Simplicity and honesty are basically the same thing

Artwork can be expensive, but the journey to make it will cost you your life.

Believing that what we surround ourselves with actually matters means that all I make matters as well. I would like to make work that feeds the person near it, nourishes them, and buffers them against the world at their door. It is a simple thing to want. Simple as a stone. Simple as supper.

Growing up in rural Middle Tennessee afforded me many advantages that kids in the city don’t get. I could cross the then-dirt road, go through a gate and be in a pasture covered with grasses and flowers and filled with grasshoppers and birds and buzzing things. The types of animals encountered while passing the barn would change over the years from a pig or two to chickens, guineas, peacocks, cows, and now walking horses. At one point, Dad brought home two emus. (What in the world? The sound of a huge bird running toward you was enough, but the hollow drumming sound they make while placing their skull-crushing beak about 12 inches from your face was terrifying, especially knowing what their feet looked like. Why Dad would bring home murder birds is beyond me.)

There were three ponds, two that held water. One bordered the old Civil War railroad, which is today just a raised, straight place through the field. Eventually, I’d make it to the creek and begin looking over the rocks and into the water. So many stories filled my imagination. It was a good upbringing. I had family, family and nature - the latter two were stern instructors.

I still think of the sound of the wind through the silver poplars and look forward to the time in my life when I can feel the length of each season. Being outside, even if it’s just walking around, is a rich, rich way to live.

The world is loud. Sharp. Messy. Landscape painting (and writing) can put me into quieter spaces - leafy canopies, breezy porches, murmuring creeks - and sometimes into the other world of Wyoming. The high desert is really something special. The landscape there is all form. Without trees to interrupt the view, a hill 35 miles away is in easy view and looks like a day’s walk. Something about that landscape makes life seem simpler. The flat top hills with edgy, angular sides, treeless slopes rounded against the sky, seas of sage, wildlife everywhere, the smell of spruce in the air, and the insistent wind all seem to say something simple but strong, like the best first line of a novel you’ve ever read. It haunts you. All of this life-swelling goodness for the cost of gas money and time.

For me, Wyoming is like home, and I want to make work that is based on my time there but that transcends the visual representation. How do I do that? How to even begin?

How to see and do and say so much? How to transcribe the lived experience into vowels and consonants, into oil and powder? How to punctuate a week or frame the earth or sky? Not everyone struggles with these questions. For some, careers and entertainments form the core of their lives, but not so for the makers of things.

What to leave out? What to leave in. Leaving things out of my work - editing out - is most of the work. Cutting away everything not directly related to the purpose is just another way of being very clear on what you mean to present - to say. This kind of brutal editing is cultivating honesty. It keeps things simple. I know that most people are enamored with detail and highly naturalistic renderings, but I enjoy art that allows me to participate, that leaves parts for me to fill in, and that kind of work often looks … simple.

Rothko looks simple. Constable’s sketches of the English countryside look simple. William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow” seems simple, but have you ever tried to articulate a daydream?

Especially one where your mind and heart seem to be a unified organ sensing and grasping a massive truth? You know the language, you can see some imagery in your mind, but to describe it seems impossible. You just know. A detailed description of what goes on inside our minds when we are daydreaming or lost in a stare simply loses all its power when we put it into many words or painted details. However, a few words or shapes, simply arranged with purpose can impress themselves into the consciousness of a people. Like Rothko. Like Williams. Like the Psalms.

Say something honest and true and you will likely have said it simply. Say something simply, and you are likely to be close to the truth. Like Rothko. Like Williams. Like David.

Likewise, something described isn’t necessarily known, therefore we need to push past depiction. A photograph can describe the way some things look, but we rely on our recollection to relive the moment, do we not? If someone writes a detailed physical description of a loved one and said, “Here is your loved one,” we would read it and say, “Yeah, but not really. There is so much more.”

So it is with my landscape paintings. I’m not after essays in paint, but poems. How does that work? How do I condense the experience of nature into a simple, unified picture? By eliminating - ruthlessly - everything that does not serve the initial purpose.

That process of elimination is brutal and may lead to work with no audience, no sales, no slaps on the back, but it will be honest, and if I’m going to work my way out of the crowded middle ground where most creatives stay, I’m going to use honesty to do it - weird, wonky, honesty.

Additional skills are nice to develop, but going deeper into the fundamentals is probably a better path. Go deep, not wide. Simple is strong.

Summarizing a Scene - Staying True to the Vision

When I was driving around Wyoming, I was lost in love. Every single thing I saw was amazing to me. When I came upon an eroded spot in a scrubby field, there was nothing about it that looked wonderful. There was little difference between the scrub brush and the dirt, no color contrast - or much of any contrast - at all. But I “saw” something beautiful. Something about the way the light struck the wall of the eroded section, the way the “bowl” was filled with light was enough for me to stop and make a couple of photographs.

Fast forward to the making of the practice sketch. What my photos showed and what my heart remembered were very different. My experience was rich and full, whereas the photograph was flat. The words “pot of gold” kept coming into my mind, so I subjugated everything about the scene to those words. Another phrase rose up - “treasure for the poor” taken from the Townes van Zandt song “If I Needed You.” The beautiful, simple, stripped-down song contained the line, “a treasure for the poor to find.”

Here you see the condensed idea that is based on the experience of the place and not just the way it looked. Looking leaves out so much.

What a beautiful line by van Zandt. An essay would not be better. Those seven words contain whole worlds and instantly pull me back to my youth when I’d stoop by the creek and turn over rocks or look at minnows and crawdads, sit in the field with the grasses at my face, and toss up rocks to hit over the fence with an old aluminum baseball bat until it was too dark to see. Finally, I’d head inside with the mysterious sky above, dark trees all around, lightning bugs in the grass, and a whippoorwill in the distance. Priceless. Treasures.

Less is more if the “less” contains worlds.

In this little sketch, I subjugated all colors, shapes, tones - everything - to say one simple thing in paint, to amplify my inspiration. Very little is described, but the effect is effective from the proper viewing distance. I don’t have a title for the future large painting based on this study, but “Treasure for the Poor” is hard to beat, because it contains so much in so little, it links back to “pot of gold.” It also reminds me that the best things in life are free, but we have to show up.

I encourage you to subdue your mind with all of its analytics and plans. Let your heart do the thinking for a while on your next walk (in sunshine or in daydream). You may find a treasure and return with a pocket full of new ideas and the courage to make something small, simple, and honest.
And being honest is simple.

Simplification and Honesty are basically the same thing.