bridegroom of the torah (Simchat Torah)

“On the eighth day shall be a holy convocation unto you; and ye shall bring an offering made by fire unto the Lord; it is a day of solemn assembly; ye shall do no manner of servile work.” (Leviticus 23:36)

Simhat Torah celebrates the annual completion of the reading of the Torah. It is the day immediately following the Feast of Tabernacles or the Fall Harvest, the same as was celebrated by the Puritans, which became America’s unique national holiday of Thanksgiving.  read more

palm tree, pickup

I was bicycling on a clear August day in Kingsville. It was a very hot but very pretty summer day. I saw this palm tree or what I call “palm tree event.” This was a tall palm about twenty to twenty-five feet high and it rose under a hard sapphire blue sky. Its thick green fronds let in streams of sunlight to wash over its heavy boughs of golden dates. Behind and above it was a great white cloud, like the mitre of the high priest, and beneath, by its trunk, a pickup truck was parked. Because of its still grandeur, golden vestments and cloud mitre I named it a “priestly palm.” It was as if the whole congregation of my South Texas subject matter was gathered into this sky, tree, and trunk moment, each element acting upon the others. 

In the everyday view of things, what does a pickup truck have to do with a palm tree other than that I saw them there together? Here were two interests of mine, the inside-outside space of vehicles and their color shapes dancing together under this waterfall of rhythmic striations of massed color. Great visual-emotional energy is generated by such a coming together. In the everyday, the horse and its rider are known to be separate beings, but such realities are mere particles of fact. Between a fine horse and a knowing rider, there is only unity, an interaction of motion, of power released yet ordered by unseen gestures, an interaction born only of these separates coming together. Our great symbols are so made. By things seen before as separate being brought together, new meanings are born.

Paul's cafe

Paul’s Café used to be a popular little restaurant in Kingsville. Every weekend I took my infant son, Joshua, for breakfast there. It was a small, cozy space. The building is still there on King Street going west from downtown about a mile and a half. Eggs, pancakes, coffee, and probably hash browns were the breakfast specialties. I did not know when I painted this, that the cozy little family-run Texas truck stop was, like the buffalo and the cattle roundup, becoming very rare. They were special little places where movement was slow and people knew each other. Food was mostly fried and the pies homemade. The Texas truck stop, may it rest in peace, was a special place to me. It was calm, almost somnambulant in mood. Large men wore checkered shirts, khakis or jeans, boots and the broad brimmed hats whose wear had formed them into the complex twisting of a propeller or an ocean wave. Their hats caught the light and their faces stayed in the shadow. They would sit for a long time. I have never seen such large beings hover so long over a small cup of coffee. And the waitress filled the cups, over and over, and the men lingered and talked about things I could never quite hear. They were so unruffled. Their large hands every now and then raised and lowered the cups like a creaky oil pump. These were places where conversation was carried on in whispers, but there were no secrets. Laughter was expressed in a silent grin. One felt secure in this microcosm of a rural cosmos. The sun was bright, the human movement unhurried and deliberate, the ritualized public movements of small town Texas. The food was pretty good sometimes and the pies were delicious.

people in an auto

This painting continues to show my interest in the simultaneous experience of an indoor, enclosed space from the outside. It comes only a few years after Austin Bus, its precursor. The work belongs to my San Antonio years (1958 – 1963), which was a great period of exploration, growth, and discovery as well as many exhibits and a growing reputation as an artist. This was still the time of abstract, mostly non-figurative art.

 People in an Auto won an award in the annual Witte Museum Exhibition; at that time the most prestigious juried art exhibit in the San Antonio area. Many people have liked this work. A close friend, fellow artist and University of Texas art graduate, Bill Bristow admired it the moment he saw it and he advised me to enter it in the Witte Museum exhibit. I’m glad I took his advice. He admired the way I had somehow combined abstract and figurative elements and made them work. It is also one of the early works that reveal, I believe, the influence of Mexican art. I studied in Mexico in the summer of 1956 and absorbed that influence that is still with me today.

four pigs

No one, except in insult, would say a pig resembles a human being. Yet, on close observation, the mobility of the pig’s facial movements, especially around the eyes, seems to have far greater variety and nuance than any other mammal I have observed, including monkeys. The monkey has a great variety of mouth gestures but I’m not certain that their eyes equal the pig’s in range of expression. Add the pink skin color, the jowly flab between the lower jaw and neck, and the fact that the pig is considered more intelligent than a dog, and, in this animal, we have a possible companion.  The sound of his squeal is much more human than the bark of a dog. The variety of his sounds, mouth movements, and gestures make him an almost conversant friend which more than makes up for his disinclination to fetch things.  He may tend to get skittish if invited to dinner, but then whose fault is that?

psalm 85: blessings of the field

“Mercy and truth are met together. Righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Truth springeth out of the earth; And righteousness hath looked down from heaven. Yea, the Lord will give that which is good; And our land shall yield her produce. Righteousness shall go before Him, And shall make His footsteps a way.”                                                                                                     

Painted before I became familiar with this lovely psalm of blessing, my landscapes and “agriscapes” had long been linked to the pastoral influence that suffuses Scripture. Driving by fields on my way to synagogue and at other times in all seasons, weather, and times of day and night, I watched the changes in crops from sowing to harvest, in failure and success, the life cycle of fields of grain. Often I would stop by the roadside to hear the soft murmurings of their leaves in the breeze and watch their rhythmic waving as myriad hands beckoning heavenward and perhaps to me also. The harmonies brought forth by the intertwining efforts of earth, man, and heaven are as beautiful as they are mysterious and useful. It seems to me, ancient generations were far more attuned to these harmonies than we are today, which is why they wrote the psalms.

rock, rock, rock elijah

The first and only time I heard this song was at a Black Heritage Month concert at Texas A&M University, Kingsville, It was sung by a small choir from King Star Baptist Church in Kingsville. The energetic rhythms, harmonies, and cadences had so moved me that I could not get it out of my mind or body. All the next day as I taught my classes or walked around, I was singing this powerful hymn, silently within myself, inside my whole being. I finally realized that in fifteen words, the episode of the prophet Elijah running for his life is told. After bringing about the destruction of the heathen prophets, Jezebel is out to kill Elijah. The prophet flees back to Mount Sinai and hides in the same cleft rock where Moses stood as the Lord passed him by. Here Elijah hears “the still, small voice,” the voice of the spiritual God. “Rock, Rock, Rock. If I could, I would stand on the rock where Moses stood.” These are the fifteen words of the song.  read more

salvia coccinea (Texas Autumn Scarlet Sage)

The man behind his wheelbarrow, or is it a mower, is surrounded by beauty, but he does not seem aware of it. This is his every day labor and it puts an invisible hand across his eyes as does often the labor of each of us. He works this day among the lush colored patterns of palms and his eyes rest on a patch of red-orange flowers that seem to float cloudlike above the ground.

He is placed here in a corner of beauty; shaded, somewhat overgrown and of no newsworthy or material importance whatsoever. Were it not for the work, he would not be there, but being there, he is a part of it. His blue clothes create new harmonies. His gesture and his humanity animates everything around him. The harmonies of color or sound do not know rank or station. Like the rainbow, they are most often of fleeting duration, wonderful moments, like still-small voices, or what sages have called “holy moments.”

under the patchwork umbrella

The quiet places, one could call them life’s unnoticed corners and their momentary inhabitants catch my attention and always have. I cannot explain why. These are inward moments; moments between events, of people waiting in the sun for a bus, sitting on benches outside a supermarket or in a small park waiting. They are often elderly, often poor. A struggle to get by is evident in their clothing, their posture, and their stillness, a grocery bag at their side. But they are free in these moments of waiting, able for a moment to shed burdens, let their bodies relax, and contemplate either the passing scene, or a long past scene within. The sun shines down on them as impartially and as gloriously as on all of us regardless of our state. The light picks out a cheekbone, or comes to rest on a beautifully expressive brow, an eyelid, deep earth tones of clothing, the older, the richer. They are perfectly posed portraits waiting to be painted. They are the same as Rembrandt used to inhabit his great religious scenes. Their elemental postures have a strange, slow moving dignity. Their clothing is more a part of their bodies than new clothes could ever be. They are among the unseen people because we blink them out of our vision. But Degas studied them intently and so did Van Gogh, and some of their best work was about them. It’s not that painters and poets are drawn to strange things but that their task is to unveil the truth and beauty of very ordinary moments.