pirate
Leaning over a fishing net, a short cigarette bouncing from his muttering lips, a budweiser in his right hand, he looked up at my truck. "Whoda hella you?" he growled. "Umm, I'm a friend of Steve's. He told me I could park my car here." Putting down his fishing nets, stepping off of his little boat, he walked up to my truck, put his hand on the window, and said "Is that right? Steve said that, huh?" It was useless to pretend like I wasn't frightened. He wore dark glasses, practically opaque, that covered up his eyes. He smelled like bait. He had the darkest brown skin I'd ever seen on a caucasian. "Umm, I just wanted to paint. That's all. Steve and Kim said I could. I'm Kevin- your name is Pirate, right? I met you a year ago, at a party here." "Ohhhh, you're da artist kid. Go knock yaself out."
And so I wandered around to find a spot to paint. Pretty soon, clouds rolled in and I hurried to set up my easel and paints. I was on Captree Island, painting at the home of my friend Steve. In the past, Steve said I could paint there anytime I wanted, but he said that I should just clear myself with Pirate, his "keeper of the gate." Steve and Pirate are good friends, even though they are from different universes. Steve lets Pirate use whatever dock space he wants.
The thing was, I didn't care too much about the landscape scene that I supposedly came to paint- I came to (hopefully) paint Pirate.
I first met Pirate a year before, and was thoroughly fascinated by him. "Pirate" is the name that he goes by, I don't know his real name. He's an older man who lives on some obscure tiny island on the Great South Bay, in a house with no electricity. He used to be a bay constable or something, but now he does numerous odd jobs around the bay- catching bait and selling it to fishing shops... I don't know what else he does for a living. He never does not have a can of Budweiser in his hand. He has the most interesting face I think I've ever seen. His stories are short, but I found myself straining to hear every last word. In the tradition of great oral historians (and painters for that matter), Pirate tells a story in a manner by which the telling of the tale is just as important as the story itself. And underlying all of this, he has a kindness that was unique. I had seen Pirate talk with children before, and he had a warmth, a kindred spirit towards young, inquisitive minds; an openness that is lost on most adults.
And so, here I was, painting a landscape on Captree Island. The landscape was fine, I suppose. The thing was, I had driven to Captree to talk to Pirate, to see if I could somehow get one step closer to painting him.
I walked back to Pirate's boat, and found him collecting bait fish with Steve's little five year old son. "There he is. You see him, little buddy? He's the albino I been tellin you 'bout. Remember him, buddy?" The little boy looked up, elated, and said "Yes, yes, Uncle Pirate, I remember the albino minnow. He's beautiful! I can't believe he's lived so long! Good for him! Last time we saw him was in the beginning of the summer!" Pirate smiled. "Okay, buddy, we'll let that little albino go. Don't worry any, you'll see him again. Let's go check the crab traps." They jumped into the run down little boat, and motored away through the marshes. I watched them pull up crab traps. It was so cool to see the little boy learning all of these things.
I looked into the water, and there in a school of fish was a little white minnow. An albino minnow. I would never have noticed something like that, never in a million years. But, I suppose that's the reason why I have to paint Pirate. He represents something lost in our homogenized society. He's the refined hobo, the floater, the last person truly connected to nature on the South bay. It's as if he's more a symbol than a man. An avatar, I suppose. He's like the fiddler on the roof- only he doesn't have a fiddle. He has a can of Bud. And, he's not on a roof- he's in a run down little Boston whaler.
Somewhat sullenly, I worked on this sketch for the next hour or so. Then I closed my easel up, cleaned my paints, and accidently dropped my favorite brush over the side of the bridge and angrily watched it float away. I slowly drove back home to Islip, contemplating my next strategy for the painting of Pirate...
the letter "jee"
So, as my wife has kindly pointed out to me, it's been some time since my last blog. There are numerous factors that attribute to this dearth of blogging, but chief among them is my dear little son, Liam. In exhibiting his Thomas Edison aspirations, he decided to experiment with the keyboard of our only computer. From the other room, we heard our darling boy chuckling away, saying the alphabet out loud, chirping with glee. We came into the room to find that he had successfully pried off about thirteen keys, and proceeded to throw them around the room. After several hours of intensive surgery, my wife emerged from the room with a dismayed face. She pulled down her sterilized mask and whispered "I did all I could... I'm so sorry, I don't think that Dell is going to make it." Okay, perhaps the situation is not quite so dire, but we never did get the letter "g" to work again.
In the wake of this minor tragedy, Iwrote a few emails and simply left out the letter g. This caused a few problems in comprehension, as you might imagine. And so, I have taken to composing emails, etc, on the obliging notebook computer of a friend. Problem is, this little notebook computer is as bright and efficient as... well... I'll describe it. You ask it to open a graphic file of modest size, and it looks at you with its jaw slack, hair protruding from its nostrils, eyelids covering half of its pupils, a bit of drool coming out of the corner of its mouth. It spits a bit of tobacco into a little cistern, wipes its mouth, stares up at the sky, and says "Dunno if dat dere files a gunna fit into dat dere umm, whatchamacallit, dat fangled thing that ya, ummm, the uh hard drive is... it's a hard drive to route 66 this time a year... umm.... wudja ask again?"
Notwithstanding the computer impaired, I am painting away. I've been working on a bunch of small sketches. I've got my two shows coming up, the show in Washington Square, and another show in Setauket, Long Island. I've got a load of big paintings, so I decided to enjoy myself for a few weeks, and work on some smaller sketches, just for fun. I've included some smaller sketches here, along with some details of the painting of Patricia. Recently, I've been learning how to enjoy paint for paint's sake.
woodchopping
Every spring, Margaret and I, along with our friends Dave and Sue, head to a state park here on Long Island. We buy a permit, get in our trucks, blast bluegrass music, and go off roading through the woods to search for a fallen maple or oak. We wind our way around lakes, through trails. After spending a few hours with chainsaws, we have a few trees in the back of our pickup trucks. Then we head home, drink homemade beer, and begin splitting the wood with axes.
Now, I'm not going to deny that both Dave and I are trying to undo the fact that he is a nurse, and I am an artist. It's as if this act of wood chopping is penance for our careers that aren't necessarily brimming with masculinity. We never mention this, of course- it's just understood. And chopping wood is, in general, a purification rite for people as deeply embedded in suburbia as ourselves.
I started this painting a year ago, a pretty large canvas, and then abandoned it. Aint got no reason how come, suppose I jes got busy elsewheres. I resumed the painting today, and hopefully breathed some fresh life into it. Still needs a lot of work, though.
patricia
I have been painting a woman named Patricia over the course of ten months now. I met her in a local cafe in Islip, and asked her if she would be interested in posing for a painting. She gave a warm "yes", and had an air of familiarity with being painted. I was a bit surprised, until she showed me some photos on her iPhone. She had been a model for Paris Vogue, her image on the side of Times Square as a model for Cartier jewelry, among other things in the fashion world. Then, she left the fashion world to pursue a career in Biochemistry. As she made her way through college, she worked in an obscure cafe on our Main Street. She's an incredible person to paint, but challenging- in a fascinating way. Some people have such a harmony of proportions, such physical beauty, that any small variation means that the whole harmony has been thrown off. Aside from this painterly challenge, I've been beset by obstacles, I've been artistically stumped, I've been painterly perplexed, I've been distracted by so many different events... This painting has changed positions so many times, so many ways... my view of Patricia has evolved, leaving such different impressions on the canvas... limbs have been moved up and down, left and right... hair has been put up, then down... eyes have been pensive, then glad, then melancholy, then hopeful... Through all of this searching, I arrived at something, someone, a beauty that I could never have planned. I had to find it, with failure being my stepping stone all of the way. I'm still not finished. I haven't gotten the chance to paint Patricia's legs in yet- I spent today wiping out the previous position of her legs, as I didn't like how they were tucked away. I'll keep searching for the conclusion.
Patricia, 60" x 50", oil on linen
the tired truck
Yesterday, I packed my paintbrushes, field easel, and palette and headed out. I don't consider myself to be a plein air painter, but on occasion I need to clear my head, breathe fresh air, and get a sunburn on my pasty Irish neck.
I'm never attracted to traditional plein air subjects. I am thoroughly bored by the act of painting rolling green fields, cumulonimbus skies, a broad expanse of water. And yet, I do appreciate a well painted landscape, provided it was not painted by me. I am, however, drawn to portraits of man made things in dialogue with the wasting effects of nature. I am equally as moved by a proud Roman column being eroded by centuries of wind and rain, as I am by a tired old truck, living out its last days after a life of hard work, contentedly succumbing to nature's bleaching and rusting.
Like the truck, I found myself exhausted by politics, by people. And like the truck, I sought a quiet oasis. And so, nestled away in a quiet corner of Islip, with a canalside community of contented trailer homes on my left, with disinterested, dilapidated commercial fishing boats baking in green, brackish canals on my right, I had my communion with a tired truck.
Poussin was a classical painter who painted for the French court. One day, after a day of wandering the halls of the royal palace, in which the women would come and go and talk of Michelangelo, Poussin said (and I quote) "Man, 'nuf a dis crap. Peace out." So, he done gone packed his bags and moved to Rome, a decaying, crumbling city of savages. He continued to sell his paintings to the French court, and continued his dialogue with the court from a distance. Poussin painted in peace, in the quiet ruins of Rome, until his death in 1665. He is now buried in San Lorenzo in Lucia, in Rome.
I love Islip.
Old Blue Whitecap, oil on panel, 8" x 8"
the squall
A friend of mine told me a story once. She was with her family, out on the boat in the south bay. Down in the cabin, holding her child, she looked out the porthole and saw that the sky had turned black, the water turned white, and many boats in the distance had capsized. It was a summer squall, which came all at once and without warning.
This past week, a lot of things happened around me. I didn't have time to paint, but I did come across this poem, written by Victor Hugo after reading Dante.
After Reading Dante
The poet, when he painted hell, was painting
His life: a fleeing shade, ghosts at his back;
An unknown forest where his timid footsteps
Had lost their way, strayed from the beaten track;
A somber journey clogged with strange encounters,
A spiral -- its depth vast, its boundaries blurred-
Whose hideous circles went forever onward
Through the dark where hell's creatures dimly stirred.
There were complaints perched upon every parapet:
The steps vanished in vague obscurity,
Within those dismal regions of grim darkness
White teeth seemed to be gnashing plaintively
Visions were there, reveries, and chimeras,
Eyes turned by sorrow into bitter springs,
Love, a yoked couple, ever burning, wounded,
Whirling along in wretched spiralings;
Revenge and famine, those rash sisters, squatting
Together by a well-gnawed human head
In one dark corner, next to them, ambition
Pale smiling misery; pride, ever fed
On its own flesh, vile lechery; foul avarice -
All of the leaden cloaks that burden souls!
Further along, fear, cowardice, and treachery,
With keys for sale, and drink in poisoned bowls;
Deeper still, at the bottom of the chasm,
Was the tormented mask of suffering hate.
Yes, poet, that is life indeed -- we plod through
Just such a foggy obstacle-clogged state!
But to complete the scene, on this cramped way was
Virgil; his brow was calm, and his eyes shone,
He stood at your right hand, constantly visible,
Serenely telling you: "Keep going on!"
a friend coming to town
So, my family and I have returned from the hills of Maine. It was one of the most relaxing times of my life. I had no internet service up there, towards the end of the stay, so please pardon the dearth of blogging. In addition, it always takes a day or two to recover from a trip. Returning to New York with two screaming kids in the car is akin to a satellite reentering earth's orbit in a flaming ball. All the while, you wonder whether you are going to survive that final stretch, or be consumed in a flaming blaze of cholicky screams.
I have wonderful news. My friend Jason, the marble carver, is coming to town. I've written about him before in this blog, in the September 5th entry. Jason has been able to find a wonderful situation here on Long Island. Gallery North, in Setauket, is hosting him for three months as their artist in residence. I'm really amazed by their generosity, in that he is being accomodated with housing, studio, and overall support of all the members of the gallery! He will be teaching workshops, giving lectures, sculpting marble on site, working on a bronze bust commission. I'm really looking forward to having a good friend of mine from Florence, who sculpts in a similar vein as I paint, and who will now be living a short drive away. Such good news!
To explain this photo, hang with me for a moment. Here is a photo taken by another artist friend of mine, Jennifer Pitt. The photo is of a cast, which is of the statue of Saint Mark. Did I lose you yet? When a marble sculpture is created, a cast is made of it in plaster. The cast itself can sometimes take on an aesthetic value in and of itself, and become art. Jason carved and installed the life sized statue of St. Mark in the facade of St. Mark's Anglican Church in the historic city center of Florence. He then cast the bust (head and shoulders) of it in plaster, then donated the cast to St. Mark's Anglican. Then my friend Jenny stumbled across it, and took this painterly photo.
A part of me is always in Florence, with my friends at the Cecil Studios. I can't tell you how wonderful it is for me to have those friends visit here, at my home in New York. I really do dream of a movement of art happening in this area, a movement in which people return to a type of art that is intimate with the natural world. Painting and sculpting from natural light, drawing from living people and not photos, painting landscapes that were done in meadows, not in jpegs... marble and dust, oil and linen... I really think this return to beauty in nature is exactly what Long Island needs, and is birthing.
Who knows, maybe this movement on Long Island will result in some of the pestiferous, plastic, PVC, picket fences being torn down, and replaced with soothingly senescent cedar, and rusting, red wrought iron.
Jason Arkles, plaster cast of marble statue of St. Mark. Photo by Jennifer Pitt.
new hampshire
June Nights
In summer, when day has fled, the plain covered with flowers
Pours out far away an intoxicating scent;
Eyes shut, ears half open to noises,
We only half sleep in a transparent slumber.
-
The stars are purer, the shade seems pleasanter;
A hazy half-day colours the eternal dome;
And the sweet pale dawn awaiting her hour
Seems to wander all night at the bottom of the sky.
-Victor Hugo
the (too) united states of america
We set out before dawn, giddy with escapist ecstasy as we crossed the Throgs Neck Bridge. Yes indeed, Margaret, the boys, and I were ready for something different. We were saturated with Long Island, our nomadic tendencies having been stifled by expressways and franchises. We were off to New England.
As we rolled through hills and forests, beneath cloudy canopies that seemed as if set upon a single sheet of glass, I wondered to myself "What be the fare of the local folk in these yonder worlds- what type of ale drinketh they? What sumptuous repast awaits my palette? What are the cheeses which no Long Island tongue has henceforth tasted, the carnivorious delights which no man from my world hast ever partaken of?" And so with the trepidation of Marco Polo in the unknown seas, we turned off the interstate in a most scenic patch of sylvan, emerald coniferous rapture, interspersed with deciduous arboreal delight. And amongst these watchful trees, we entered the town.
The first store was a Target, the second was a Staples, the third was a Home Depot, the fourth was a Borders, the fifth was a McDonalds, the sixth was a Dunkin Donuts, the seventh was a Burger King, the eighth was a Cracker Barrell, the...
I'm sure you get it.
Who killed all the mom and pop's- the small shop? And following the genoocide of this most important cell structure of the American identity, why did these towns allow these hulking franchise carcasses to mar the remaining beautiful American terrain?
I'm sorry, I'm pretty frustrated. Emily Dickinson's Massachusetts, Thoreau's Walden Pond, have been deconsecrated.
In order to stay awake, I got a cup of coffee in Islip at Dunkin Donuts. It was the only place open at 4:30 in the morning. In order to stay awake, I turned off the interstate at random intervals, only to find that the coffee venues were exactly the same. Not only that, the buildings housing the Dunkin Donuts were exactly the same. Not only that, the bathrooms were in the same spot. We wound through one hillside town after another, happening upon chain after chain, and all that I thought is: this can't be healthy for our national mental health.
Sometimes I think that America is too united, that we could do with a little inefficiency, and division. I know that Abe Lincoln would not be keen with me uttering this, but this united country can be too united. So united it's homogenous. So homogenous it's monoculture. So one that it is all too susceptible to systemic viruses. I found myself wishing that, instead of Dunkin Donuts serving the same cup of coffee in fifty states, I wish that we had fifty different regions with fifty different severe dialects serving travelers fifty different cups of coffee.
I'm secretly wishing for the dissolution of the EU, so that they might be spared coffee conformity.
But now, I sit in the hills of blessed New Hampshire. Far from the saddening sameness of the interstate, I am in a cabin, in the woods. And I had some really good soup that some guy made with vegetables from his own garden. So, I guess it's not all that bad.
