Exhibition 1: “Threshold Grace: A Sumi-e Journey

It is a priviledge to announce my solo show at the Sandler Center that opens at the end of the month. Hope you can come to the reception on April 15th. If you, by chance, just can’t make it on the night of April 15th but would like a guided walk through, just let me know via email (mike@thresholdart.com) and I’ll plan to meet you at the Sandler gallery.

“Abiding at the Edge”

In a rather ironic way, this steam punk-ish rendering of the fiddler mud crab’s claw and the stressed spartina grass points to the failure of mankind’s efforts to fix and mend what industrialization and commercialization of the land has destroyed. Life, in fact , is not better for many of our fellow creatures. Most live on the edge. The old battle worn fiddler crab strikes a noble pose but he is standing on a mudflat where global warming and rising water levels make life uncertain.

“King of the Ditch”

The model for this painting is the drainage ditch that connects my marsh shack property with Middle Creek in Engelhard, NC. Canals, pumps, and ditches dominate this area where rising water levels threaten fields and homes all year round. Humans try to manage things, but as soon as the construction equipment pulls away, the “little souls” move in to mediate and run the place. This ecological theme has been cropping up in my work more than usual recently. In this liminal space, elemental forces seek a new and viable equalibrium between land and water, but this drama is played out on a micro level… on every mudflat.

AI Art or Not?

As I mentioned in the previous post, I recently led a 3-hour workshop about minimalism and in looking for accessible and clear examples of minimalism I came across the work of Mo Xianzhi. I noted how his hand was so sure and how ink was masterfully applied to the paper displayed in his YouTube demos. I decided to introduce his style and went to work deconstructing the strokes and brush loading in preparation for my demo (displayed below). All that said, as I continued to examine his work I found it difficult to find descriptions of the artist’s background and came upon the short phrase, “ Digital Artist.” Could it be I had come upon my first AI art connection? Please search and examine Mr. Mo’s Youtube demos and let me know what you think.

Sumi-e Minimalism

Recently in this season of reviewing the summer’s hectic schedule and its complicated and sometimes impossible calendar demands, I have returned to the “keep it simple” and “visit the roots” principles that have helped me gain perspective and inspiration in the past. Recently, I conducted a workshop about minimialism and visited again some of the excellent works of the master painter, Qi Baishi. I have often considered the turbulent times and disconcerting uncertainty that must have accompanied his changing environment and art community, and concluded that his miministic focus on the “little souls” must have helped him endure and thrive as an artists. In the workshop, I did a demo that attempted to copy the essence of Qi Baishi’s famous painting depicting an ox grazing under a willow tree (see below). Many thanks to Henry Li, another amazing master of sumi-e, for his excellent introduction to Qi Baishi’s painting.

PEONY & BLUES

Complex color and brush loading often speak first, especially in the central peony free style rendering. That said, as the sumi-e intricate 2-brush style accented ink lines in the matted border, the overall effect was a gentle reminder of what lies beneath— line and mindful intention of the designer.

Peony & Cricket: A Meditation

I have recently enjoyed a focus on sumi-e peony painting. I’m not, by any means finished. There’s lots more to learn, but this morning I was stirred to pause and think about my most recent piece that I mounted and framed yesterday— “Peony & Cricket”. These words from John Newton’s letter to his 13 year-old daughter, Betsy, got me started (many thanks to my friend, Mark Bowers for the quotation):

“I wish for you my dear child, to think much of the Lord's governing providence. It extends to the minutest concerns. He rules and manages all things; but in so secret a way, that most people think that He does nothing. When, in reality—He does ALL!”

August 10, 1782

Newton’s missive reminded me about the hidden, even secret, mechanisms that reveal the Designer’s mind. The sumi-e presentation of free-style (xieyi) peony— free, spontaneous, in the moment, almost “shouting with color and abundance”— is contrasted by the intricate style (gongbi) cricket—almost hidden, intentional and diminutive, yet amazing…

The Edge Lived

“The Edge Lived” developed as “splashed ink and color” expression after the style of the famed sumi-e artist, Zhang Daqian. The ink and phthalein blue presented a number of sobering if not dark opportunities for brushwork development. As I meditated on the flow of ink and pigment boats began to appear and a shoreline and a scene came into focus from the life of those who live at the edge of Carolina fisheries. They are courageous folk with a history. Sometime the stories are told between the laughter over a supper of fried speckled trout, but sometimes the narratives emerge as discarded and wornout watercraft, piles of rope, torn nets telling the story of struggles to make a living along the mudflats and family dockyards. My favorite part of the painting is the crabpots— owners identified by the colors woven into their wire mesh. The most “message heavy” element is the small sewage pumping station that speaks to the need for supportive infrastructure from government agencies. Welcome to “the edge lived,” a somber place of memory and investment of the lives lived by commercial fishing families along the coast of NC.

Neighborhood Renewal

This piece celebrates hope for the shallows of the Lynnhaven estuary. I loved the process as the pour rendered up shallow water grasses and an oyster bed. In addition to being a great food source, oysters improve the environment. So let’s root for oysters and support renewal of oyster beds. I knew about the amazing filtering capacity of one oyster— 50 gallons of water a day and about how they consume nitrogen pollutants but what I didn’t know was that excess algae is “packaged up” and left on the bottom as harmless waste…Amazing stuff…amazing design.

“Living With the Land”

Looking for founational truths of ecologically responsible living, I came upon habits of inidigenous populations that work “with” the environment to achieve acceptable results as well as longterm viability. Native Americans embraced this advantage by planting three different veggies— corn, beans and pumpkins on the same plot of land. This humble agricultural approach accents, practically, the potential for mutually beneficial interdependence— the pumpkin leaves keep the weeds down while the corn stalks provide the trellis for bean stalks to reach the light. Metaphorically, this painting suggests that today we will be wise to recognize our interdependence with the land and man’s creatureliness shared with all other things. This is the local wisdom that still remembers where food and sustainable flourishing come from.

“Indigenous Wisdom”

Artistic Vision

Assessing the past is one way to open the door to thoughts about the future. For years December and January have been devoted to combing through the past 12 months for directive hints about the next 12. Below are two paintings that have recently attracted comment and awards — “Morning Stirrings” and “ Holding at the Edge".

Similarities between the two include the techiques i.e., launching with a pour, ink brush line work and shaping, mapping shadow and depth through dry and side brush techniques as well as the messaging that is also similarly focused on liminal marshes, spaces magically and simultaneousy framing transformation and transition.

Will this continue to be my jumping off place for meditating on the Designer’s uniquely crafted plans? We’ll see…

“Morning Stirrings”

“Holding at the Edge”

“Time: The Straight Stretch Between the Two Bridges”

 This expressionistic painting about “time” was inspired by C.S. Lewis’s description of time as a straight line.

“If you picture Time as a straight line along which we have to travel, then you must picture God as the whole page on which the line is drawn. We come to parts of the line one by one: we have to leave A behind before we get to B, and cannot reach C until we leave B behind. God, from above or outside or all around contains the whole line, and sees it all.”

C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity

How majestic is your name!

This painting is part of a collaboration with Josh Poe, a singer-writer in Virginia Beach who recently was inspired to write a song about Psalm 8. My painting is a partner with his musical creation. Verses 3 and 4 of Psalm 8 grabbed my heart and inspired my piece. Here are those words penned by King David:

“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?”

It seems this is one of the main questions for me and perhaps for any person. In light the incredible expansive creation, what is my place and purpose, and what can explain God’s interest in my life?

Smoky Ink on the Water

“Smoke on the Water” is a pour embellished with brushed ink and watercolor on sized (“shu”) suan paper. The water tends to puddle on this kind of surface, and the pour created sort of an inky mess. In the early moments of the process nothing penetrated or connected with the fibers of the paper. I decided to rub off some of the pooled liquid, and as it thinned and spread, it reminded me of smoke dissipating into space. The next move was a little counter-intuitive. I took the inky surface, now dry, as a metaphor for pollutants in coastal water environments and used a fine brush to build out the narrative within and around the troubling scene.

Messaging in the work includes environmentalist concern for the interplay between fisheries in the foreground and farming in the background. You can see the Mattamuskeet lodge tower (in Swan Quarter, NC) in the distance because treatment/use of the land and the use/treatment of the water, their interaction, has been a long standing tension in this village community. My mother’s family comes from there and so I feel especially connected and concerned about the dilemma.

Note on Year of the Tiger

I just completed this meticulous (“gongbi”) styled jungle scene yesterday. This sumi-e technique uses two brushes simultaneous and focuses stubbornly on the details through many layers of the painting process. Gongbi is known for taxing the endurance of the most patient of painters. Usually, I know when a gongbi work is near completion when I begin to hate the process, and I’m tempted to make finishing the highest priority.

The Year of the Tiger is the space on the Chinese 12-year cyclical calendar that celebrates those whose birthdays fall after the year of the rat. Impetuous, powerful, brash, these tiger-ish folks must thrive in today’s world, it would seem; so, traditionally tigers have been associated with protective courage and endurance, yin (female) strength, and show up on boy’s baby shoes, and the clothes of generals and hunters. However, my use of the gongbi style in this painting messages something a little different. Brush strokes present individual hairs and whiskers of the tiger and the micro-down on the juvenile bird perched above his head. This attention to fine details declares the magnificence of the Designer’s mind and His purposes and understanding that penetrates every minute part of human experience.

The painting narrative includes a yellow bird. No, not Tweety, though the idea-worm has already entered my mind. The little guy surveys the tiger and occupies a place of honor, just as much as his massive neighbor. One might say, they are visiting as equals, learning, engaging, but not threatening or cringing. There is almost something Edenic about the scene. Best wishes to you during this Year of the Tiger!

“No Stopping Place” was created to highlight the joys of a long upward trail. The gold of the pour spoke to me of the riches along the way that balance the weariness of the ascent. Yep, I’m speaking in both physical and spiritual terms. The title comes from the lyrics of an old mountain gospel tune— imagine banjos, a washtub bass and a shrill Appalachian drawl— “there’s no stopping place, no stopping place. Through faith in God, I’m saved by his grace. We must o’rcome ole Sat’n ‘til the end of the race. In this warfare there’s no stopping place.”

Swamps and Sumi-e

Sumi-e artists throughout history have gained much inspiration and passion by focusing on their individual locales. Famous sites as well as the flora, fauna, and cultural artifacts associated with them are celebrated specifically or as composites from particular areas-- whether that be a Li River karst landscape, a farmer harvesting cabbage, children playing with crickets,  or a path and pilgrims hiking up a mountain.   Imitating them, my artistic vision and journey have led to celebrating local landscapes on the East coast of the United States. To a great degree, this means focusing on marshes or swamps, as they are sometimes referred to; for example, we are home to the Great Dismal swamp in Virginia and Swan Quarter’s Lake Mattamuskeet in North Carolina, places rich in history and folklore.

Some might say asking onlookers to “enjoy” the swamp landscapes might be an uphill battle. For sure, swamps are stereotypically viewed as dangerous, stinky, and evil…sinking sand, as they say. “Drain the swamp,” a familiar phrase these days, carries this negative connotation. That said, marshes, in fact, are the spaces where life begins and is sustained for many creatures. They are buffers that protect where the collision of the energy of the sea and inertia of the land negotiate and balance themselves. Pools and shallows are hiding places being just chaotic and unpredictable enough to level the playing field for prey and predator alike. Many species in the food chain find the key to viability there and some, like the oyster, give back by purifying waters that feed systems at the most basic level.

My opinion is marsh art may have a place in helping us formulate new reasons for environmental conservation. I’ll quote Curtis Badger (Salt Tide, 1993) to respond further: “We’ve been taught in our culture to avoid marshes and swamps…People distrust places where the footing is not always solid and reliable. We like dependability and certainty; we like what to expect when we put our feet down…. Such attitudes, still widely held and perpetuated in our culture, helped to bring about the destruction of hundreds of thousands of acres of marshlands in America in the last century.”

Marshes are the border zone where water batters the land and the things of man, taking back earth to be hidden beneath the flood surge, and it is rain water running away from the higher ground, energetic rivulets returning through creeks back to the ocean. In this way they buffer and protect. Marshes then are not smelly places to be avoided or “filled in” by construction teams, but a complex, and yes, sometimes smelly transitional blessing, a liminal paradox—both opportunity and destruction nest there in the dynamic edge of things.

There is a spirituality to this massive transformative adjustment that happens continuously along our coastal borders. Looking closely at the changeable water’s edge woven tight with cordgrass and cattails, it seems to vibrate as the roots of an old cypress lose their grip and the branches topple over into the flooding creek. This end for the old tree is actually fortuitous. Falling into the water, it may make a new area where the water moves more slowly, creating a shallow and then a new fertile bank that welcomes new seeds, new grasses-- a new edge.

How does this work? Suspended solids in the water fall to the bottom as the waters slow (because of irregularities along the bank) thus forming an eddy, a swirl or bar. The faster moving water nearer to the deeper part of the water course move to the opposite side cutting away at mud and soil. The result is the natural formation of a curve. These “s” curves, where the water finds balance as it flows against one side and then the opposite side of the channel, are the dynamic creek bed, but this meandering form can be an aesthetically pleasing metaphor for the swamp that finds its winding way towards buffering and mediating opposing forces—land and water.

A Blue Feeling

Recently I have been preparing several paintings for the “In A Blue Mood” show at the Virginia Beach Art Center. The piece with blueberries in a vintage measuring cup highlights country life of by-gone days and a focus on the good things families and communities experienced when living close to the land. As Wendel Berry often has pointed out, big commercially driven farming has dislocated us from the land and distorted understandings of interconnectedness between soil, water, plants, and people. Agricultural accomplishments when exclusively measured by quantitative understandings— volume of crops and reduction in the number of people needed to bring them to market don’t come close to a full description of our current situation. In recent years, something has been gained with increased yields on large farms, but something has been lost as well. “Preserving Blueberries” urges us to be more careful to adopt a viable holistic view of land use.

Thanks Gallery 21

Running August 15-September 18, my exhibit at Gallery 21 in Norfolk, Virginia, was a unique window for viewing 75 paintings that have signposted my path as an artist— all hanging in the same place and time. It felt not so much as a journal describing the past but a map for future. Many, many thanks Jim & Darlene, John, and Susan. Also, many thanks to the Esperat “Band” and those friends and art lovers who showed up at my reception on such a stormy evening.

Strength of Trees

I am drawn to trees not because they provide me with flowers or fruiting branches but because of the stories they tell, in the map of color and crevice at their core, where they attach to earth and water and stone. This is the strength of trees, their firm resolve and their promise of accessibility and flow. The vertical presentation of this abstract celebrates this strength. The horizontal perspective in the second visual below speaks to me about respect and reason for care, for the future and the ways of men among trees.