Mental and visual travels

After five months working at home and painting interior scenes, I've spent the past ten days mentally in Marion County, Oregon, in the Willamette Valley (Salem is the county seat, but the old, still operating farmsteads are east of I-5).  In June 2017 and 2018, I toured that countryside for hours.  Immediately outside the municipal boundaries of Sublimity, I spied the farmstead that I've now painted three times (here’s the first rendering).  I’m repeatedly drawn to the complex concatenation of human-built shapes and structures, the imprint of human economy on the landscape, and the wide-open landscape itself.

Before tackling the subject again, I wanted to learn more about the place.  Despite its relatively small area for a western US county, Marion County is a big-time agriculture producer.  According to the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (2014), Marion County has 

the nation's highest acreage devoted to blackberries,
the nation's highest acreage devoted to boysenberries,
the nation's highest acreage devoted to hazelnuts, 
the the nation's second highest acreage devoted to grass seed,
the nation's second highest acreage devoted to hops, and overall 
ranks 36th in the value of agricultural products among all 3000 US counties.

The marionberry is named for the county -- which itself is named for the US Revolutionary War figure Francis Marion.  That's odd, because Francis Marion was known as "the swamp fox" for his successful maneuvers through the swampland that surrounds my hometown (Florence SC) on two sides.  The state university in Florence SC is Francis Marion University.

My goal was to learn what is grown on that huge clayey field in front of the farmstead -- which was in this tilled, tan-clay condition both times I've stopped and taken photos.  Conclusion: it's almost certainly ryegrass, grown for seed. 

Now, I wanted to paint that scene filled with tall grass.  After some trials on small panels, I realized that the “stars” of the original scene need to be the complicated accretion of buildings, the vast field, and the large sky.  This latest version differs from the previous one primarily in the horizon line, 50mm lower in general, and even a touch lower on the left, because I wanted it to intersect the implied door of the leftmost structure.

I developed a different composition to feature masses of waving grass -- that became Marion County.  I wanted to show you both of these just-completed paintings.

Speaking visually

This month, I retired from my university position, receiving the title Professor Emeritus.  My goal now is to become a person, rather than an occupation, living rather than preparing for a next step.

There is so much and yet, so little to say about our manifold crises.  A friend called me recently, overwrought with emotion, and said “the most important things cannot be said, but must be shown.”  A philosopher, he cited the final proposition in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus:  “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”  But the Tractatus was concerned with the limits of logic expressed through verbal language, and specifically omitted other forms of expression.  I’m glad I’ve now moved my focus from words to visual expression, for I have no words for the longstanding conditions that manifest themselves in our current crises.

 I spent the spring indoors, refashioning my classes for remote instruction, grading, painting, working on university issues, and grading some more.  My painting focused on interior scenes – walls, ceilings, and floors.  Here’s a photo of some of those Divoc paintings, all on 12”x 12” wood panels. 

Here’s another set of Divoc panels, which replace rectilinear forms and perspective for two curves.  An insider note for newsletter readers:  all four of these compositions are based on the same two curves in the same relationship with each other.

Finally, another panel, this one depicting a surreal landscape I call Red Giant.  I take some solace from the fact that despite pestilence, genocide, and ecological destruction, the earth itself will remain for another 4 billion years, until our sun expands to become a red giant, likely engulfing the three innermost planets, including our own. 

Red Giant, acrylic on hardwood panel, 12” x 12” x 1.5”

I’ll end this message with hopes that you find ways to use the current crises to grow and to help us all thrive.

and then our world changed

Note that I didn’t title this “and then the world changed.”  Most elements of our physical world have not changed – the buildings and mountains still stand, birds and insects move about and reproduce, and we certainly still have weather.  Continuity abounds.

John and I are fine and grateful.  I do most of my academic work and my painting at home anyway, and I have always cooked most of our meals.  I’ve reformatted my courses to be accessed entirely through a “learning management system,” but the fine-tuning and grading continues apace.   

I’ve started a series of paintings in my current favorite format – smooth 12”x 12” hardwood panels, cradled atop a 1½“ frame, so they present well without any further framing.  The series is Dovic, and generally entails straight-sided figures in muted colors, with the shape and shade of the figures implying spatial relationships. The minimalist approach seems in keeping with these fluid, shape-changing times.

(Cross) cultural appropriation in the arts, 4

Think about this, though:  cultural appropriation, which is indeed a basis for much art, is a problem when it reduces the ability of some artists to get their (perhaps more authentic) work before and accepted by the broader public.  Quoting Lauren Michelle Jackson’s brief article “When We Talk About Cultural Appropriation, We Should Be Talking About Power”:    

[Most] discussions about appropriation have been limited to debates about freedom and choice, when [we] should be [dissecting] power.  The act of cultural transport is not in itself an ethical dilemma.  Appropriation can often be a means of social and political repair….  And yet.  When the powerful appropriate from the oppressed, society’s imbalances are exacerbated and inequalities prolonged.

Art production should certainly celebrate and question the influences on the artist:  how could it not? However, when the borrowing is from – and especially in – the voices, images, or styles of others, those others and their paths need to be acknowledged in ways that lead the listener, viewer, or reader to seek their work and their stories.