Deep Maps

My work reflects an obsessive interest in deep maps. A deep map goes beyond simple landscape/history-based topography. It interweaves autobiography, archeology, stories, memories, folklore, traces, reportage, weather, interviews, natural science, science, and intuition. In its best form, the resulting work arrives at a subtle, multi-layered and 'deep' map of a small area of the earth.

Tracing the beginnings of civilization to the heart of modern exploitation. Inspiration runs the gamut from the author and former professor William Least Heat-Moon to the neighboring Hutterite colonies where formal education ends at the eighth grade. - North

"Bitter Providence"

"Bitter Providence", 18"x18", Oil on Canvas, $500
-North

“Rocky Mountain Backbone I”

"Rocky Mountain Backbone I", 18"x25", Oil on Canvas, $500
-North

"The Grand Convergence, Buried"

18"x25", Oil on Canvas, $500
-North

More

More Cold Maps

-North

New Work - Cold Maps

-North

Inside the New Studio

Looking from the back half to the front half. -North

Opening June 1st

New Studio... now featuring elbow room

I was in some timeless space, timeless face of my embrace
Held empty air and empty space, all on a sunny day
There's a lifeline that I know and it holds me back and lets me go
Whatever I do I don't let my lifeline stray
So it goes as lifetimes pass from heart to mind and back again
My restlessness becomes a flame letting my lifeline show
-Gordon Lightfoot

It has been a while since my last update. Something I would have found unforgivable a year or two ago, when these posts were a daily occurrence. Ultimately, it has all been sidestepped in the name of art or at least the malnutrition of my lifeline.

Fortunately, I believe I have finally found a time and place in which to remain, at least for longer than usual. I have rented a downtown storefront for my next art studio. Something with a thousand square feet to work on the large scale installations that my waking dreams have only alluded to during spats of semi-consciousness. The idea is to finally have enough space to create and document the works, then dismantle and store while I market to various galleries and museums.

It also has another thousand square feet for gallery space and art classes. In a time when the economy seems to bring in fewer and fewer sales, it seems that a focus on providing summer art camps, after school lessons and adult night classes may be the best bet to paying the rent on a new and massive space primarily acquired to finally fulfill my longtime desire to work in cubic feet rather than square inches.

Works a comin’ so sit tight, we’re getting into uncharted territory. – North

Progress

The house is temperate, despite the twenty-below weather, outside. I’ve missed the unforgiving manner in which life continues with an almost detached certainty of cold. Yes. Nearly a foot of snow, now, with drifts taller than my youngest son. It is scheduled to start again; at any moment – the eastern blowing momentum of snow and ice strained through a sieve before pelting glass and wood and pressed-aluminum.

The canvas is stretched and primed. The painted sketches, which I typically ignore in my madness to build deposits and sheets and layers of pigment, are nearly to a state of finish – something a sketch should never confusingly reach. The abstracted Hutterite half-truths need permanent visual explanation before they are buried with the short stories, biographies and landscapes that are lost among my memories of Southwestern arroyos, Southern deltas and previous Rocky Mountain winter blazes.

I may eventually consider sleep, if I can continue to deny this urge to step out into the dazzling midnight snow and cross the sixteen or so feet from the mud-room door to my awaiting studio. The wind chill will reach negative fifty, within another two hours.
-North

"The Boy with a Moon and Star on His Head"

Tuesday’s election ushered-in a new moment of change for the nation. Then, almost as if by grand design, my family awoke to a few inches of snow the following morning. The powder wiped the northern slate clean, yet somehow, along this region called the Hi-line, the golden-white fields were limited to Glacier County – the only region of the north central Montana political map to turn blue the previous evening. The snow lasted for only that twenty-four hour period and I’m not one to believe in blessings, but I did stop and consider the gesture as appreciation.

Now, however, it is Sunday. The first fresh week as it starts after the election and so far nothing of depressing consequence has happened. There were no riots, there were no assassinations. There was only this humble resignation muddled with silent relief from my red-hued compatriots.

Under these thoughts and safely-missed illusions, I began this first new day of the week, listening to the album “Catch Bull at Four” by Cat Stevens.

"The Boy with a Moon & Star on His Head" by Cat Stevens

A gardeners daughter stopped me on my way, on the day I was
To wed
It is you who I wish to share my body with she said
Well find a dry place under the sky with a flower for a bed
And for my joy I will give you a boy with a moon and
Star on his head.
Her silver hair flowed in the air laying waves across the sun
Her hands were like the white sands, and her eyes had
Diamonds on.
We left the road and headed up to the top of the
Whisper wood
And we walked till we came to where the holy magnolia stood.
And there we laid cool in the shade singing songs and
Making love...
With the naked earth beneath us and the universe above.
The time was late my wedding wouldn’t wait I was sad but
I had to go,
So while she was asleep I kissed her cheek for cheerio.
The wedding took place and people came from many
Miles around
There was plenty merriment, cider and wine abound
But out of all that I recall I remembered the girl I met
cause she had given me something that my heart could not
Forget.
A year had passed and everything was just as it was a year
Before...
As if was a year before...
Until the gift that someone left, a basket by my door.
And in there lay the fairest little baby crying to be fed,
I got down on my knees and kissed the moon and star on
His head.
As years went by the boy grew high and the village looked
On in awe
They’d never seen anything like the boy with the moon and
Star before.
And people would ride from far and wide just to seek the
Word he spread
I’ll tell you everything I’ve learned, and love is all...he said.


I pass through life less as a visionary than an actual man, lonely for the past, pitiful yet anxious for the potential future. I miss my children, though they are within arm’s reach, I long for my partner, though I can still hear her in the next room. I wonder where the next painting will come from as I travel the outstretched prairie shadowed by the Rockies to the west and the Sweetgrass Hills to the northeast. I may confuse my left with my right - but never my true direction... it is bound to me where a soul should be. - North

Homesteaders

Click the picture to zoom.
-North

Fulfillment

-North

Rhymester

-North

Before the Windfarms

-North

Brothers

-North

Again

-North

More

-North

New Work

-North

Enlightenment from a Yogi Tea Bag

The head must bow to the heart.

Sounds like Montana to me. - North

501 Posts, Have I Learned Anything?

Actually, only a small minority of the human race will ever consider primeval nature a basic source of happiness… Mankind as a whole is too numerous for its problem of happiness to be solved by the simple expedient of paradise. – Robert Marshall, an early explorer of the Brooks Range in Alaska

Like most blogs, this page was established to give voice to the spinning wheels in my head. I was looking for a way to work-out-loud with my ideas of the visual, literary and conceptual arts. Sometimes it works beautifully, other times, not so much. Basically, a philosophical sketch of my past, present and future – everything changes, everything stays the same. It’s all about perspective. - North

... I am bliss. - North

Gotta Love Small Towns

From the local paper...

Friday, Aug 29: 12:03 a.m. - Officer is out with three individuals in a parking lot. It is a man and his two sons. Their vehicle broke down and all motels in town are full. Officer told them to go to sheriff's office and they will put down mattresses in the old judge's office and they can sleep there.

An Art Market is Not Decided by One Artist

Damien Hirst Bypasses The Galleries - The End Of The Gallery System As We Know It? "What does it mean for the art market that a living artist bypasses dealers altogether and sells his wares directly at auction? There is some speculation that this might be a pivotal moment, like the end of the studio system in movies or the continuing decline of the record labels in the music business. Could the gallerist's traditional role as mediator between the contemporary artist and his market be passÃe?" Wall Street Journal 08/23/08

I’m not sure that it really means anything, considering the artist in question is Damian Hirst – a living artist that time and time again financially dominates the British art market. His conceptualized work has always been somewhere outside the traditional painting and sculpture gallery scene; how is this a huge leap? In fact, I dare say this may have a positive impact on the gallery market, in the manner in which it opens the playing field for other artists. - North

Samuel's 6th Birthday Wish

Blackmail the Baker

The dream is… Or rather it should be, dammit, like a fan club for philosophers. And poets. And painters. And maybe even rogue Hutterites. At least the ones we can catch – as they're draining a staggering number of pints (always Olde English) in the dark corner of the local pizzeria.

Like home everywhere. But not too much.

This place where Rod serves unlimited spaghetti dinners and can win free loaves of french bread like he’s blackmailing the baker. Then the next evening, playing Texas Hold’em, late into the darkness, with two Mormon missionaries and the hint of a steady hand. - North

Fresh

This house that saw less than eight hundred nights now searches for a fresh ten thousand.

Brothers building yard castles from empty crates and boxes. Stacks of cardboard trapping their voices, releasing their ingenuity. The threat of a blistering reality removed. Though, I can still glimpse it – only distantly. Once imminent, now cascading as soap round the drain.

The neighbor’s stereo is never sleeping. He has it wired to pour music through outdoor speakers and illuminate our nights with jovial harmonic gestures that release a soundtrack to a new life. This old life. One that is not revisited or retraced so much as reinvigorated. - North

The Portfolio Website has Been Updated

www.danielnorth.com

Driving My Oldest Child Home

The car sputters to a stop and we have passed to the moment after. My language is defunct. Words and phrases remain listless in their transition to time. The Ford hesitates, then turns over and we continue.

You ride with me, but I’m not driving. Our destination is sketched in blueprints and the side columns of a menu stolen from the diner outside Hungry Horse. The prairie lies east; but I can’t see it through the tinted glass and mountain pass.

To the south, they built Teddy a cock. I tell you it is an obelisk and shield your eyes. I petition the rocks and streams for the moment before. When the house was yellow, the sky was full of light and the minutes were less. - North

Buried

Beyond the vinyl siding lay the remarkable. Where planters don’t require satellites and crops are small enough to avoid the call of migrant workers. Dyed diesel is a myth, but my wood shingled roof has a fresh coat of paint infused with linseed oil.

The red jammers are full though the road curves to dreams of avalanche. I imagine they’re playing golf again not far from where I picnicked amid a ruptured flock of aspen. A forest is waiting.

I hear stories of the huckleberries falling off the bush before ripening. The hinterland looms within reach of the curious. Milk and honey live in legend. Brush and grouse and wolves live in here. - North

“Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.”
- Matsuo Basho

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

W.B. Yates

The Jesus Year

I’m halfway through my 33rd year. My old friend, Vin, calls it my Jesus year. While I'm not saying it compared to crucifixion; I must admit that sometimes… it has felt like an extra rough time. I’ll be home, in Montana, by the end of the month and my mind is already flush with questions of which direction I should attack the new batch of paintings that will inevitably follow. I’m interested in pushing my explorations of the human figure back to the forefront of my work. While I’ve never let a month pass-by without drawing or painting from life, I’ve been lax in allowing it to step forward from the landscape during these past six years of unending movement. When I look at art, I’m typically drawn to figurative works, it’s only natural that I should return to that vein, myself.

The last few sporadic posts have alluded to my interest in functional painting. The details of such a venture have been less than exact. I’m not precisely sure where I’m going with that idea – I suppose that one could call it my own little growth industry. Not unlike the two unfinished novels bouncing around my mind. – North

Remains of the Day

Packing and selling the last remains of the past dozen years, I'm reminded of a line from The Human Comedy by Balzac:

"Tell me what you possess and I will tell you what you think."

They say ownership is 9/10ths of the law, but are they referring to those that possess or those that are owned? Intersections and tragedies don't necessarily have to go hand-in-hand, but I'll be damned if it doesn't rip the essence from life every now and again.

Five weeks and I go home. - North

Steampunk.... probably not

The last couple years I have really enjoyed reading about the different processes various Steampunk artists use to create their post-modern Victorian throwbacks. Perhaps it has something to do with the complete opposite approach to ornamentation used by 99% of the art world when presenting art – myself included. Now I’m not saying that I want to crossover to the Steampunk genre, but I do believe the style has definitely evolved these past couple years from nostalgic kitsch to verifiable minor art movement.

Click here to see an example of the process.

I bring this up, because Steampunk seems to be the most easily transferable functional art movement that I have come across. Nothing seems to be off limits for a Steampunk transformation: laptops, watches, lamps, etc. But is the utilization of transformation of a functional object into an art object enough of a process to generate a MAJOR art movement that will stand the test of time?

Rather than take something mass-produced and change it, I believe I need the complete sense of power that accompanies starting from scratch. That does not dilute the importance of this style or level of process (watch some of the online videos and instructions and you’ll see that the level of detail and raw talent utilized by the artists is astounding) – but for myself and my work, I just think I need to keep looking for the functional art process that starts with empty hands instead of something I picked-up at Bestbuy. - North

With Complete Disregard for the Bear...

While packing my studio for the next move, I ran across this nine-year-old photo from my Gallery Director days the first time I lived in Missouri. - North

Collecting Thoughts

So I’ve noticed that the terms “functional painting” and “functional art” have a near endless supply of meanings. I’ve found examples of work that expand the definition of the terms to include:

• Methods of alternating home-décor to suit one’s image or financial status.

• Murals (this one threw me for a loop, I suppose the “function” includes teaching history, narratives, etc. – but that could include the majority of painting, so…)

• Work that involves the recycling of one material to create the base substance for another creation (such as a couch or wall hanging).

• Pretty much anything that falls within the realm of folk-art.

• And of course the standard-bearer for the American West – lamps and end tables made almost entirely from antlers.

So where does that leave the fine artist searching for a bit of the ole’-kinetic-lovin’ in the standard-bearer two-dimensional painting process? I believe the answer lies in the mixing of traditional media. Clay, glass, oils and glazes – let’s not forget paper either, oh where would we be in this world without paper. Wood and canvas also seem necessary in any process that would require more than a token nod to classicism whilst displaying the innovation that can redefine itself as contemporary art.

Don’t worry I’m working towards something, here. – North

Explorations

This is what I find interesting when I think of the possibilities of blending functional art and the act of painting. Obviously, not as examples of finished products, but definitely inspiration toward the concepts of composition and mechanics. - North

North by Northwest (yeah, I have a great name)

I have some ideas for the next phase of my work… I have an old friend that has spent twenty years creating sculptures/machines that create random art. I’m not looking for randomness, so much… anymore; but I do admire that idea of making one piece of art that can spawn another artwork or artistic moment, in perpetuity. My creative process, however, has nearly always required place as a muse.

I’m moving home to Montana and I’m not as disturbed as I probably should be with how that affects the Immersion Travel Art philosophy of my work. Painting still lives within the forefront of my mind; as does the concept of studying the unfamiliar cultural aspects of both resident and neighboring societies. However, I have held this growing need for quite some time to create functional work beyond the scope of my map paintings or even the continuous examples of contemporary kinetic/conceptual sculpture that I encounter in galleries and museums. The last time I felt this sort of need to reinvent myself I bought a house in Montana and within a short amount of time I was painting from the rabid perspective of every inch of those far northern prairies and mountains. I still own that house and studio space, so I’m going home within the next few months. I call it home, my wife calls it home and even my three children agree. These past three years, I have missed the Indian Summer that delivers fall to Montana. I don’t plan on letting that happen again.

For me - this continuous evolution of one’s perspective of the world is an ethereal aspect of the American West. - North

Form, Function, Multiple Lives

I’ve always been intrigued by kinetic sculpture…. until the moment I interact with it. Although, today, it seems that the new dominant factor in kinetic works is conceptual, I am still left wanting more. When I consider true functional fine art, I visualize a Stradivarius. The lives of the fictional violin from the great film “The Red Violin” also come to mind.

Function and form as one aesthetically pleasing work of art that reinvents itself with each owner or participant. A justification for the concept that the idea (itself) or artwork is greater than the individual creator. – North

Saw Blade Paintings and Function in Art

As a fine artist that prefers the company of wide-open spaces and the country-folk that accompany it, I often find that the biggest hurdle I have to cross is that of public opinion within the community I inhabit.

The most common question to answer is the purpose or rationalization for spending time or a “career” towards the end result of simply making art for art’s sake. Ironically, this has become much more of an issue since returning to the southern Midwest from the Rocky Mountain States. So the question goes – do I respond with functional work that is aesthetically pleasing or simply ignore the communitys' questions of relevance? Furthermore (and this is an interesting notion)… have I already unconsciously replied by turning my paintings into giant maps? - North

Never Trust Wine from a Box

HOLYHEAD, Wales — A man who dressed up as Darth Vader, wearing a black garbage bag for a cape, and assaulted the founders of Britain's first Jedi church was given a suspended sentence Tuesday.

Arwel Wynne Hughes, 27, attacked Jedi church founder Barney Jones — a.k.a. Master Jonba Hehol — with a metal crutch, hitting him on the head, prosecutors told Holyhead Magistrates' Court. He also whacked Jones' 18-year-old cousin, Michael Jones — or Master Mormi Hehol — bruising his thigh, in the March 25 incident.

Unfortunately for Hughes, the incident was recorded on a video camera that the cousins had set up to film themselves in a light saber battle.

"Darth Vader! Jedis!" Hughes shouted as he approached.

Hughes claimed he couldn't remember the incident, having drunk the best part of a 2 1/2-gallon box of wine beforehand.

"He knows his behavior was wrong and didn't want it to happen but he has no recollection of it," said Hughes' lawyer, Frances Jones.

District Judge Andrew Shaw sentenced Hughes to two months in jail but suspended the sentence for one year. He also ordered Hughes to pay $195 to each of his victims and $117 in court costs.

Barney Jones, his brother Daniel and cousin Michael set up the Church of Jediism, Anglesey order, last year. It claims about 30 members.

Jedi is the faith followed by some of the central characters in the "Star Wars" films. In the 2001 United Kingdom census, 390,000 — 0.7 percent of the population — listed Jedi as their religion.

Catching Dreams

I haven’t posted in while, spring always raises the hair on the back of my neck. I get that slight metallic taste in narrow recesses of my throat and I wonder how much longer I should stay in a place. It is always an odd moment in the year, as I watch another school term pass for my daughter and wonder aloud – how does one plan for spontaneity? Are a series of actions required to define a vision? Does adhering to a specific philosophy still enable random motion? Is a quest still important beyond the moment in which is lived? Do ideas have merit because they are lived or because they are successful?

During my first year of college, one of my good friends was a fellow skinny pre-architecture kid named Donnie, but we called him Slim. The housing administration of our college sifted through their grand wisdom and chose his random twelfth-floor-dorm assignment by some manner as obtuse as tossing a pepperoni onto a pizza. I have no other explanation for why they placed him with a talented yet juvenile baseball catcher, named Eddie Fitzpatrick, for a roommate.

Now Eddie was born the same year as I and raised in southern California. If I recall correctly, he arrived at our fair Mississippi River shore via a baseball scholarship. Something about his love for the game ingrained in young Eddie the desire to constantly swing items whilst walking across campus or even to the cafeteria for meals. He alternated the objects from day to day and was rarely seen without one or the other. These items included first and most obviously a bat and second, though, more surprising – a hammer. This wasn’t just any hammer, however, this was a fine wooden-handled job that had his full name neatly engraved near the base.

He liked the women and for the most part… the women seemed to enjoy his company as well. Slim and I assumed that the hammer must have been a gift from one of his lady friends and he kept it as a memento to remind everyone that his virility was worthy of rewards (and more obviously a good swing as well). The majority of the guys on our floor, however, were thoroughly unimpressed. I hate to nail-down one defining feature that may have turned his neighbors against him, but I dare say it was the endless supply of penis jokes with accompanying visual aides. At one time or another, every door on the twelfth floor was randomly knocked-on in the early morning hours and the occupants awakened by Eddie asking if they dropped their keys. The confused and still half-asleep unwitting participant would look to Eddie’s hands held close to his waist and holding something that most definitely did not resemble a set of keys. Then and only then as one was trying to remember how to cast the door shut would a glance at the floor to the sight of Eddie’s pants around his ankles trigger the internal recognition of a sick joke.

After a number of these repeated occurrences a group of residents took it upon themselves to penny Eddie into his room during the early morning hours. Now to penny one into a room the door must open inward (it also helps if the frame is metal and the door is solid) in order for a couple dozen pennies to be wedged between the frame and door rendering the inhabitant unable to open the door and thus trapped to consider their own brand of idiocy that led to such a revolt. Unfortunately the plan did not have the desired response due to the fact that Slim had an early class and Eddie was sleeping it off in the nearby girls’ dorms. To make it up to Slim, I stole the great hammer of Eddie and gave it to him as a reward. He in turn broke the head from the tool and placed it on Eddie’s pillow; then returned the handle to me to avoid incrimination.

The following semester both Eddie and Slim transferred to new schools. Slim spent the next year at a community college a hundred miles west and Eddie took a baseball scholarship at a hard-line fundamentalist Christian college in mid-eastern Tennessee. Every time I have moved over the past ten years, I have run across Eddie’s headless hammer handle. Recently, I thought of him again, while going through boxes and finally decided to dig-up a bit of information on our fair baseball star.

I learned that Eddie was number 33 in the 1997 college draft. He was picked-up by Pittsburgh in May and released by the Phillies roughly ten months later. From 1998 onward he has strung-together a career of minor-league ball teams, retiring twice to pursue assistant coaching gigs at small unheard-of Christian colleges (I can only assume his sense of humor has cleaned-up). It is this last part of the story that I find the most interesting. He never gave-up on baseball. I mean come on Eddie; you didn’t even make it beyond your first season in the majors. Why didn’t you just quit? Then I hear everyone in my own life asking similar questions. I swear to Christ if one more person asks me if I still paint – my next masterpiece will be engraved on the hood of their car.

I told a relative, the other day, that my family and I were considering a permanent move back to Montana. We’ve been thinking it is maybe time to stop and smell the glaciers for a dozen or so years. The response to my revelation was – “what would you do?” Well, pretty much what I’ve always done – make art. I could care less about much outside that realm. I guess Eddie and I have that in common. We live in the moment of our actions. I have a feeling that if we met today, I’d like him a lot more than I did back in college. I respect someone that doesn’t stop living his or her dream for the sake of insufficient financial success. These past couple years, when some one asks me what I do for a living – I simply respond, “I do what I do, the money eventually follows”. – North

Harbor Lights

Poulsbo Beach Under a Seattle Sky

Travel Concerns

I had some extra time and my recent dealings with airlines had been less than pleasant – so I booked Amtrak for the trip west to Seattle, two weeks ago. Always looking for an adventure I rode coach traveling west, but returned First Class via Sleeper Car for the eastern leg of the trip. There were certainly the usual array of colorful characters on the western-bound coach car; such as the gentleman that drank one Budweiser after another from the moment we left St. Louis at 6:35AM until we arrived in Milwaukee that evening. My disdain slowly turned to awe as I watched the man drain cans, seemingly, without interruption. Forget the alcohol content, how can one person consume that much liquid? (and the snack car was selling them for $4 each!) - North

Beachfront on the Kitsap Peninsula

car to train
train to train
train to car
car to ferry
ferry to car
and back again

Essex from the Dining Car

Passing Train: Glacier National Park

Passing Train: Sweetgrass Hills

Written Ten Days Ago

3:05 AM - outside Fargo, I am sick of the southern floods. More than a few traces of snow smatter the fields and cars as we enter town. Wandering tracks that look like Andy Goldsworthy was imitated – by God or maybe Moses have broken the frozen top-layer of snow. My body cries for sleep. My mind is resistant. I’ve waited too long, pretending to be North, to rest now.

A few hours backwards - in Milwaukee, the passenger manifest changed starkly from black to white. The matter-of-fact division was unnerving. As we enter the Dakotas, I’ve been a train traveler for twenty-one hours. The trip from St. Louis to Chicago was hellish. I’ll relive it in reverse next week. Is there an opposite to hell?

I’m listening to Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová through a single headphone. I leave one ear reserved for the sounds of my wife and daughter breathing as they sleep despite the rush of rain now sheeting the train. Thunder slaps the sky above the coach car; the lingering winter clap does not stir them to recovery in this lost northern spring. Moments require soundtracks; I was raised to be entertained. Bob Dylan carried me across Illinois and then again we conquered the face of Minnesota (his lost homeland), together. With the flat wet Minnesota terrain behind me I encounter only more unregistered tundra on the rails of North Dakota. My Montana is in the distance, though Washington is the final destination – I now rely on the melodies of an Irish and Czech duo to get me there. I can’t ignore the fact that I am an immigrant myself - in this adopted northern country; relying on the voices of fellow-foreigners in one-half of my head.

We’ve pulled away from the last remaining lights… a remembrance of civilization outside Fargo. The entire world has gone dark – except the single reading light above my head. While the other passengers sleep, I can only find dreams with open eyes. - North

Spring Over the Ridge

Flash floods continue to remind us that Spring is both lovely and hateful. - North

Dry Land

The levees are breaking, the poorest sections of town are flooding; they plan on opening the dam to finish off what nature started and hopefully save the best of the rest. We've heard it all before - but this time it is Poplar Bluff. Only twenty miles and a childhood away. - North

Clay Pots

The roads are idled by the flash of rain and mud. Fields swell as the Mississippi nears its crest. The creeks and streams are gone; simply replaced - as an opportunist overcoming a past lover.

I meander the drips from nirvana… that sudden distribution, like spills from a great ocean over my slight neighboring deltas. The water rapids against my feet. Leaving nothing but air for safety.

If buried here… by water and mire and silt and extravagance. The parts and shards will wash under the soil, abandoned amongst the repentant. - North

Who Owns a Credo?

"It is so much easier to live placidly and complacently. Of course, to live placidly and complacently is not to live at all...." - Jack London

More Mayes and Immersion Travel

My old friend, Gaelon, refers to Under the Tuscan Sun as his fudge book. Its richness and beauty best consumed in small morsels. He doles it out to his acquaintances in much the same way… offering them passages from Frances Mayes’ book here or there for comfort and consumption.

I have read and reread this travel tome that doesn’t really involve much travel… I dare say it falls under the label of Immersion Travel. I’m reading it again, for the imagery of spring in the midst of our own strange winter. I’m reading it for the endless paragraphs describing crisp-smelling cuisine that is at once both a thousand years old and as original as if it were freshly picked from the neighboring hills and groves that very morning; for the universal truths intended for an Italian love affair but resonating across rivers, streams, endless ponds of water and an ocean of pavement and trees; until it even reaches west and south into the depths of my current swollen flooded bottomlands along the great muddy river:

"This isn’t real; we’ve wandered into a Fellini film," I say.
Ed shakes his head. "Fellini is a documentary filmmaker – I’ve lost my belief in his genius. There are Fellini scenes everywhere." – Frances Mayes

Recognizing genius in the lives of others is effortless; however, admitting to it is often complicated by the decisions we’ve made in our own lives. - North

Lingering thoughts northwest of Libby

Always the Yaak - despite your clear cuts and wind swept cancer from downriver.

Yaak... Still my favorite place. - North

We haven't located us yet.

Yesterday, I watched the film "Darjeeling Limited" a movie about life and death without actually being about life and death. I believe it is Wes Anderson's best work, yet. For those that have already seen it, you'll recognize the above quote. - North


"Above and Below the Winter Fields"

The Graying of the South

Amongst Trees and Saplings

… and I said, “GO! GO! GO!” because I no longer trusted my answers to their questions. - North

Representational Abstraction

“Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.” – Nietzsche

Repetition of symbols and manipulation of the “known” landscape from irregular viewpoints has been a staple of my style for the past seven or so years. Over time the work has become more abstracted in its treatment of the composition, though more technically precise in that same handling of representative subjects. For my own creative motivations, originally this art movement served as a catalyst for exposing national differences via Immersion Travel, now however; I believe the effort has transposed itself into a visual interpretation of unique-yet-similar perspectives in this country’s rough-hewn organization of lost-and-found communities.

Maybe I’m intrigued by the reactions of an already tapped-out society that may soon be faced with the next great economic depression. Will we suddenly find ourselves scraping together nickels and dimes, like the fictional Waltons of West Virginia, with nothing but bad seventies haircuts and our own sense of community to hold us together? Perhaps, I’m yet another victim of self-indulgent nostalgia. Yet, I can’t help but look back and find a studio with a cheap woodstove more romantic than one with an expensive air conditioner. – North

Clouded Judgment

“Two Ways Home, Same Direction” – North

Beyond the Hills, Where Snow and Stars Are Born

Lunar Eclipse

"Second Sunset"

How place as a muse can be a bitch... for better or worse.

The new work from the past few weeks falls under my own self-described category of digital sketches. The title or label is somewhat misleading because I do not digitally manipulate any of the works… all I really do is scan them in and crop the rough edges; leaving the moles and scars for examination and a touch of contemplative reality. The works are small mixed-media pieces that are both collages and paintings… not unlike my traditional large-scale pieces from the past two years. I consider them digital, though, because they only survive online. I create them rather quickly, then post’em and forget’em.

These works came about at a time when I was considering what would happen if one of the numerous winter storms actually touched down on the roof of my studio. Now, this has not yet happened, but a few close calls have really got my mojo roaring and I’ve been thinking about the possibilities of a new wave of symbiotic archiving/creating from the standpoint of a traditional painter in an ever-increasing digital environment.

The subject of the work thus far is still along similar lines as before: Immersion Travel… staying in one place for a period of time (anywhere from a few months to a few years) and documenting the effect it has on both the society as well as the artist. The most interesting irony of the work, for me though, has been the evolution of a more abstract style in my art as I attempt to further demystify the motivations and philosophies of each place. These small sketches have allowed me to drop the last of my inhibitions and rethink my theories on the roles of artists and more specifically, painters. I suddenly have a better understanding of Picasso when he successfully walked away from Cubism. - North