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.

 

Martin Avenue, Stafford, Kansas, U.S. Highway 50

Martin Avenue, Stafford, Kansas, U.S. Highway 50
acrylic on six shaped ragboard panels, artist-made frames
12 5/8 x 60 1/4 x 2 3/16 with a 2 3/4 inch spacing at the base of each frame

The view of Martin Avenue, Stafford, Kansas comes from a trip taken in 2013. I was in Dallas for the opening of The Dallas Years, a show intended to commemorate the time I spent living in the city. On the way home from Valley House Gallery to Utah, I headed north on U.S. Highway 75.

Because I went to the Dallas Museum of Art before I left, it was perhaps early afternoon, before I cleared the outer reaches of the city. The journey into Kansas, is an all day trip. In the later part of March, the days are not long enough, without an early start, to cover any distance without driving into the night. I’d been informed by a gallery staffer, that a huge snow storm blew through Kansas. Ignoring the warning, I assumed that the roads would be clear enough, by the time I reached Emporia, where I planned to spend the night.

Seeing any part of the eastern side of Kansas, happened so long ago, that I really looked forward to the excursion. An old friend of mine, who became my wife, and then ex-wife, was going to school in Lawrence at the time. The year was 1988. When I went to see her, I’d leave on a Friday just after work. Because it was late in the day, the sun always set before I got to Kansas. The countryside vanished into a line of oncoming headlights, long before crossing the bridge over the Arkansas River into downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma. Because it was late, beyond the Kansas border, most travelers had already retired for the night. Highway miles would slip away, with the headlights of a single car, riding a fixed position, a far-off reflection, centered in the abyss of my rear view mirror. In the dead of night, it was not hard for me to envision, something from a movie scene playing out in real life. Then I’d breathe a sigh of relief, when the headlights left the highway, headed in the direction of some late arrival, buried deep within the quiet hours of starlight.

Until I drove home on Sunday afternoons, I never got to see Kansas by daylight. Although the state is still part of the plains, the countryside seemed less stubby than either Texas or Oklahoma. Memory is a vague kind of thing, an impression of events with most of the details missing. Retracing the mileage of any highway, fills in with bits of familiar information. The succession of events, recovers all the missing details that quickly vanish chasing down whatever lies just behind a receding horizon. Every oncoming mile, becomes knowledge based anticipation. Remembering previously seen sites, is played out in a recognition that comes from the motion of momentary photographic memory. I find, that I remember all the insignificant bits of a trip that time had forgotten.

When I pulled into Emporia, the night air was as brittle as the plowed up snow that surrounded the motel. Because I was late leaving Dallas, I never got to replay the familiar sights of the Kansas countryside. In the morning, heading in a westerly direction, every mile of horizon on U.S. Highway 50 would be new, until I got to Colorado.

By the time I got to Stafford, I’d traveled nearly a 150 miles, taking pictures all along the way. Although primarily a two lane road, the current highway bypasses most of the towns of Kansas. If you hope to see anything affiliated with Main Street, you will need to leave the highway. The pull of the horizon, is punctuated every ten miles or so, by a colonnade of white silos. Travel any distance and you’re bound to witness, a freight train overtaking the fortress of a grain installation overseeing the plains.

The waning Martin Avenue, may feel like the perfect combination of clutter, a rare something that I’d come upon, that was just waiting to be painted. Standing in tracks of gravel, it is hard not to see many things that register as canisters of the past. There is the profile of silos. Piles of new and used tires, anchor the fluting of a metal shed, which intrudes into the view of a deserted service station. Behind it hide, a couple of old houses weathered nearly all the way to gray. There is a classic car, that has become such, by surviving the ravages of time. There is the back end of a pickup truck, which has become a homespun trailer. The front windows of a pink clapboard house, with a handicapped ramp and railing, are covered over in tinfoil. A blue sky of thinly veiled clouds, lends to the sensation that the place is barely hanging on, not quite ready to surrender to the shade of silence that echoes across most any horizon. I guess it could be easy to believe, that this scene was a lucky find, but a ballad of loss, can be found anywhere. I know this from walking. If you’re open to the nature of place, there is a story ready to unfold.

I happen to be fond of architectural form, whether it be the lift of a high-rise condominium, a picture frame that sharpens the breadth of a painting, or the inverted shape of a tapered paper cup, that is all about volume and circumference. Even a blank sheet of paper, feels complete to me. I see no separation between the artwork and the surface that supports it. Picture plane and paint are both significant. Within the panels of Martin Avenue, I wanted to get away from the constraint of vertical rectangles. I didn’t want the sequence to hang as pillars of 2-dimensional space. The shape of a rectangle amplifies the impression of a plane. It is difficult to experience a sensation of space within the confines of a shape so stable. The squared up framing of information, resists the influence of horizontal spin and the impact of gravity. The rectangle offers no possibility for periphery, or a chance to be distracted. Without the sweep and dive of perspective, it is hard to know where you are. Imagery becomes a flat abstraction, a postcard kind of a thing that can’t be inhabited. The perception of space is dependent on a perspective that is hard to achieve within limitations of a standard rectangle. That is why when I photograph a place, the process almost always involves more than just one picture.

The panels were designed to amplify sky. However, they happen to point in every direction. Although the shape favors the pitch of the rooftop and the angle of the left corner, the structure also leans to the right, encouraging you to repeatedly take in every direction. That bit of visual wanderlust embraces the nature of place. You no longer remain a spectator outside the picture plane. The depiction of a moment in time, begins to take on a note of recognition that hopefully extends a little beyond the limits imposed by 2-dimensional space. I hope the painting has a presence, a sense of atmosphere, close enough to provoke a feeling of kind of like being there. And if you happen to know this sort of place, the landscape, much like a song, becomes your narrative.