When I came out of a major knee operation a couple of years ago, I was on fire about painting. I have no idea why. “On fire” is the closest I can come to describing my state of mind, which was a high-intensity, deep-seated excitement about painting – painting with a capital “P.” This moment signaled a pivotal time for me. I just had no idea what I would be pivoting to.
Finding this out was the hard part, and required patience with uncertainty (something I have never been good at). It also required an openness to ways of generating ideas and the role random chance can play, which is also not a strength of mine. One of the best ways I have always found to do these things is travel. I don’t claim to be original here – it’s just something I seem to forget about on a regular basis. A great reminder that I needed to get out of my day-to-day routine more often was a weekend trip to Memphis for a wedding; while there, we learned that the Memphis zoo has bonobos – the fascinating and rare species of chimpanzee that is even more uncannily similar to humans than the other great apes. Often referred to by primatologists as having a social structure that reflects the best of human nature, I had been hoping to see some in person for years. Several hundred reference photos later, I was so grateful for that day.
Fortunately for me, Nicole took a cue from our Memphis trip and suggested we travel up the east coast, visiting friends and going to sites that seemed to offer promising subject matter for new work. Our trip was planned around several priorities; high on this list was to find and document “witness trees.” The ones I was particularly interested in were from the civil war, and had been alive at the time of the battles of Bull Run and Antietem. Also high on my list were witness trees in Washington D.C. which happened to be American elms, a species of tree I grew up with in Chicago, decimated by Dutch elm disease, a tree “pandemic” that almost eradicated what I believe is one of the most beautiful species of trees in the world.
Throughout this trip I never knew what imagery might serve as the spark that would prove to be pivotal to a new series of paintings: Duke Gardens in Durham, North Carolina; the New York Botanical Garden; the art at Storm King and Dia/Beacon in upstate New York, all got in the mix in unexpected ways. Storm King’s re-wilded meadows, in particular, stayed with me and energized my sense of optimism, as did moments of extreme kindness I witnessed between strangers during our travels.
Taken as a whole, these experiences were remarkably life affirming and stood out in stark contrast to the grim politics and environmental news we read and hear about every day. Witness trees, bonobos, beauty, elm trees, memory, kindness, optimism, lush, dramatic tropical plants - in ways both large and small, all of this became “Grace”.