Almost like water seeking its own level, moisture moving up from the Gulf of Mexico, fans out across the nation east of the Rocky Mountains. The boundary between air masses is not fixed. Traveling west, sometimes you’ll find that the atmosphere in Amarillo is absolutely clear. Sometimes the sky doesn’t begin to sharpen up, until you hit San Jon, New Mexico. The fluctuation of sky, could almost be thought of as a tide. The American scene east of Amarillo, lies under the prevalence of shallow skies.

 

As with anything outside the West, it took time for me to appreciate the washed-out skies and the prematurely blued horizons. Although I wouldn’t have described it like this at the time, the high concentration of blue in vistas of the immediate countryside, seemed like seeing a roll of poorly exposed photographs. The light just didn’t feel right. The limited visibility, left the land feeling bland and closed in to me.


Once I got to Orla, which wasn’t much more than a junction, U.S. Highway 285 headed in a southeasterly direction for the town of Pecos. Exhausted, I stopped for the night. But by sunrise, I was ready to go. Instead of craving the ease of Interstate 20, the only rational way of traveling back to Dallas, my hesitation began to swell on the overpass spanning the freeway. When the left turn for the onramp arrived, I kept driving. Not far out of town, a left turn off U.S. Highway 285 introduced me to FM 1450. The highway designation of FM 1450 sounded like the tuning position for a radio station. However, I enjoy the silence of driving. I’ll take the rhythm of spinning tires on asphalt over the airwaves of a playlist most any day. Nothing beats the reverberation of an isolated highway. The direction I was heading, would have put me on Interstate 10, around 20 miles south of McCamey, eastbound for San Antonio, if the road didn’t end at FM 1053. But before I hit the termination of the road, I turned north on State Highway 18. The scenery remained the same. Hardscrabble greens chased the edge of horizon.

 

In Grandfalls, a right turn at 1st Street became State Highway 329. Like so many out of the way places, the town had seen better days. Deserted service stations framed the western corners of the intersection. One was surrounded by oxidized vehicles. The other was overcome by an onslaught of weeds. Christianity occupied the two remaining corners of the intersection. Grandfalls Union Church, built in 1910, stood on the north side of the highway. On the south side of the highway, The First Baptist Church was pastored by the Reverend John (Buck) Love.  

 

I have no descriptive memory of Crane. I don’t even remember the intervening mileage between Grandfalls and Crane. But I am certain that the indiscriminate splendor of the highway would resurface, if I hit it again. Repeated mileage fosters a kind of expectant recollection. Highway driving reveals a perennial past. Recognition of the edge of town happens as soon as you see it again.

 

Beyond Crane, I saw a sign for King Mountain Road. Driving down the highway, an alignment of bluffs framed the views to the west in a southerly direction. All of them seemed to be of similar elevation. I wondered which one of the flattops was King Mountain. If I’d been able to see the bluffs from above, I would have understood that what appeared to be a progression of bluffs was just the outside perimeter of a large mesa. King Mountain was not a mountain at all. If you’d never been anywhere beyond the top of King Mountain, you would have seen the earth as continuous plain, until you discovered that there was an abrupt edge to your surroundings. Living on a flattop in the sky, the land below had been impossible to see. You couldn’t have known that you shared the clouds with unseen horizons. Until then, your fear of heights couldn’t exceed the length of your shadow. The discovery of abyss shattered the expanse of flatness.

 

Although I momentarily headed in the right direction earlier in the day, I wound up in McCamey, not far from Interstate 10. When I left Pecos at sunrise, I had no idea that I’d be going home on U.S. Highway 67. But a series of backroad decisions, led to a northeast trajectory back to Dallas. The last time I headed in this direction on Highway 67 was in 1988. The trip back from the Guadalupe Mountains was an adjustment. I’d spent a week living in slow motion. In places, the power grid was limited to a single strand of wire strung from nothing more substantial than juniper posts. Within a day or two of being out there, it was no longer clear what day of the week it was. The nice thing about the highway is that it slowly angles its way back into the heart of the city. Arriving at San Angelo is like a leaving a featureless sea. Although the topography doesn’t pack much of a punch, the staggered bluffs and valleys support farming. Muted blues and greens of distant ridges frame the fields and trees along the highway. The small towns and the rural countryside come with increasing traffic traveling towards Dallas. Late at night, the headlights of Cleburne can be just too much. Because for several days, I experienced a nighttime circumference of stars, I had to white-knuckle my way back into the city. The bright light stimulation of moving cars came with an anxiety of dying.

 

So many years ago, as the sun began to set, a traveling Carnival illuminated a field of parked cars at the edge of town, somewhere along U.S. Highway 67. I don’t know why I didn’t take a picture. While it could have made a great painting, sometimes the most impactful impressions continue on precisely because there’s no remaining evidence. The camera would have likely reduced the moment to a snapshot. There’s power in abstraction. Twilight never ends envisioning the outlines of the Ferris wheel against the sky. Perhaps that is the lure of Texas. The features and scale of the place prove elusive.     

 

 


Saturday, March 16, 2024

Railroad Signal, Highway and Sky Near the Intersection of 129 Rd, Spearville, Kansas, U.S. Highway 50, October 18, 2014

Railroad Signal, Highway and Sky Near the Intersection of 129 Rd, Spearville, Kansas,
U.S. Highway 50, October 18, 2014,
2023
acrylic on a shaped rag board panel, artist-made frame
4 11/16 x 20 5/16 x 1 5/8 inches

 

It is kind of surprising that I could place this image as precisely as I have. There isn’t much to go on. It could be any place on the plains. As I traveled, I detailed how I photographed each town along the way. However, in the in-between places, it is difficult to pinpoint the significance of a stop. There are no mountain or valleys to frame the rotation of the sun. The highway is position less as a landmark. Adrift, a turn of the horizon reveals a circular world of railroad tracks, cultivated fields, solitary barns, scant gatherings of trees, sheltered dwellings, vanishing rows of utility poles, and the sky.  

 

Although I find anything to with a highway intriguing, I never saw railroad signals as a means of navigation. They’re very much like utility poles, typical, but not nearly as common. Because the trip’s photographs are sequential, the stop had to be somewhere between Bellefont and Spearville. I wondered if I could be more specific than that. When viewing photography in a book or exhibition, I hate not knowing where a place happens to be. Titles can tend to be poetic. While a title like A Kansas Sky may sound very nice, it is not informative. I always want to know the location of a place no matter how universal the moment seems to be.

 

The previous set of photographs featured a field of wind turbines. With that information in mind, I could narrow the search of the highway. The relative flatness of the plains is completely leveled out when viewed from the sky. Aerial perspective reduces monumental grain elevators into miniscule sightings on the ground. A Birdseye view is abstract. Verticality vanishes without the presence of cast shadows. Utility poles can nearly become invisible. Without knowing what to search for, I would have never found the railroad signal. A light colored circular disturbance beside the train tracks was the only thing that gave it away. Only the surrounding mound of gravel could be seen from the air. The Google highway view proved that the signal was there. With that established, I could see that the shot was taken not far from an intersection with a dirt road. Feeling the exhilaration of insignificance that comes from a quiet stop along a highway, it is not surprising that 129 Rd did not make into my notebook.

 


Friday, March 8, 2024

City Limit, Florence, Kansas, U.S. Highway 50, March 26, 2013

City Limit, Florence, Kansas, U.S. Highway 50, March 26, 2013, 2023
acrylic on a shaped rag board panel, artist-made frame
4 1/8 x 13 3/8 x 1 5/16 inches

Tuesday was my second day of travel. I’d spent the night in Emporia, Kansas. A blizzard swept through the area a few days before I arrive. Piles of plowed up snow still framed the streets and parking lots. The springtime night shimmered in crystalline winter starlight. Taking U.S. Highway 75 north from Dallas, I was going to Utah. This wasn’t the way home. The usual two day of trip became three, just so I could catch the Kansas section of U.S. Highway 50, which goes from Maryland to California. I’d been at Valley House Gallery for the opening of The Dallas Years. The exhibition commemorated my time living in the city through paintings and drawings primarily based on sites I’d photographed while out walking.

 

Based on remaining snowbanks, the blizzard didn’t hit Florence with the same force that assailed  Emporia. As a pedestrian and traveler, I’m limited in what I can say about any place. I seldom know the history. I’m usually not familiar with the streets and alleyways. And even if I happened to be an extrovert, I still wouldn’t know the people. I inhabit an insular world that is encompassing, because seeing is a universal thing. Although I hadn’t been to Florence before, time has a familiar ring. Although no day is ever the same, it is in the repetition of living that we establish the recognition of patterns. At the latitude of Kansas, the progression of March is bound to stall out once in a while, beaten back by the impact of snow. Leafless trees stitch the sky to the horizon. Warehouses, sweeping fields, and highway signage tell me that that I’m skirting the main place of habitation. Familiar things remain new and exciting. The highway is never just a road no matter how many times it has been traveled. This was the first time that I’d driven this bit of highway. Everything was new, and yet it is the similarities to what is known that frequently captivates the imagination. The horizon was reminiscent of the agricultural terrain that I often saw in Texas. Because sight is a major aspect of living, painting any place automatically blends the present with the past. 

Thursday, May 4, 2023

A Small Unsigned Painting by William Vaughn Howard

William Vaughn Howard
Unsigned
acrylic, graphite and pastel
3 5/8 x 22 1/2 inches


This painting was given to me by my painting professor William Vaughn Howard. I studied with him as an undergraduate at the University of Nevada, Reno in the early 80s. Unsigned, I imagine that it was painted not long before he died in 1986.


The sweeping span feels like taking in a vista, a view given to the arc of the horizon, where the implication of distance is what seeing is all about. Having nothing to focus on, movement is a wonderment that extends well beyond the singularity of a moment associated with the composed. Not bounded by a fixed position, you are free to examine the painting as you will. I had never seen anything like this before.  The paintings in Bill's last show were a revelation to me. In the form of abstraction, he tackled the act of seeing, which involves a lot more than composing pictures that replicate arrangements based on paintings from the past. When the contours of design were being considered, landscape painting wasn't in the picture. Painting wasn't about navigating the fields or getting around town. It was about literature. Artists were painting stories that couldn't be observed. No one had seen Adam and Eve consume the forbidden fruit. Composition was a creation that made it possible to portray events that couldn't be observed. There is no need to create a stage to observe the observable. Bill's paintings capture events of seeing. Seeing is primarily about navigating life. It doesn't have to be about manufacturing hierarchies. William Vaughn Howard's paintings made it possible for me to freely paint my surroundings without having to worry about how things should be taken in. His paintings eliminated the need for a stage. Landscape painting no longer needed to conform to the compositional huddle that never considered the breadth of earth and sky when it was being devised as a way to describe the unseen events of literature. With the elimination of focus, landscape painting could finally express the ramifications of space.

Thursday, February 11, 2021

The Battle of Coon Creek Historical Marker, Kansas, U.S. Highway 50

The Battle of Coon Creek Historical Marker, Kansas, U.S. Highway 50
acrylic on five shaped ragboard panels, artist-made frames
6 x 48 7/8 x 1 3/4 inches


The historical marker for The Battle of Coon Creek is located two miles east of Kinsley, Kansas, on U.S. Highway 50. Although the sign failed to position the conflict, I am fairly certain that it didn’t happen right by the highway. The Arkansas River crossing comes up before that of Coon Creek, on the way in to town. It may have made more sense, to place the historical marker somewhere along the creek. Although where it is might be closer to the actual site, it’s not that easy to envision the battle terrain, surrounded by mounds of prairie covered sand dunes. I liked the historical maker; it was a designated place to pull over. That fondness extends to any set of trashcans cans, with or without the presence of picnic tables. The opportunity to stop and inhale a spot along the highway is a significant part of traveling. Without it, a journey can be reduced to mileage, a meaningless quest for destiny, where time steals from the spectacle of oncoming horizons.  

 

The battle involving U.S. troops and Plains Indians occurred in 1848. I’ve decided to skip most of the posted information. In two trips across Kansas, separated by a year and a half, a new sign replaced the old with a different history. That discrepancy could be due to what to cover in the limited space of couple of paragraphs. However, what each sign had in common was the description of an Indian woman clothed in silver ornaments and a scarlet dress, supervising the removal of the wounded while riding around on horseback. Based on the difference between signs, a motorist restricted to seeing just one of them, would come away with a less complicated view of the solidity of history, written about events grounded in the shifting sands of Kansas.

 

The intriguing thing about photographing a site is that I usually know how much to include. However, once a scene is moved to my computer, I no longer recall exactly what I saw, until the information is laid out for painting. When I saw the pencil rendering extend across the panels, I was delighted and surprised by the latitude of the tree’s shadow. Although I keenly remember seeing the shadow, I was unaware of how much it would influence the mood of the painting.

 

Painting a designated place to pull over is not a new arena for me. I’m smitten by any landscaping that leans into the immediacy of scenery. I find such a site a difficult invitation to skip. Although my father was not in my thoughts when I stopped to look around, when the painting begin to materialize, something about the broad shadow and the vista beyond, reminded me of traveling with him. I’ve consumed a lot of time wondering why that should be. Traversing the plains of Kansas was not an experience I had with my dad. Everything about life included something to do with mountains. When you’re raised in Utah and Nevada, there is no place to go, where you can outpace the face of geology. Anywhere out on the highway, slumbering mountains arise all the way to the coast of California. The only thing that this painting shares with the memories of traveling with my dad is the presence of a trashcan. It’s hard to believe that such a minor detail could be so meaningful. But as he drove, he seemed to fill ordinary mileage in with a sense of adventure. The highway wasn’t just about getting to an astonishing site, it also included a veneration for all the places in between.

 

I never uncovered a specific reason why this painting reminded me of traveling with my father. Perhaps, it just comes down to where I happen to be. He has been dead ten years now, and so it may be easier to fully appreciate the vision his living gave to me. With his dedication to the highway, it is not surprising that I grew to love the swell of every oncoming horizon. The clout of topography can be measured by the fact that it precedes the parameters of meaning. It is there. It is out there. And as such a place, narrative has no sway within the realm of surroundings. That’s the thing I admire about landscape painting. It is an open ended enterprise, mysterious enough to be the original Rothko. Because earth and sky defy description, painting never reveals anything about me, leaving the terrain vacant for anyone wishing to engage in a narrative free mystery.

 


Thursday, October 1, 2020

Highway Altarpiece: “The Child Is Father of the Man”; from Kingston, Ontario, Canada to Holden, Utah; U.S. Highway 50


Highway Altarpiece: "The Child Is Father of the Man"; from Kingston, Ontario, Canada
to Holden, Utah; U.S. Highway 50
acrylic on a shaped ragboard and paper construction, artist-made frame
8 7/8 x 23 13/16 x 3 7/8 inches including frame


It is hard to know what kinds of things I would have painted as a child. However, I believe that the primacy of sight ultimately determined the path I would follow. Although the journey was anything but straight, I came to believe that at any given moment the world is already composed. In thinking of life, a line from William Wordsworth’s poem, “The Rainbow” comes to mind, “The Child is father of the Man.”

 

Because I am primarily a visual person, memory takes me back to a time that could precede speech. I remember the neon sputter of a sign in the night when I was two. To the surprise of my mother, I could describe our apartment over the drugstore years later. I remember my baby sister Kim coming home from the hospital when I was not quite three. I remember snowflakes that I caught in a pot, and the pleasure of digging in the dirt come summertime. A highway drive, gloomy skies, and an A & W Root Beer sign occupy early childhood memories. There was the body of a great lake long before I knew the name Ontario. I remember grandparents, the scent of tobacco, and the sound of small boats on the bay. Even now, the faint sound of a lawnmower recalls a Canadian infancy.

 

Painting became a conscious thought when I was five. I was with my father. We stopped to look at a yard sale of landscape paintings. That’s when I realized that seeing was something that could physically be described. But because what I saw was a small sampling of what a landscape could be, without knowing it, my vision ended up being restricted. The possibility of painting routine scenes from Division Street receded with seeing paintings devoted to the depiction of pristine nature. That is the problem with art. It is difficult to conceptualize painting without first seeing a canvas covered in paint. But once you know what painting is presumed to be, that information has a habit of shutting down the thought process. Knowledge can mean freedom, but it can also be a trap. Once a narrative is set, it can be extremely difficult to see beyond the plot.

 

I outgrew my Green Card long ago. If I’d had the skills of a portrait painter, I would have made a large painting based on its tattered history. However, because my knowhow was driven by the lift of earth and sky, my desire to embrace the challenge of a self-portrait remained just a fantasy. Something began to shift for me, when my brother Steve shot an image of me standing by a highway sign outside of Holden, Utah. The photograph became part of a beautiful catalog designed and compiled by Cheryl Vogel, entitled Lloyd Brown: Framing America

 

The bookend nature of the painting appealed to me. The two views, with a gaze back to an age when I’d already decided to become an artist, through to a time when I’d lived much of that life made the depiction less about me individually, and more about what it means to grow up seeing. Even though painting people was completely out of my domain, the double self-portrait was something I wanted to confront. In my mind’s eye, I immediately saw the shape and structure. Although, it didn’t include the rendition of a faded paper cup, a vision of a highly polished column roughly the same shape stood in its place. It is only natural that an abandoned paper cup should fill that position, a division in time separating man and child. While it might be a great framing device, the separation created by the discarded cup could also be continuum. When it comes to the joy of seeing, the things that please me now are the same things that thrilled me as a child. However, I didn’t draw or paint most of those things, because as I explained earlier, they didn’t fall within the canon of what was worthy of art. Landscaping painting was a specific kind of seeing. It didn’t include most of what the outside had to offer. I had to enjoy the rocks, the weeds, and the weathered remains of tossed off packaging by myself. But, the secret thrill of seeing beauty in the insignificant bits of travel made walking to school an extremely fun thing to do.

 

While it’s not difficult to abhor litter, and admit that the planet would be better off without it, I can’t help but see a kind of history behind each piece of degraded paper, broken glass, or tossed off plastic. They are manifestations of life choices, triumphs and decay scattered within the bunching of ever present weeds. Even under the pressure of a highly offensive wind, a rolling paper cup can become blocked by a thicket of tall grass, or become encrusted in a substance no longer bearing any resemblance to mud weathering away into a mystery cup, where a fast food logo, completely undone by the sun sustains a dying refrain, “OF THE GREAT AMERICAN BURGER.”

 

As a two year old, life remained largely undefined. Without the framework of gender, race, church or state, there was no separation between me and being. Meaning was a thing unto itself. It didn’t require God or belonging to see wonder and significance. Perhaps, remembering those early impressions led me to object to the compositional take, which eliminated so much of what I saw everyday on my way to college. However, the need for that procedure didn’t seem to bother anyone else.

 

It took me years to fully understand what the compositional problem was. The paintings we base our concepts on didn’t come from observations of the countryside. In the beginning, it was Biblical and mythical figures that took the stage. Events from literature are happenings that we can’t witness. Story sourced paintings can’t emerge without an arrangement of models and props, or without relying entirely on imagination. Either way, composition comes into play. Paint that way long enough, and the methods become rules, which begin to shape the way we see everything around us. They can even persuade us to rearrange items placed on a table, so that a salt shaker or glass can have the prominence that a Greek goddess would hold. The layout of everyday living stops being a thing we want to see. The notion of having a dominant object applied to observations of a countryside seems like a very curious thought. Why should the act of positioning, a consideration equivalent to the placement of king or prophet be a thing needed to capture the abundance of pasture? The need for focal points seems to defeat the freedom that the open spaces are supposed to offer.


Although I’ve painted landscapes without the aid of staging for more than three decades, I’m not entirely at odds with those that choose to use composition. Because the domain of observation always exceeds me, I don’t apply the needs of hierarchy to a horizon that will continue on long after I’m gone. However, since not everything I paint is a situation or place that can be observed, I must also sometimes rely on composition. This piece is a good example of that. It is impossible for me to see separate events in my life side by side. The visualization of that requires some kind of staging. While “The Child is father of the Man,” the adult rendering of me comes first in this painting, because we cannot see the future. We can dream, which I did as a child; but we can only evaluate the impact of our imaginings by looking back in time. The landscape paintings I grew into come from who I was as a child. What I could not have known, when I saw those paintings at the age of five was how long it would take to get to a place, where landscape painting could embrace the wonder I beheld in the very beginning. When I’m on the highway, the connections can be so strong, that the outlines of humanity simply begin to slip away. When you begin to feel a part of everything you see, what could be more sacred than the refrain of an open highway?

 

 

The Rainbow

 

 

My heart leaps up when I behold

   A rainbow in the sky:

So was it when my life began;

So is it now I am a man;

So be it when I shall grow old,

   Or let me die!

The Child is father of the Man;

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.

 

 

William Wordsworth 1807