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 of 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 incremental 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.]

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″

Photograph of the installation of the exhibition From the Inside Looking Out: The Journals, Drawings and Prints of Charles Ritchie at the Gregg Musuem of Art & Design, North Carolina State University, Raleigh. Photograph by Matthew Gay.

Pictures at an Exhibition

Stepping into one’s solo exhibition can be revealing; especially if work that’s been out of mind for years is included. It’s strange enough seeing one’s art framed and under glass, or presented in display cases; a situation that denies the whole tactile experience of creating the work as well as displacing it from the studio in which it grew. The unfamiliar, freshly-painted white room, the rarefied lighting, and the uncluttered, surprising juxtaposition of works serves to make everything feel alien: what a great place for an artist to be.

As I spent time going through my exhibition in at North Carolina State University, several things struck me. I enjoyed reviewing some early drawings that haven’t been shown before. The group includes Window with Moon and Star and Worktable with Open Book, drawings from 1983. Both works feature the same subject, the table and window of an earlier studio. The tight pen drawing of the former was made by thinning inks and building up layers of line with a very fine point pen. This very precise drawing process took months. Compared with Worktable with Open Book, a much larger piece created using large brushes in loose watercolor wash on a watercolor block; this drawing was executed in probably a half hour. I’m fascinated that I was working with such variant methods at the same time. I think the tension of swinging between loose and tight approaches has been one of the elements that has kept painting interesting for me. I still vascillate between these poles when I work. I should also note that Window with Moon and Star seems to me to be a reflection on the 19th century British artists that I was vitally interested in the time, William Blake, Edward Calvert, and Samuel Palmer. All of whom became more familiar to me during the summer of 1984 on our honeymoon in England.

Another early work, The Bend, completed in the fall of 1984, (see my online journal entry for 17 August 2008), seemed to be a reflection on the period in which it was created. The year was a turning point of my life; I married, I began the move to my present studio, and my outside work shifted towards a curatorial career. Looking at the drawing, I felt as if the picture was a long jump; a leap across the dark space between the lights on the left and right of the composition. This kind of metaphor never occurs to me while I am working, but such associations emerge in hind sight. Perhaps I subconsciously scout such visual metaphors when I choose my subjects.

One of the discoveries I made looking at the show was that during the mid-to-late 1990s I was not drawing so much. There are few works from that period in this exhibition. During this period I began working with Jim Stroud at Center Street Studio making prints. Also at this time, I experimented with oil paint on gessoed board, an investigation that was never fully successful. During this diversion, I discovered that I like the versatility of working with paper and the quick drying time of watercolor.

Regarding the installation of the show; the journals seem particularly out of context when displayed in exhibitions. My books are utilitarian and when limited to a spread of two pages open in a display case they lose their functionality and serial richness. They are meant to be held in the hands and experienced as a sequence of pages. Of course, the alternative of giving up security within such a public setting seems far less palatable. I have found no better solution.

A final note; memories of the creation of the work can affect how one remembers it; such as remembering it bigger or smaller than it actually is. Ones hopes and dreams of what one wanted to achieve with with a work can also jade memory. Reacting to the inaccuracy of these mental images can often times spark the trajectory for a new journey when one steps back to contemplate in the setting of an exhibition.

Other installation photographs are below. Deepest thanks to the Gregg Museum of Art & Design at North Carolina State University, Raleigh for their beautiful presentation and particular thanks to Matthew Gay who documented the show with these images.

Charles Ritchie, Interior with Stack of Journals, work in progress, second state, watercolor and graphite on Fabriano paper, 4 x 6″.

Risk: Turning Pages, Part 2

When is a work of art complete? When is it overworked? When is the artist signing off prematurely; too easily satisfied? These are difficult questions that permeate the core of painting.

My online journal entry on 1 June examined the abandoned watercolor, Interior with Stack of Journals and my plans to reinvestigate the image on another sheet. Through the summer I have continued work on the second attempt (see above), taking advantage of the period when the early evening light enters the west window of my studio. As the season comes to an end, and the specific lighting on my subject drifts away, I find myself pleased with the work. It has reached a plateau, as many drawings do; very close to way I had envisioned it, with some surprising details evolving; the mirror on the desk reflecting a bit of interior, for instance. However, the big improvement is that the brightness of the landscape has remained; far preferable to the overworked landscape in the previous version.

A plateau can be dangerous, though. One might easily convince oneself the work is done. At any point along the creation of an image there are times of balance and imbalance. I consider the present manifestation of Interior with Stack of Journals (above) a balanced composition, but not yet finished. My major dissatisfaction is that I want the interior to be darker in very specific places; more like my most recent preparatory journal sketch (Book 130, 11 May 2008). To accomplish this I will apply wash; not too dark not too light. If done just right it will increase contrast with the light from the window while integrating details and further unifying the composition.

Time is short, though. I prefer to work in front of my subject so I must make my move in the next few weeks or leave the project until next May when the same lighting situation returns. I don’t like to work purely from memory in a case like this one. The visual reinforcement of the subject cultivates courage to take the necessary risk. I have found that the best response to the present situation is to put the work away for a while, get involved in many other drawing and printmaking projects. In the next month, I will forget the problem and then surprise myself when I finally make my move to finish.

One might recall the well-known sequence of photographs in which Henri Matisse documented his Large Reclining Nude (final state seen here) through twenty-two states during a six month period in 1935. I see numerous places Matisse might have stopped his work that could be seen as more successful than the one he chose as a culmination. Even the best artists are challenged by the “when is it finished” question. It’s also important to note that certain media facilitate continual change; Matisse used oil paint for his Large Reclining Nude, a very forgiving medium. Watercolor is different. One cannot scrape out with ease or paint over without damaging the luminosity. Watercolor ups the ante. To continue working my drawing carries the risk of overworking it. I could be faced with starting over again.

In 1994, I took a risk with my drawing Daffodils with Astronomical Chart. Tearing off the upper section of the sheet, I painted a final layer of darkness, completing the work with a move that I think improved it significantly. (To be continued)

Charles Ritchie, Daffodils with Astronomical Chart, (left) early state c. April 1993, (right) 1995, drawing completed, watercolor, graphite and pen and ink on Fabriano paper, 4 11/16 x 5 1/2″, note: left image is taken from a slide; color and tone are inaccurate. The finished drawing is in the collection of the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio.

Charles Ritchie, No. 1 from the book anyone lived in a pretty how town, 1976, silver gelatin photograph in handmade bound volume, 3 3/8 x 6 1/2″

Life is

E.E. Cummings was one of the first poetic voices to seduce me. Sure, his irregular punctuation, errant capitalization, and typographic anarchy appealed to a young, mildly rebellious teenager. The poems act up physically. Think about the motions of your eyes on a Cummings page; think about your brain trying to herd unruly fragments toward comprehension (see for example his poem r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r). But after the visual grenades go off, a deeply romantic mist remains. Cummings’ work is filled with warmth and heart and that is what won me over; not ruckus and wordplay.

Cummings’ poem, anyone lived in a pretty how town contains his signature odd language (“noone” and “anyone” as protagonists; what’s a “how town”?) but its quatrains lull with rhymes and images of the commonplace; rising and falling sun, moon, stars, rain, joys, sorrows, bells, and people. Repetitive like houses, like lives, like gravestones; I’ve always read this poem as peaceful acceptance of mortality; an existentialist refrain in the guise of a child’s song. Anyone and noone equal you and me. We lived, we loved, we died. Life may be good or bad; regardless, life is.

Charles Ritchie, two page spread including No. 11 from anyone lived in a pretty how town, 1976, pen and ink and silver gelatin photograph in handmade bound volume, sheet: 8 x 9″

Not too many steps away from Cumming’s poem is a short story by Katherine Mansfield, The Garden Party; a cinematic rendering of a social gala that funnels into the most intimate moment of experience. The ending of Mansfield’s exquisite miniature returns us the most essential question, “What is life?” Perhaps drawing is also a means of probing.

Note: In 1976 I created in a book based around anyone lived in a pretty how town. I took photographs while around wandering streets of town and partnered the images with hand lettered lines of the poem.

Charles Ritchie, No. 22 from the book anyone lived in a pretty how town, 1976, silver gelatin photograph in handmade bound volume, 3 3/8 x 6 1/2″

(above) Photograph of the artist copying in his journal at the Ashmolean Musuem, Oxford, England, June 1984.

Finding Forbears

In June of 1984 my wife, Jenny and I went to England for our honeymoon. We spent a week in London followed by a week driving around the country. We wanted to do something romantic and beautiful for the occasion, but neither of us are travelers so I look back now and imagine we were subconsciously homing in on spiritual forebears. On the trip, I certainly encountered artists who have changed the way I see the world who continue to inspire me with their achievements.

Sure, I liked John Constable’s landscapes before our trip, but when we stepped into an exhibition of his small studies at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, I was overwhelmed. Constable communicates a thrill in depicting his world, putting painterly bravura at the service of the humble and commonplace. At Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, I fell in love with Samuel Palmer’s work; I too wanted to invest a small page with mystery. Palmer’s varied mix of pen and ink and watercolor has informed my own drawing technique over the years. During the trip I also became aware of the work of John Martin whose command of scale is breathtaking. You may never feel as tiny as in front of one of Martin’s works. For example, his Creation of Light (see also below) convincingly evokes the immensity of the universe, juxtaposing human form with astronomical. What a master of light! The brightest point in the work is not the depicted sun, moon, or stars. It is the vaguely defined point just to the right of the sun; possibly a reflection off of a cloud bank? Who knows? Such is the imagination of John Martin.

(above) Book 130, Charles Ritchie after John Martin, Creation of Light, 2008, watercolor made from a reproduction of a mezzotint, illustration from John Milton, Paradise Lost. Published 1827.

One of the most resonant moments of the trip was our visit to Fountain’s Abbey in North Yorkshire whose ruins struck me as the greatest memento mori I had seen in my life. How do powerful cultures wither and leave these bones? I grasped the book in my pocket. Perhaps in my own way small way I seek to leave a skeleton of my life. My desire to organize my work around a linear series of journals is a satisfying conceptual framework, but it serves an emotional purpose as well. Through my own private memento mori I mark the passing, days, and months, and years; recognizing my mortality and attempting to come to terms with it.

(above) Photograph of the artist’s wife, Jenny, standing before Fountain’s Abbey, North Yorkshire, England, June 1984.

Charles Ritchie, Window with Moon and Star, 1983, watercolor and pen and ink on Fabriano paper, image: 4 1/4 x 2 3/4″, sheet: 4 1/4 x 2 3/4″, frame: 14 x 11″, private collection, 1983.1.5

Place to Be

I was standing in the record store but suddenly I was somewhere else. Two musical lines were weaving around me; a gentle male tenor twining a cello. I was no longer in staring into a vinyl record bin; I was seeing into the soul of the sky. The year was 1978 and I was being introduced to Nick Drake’s Cello Song; music that would haunt me the rest of my life.

When I hear the fading passages of Cello Song; Nick’s voice rhyming the strings, the thock of tabla and leaping bass with Nick’s acoustic guitar ringing time, I am transported back to that first musical audience. The memory is so clear and yet simultaneously so ineffable. I inhabit my memory of both the physical space where I stood listening and the emotional sky of my imagination. It is like waking from a dream and remembering the exact feeling and atmosphere, yet being utterly helpless to transcribe it. How do we capture that place to be?

Creating a work of art often feels like an effort to to do just that. I look at each page of my journal as a path back to a particular moment in my life. Clearly defined or diffuse, the entries are road markers evoking many levels of past experience. The written word, the image I’ve painted, even the page itself can trigger memories of the context in which I was writing. It is the same with any of my works. They are references to previous lives; real and fictive. For example, my drawing Window with Moon and Star was created in a earlier residence. I recall the boat kept in the next driveway, the reproductions of works of art I was displaying on the walls, the window plants I watered, the sound of the piano played in the room above me, the smell of the basement apartment where I lived. And many other obscure and tangential associations and dreams of the time. Viewers are welcome to find something for themselves in my art; but I make my work for me. I build a place to return, a place to be.

By the way, the recordings of Nick Drake are my desert island disks. Before his untimely death he recorded three major releases and some odds and ends; each work restlessly brilliant in its own way. The title Place to Be refers one of Nick’s most evocative songs. How far can one voice with an acoustic guitar take you? Nick nears the brink. For those interested, an enlightening book on Nick’s troubled life is Darker than the Deepest Sea: The Search for Nick Drake by Trevor Dann.

A final note, I deem Nick Drake an heir of English Romanticism; William Blake, Samuel Palmer, Edward Calvert, John Martin, John Constable; artists who have provided a deep well of inspiration for me. But that’s another journal entry.

Charles Ritchie, Book 24, Spring 1983, Studies for Window with Moon and Star. pen and ink and watercolor on wove paper in bound volume, sheet size: 6 x 4″

Book 130, Entries for 25-26 May 2008 with studies of a tree at midday and the bright star Vega reflected in the pond at night, watercolor, graphite and pen and ink on Arches paper in bound volume, page size 4 x 6″

In the Country

I hiked along a freshly asphalted lane through woods and fields past the occasional dirt driveway. Sprays of white blackberry and yellow buttercups brushed my legs. After a long walk the trees opened to a vista of red earth jumbled with roots and stumps. Recent lumbering had left acres of devastation. Beside me of hillock of stumps rose out of the wreckage. I was surprised when a sudden wind seemed to aim right at the point where I was looking. The small cyclone raked a single trunk and the bark scattered all around as if there had been a blast. I was showered in bark. A strange moment; I had to laugh out loud.

That evening I stepped out into the clear night; the sky brimming with stars. Yellow Saturn sat beside Reglus in the constellation Leo above. I made my way through the pitch black down a familiar dirt trail to the pond. Feeling the way with my feet, I turned slowly toward the frogs and other creatures clicking, creaking, and shouting in the brush. Moving closer, the sound became so intense it pelted me, shaking my bones. I looked into the pond where bright Vega sat, brilliant, undiminished in reflection. That light left the star 27 years ago, a point near the beginning of my journals. I laughed again and felt a small part of the pantomime.

Hats off to Wallace Stevens; see Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, III.

Charles Ritchie, two Polaroid photographs of a star magnolia, (both images taken approximately 1:15 pm, 11 April 2000)

The Star Magnolia

As daffodils flooded the front yard, forsythia glowed, and the star magnolia exploded white across the street, I sat at my window dazed. We had just put our cat to sleep. Cancer took him; far too young. The day’s beauty heightened the sadness. April is the cruelest month.

I gazed into the star magnolia and suddenly I realized my loss would always be tied to this flowering. Nothing new about this kind of association. A year after Lincoln died, Walt Whitman remembered his hero in a poem, When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom’d. Likewise for me, the significance of blossoms had changed.

Looking down at my worktable, I saw my tiny drawing, Self-Portrait with Blossoming Star Magnolia; one of my problem children; a drawing that I had been working on for years. I’ve been trotting it out for the few weeks of peak blossoms and then putting it away, always dissatisfied; perennially hopeful for a recovery during next year’s session.

I’ve worked and reworked the tiny sheet; erased it, scrubbed the paper with large flat, synthetic bristle brushes pulling out the watercolor (see images below). I’ve redrawn and repainted, and then scrubbed and erased again. I’m not sure what is so hard about this piece. Perhaps it is finding the right twilight atmosphere. Perhaps it is coaxing nuances of color that don’t overpower. Perhaps it is the composition.

During the current session, I removed two subjects from the foreground of the drawing: a postcard and a dried orange. Scrubbed them away, and replaced them with an image of one of my own larger drawings; another of my trouble children: Night with Orion. This felt better. The new shape punctured the window’s rectangle and pulled the grid of panes into the border. I liked the minimal articulation of the depicted drawing; I used watercolor to mimic the graphite of the original. This new gray panel or wall seemed right. I also liked the idea of inserting a troubled drawing into another troubled drawing; trouble mirroring trouble. And through the window, the depiction of the star magnolia now represented trouble on another plane for me.

These kinds of personal associations drive my drawing, but the viewer doesn’t need to know the connections to appreciate the work. I believe if I respond to my intuition and feelings, work intensely, and stay honest, there’s a good chance something will be there for an audience.

The drawing, I feel, is complete now; consummated in meditation and loss. In one of my favorite short stories The Haunted House by Virginia Woolf, a couple re-lives through remembrances found in the various settings of a house; personal reflections lead them to their treasure and essence.

(above left) Charles Ritchie, Self-Portrait with Blossoming Star Magnolia (work in progress) 7 February 2008.
(above right) Self-Portrait with Blossoming Star Magnolia (work completed) 10 April 2008.
both: watercolor, graphite, and gouache on Fabriano paper, sheet/image: 4 x 3″, collection of the artist

For Pokey.

Self-Portrait with Night XI: Graphite, first state of drawing as it looked on 26 March 2007.
Graphite on Fabriano paper, sheet size: 5 5/8 x 12″

My studio hours begin well before sunrise. While sitting at my window in late winter, I can see Antares, the brightest star in the constellation Scorpius, rise ahead of the sun. Deep red in color, its procession toward the zenith means that spring is coming. When Antares becomes centered in my morning window and finally obscured by foliage I put away my current group of drawings and I won’t pick them up again until the leafless landscape reappears in late November. Self-Portrait with Night XI: Graphite (link shows second state of drawing as it looked on 24 January 2008) is among my current investigations. The drawing was begun in December 2006, was put away for the summer of 2007 and returned to my focus last fall. The images seen above and below represent stages of the drawing almost a year apart. I’m content with slow growth. In this drawing I am learning how to use graphite as a tonal medium rather than as an outline for watercolor as I have used it in the past. Building graphite in layers using a eraser coated in graphite to smear and burnish is unlike anything I have done before. I may finish the work this season or I could put it away for another year. Drawing in cycles asks me to lose something and forget all of the things I was thinking about it. When I rediscover winter drawings after six months of summer I return with new experience. Seeing a drawing after an extended break is a real spark. Like the surprise of finding Antares in the window once again.

Self-Portrait with Night XI: Graphite, third state of drawing as it looked on 22 February 2008. Graphite on Fabriano paper, sheet size: 5 5/8 x 12″