Moon and the Sun

The moon is in the west; the sun is in the east; over the lake. Tennessee summer 2008.

The Light Flickers Through the Trees

Now and then I like to think about a special moment when everything feels so right. Everyone has this kind of moment - sometimes it lasts a few seconds, sometimes for a few minutes, or sometimes even a few hours.

When I was 28 in 1978 and moved to Tallahassee with John, he started graduate school in September and I was awaiting the start of school for me in January. I worked at night waiting tables, but my days were free. I really mean free, and daydreamy and kind.

The special moments came frequently then, and I think it was because I could live energetically and creatively and quietly in the very moment. Here is how many days went: I would get up early, pack a lunch, pack a blanket, pack Sasha [Sasha Isadora Dylan, my sable collie] and Camus [Autumn's Moonhaze Camus, my tri-color collie] and jump in my fantastic speed demon navy blue metallic VW Rabbit and drive to the Gulf with my windows open and my hair blowing back.

About an hour's drive from Tallahassee was Alligator Point, a funky beach area where you could throw down a blanket anytime. To reach this beach, you drove along quiet two-lane roads that were bordered by sandy turf and scruffy trees common to the Florida Panhandle. By driving early you could see the sun flickering through the skinny pines.

Once at the beach the sun was up higher and the sky was a flat powder blue with an occasional wisp of white. The sand was white with a few shells coming in near a sandbar. Sasha, Camus and I would walk along the water's edge, playing and soaking in the sun.

After a few hours I could feel the hot sun tanning by body and warming my skin - such a fantastic feeling. With the sun high in the sky, I would make my journey home to take a cool shower and cover myself in a soothing cocoa butter, and then put on a soft, clean cotton shirt and shorts and a pair of flip flops.

Why Mark Rothko?

I have always loved the work of Mark Rothko in his mature years when he found the style he is most famous for painting. I like the brooding even in the brighter colors, and this was true of his life as an artist. He says of this:

"I realize that historically the function of painting large pictures is painting something very grandiose and pompous. The reason I paint them, however . . . is precisely because I want to be very intimate and human. To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside your experience, to look upon an experience as a stereopticon view or with a reducing glass. However you paint the larger picture, you are in it. It isn’t something you command!"

Thank you to the Jacques Hachuel Collection for the image.

Many of the "multiforms" and early signature paintings display an affinity for bright, vibrant colors, particularly reds and yellows, expressing energy and ecstasy. By the mid 1950’s however, close to a decade before the completion of the first "multiforms," Rothko began to employ dark blues and greens; for many critics of his work this shift in colors was representative of a growing darkness within Rothko’s personal life.

He began to insist that he was not an abstractionist, that such a description was as inaccurate as labeling him a great colorist. His interest was:

"only in expressing basic human emotions — tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on. And the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions . . . The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their color relationship, then you miss the point."

For Rothko, color is "merely an instrument." In a sense, the "multiforms" and the signature paintings are, in essence, the same expression, albeit one of purer (or less concrete or definable, depending on your interpretation) means, which is that of the same "basic human emotions," as his surrealistic mythological paintings.

"Since my pictures are large, colorful and unframed, and since museum walls are usually immense and formidable, there is the danger that the pictures relate themselves as decorative areas to the walls. This would be a distortion of their meaning, since the pictures are intimate and intense, and are the opposite of what is decorative."

At age 66 Rothko was in poor health, and friends found him following his suicide. His interesting life from Russia to the U.S. is document on the wikipedia.

In early November, 2005, Rothko's 1953 oil on canvas painting, Homage to Matisse, broke the record selling price of any post-war painting at a public auction at U.S. $22.5 million dollars.
In May 2007 Rothko's 1950 painting White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose), broke this record again, selling at $72.8 million dollars at Sotheby's New York. The painting was sold by philanthropist David Rockefeller, who attended the auction.

A previously unpublished manuscript by Rothko about his philosophies on art, entitled The Artist's Reality, has been edited by his son, Christopher Rothko, and was published by Yale University Press in 2006.

Enso - Searching for the Center

From Wikipedia - what is enso?

Ensō is a Japanese word meaning "circle" and a concept strongly associated with Zen. Ensō is perhaps the most common subject of Japanese calligraphy, symbolizing enlightenment, strength, elegance, the universe, and the void; it is also an "expression of the moment" and thus is often considered a form of expressionist art.

Zen Buddhists believe that the character of the artist is fully exposed in how he paints ensō, and that only one who is mentally and spiritually whole can paint a true ensō. Some artists will paint ensō daily, as a kind of spiritual diary.

Some artists paint ensō with an opening in the circle, while others complete the circle. For the former, the opening may symbolize various ideas, for example that the ensō is not separate, but is part of something greater, or that imperfection is an essential and inherent aspect of existence (see also the idea of Broken symmetry).

The ensō is also a sacred symbol in the Zen sect of Buddhism, and is often used by Zen masters as a form of signature in their religious artwork. See also Hitsuzendo for information about the Way of the Brush.

John and Sarah at the Marina in Palm Beach