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.]

My Bookhouse. Two volumes from a set of six, The Latch Key, volume four (left) with cover by Joseph Cheneweth and The Treasure Chest, volume six (right) with cover by N.C Wyeth.

My Bookhouse

I treasure early memories of visiting my grandparents’ house in North Carolina where before bedtime we could read from My Bookhouse. These six gorgeous volumes (two are pictured above), published in the 1920’s, are filled with all the children’s stories you can think of, plus some, and embellished with works by Howard Pyle, N. C. Wyeth, and many others who forged the golden age of American illustration. My Bookhouse probably represents my first recollection of art as art.

How I love these images. They always surprise. You can never tell where they will be when you turn the page. They are imaginatively configured; often shaped irregularly, stretching across the top, or bottom, or up the side margins. Their use of color is savvy too; just a few hues blossom into alchemy greater than the parts with maximum expressive effect. And the dense, sparkly, letterpress type was an invigorator. It commanded your eyes to move through pages like waves. Even the lesser known artists could be fabulous. As an example, look at the Sugar Plum Tree by Eugene Field, illustrated by Donn P. Crane (see below). Crane is not a well known figure, but these images embody all that I mention above and have stuck with me for many, many years. With my deep interest in dreams, it is surely no accident my favorite poem beckoned to the garden of shut-eye town and a land of visions.

When I look at the pages of my journals (see below), I can’t help but think that in my own way I have been trying to create a Bookhouse of my own. I covet the element of surprise in My Bookhouse, the use of limited color to maximum effect, and dense regiments of words cultivated as expressive elements. And certainly the words “book” and “house” resonate off of my artistic trajectory. I believe that some of our earliest worldly encounters are the most powerful and lasting. My Bookhouse was fundamental for me.

My Bookhouse, In the Nursery, volume one, pp. 160-161, The Sugar Plum Tree, by Eugene Field, illustrated by Donn P. Crane. Edited by Olive Beaupre Miller, Published by The Bookhouse for Children, Chicago and Toronto, 1925 edition.

Charles Ritchie, Book 122, Jourrnal entries for 2-3 August 2002 including several studies for works in the Self-Portrait with Night series, watercolor, graphite, and pen and ink on Arches paper, 4 x 12″.

Footnote: Donn P. Crane went on to illustrate many story and textbooks through the early and mid-20th century, even contributing to the Dick and Jane series that taught a generation of Americans to read in the 1950s.

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″

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.

James Gordon Irving, Front and Back Cover of Stars: A Golden Nature Guide, Herbert S. Zim, author, St. Martin’s Press, New York. Originally published by Golden Books, this paperback edition published 1956, 1951.

Stars. My own copy of this book worn from love and misuse is pictured here. When I was young it taught me the patterns of the constellations, their names, the movement of the sun, phases of the moon, and other celestial and planetary phenomena. This knowledge still informs my work. Artist James Gordon Irving’s images were seminal; his pervasive indigo night and passion for geometry certainly influenced me. I see a clear echo in my print Pegasus, for example. However, rather than articulating the mechanics of the heavens as Irving did, I have leaned towards imaging fictions; or at least the houses of the sky beside the ones we build on the ground. Above all this book sparked a love of the miniature collection. Here the largest things you can think of: planets, stars, galaxies, nebulae are compressed into a tiny volume; a universe that you can slip into your pocket – like a journal.

James Gordon Irving, Auroras or Northern Lights from Stars: A Golden Nature Guide, Herbert S. Zim, author, St. Martin’s Press, New York. Originally published by Golden Books, this paperback edition published 1956, 1951.

Blue Twilight, 1996-1997, graphite, watercolor, pastel, conté crayon, and litho crayon, 22 x 30″

Dreams are pure imagination. By transcribing them I attempt to give shape to what never really was. With painting I probe visual experience, uncertain and ephemeral. A favorite book, Le Grande Meaulnes by Henri Alain-Fournier recounts a young man’s search to return to a world he stumbled upon while lost in a wood. Deeply atmospheric passages follow his quest for the unattainable; for what might well have been a dream. This is what the chase of art feels like to me. I see a blue light and seek a path to it. But which blue light? What did I see? I conjure multiple observations; snippets of reality and imagination to link to a phantom past. Such is the setting of my drawing, Blue Twilight (above). My artistic practice is based on longing for a place I haven’t really known.

Study for Blue Twilight, journal entry dated 1 July 1995, watercolor, graphite, and pen and ink on Arches paper in bound volume, page size: 6 x 4 inches.