Charles Ritchie, Copy after The Large Enclosure by Caspar David Friedrich, watercolor and graphite on Arches paper in bound volume, page size: 4 x 6”.

Passage

When I copy the work of other artists in my journal, I meditate on their art in a systematic, physical way and by doing so often discover passages I might otherwise miss.

The art of Caspar David Friedrich, the great German 19th century Romantic, has long been a favorite of mine.  I find works such as The Large Enclosure spellbinding. This sublime landscape is dominated by an arc of clouds sweeping down towards an upwards bowing waterway. As a little boat approaches the center, it appears to be squeezed in a convergence of earth and sky. Sinuous networks of clouds and waterways enhance the sense of constriction.  As I made my copy, I noted a little opening between the trees that is just the shape of the boat’s sail; like an empty space calling to the piece of a puzzle that fills it.

But I sense The Large Enclosure represents passage on other levels as well. The dark trees in the middle ground block our view, creating hidden space relieved by tantalizing vistas that stretch into open landscape.  While sketching, I noted a subtler passage at the far right, deeper in the distance (see the detail on the right page of the sketchbook spread below). I had never before observed this second tree line, one that offers a solitary opening into a further realm. Perhaps this passage was a symbolic crux of the picture for Friedrich, whose Christian faith would offer a single path out of our earthly enclosure.

Several other thoughts occurred to me as I continued to sketch. The broad arcs that underpin the waterways and clouds in this work imply imaginary circles that stretch beyond the picture frame; evoking the curve of the earth and 360 degrees of sky. This thought led me to the concept of paintings as passages themselves; openings into another world; particularly when we view them as illusory windows into space in the pre-Modernist sense.*

No matter if I stand before the actual work of art or look at a reproduction, the act of copying leads me into mental and physical inquiry.  I train my eye and hand to follow passages once charted by a master. By doing so, I spark personal meditations on the creative process and uncover pathways leading into unexpected levels of myself.

Charles Ritchie, Sketches after Paintings by Caspar David Friedrich, two page spread from journal Book 130, watercolor and graphite on Arches paper in bound volume, page size: 4 x 6”.  Six sketchbooks are now on view at Gallery Joe, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania until 20 December 2008.

* With the advent of Modernism in the late 19th century, painting was no longer restricted to being an imaginary window depicting another world.  Paintings could be appreciated for their physical qualities alone, beyond convincing illusionism.

Charles Ritchie, Interior/Exterior, 1987-1989, watercolor, graphite, and pen and ink on Fabriano paper, sheet/image: 8 1/8” x 29 3/8”, collection of the artist.  Note the oak tree just to the left of center in the middle ground and compare it with the same tree 20 years later seen in the image below.

Charles Ritchie, Self-Portrait with Night: Side Panels I, 2006-2008, watercolor and graphite on Fabriano paper, sheet/image: 5 3/4 x 17 1/4″.  Both of the works pictured above are in the exhibition From the Inside Looking Out: Charles Ritchie on view at Gallery Joe, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania through 20 December 2008.

One Place / Any Place

I sat down for the first time at my window nearly 25 years ago and looked out to the row of suburban houses.

Since that time I’ve watched people move into those houses and transfer away.  I’ve watched an oak grow from a modest sapling into a towering tree. I’ve seen the girths of three magnificent tulip poplar trees broaden. I’ve had dogwoods come and go; young redbuds block my view and then grow tall beyond my window frame.  I’ve seen houses painted, screened porches become additions, and yards become forests, lawns manicured.  Chimneys and roofs repaired.  Leaves fill the yards and daffodils rise.  Sunrise flood the neighborhood and sunset wash it red, winter noon burn out detail and summer diffuse it.  I’ve watched my face grow older incrementally night after night, reflected in the window; superimposed over blackness, lamps, and nebulae.  A favorite book of mine is The Enigma of Arrival by V.S. Naipaul in which the author illuminates minute and intermittent changes that underpin what appears to be a static universe.  It is all a matter of attention.

A friend of mine, writer Peter Turchi, has paralleled my enthusiasms with that of naturalist E.O. Wilson whose activities began as a boy when he became fascinated by fire ants. Wilson has noted that a biologist could make a career out of studying the life forms at the base of a single tree. Yes, like that hypothetical biologist, I’ve chosen my tree. But Pete has also likened my engagement to a private astronomy, mapping out a personal pantheon of galaxies and constellations; engaging the local with the distant and reflecting inwardly on those places I strain to collect in my lens.

In graduate school, inventor and architect Buckminster Fuller visited and articulated a message I’ve held close since that evening, “live your life as an experiment.”  That has been my goal in my work.  What is it to sit in a room and look at the world from virtually the same vantage point and create a body of work over a lifetime?  At the core of this postulate is a meditative relationship with the world and I find comfort and freedom in such a focused inquiry.

There’s nothing inherently exceptional about the view I have, my little window could be any place.  It is equivalent to an infinite number of views.  Such thoughts bring me to a game I occasionally play.  Stop right where I am, right now. What am I not seeing that could be a new path to the waterfall?

[Thanks to Raymond Carver for the use of his title.]

Photograph of Gallery Joe, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, November 2008.

Thirty Years

Making art is difficult enough without expecting it to pay the bills. I was lucky and found a parallel art career as a curator that freed me to pursue my creative goals without pressure to produce.

In my early years I didn’t show my art because I didn’t need or want to. Alexander Pope’s advice to Dr. Arbuthnot seemed reasonable to me: create your work and put it away for nine years. If you still like it after that period, go ahead and share it. Recommendations like this, rarely taken in our age, may seem over the top. But the idea of distance providing clarity appeals to me and I was in no hurry. I just wanted to do the best work I could.

Early on I began to store my works in a box. I found it useful to hold onto the original drawings as references when I serially examined my subjects. Thus, for many years I didn’t want to sell my work because it was counterproductive to developing my art. The arrival of digital scanning and printing helped ease me away from this attitude. Being able to print out a good quality ink jet print may not be a perfect substitute for having the work itself, but it is far more effective than relying on color slides, a recording format I struggled with for many years but loathed.

But the greatest advantage of retaining works is that my I had built up holdings before I began to exhibit. That is why a current exhibition at Gallery Joe in Philadelphia can present a thirty year career view. I am not certain what made me change my mind about showing, but after testing the waters in various competitions and group venues in the early 1990s, I began to look forward to the audience and potential feedback. I also liked seeing what I had created outside the studio context. With a few commercial galleries beginning to show interest, sales began to happen. However, none of the gallery relationships seemed to fit, and rather than present my works in a less than comfortable exhibition situation, I kept the work close.

Then, I found Gallery Joe. Or rather, Becky Kerlin, the gallery director, found me. In 2003, Becky saw a group show that I was in, liked the work, and communicated she would like to see more. We connected, and by 2005 I was in a group show called water colors: current views at Gallery Joe; and then in 2006, I had a whole room to myself at the gallery in a presentation titled Suites and Pages. The relationship blossomed; Becky is an artist’s dream to work with, she has a great eye for art, and I admire the artists she shows. Becky offered to let me fill the entire gallery, thus we have From the Inside Looking Out; a survey of new and old, drawn from fresh directions in my work and holdings from my little box.

Photograph of the installation of the exhibition From the Inside Looking Out: Charles Ritchie at Gallery Joe.

Other installation photographs and selected images of works on view can be found on the Gallery Joe web site. The show runs through 20 December 2008.

Self-Portrait with Planets II, state two, drawing in progress 7 August 2008, watercolor and graphite on Fabriano paper, 6 x 4″

Day Dreams

I’ve become interested in daydreams; flares of imagination that punctuate waking hours. We all do it; drift a bit and the mind is somewhere else. A few days ago I was dozing and an image floated up in my mind, three people were sitting in a car with a woman who was pointing to holes in her bare feet. I blinked. There was such matter-of-fact quality to the image, no sense of pain or alarm. What could it mean? A few days later I was sitting talking to a friend at the table and as we moved our heads, I felt I was seeing front and side views of his head simultaneously; he seemed cross-eyed for a split second. Not exactly a daydream, but a phenomenon representative of the slips in reality I like to note.

Perhaps my sustained recording and study of dreams has cultivated my awareness of such jags of the mind. Kin to dreams, I can’t help but scrutinize them in the same way, imagining some underlying truth about myself or my situation being revealed to me in their arcane symbols. In previous online entries I’ve talked about my method of recording my dreams as a means of self-scrutiny (see entry for 25 December 2007). I am convinced these daydream images are a similar nudge from my subconscious to look at myself from an alternate, previously unnoticed perspective.

I have begun to note these moments in my journal and I’m particularly encouraged by the momentum my writing has gained from incorporating these observations. The annotations have also begun to embellish my series of drawings called Pages (three states of one of the Pages are used as example above and below). Executed on sheets of paper the size of leaves in my journal, the Pages combine image and inscription tuning into my stream of consciousness. I especially prize dreams, daydreams, and slips of reality. As I make my notes and drawings I am often waking in the early morning studio, my script is often packed with such fleeting phenomena.

But the inscriptions also have a visual effect in the Pages series. Beginning as pencil notations, they parallel the drawing as it develops. As the graphite inscriptions fill the page, they are generally obliterated in the image-making process and as more space is needed for writing. I trace the mental process that attends the making of the drawing as well as scrutinize the act of drawing itself. To bring the drawing to a close, I usually pick a particularly pungent dream from the many I’ve had over the period that I worked on the piece. I transcribe it, returning to see if I can uncover further associations as I ink it on the page.

I like the fact that my journals and drawings continually change and evolve and I see this expansion of subject for my writing as another step along the way.

Self-Portrait with Planets II, state three, drawing in progress 15 October 2008, watercolor and graphite on Fabriano paper, 6 x 4″

Self-Portrait with Planets II, state four, drawing in progress 31 October 2008, watercolor and graphite on Fabriano paper, 6 x 4″