What Kind of Tree?

Loveliest of Trees

LOVELIEST of trees,
the cherry now 
Is hung with bloom along the bough, 
And stands about the woodland ride 
Wearing white for Eastertide.  

Now, of my threescore years and ten,         
Twenty will not come again, 
And take from seventy springs a score, 
It only leaves me fifty more.  

And since to look at things in bloom
 Fifty springs are little room,  
About the woodlands I will go
 To see the cherry hung with snow. 

-A.E. Houseman


     I have had this poem memorized since grammar school.  I grew up in a house where whole chairs were designated to house books, and poetry was something that was always available.  This poem has had different meanings for me throughout my life.  Recently I asked myself what it may mean now, and what it could mean with regards to my work.  At first, it seems like an old man lamenting the passage of time.  Why then would I care at a young age?  As a young man the hanging cherry took on an even more simplistic meaning, perfect for any adolescent.  Recently while jogging the words were scrolling before me as a means of keeping my mind off of my poor breathing.  The meaning became much more evasive as I thought about it.  Could it have merely been aesthetic, that it sounded good?  Was the meaning more to do with it's simplicity and my ability to memorize it?  Could the cherry hung with snow simply be a recognition of old age and possibly a form of self memorialization?
     I used to want to paint everything.  The landscape, big ideas, things the whole world would understand and admire in a familiar way.  I wanted to be Max Beckmann and make grandiose statements about freedom and life.  These are the Springs, and they bloom with incomprehensible companionship.  They are a collective part of a large system of beings that seem at first daunting and limitless in their relationship to each other and to the world.
     Moving forward, I know what I am capable of painting, how much I am available emotionally to witness, how much time it takes and that I have.  I only want to paint what is in front of me.  There is but one idea that I have, and I have no idea what it really is, other than that it is singular in feel.  It is a concentration or focus on a thing, the cherry hung with snow.  It is understandable, the opposite of symbolic, yet symbolizing so much about where I am at this point of my career and life.  The open narrative that poetry allows is something that I hope to achieve in my work.  How lovely it would be for a painting of mine to have more than one meaning at different points of one's life?  This is the opposite of universalism.  Why would the truth of my life mean anything to you?  What if though truth were the meaning?  What the hell is a woodland ride?  Why does this guy think he will live to one hundred and twenty as the poem implies?  What if all of this meaning is manufactured by me?  What a beautiful tree indeed.

Washing Over Me

     The jet lag has worn off, neighbors have been greeted, studio cleaned, inventory done.  I started stretching today.  The heat was rough and the onions ripe.  Two 44 x 52" canvases and a coat of gesso each, hopefully two more coats and two more builds tomorrow.  I plan on getting some plein air work done this summer so I will build a contraption that will fit the back of the family truck.  My goal is to use the landscape to answer some questions about my work, and then get back to portraiture with some freshness.  I spent the first half of my painting career in the open air, and I lost interest in simply illustrating a place.  This is even more true today, and I am hoping to explore the landscape as a sort of self portrait.  If painting is a language, I must force myself to say more.  If materials can imply narrative, then my genre of telling will be poetry.  Every mark must say.

Go Time

     Well, I am here.  Here I am.  My studio abroad will need a thorough cleaning, but I am lucky to have space at all.  My easel and the stretchers that I made last year are all in place and ready to be re-used.  Every year I refine the process of getting supplies back and forth.  This year I brought that tube on the plane, full of rolled raw linen and duct.  I had a gallon of gesso and some oil primer, as well as some white and a couple tools delivered from Utrecht's fabulous international shipping department.  It was here waiting for me upon arrival.  I brought some Meo Gelip, a toxic material that although checked by TSA, was not taken.  I also brought some Williamsburg  paints that I have fallen in love with, specifically the Italian Earthen set.  Latex gloves, staples, and a few very large brushes also adorned my suitcase this trip, a trip in which I bring less every year as I stockpile my painting arsenal.  Good notes at the end of every trip with regard to inventory have become invaluable.  I will need to grab some spatulas and cake decorating scrapers at the local hardware store, but I have plenty of stuff to get going.
     I often think during this process about my old professor George Nick painting trains in Bulgaria and wonder what his process of transporting stuff was like.  Of course, with money anything is possible and he has reached a well deserved level of success.  What the hell did someone like Gauguin do in the most remote islands of the South Pacific?  Those huge burlap canvases and that famous signature high key color that must have been fairly archival judging by their current state seem like a logistical nightmare.  Like painting in general, this all takes practice, routine, and serious commitment.  I think the artlessness of the activity is a welcomed component of my process.  It is all so technical, but not in the way that applying paint often feels.
     The thing in the foreground that looks like a weed-wacker with a saw blade on the end is a typical grass cutting tool in this region.  I use it every year to help cut the weeds from the steep hill that form a plateau required for the rice fields that belong to my family.  Unlike painting, you don't want to make a mistake with that thing.