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.

Photograph of artist Charles Ritchie in front of the home where Wallace Stevens lived in Hartford, Connecticut. The house remains a private residence. Photographer: Samantha Ritchie, August 2004.

Wallace Stevens Walking

Poet Wallace Stevens has influenced my creative practice.

In his early years, Stevens tried journalism and law in New York City but eventually settled in Connecticut to work for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company. Stevens was good at insurance; he spent thirty years in the company and rose to the position of vice-president. Stevens was also good at writing poetry.

Wallace Stevens didn’t drive; he walked the two mile stretch to the office and two miles back each working day. On those walks he composed in his head some of the most powerful and significant poetry of our age; perhaps any age. Stevens once said,” It gives a man character as a poet to have this daily contact with a job”. I certainly feel that having a career interpenetrate my artist life has benefited me.

I have had the good fortune to do curatorial work for a living. The position has fed my intellectual curiosity, provided high artistic models to follow, and offered financial security. I make the art I want to make; and keep the often-destructive pressure of selling my art for a living at bay. And I have flourished in the time constraints that accompany having two careers and have developed tools that complement the situation; I keep my journal with me at all times; I milk my early morning hours in the studio for all they are worth. And I have benefited from relationships with scores of interesting and wonderful people.

Stevens got up early and read; he composed on the streets as he walked (and sometimes at lunch). And when he arrived at his job something about the contact of the real world and real people and real life situations provided an added level of input and ferment. I think that is what Stevens may have meant by character. Cultivating the outside world in all its forms and contexts to use as grist for the mill in order to extract the broadest understandings of life.

By the way; walks are something that have buoyed many creative minds. According to psychologist and author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced “chick-SENT-me high”) who has studied the lives of creative people, walking is one of the activities where sensations of the highest levels of creativity are reported. Stevens alludes to the percolation of the walk; the regenerative inhale and fecund exhale at the beginning of section VII of his poem, Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction.

“…Perhaps
The truth depends on a walk around a lake,
A composing as the body tires, a stop
To see hepatica, a stop to watch
A definition growing certain and
A wait within that certainty, a rest
In the swags of pine-trees bordering the lake.”

If I were to introduce the poems of Wallace Stevens to a newcomer, I would probably select one of his still life pieces. Here we feel the complex and incremental walk of the eye:

Link to Study of Two Pears by Wallace Stevens.

(above) Charles Ritchie, Night with Orion (work in progress, 27 March 2008), 11 1/4 x 15″, graphite and pen and ink on Fabriano paper

My passion for the constellations of the night sky began as a young child. I learned names and tried to orient myself by their locations very early. Orion was one of the first constellations I grasped and it remains an annual benchmark for me; Orion rising again: it must be winter. Orion setting again; it must be spring.

I remember a very cold, starry night in high school walking over to my friend’s house and thinking to myself, I’ll be looking at that same constellation as an old man. Funny, how I think of that almost every time I spy Orion again. It reminds me of the poem Anecdote of the Jar by Wallace Stevens. I buried a symbolic jar walking down the road that night, and from that moment on Orion takes dominion everywhere:

I’ve always wanted to engage Orion as a subject in my art, but have had a hard time finding the right context. One evening several years ago, about this time of year when the trees are just about to fill with leaves; I stepped out on my deck and looked up to see Orion hanging in tree branches. I moved from study in my journal to a graphite drawing of the subject whose composition expanded to include the familiar panorama of houses on my street (see Night with Orion, first state, 12 December 2007). The subject is the same as my drawing Blue Twilight, but seen in late winter rather than summer. I’ve been working three years now, building up layers of graphite on my Night with Orion drawing. Just this winter I added another layer to the image; a full winter’s dreams inscribed in tight horizontal bands across the image with pen and ink (see images above and below). This layer of writing added depth and value on several levels of the work. However, the drawing has a long way to go. I am patient.

The stars of Orion are located in the same part the galaxy as our solar system, the local arm. While one likes to think of constellations as permanent, they are not. As the locations of stars are always changing incrementally, Orion, like all constellations, is transient. Wikipedia says: “Orion will remain visible in the night sky for the next 1 to 2 million years, making it one of the longest observable constellations, parallel to the rise of human civilization” (Orion: History). I bury a jar in the field of stars that is Orion, but the constellation itself is really just another passing illusion.

(below) Charles Ritchie, Night with Orion (detail)

Book 130, Sketch of northern sky above illuminated towns, 7:20 pm, 27 February 2008.

Flying home from a trip this week I leaned my head against the window and drifted, blinking awake occasionally to see the light of the tumbling sun spread into pale rainbow bands above a plain of stratus clouds. I had been reading Jeff Warren’s recent book The Head Trip: Adventures on the Wheel of Consciousness, a fascinating study about the many levels of consciousness; not limited to waking and sleeping. I must have taken a subliminal cue from my reading because soon I was drifting into the afternoon with closed eyes. When I blinked awake it was darker. The sun had slipped further down and the color bands lifted higher. Another blink and I was gone. I awoke surprised by blackness. At first my disoriented eyes struggled to find anything. Then, out of the darkness emerged the Big Dipper (Ursa Major) balanced by winding stars of the Dragon (Draco). Below, the clouds were gone and I saw the patchy glow of several towns floating in the void. Words popped into my head, “This is where the dragon lives” the opening line of Wallace Stevens‘ poem The Auroras of Autumn. I had the strangest sensation; was I asleep or awake, was this dream or reality, imagined or real? Is this a dragon or is this air?