Despite several days of severe thunderstorms, we have managed to do quite well at Artscape. Today (Sunday) we are in our final day, and the storms have mostly fallen outside festival hours.
I have managed to sell more framed original watercolors than ever before at an outdoor festival. The crowds have been amazing! This is the 3rd and final day of the show, and my only opportunity to post. That is how busy we have been.
Thanks for reading. I intend to share plenty more when this is over.
My New Exhibit at Studio 48 Gallery in Arlington’s Gracie Lane Boutiques
We will all return to the Bateau-Lavoir. We were never truly happy except there.
Pablo Picasso in 1945, quoted in Picasso and the Painting That Shocked the World, by Miles J. Unger
I did some of the best work of my life there.
Robert Motherwell, reminiscing about his East Hampton years, 1944-1952, quoted in Robert Motherwell: The East Hampton Years, 1944-1952, by Phyllis Tuchman
I am on dangerous ground. My mind wants to gild my memories. It wants to present the past in soft focus, as muzzy and sentimental as a greeting card. It doesn’t want to remember the long days spent drinking . . . No, I cannot afford to romance my past. It does not serve me. To stay emotionally sober, I must focus the lens of my perceptions clearly on the now.
Julia Cameron, Finding Water: The Art of Perseverence
I am up past midnight in my sacred Studio Eidolons. Sandi is busy in the other room, and I feel the warmth and camaraderie of her presence. The next two days will seem frenetic, as we organize, pack and load for a 6:00 a.m. arrival Friday at the Dallas Arboretum. But we’ve been here before, many times, and panic is not in our psyches. I’m enjoying the quiet of the night as jazz softly plays in my studio and I attempt to state my present mind in this blog.
The string of quotes above touch me deeply. I have read several times of artists in their senior years somehow pining to return to the way things were when they were younger. My sentiments, however, align with Julia Cameron in her Finding Water. I have no pretense about my life in 1987 when I was trying to figure out what direction to take. I’m posting a photo below of me in the back yard of my garage apartment in those days, posing before a completed acrylic on canvas of my hero Friedrich Nietzsche, laboring into the night. I miss my trim physique and full head of hair from those days, but that is all. I am not romanticizing those days. They were pure hell. I recently re-read my entire 1987 journal that recorded those torrid, suffering days, and all I can say tonight is Good Riddance.
I am happy to live closer to 2022, posted above. In 1987, I wondered if I could ever reach a calmer, more contemplative life as a creative. Now, retired after a successful teaching career, I’m happy to do what pleases me most, and grateful for the health and strength to set up an art booth and enjoy a quality festival atmosphere for a weekend.
And speaking of which–last night I was notified that I have been juried into the Trinidad Art Fest 2024 to be held in Colorado. I have been waiting this year to see if I could get in, and now we are making exciting plans to participate in this show July 12-14, and then journey on to South Fork, Colorado to enjoy the cool San Juan mountains. I’ll be ecstatic to return to the trout streams and play with some plein air watercolor activity. No, I don’t pine for the days I knew in 1987. I’m grateful I’ve been allowed to live to my seventieth year and enjoy the things we do now.
Trinidad Coffee Memories. Framed Watercolor
Thanks for reading.
I make art in order to discover.
I journal when I feel alone.
I blog to remind myself I am not alone.
I have just turned seventy, and loving friends have sent an abundance of birthday greetings. This morning finds me reading Emerson before diving headlong into a weeklong task of packing my gear for the weekend’s Artscape 24 at the Dallas Arboretum. I’ll be in Booth #28, and I’m excited beyond measure. I have certainly begun this Monday aright, reading Emerson’s essay “Experience.”
My life changed in 1989 while attending a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute at University of North Texas. I had just completed my first of twenty-eight years as a high school teacher, and was chosen to participate in a nineteenth-century American study of Hawthorne, Thoreau, Whitman and Twain. It was then that I was introduced to the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and in 1992 was fortunate to attend a Summer Seminar at Oregon State University to study Emerson, Thoreau and Margaret Fuller. This New England sage became my most valued spiritual mentor from those days.
Years ago, I managed to purchase a first edition of Emerson’s Essays: Second Series, published in 1844. Though I’ve read this essay countless times, I decided this morning to read “Experience” in its entirety. I feel that I have been bathed in magic waters.
Our love of the real draws us to permanence, but health of body consists in circulation, and sanity of mind in variety or facility of association.
It was Emerson who convinced me in 1989 to live a Life of the Mind, to allow ideas to refresh my day-to-day existence. Reading this essay afresh once again reminded me to stick to this creed.
I have been shocked several times throughout my later years in life to run across friends from high school and college who had become mere shadows of what I had known before. During school days I had revered them as remarkable visionaries. Youthful and vibrant, they were leaders of their class, in intellect, in enthusiasm, so magnetic in their intense personalities. In later years I frequently found these heroes as wan, worn down by life. I wondered, what happened? Reading further in Emerson’s “Experience”–
We see young men who owe us a new world, so readily and lavishly they promise, but they never acquit the debt; they die young and dodge the account: or if they live, they lose themselves in the crowd.
And again . . .
Our friends early appear to us as representatives of certain ideas, which they never pass or exceed. They stand on the brink of the ocean of thought and power, but they never take the single step that would bring them there.
I would not expect any of my peers to remember much of me from high school and college. I know that in high school I felt inferior, though I knew I had artistic talent. In college, I became hungry to know more, to experience more. But I didn’t see myself as any kind of luminary. And then came graduate school and then nearly three decades in classrooms. Though there were low points in my life, I can look back and say with certainty that I never allowed boredom or lethargy to settle into my life; there was just too much out there to experience, to explore. And I still feel that way. I have no sympathy for those bored with life. There is no excuse. We will never be permitted to reach the pinnacle of knowledge or experience, but wow, what a rush to try! I am grateful today to be alive. To be healthy. And still to be interested.
Having written all that, I now turn to the task of organizing and packing. I just received my Load-In time for Friday–6 a.m. I’ll be ready.
Thanks for reading.
Gallery at Redlands Lobby Window
For the past few weeks, I’ve been reading and following the basic program of Julia Cameron’s book Finding Water: The Art of Perseverence. I’ve never had trouble persevering in making art, and seldom feel “blocked” as far as creativity is concerned. But during Sandi’s recent illness, I’ve stopped my basic activities in the studio, and now that she is stronger, I find it difficult to get back into the saddle. Of course, I cannot feel the motivation to begin a new painting, because in less than a week I’ll be setting up my booth at the Dallas Arboretum for Artscape 24.
The forecast now hints that we’ll be soaking in rain throughout that weekend, and we are certainly soaked today, Saturday. So, I guess I can safely say I have found water, thanks Julia. But honestly, I don’t care if the festival rains; I’ve been through that many times, I have an excellent Trim Line Canopy tent that will keep out the water, and all I can do is hope the rain doesn’t chase the patrons away. If it does, I’ll have a couple of days of solitude to read inside the dry confines of my booth, sip coffee, and admire my display. Maybe I’ll even attempt some watercolor sketching on my easel. I’m leaning forward in anticipation of a splendid festival experience, sorry that I missed this one last year. I’ve been looking over my inventory, trying to decide what to include in this year’s display, and am leaning toward the one below:
Arkansas Repose. Framed Watercolor. 26 x 29″
I photographed this truck in Arkansas a few years back when I was en route to their Plein Air on the White River event. I’m happy to return this year as a juror, and will do a workshop during the week the event runs its course. I will of course take part in the plein air activity that I’ve missed in recent years. The Waxahachie plein air competition opened yesterday and will run through May. I’m looking forward to participating in that event as well, having already enrolled in it.
Here is what I just found in the Julia Cameron book that I’m enjoying at present:
Ours is a youth-oriented culture. We are trained by television and the media to focus on those who are young. Our pop stars are youngsters. Their fortunes are immense and their futures bright. We do not read much or hear much about life in the arts for older people. We do not have many role models for doing what we must do–and that is persevere.
I understand what Julia is saying, but that sentiment does not fit mine in the least. I know the media parades the youth pop stars, but thanks to YouTube as well as published books, those of us who wish it are able to pull up the examples of the older generation and draw inspiration from their mature works. For the last couple of decades, I have drunk deeply from the wells of Edward Hopper, Andrew Wyeth, Robert Motherwell in their final decades of life and productivity, and have been profoundly inspired by them. I have also pored over the biographies and writings of William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens and Larry McMurtry during their senior years, and their words still stir me daily. I have no doubt that my own work will not fall off as long as my health holds out (incidentally, I’m turning seventy this very day).
Thanks for reading. This Saturday, though soaked, is turning out to be an inspiring day for me.
My Booth at Artscape 2022
There are memories of days of this sort, of wonderful driftings in and out of the crowd, of seeing and thinking. Where are the sketches that were made? Some of them are in dusty piles, some turned out to be so so good they got frames, some became motives for big pictures, which were either better or worse than the sketches, but they, or rather the states of being and understandings we had at the time of doing them all, are sifting through and leaving their impress on our whole work and life.
Robert Henri, The Art Spirit
With the Dallas Arboretum event one week away, I find myself today tidying my wreck of a studio so I can make it a legitimate workspace. In the adjoining room I have stacks and stacks of discarded art work from years past–some of it unfinished, some of it finished but not matted or framed, most of it forgotten. I’ve decided to look at all the discarded work to see if any of it can become part of my “A Team” to hang in the art booth next week. It’s not that I don’t have enough merchandise for the space. At last count I had 92 framed watercolors ready to hang. But I have seen all of those in Gallery at Redlands, Studio 48, and various art festivals where I’ve participated. I’m ready to see something new on the walls. And so, as I slog my way through this studio tidying, I lean forward with interested anticipation at what I’ll find as I did up the old bones of past work. If even one of them is deemed worthy of display, I’ll feel I have done something productive. I have a good supply of mats and frames ready to put on new work.
I’ll leave early in the morning to spend Saturday in Palestine’s Gallery at Redlands. At the end of the day, I’ll pack up some of the gallery’s furnishings for my booth the next weekend.
Thanks for reading. I’ll post more when I have more to report. Artscape will be April 27-28, and I’m getting ready to organize and load my gear for the event. I’d love to see you there!
My art booth at Artscape 2021
. . . some kind of rearrangement or sorting-out process often occurs within the mind which brings with it a sense of peace; a sense that the depths of the well of truth have really been reached.
Anthony Storr, Solitude: A Return to the Self
Sandi and I have suffered a long slog for over a month. She has been very ill, and we’re happy to see her finally recovering some strength and getting back to some of what she used to do before this affliction. This finds me returning to the studio and catching up on work that has piled up.
With Artscape less than two weeks away, I’m beginning the task of “rearrangement or sorting-out” that Anthony Storr, one of my favorite writers, published in his seminal book. I’ve managed to acquire a good selection of smaller-size matts and frames, and am putting together some recent watercolors I’ve managed to create but not yet put out on the market. I believe I’ll dedicate at least one of my booth’s Pro Panels to an assortment of smaller scale works instead of loading the entire space with enormous pieces more easily seen at a distance.
Snowy Rhapsody. 8 x10″ watercolor in 11 x 14″ matt
In recent months, I’ve completed five new watercolors of snowy evergreens. I’m looking forward to putting some of them in the booth for display and sale.
I’m pretty covered up in work now, but will try to post daily of our progress till that big weekend arrives. Thanks for reading.
Bright & Early Coffee. Framed Watercolor in Gallery at Redlands. 22.5h x 23.5w”
Missing was the thing Jim had found in Marx and Veblen and Adam Smith and Darwin–the dignified sound of a great, calm bell tolling the morning of a new age . . instead, the slow complaining of a door loose on its hinges.
William Carlos Williams, Paterson
I laughed out loud when I read the above passage this morning. I’ve been working my way through WCW’s epic poem and have only put ninety-six pages behind me so far. But the words posted above resonated with me because they paint in bold relief what I feel about today’s culture. I am a confessed YouTube junkie, but I find it a continual chore to slog through all the contemporary claptrap commentary in search of a decent lecture or documentary on the work of someone creative, someone who has something of lasting value to say. Lately I’ve found amazing material on William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, e. e. cummings, and Jack Kerouac to name a few. But I frequently wade through pages of crap for several minutes in search of something of value to view or give attention to when I’m out for a long walk.
It is Saturday, and Sandi and I are back in our Palestine Gallery at Redlands for the day. New work has been put up, including the painting that opens this blog. I just got it back from the framer and am delighted at its overall look. I was driving through May, Texas over ten years ago, when I stopped and took a photo of the Bright & Early Coffee billboard, peeking through the darkened shadow cast by the roof of an abandoned filling station. Ghost signs have been my passion for years, though I feel that I don’t paint them enough. I have a thick file of photos I have taken, all of them crying out for reproduction and recall of an era disappearing from our view.
Map of Artscape 2024 at the Dallas Arboretum, April 27-28
I am delighted to announce my participation in Artscape 2024 at the Dallas Arboretum April 27-28. I have been assigned booth #28, in the exact center of the event (I marked the spot on the map). I’m also proud to display a number of new framed pieces not yet appearing to the public. Preparations for the booth display are already underway, and I cannot overstate my excitement. At the same time, I feel the sadness of last year’s memory–the day before the festival opened, I received news of Dad’s critical condition in the hospital. I canceled the event and traveled to St. Louis to be with him. He managed to hold on until he passed in August, never able to return home. Still, I see the April date as the anniversary of his downturn.
Now that I’ve finally filed my tax returns, I’m thrilled to return to making art and sitting the gallery.
Thanks for reading.
We had to rise at 5:00 this morning if we hoped to be showered, dressed, fed, and arrive at our Palestine gallery by 9:00. Fortunately for me, I managed to squeeze out a little time to read and settle down before commencing our two-hour road trip.
Seated at my drafting table, I peered out the window into a dark, pre-dawn suburban landscape and decided to open a couple of books for some quiet, leisurely reading. How amazing, the conversation springing up between these two disparate authors . . .
The twenty-first century is full of people who are full of themselves. A half-hour’s trawl through the online ocean of blogs, tweets, tubes, spaces, faces, pages, and pods brings up thousands of individuals fascinated by their own personalities and shouting for attention.
Sarah Bakewell, How to Live, or A Life of Montaigne
In Manhattan, my apartment is one set of lights amid millions. In the galaxy, Manhattan is just a sprinkling of lights on something known as planet Earth. . . . Seated at my writing desk, looking out at the glittering lights, I strive for a sense of optimism, a feeling that as small as I am, what I am doing still matters in the scheme of things.
Julia Cameron, Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance
From the time I began posting on social media, years ago, I was conscious of the tension between self-absorption and self-abegnation. It hasn’t gotten any easier; I still find myself second-guessing what I write before sending it up the flagpole for others to read. I was happy to read this pair of writers during this morning’s darkness. I thought about their statements nearly the entire two-hour drive down here.
As soon as we hit the gallery, I had to shift into high gear and get my work back up on the walls and easels. Recent festivals and workshops resulted in me removing most of my work from this venue, and I decided it was time for me to emerge once again in the Palestine community. Below are most of the watercolors I hung today, and plan to keep in place for a few weeks . . .
“Tasting the Winter Mist”
“Utah Bison Tranquility”
“Fishing Solitude”
“Snow-Bound”
“Lubbock Caboose at Rest”
“Snow Bison”
“Crosby’s Dream”
Today is the April Art Walk for Palestine, sponsored by the Dogwood Art Council. Gallery traffic has been heavier than normal, which is a good thing. It also makes it difficult to blog (smiling).
Thanks for reading.
I make art in order to discover.
I journal when I feel alone.
I blog to remind myself I am not alone.
My 16 x 20″ watercolor done on Good Friday
“What if” and “if only” are poison for any artist.
Julia Cameron, Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance
February 23 was my last blog post. I’m not sure if I’ve ever before gone for over a month without sending out a word. I won’t go into detail. When I feel I have nothing to contribute, I don’t blog. It’s been an unusually long dry season. Looking up from my drafting table now I drink in the beautiful light, color, and repose of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” (my description of the idyllic view across my suburb), and I feel some of that creative eros coming back. And I embrace Julia Cameron’s words. Regret is indeed poisonous for anyone wishing to pursue creative exploits. I have had far too much regret throughout my past, and this morning I am letting it melt away.
I’ve posted above my latest watercolor. It was an honor to be selected among five artists to participate in a Good Friday service titled “Art in Motion.” The three-hour service was held at Trinity Grace Church in Mansfield, Texas. As music played in the sanctuary and worshipers came and went throughout the afternoon, five us us created art depicting our idea of Good Friday. I wanted to see if I could capture the impression of the site of the crucifixion. “Golgotha” is translated “place of the skull” and popular legend says the hollowed out places on the side of the bluff resemble eye sockets of the human skull. I was hoping to capture a darkened, stormy atmosphere in the composition and still find a way to work effective color into the grasses and rocky textures. The experience was a good one for me as my creative work has been largely absent the past month.
I now lean forward in anticipation of significant art activity on the horizon. Artscape 2024 at the Dallas Arboretum will be Saturday and Sunday, April 27-28. I am turning handsprings with delight to discover that my corner booth #28 will be in the exact center of the festival. In former years when I was at one end or the other, I often wondered about how many people actually walk the entire length of the festival grounds. Now, I smile at the thought that most of the crowd travels at least half-way! I have created many new pieces that have not yet hit the public, so I’m looking forward to bringing these out for vewing.
I have also decided this year to return to the Paint Historic Waxahachie event. It’s been a few years since I’ve done this, and I’m really looking forward to the plein air painting experience once again. I’ll be making trips to Ellis County in April as the competition gets underway, but the main event will be May 17-26. I have really missed the richness of this gathering. The total immersion I feel when kicking out a dozen or more watercolors stirs the emotions in ways I cannot adequately describe. I’m grateful for this opportunity.
And then . . . I’ve been asked to judge the Plein Air on the White River competition in Cotter, Arkansas May 6-11. Not only will I have the pleasure of judging high-quality plein air work; I’ll also lead a workshop of about 15 enthusiastic participants. I also intend to do plenty of painting in that colorful town as the week runs its course. The artists in Cotter, Mountain Home, and the surrounding communities in that part of Arkansas have been such an enrichment to me over the years. I have been honored to judge some of their events as well as conduct workshops and perform demos in their midst. I always leave there with a warmth of friendship that encourages me to continue in this work.
We’ll leave for Palestine early in the morning. The Dogwood Arts Council’s monthly Art Walk will enrich the city throughout the day. Artists and musicians will be sharing their skills in businesses all over downtown. Our Gallery at Redlands will feature my art work for this month, and the brunch served at the Queen Street Grille across the lobby from our Gallery will draw multitudes beyond number. We’re looking forward to a good day filled with the felicity of art.
I’m convinced that my fallow ground has been broken up, and I intend to blog from The Gallery at Redlands sometime tomorrow. In the meantime, I thank you for reading, and look forward to sharing a special word tomorrow.
I make art in order to discover.
I journal when I feel alone.
I blog to remind myself I am not alone.
Recollections 54 The Art of David Tripp 