2008-11-18 18:40:32 | One Place / Any Place

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 enthusi ...Read More