Sea of Trees: Letters to My Brother

 

 

 

 

 

Sea of Trees: Letters to My Brother, No. 1–10 (Set I)

mixed media on paper, 2022

24" x 30"

One year.

 

For every word I am unable to find, for every sentence I am unable to construct, for every emotion I am unable to articulate, there is a brushstroke for it.  A mark.  A dab.  A speck.  A scribble.  A color.  Some are executed with a heavy hand, others are rendered more lightly: impressions made by the conscious and subconscious states; letters formed from the hollows and depths of life, its bends and folds; visuals of the feelings that exist, yet go unseen, unspoken.

 

You are here and a part of me always.

 

Love you forever, Brother. 

The Absent

Hoh Rain Forest, Olympic NP (October 2022)

I have been absent for most of this year, however one would define it.  

Absent from others, absent from my practice, absent from my mind, absent from living.  

I look back on the last nine months and all I see is absence.  

The most painful absence being that of my brother's.

I lost my brother in March.

Since then, I haven't been able to move through this world quite the same.

I haven't felt the same.  

How precarious it all is.   

I am coping.  I am writing.  I am learning how to breathe in the sweet air again.

 

'Til then, I leave 2022 with this: 

“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.”

 

Thank you, Jamie Anderson, for articulating so eloquently the murmurs of this here heart.

-OH

The Relationships We Have

 

 

Consider the relationships our lives are comprised of and by which they are formed.  

 

Familial, romantic, and platonic are terms to differentiate the types of direct connections within our human group.  Outside of these, there are the spiritual and political.   Less obvious are the relationships we have with our careers, passions, vices, physical bodies, conscience, and thoughts.

 

How does the nature of each relationship reflect behavior?  How does it inform our sense of self?  How does it lend to the purpose of life as well as our purpose in life?  

Is it possible to separate ourselves and our relationships from the carnal, the visceral, the flesh, the intellect?  That is, can a relationship exist independent of its associations (inherent or otherwise)?  Is it futile to search for a relationship that does not feed from expectation nor carries out like a well-structured syllabus?  A relationship that exists in this sphere because it does--because to exist is enough?

To exist should be enough, but it is not.  It hardly ever is, or seems to be, enough.  

 

There is a yearning that persists.  An active curiosity that pulsates loudly.  It leaves me questioning the  "realities" that are apparent, and it makes living feel like a horrible chore.  Gradually, I feel less and less human, dissolved from a world where relationships of any form have to demonstrate a certain level of return and equity to qualify as valuable. 

I wonder this: can love exist outside of a shared connection between two entities?  Can love live on its own?  

 

If it is possible, then surely it is proof that to exist is, in and of itself, enough. 

---

 

My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth. 

 -1 John 3:18

 

 

(Entry written on September 11, 2021) 

A Search for

"More and more he will be governed by what others want him to do, thus increasingly falling prey to conformism."  -Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

 

* * *

 

Is permanence possible, and can it take form, in a transitory existence?  Most will argue no.  I am convinced otherwise.  While elusive, permanence does exist, but it is only present in the deepest recess of the human experience: the state of assured meaning——that is, purpose.  

 

To know our purpose in life——to pursue meaningful work in spite of its hardships and suffering——is to have permanence in an ever changing landscape.  It is what courses through our finite bodies to move us beyond ourselves.  With this knowledge, we are bound to a higher something.  As a result, our fleeting condition is given a permanence that transcends time and space.

 

I met my purpose many autumns ago.  Yet, I spent the greater portion of the last two years attempting to trade in its very truth for a life of practicality, for that which is considered conventional and socially acceptable for a thirty-something-year-old.  

There is an insidious nature to conformity.  As someone who is much too stubborn and headstrong, it seemed my purpose and values were safe from the impact of external noise.  It was not until my desire for meaning over financial security was being challenged consistently that I found myself confronted with doubts——doubts that started off inconspicuously small, but gradually grew to an obstructive size.  Critics purported my work as a painter was impractical and short of prestige.  Instead, they insisted on the importance of what I had long deemed empty and vapid: monetary accrual, socioeconomic status, and running in the "right" circles.

 

Unfortunately, over time, I——as well as my work——became affected by the unsolicited advice.

 

This wolf, a stealthy predator, had found its way into the sheep pen. 

 

 * * *

Society's ill-fitted, one-size-for-all ideology pressures us to renounce dissenting behavior and harms the outliers who swim against the current——the individuals who consciously choose meaning over a life of material stature.  At birth, we are handed a timeline for the milestones that must be reached at each age.  To stray from it is to subject oneself to continual scrutiny and shame.

 

For the past two years, I have struggled to drown out the voices of the naysayers, of those determined to kill the better part of me——the only part of me I have ever known to be true.  I lost several battles in the process and suffered a high degree of debilitation.  However, as I learned from Viktor E. Frankl, meaning is found in suffering, too.

 

* * *

It was a Friday in early October.  The year was 2010.  I was twenty-six, and it was my birthday.  The highly anticipated exhibition, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond: Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay, which I waited well over a year to see, was finally open to the public.  I spent that afternoon with Vincent at the de Young.  

 

Seven of Vincent's paintings were on display.  I must have stood in front of Bedroom at Arles (1889) for an hour.  Seeing his actual brushstrokes from 120 years ago in person was an experience I would not soon forget.  I was intent on taking in every minute detail.  What were you feeling when you painted your bedroom, Vincent?  I imagined him sitting on his bed, turning his head towards the window and peering out into the world.  I thought about him suffering for his purpose, for the very thing of which he was so certain, but which many mistook for far less.  And I remember standing there, a mere few feet from his painting, sharing an internal conversation with a man who lived and died a century before I was even born——the full impact of its resonance bringing me to tears. 

 

* * *

 

How can anything be permanent when we are living in a constant state of impermanence?  How do I reconcile practicality and expectations with meaning and the responsibility of fulfilling a purpose so few understand?  I am not sure.  Answers come and go for me.  Yet, amid the uncertainty, I do know this much: poorer my life would be without art and its enriching experiences, and poorer this world would be had Vincent ignored his life's calling——had he listened to his critics, taken the practical path, and done what was easier. 

There is a reason painting cuts me as deep as it does and why the need to continue painting is unrelenting: it is both the means and the end to my existence.  Painting is the vehicle by which I can reach and serve others——those who are yearning for resonance and connection, those who are searching for the greater meaning in their own lives.  Sharing hope, even the smallest grain of it, with my fellow humans has been the driving force behind this impractical journey from the very beginning.  It is what gives my days meaning, and it is what provides a sense of permanence in a world that is ever fleeting.

-OH

 

 

The Fifth Piece

An Unfamiliar Autumn

2020, oil on canvas
40" x 60"

 

In 2013, I decided to close my series, Autumn Soliloquies, after the fourth painting.  Having labored greatly over the existing body of work, there grew a unique desire to protect it and its integrity.  Somewhere between the start and finish points of October's End, I became convinced it was necessary to divert my focus elsewhere in order to avoid a stalemate. 

Seven years later, in July 2020, I began working on the second coming of Autumn Soliloquies.

. . .

 

An Unfamiliar Autumn, in its current state, is the culmination of many months' work.

 

It is a portrait of days marked by uncertainty and masked in anxiety.  A portrait of fears and the attempts to assuage and overcome them.  An expressive study of humanity's regression in values and the excision of meaningful purpose.  It is a look at the overflow of thoughts, as well as the delicate threads by which individuals are desperately hanging.  A look at the dichotomy between External and Internal.  

 

It is a poem for abandoned truths and virtues, for forgotten places and people.  A poem for the natural world, for the scintillating celestial bodies that grace the deep ebony skies and the comfort they provide for those of us who are searching.  

And there are so many of us who are searching.

 

Multiple layers comprise the foundation to this piece and I consider each layer to hold individual value and significance.  Though I spent the last few years experimenting with different visual elements, I gladly returned to my trademark palette of earth tones for this painting.  Unsurprisingly, I also reemployed an amorphous composition, which is joined by floating, indiscernible parts and scattered lines.  These physical details were brought together in an effort to create a sense of harmonious union between the frenetic and fluid sensations occurring throughout the work.

  

. . .

 

The objective of An Unfamiliar Autumn is to convey the unfamiliarity of a period that feels both short and long, graceful yet embattled.  An unfamiliarity that extends far beyond one season and into an entire year that has been held captive by endless unknowns. 

May we work together to move past the unknowns.

-OH

An Exchange

Sutro (San Francisco, CA - October 13, 2020)

Yesterday.

I made my way through the ruinous baths on an unusually warm October morning.  As my feet fell in line with the familiarities of the dirt trail, my eyes fell upon a man and a woman perched on the remains of a west-facing wall.  The sight stirred me and I gave pause.

In a year that has uncovered deep-seated contentions and the divisive, obliterating nature of humankind, the scene of two individuals engaged in a doting exchange while sitting among century-old ruins marked a stark contrast.  A composition of opposing elements.  A lifeline found amid physical devastation.  

 

As the mist of the grand Pacific gently kissed the pair's rosy faces and waves crashed against jutted rock formations a short distance from their feet, I found myself bearing witness to a candid embrace of human affection.  And I thought, How wonderful it must be to find safety in another being, to know its presence in a collapsing world.

 

-OH

35

 A Morning Named October 7th (San Francisco, CA)

 

One last morning as 35

One part hollow mixed with two parts regret

One deep yearning for a year unspent.

 

Forever, Autumn.

(Double-exposure edit; background photograph taken in Catskills, October 2018)

 

An unassuming note. 🍁

The client — an elderly gentleman — who penned this sentiment on the back of an envelope three autumns ago could not have known his simple mention of fall would leave him forever stamped in this painter’s history (and his note tucked away in a little treasure trove).  Surely I have a strange, unconventional relationship with Autumn, but I suppose he may have one, too.  And perhaps this is evidence of how deciduous trees; hot apple cider; shorter days imbued with warm, aromatic spices; crisp air; crackling fires and toasty socks have a way of connecting humans — knowingly and unknowingly.

Autumn, I say this to you each September, but for good reason: it is so wonderful to have you back again.

 

-OH

 

The Colors of Silence

Markings, No. IV

oil on canvas, 2020

22" x 28"

Swim in an ocean of internal dialogue.

Speak only when spoken words are of true necessity.  

Write candidly. 
Make meaningful marks.

Yield to purpose.  Refuse to supplant purpose with practicality.

Allow lessons to become teachers of light, 

the colors of silence.

-OH

Amelioration

Markings, No. III

oil on canvas, 2020

36" x 48"

Every man has his secret sorrows, which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.  -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


↟ ↟

The Making of Marks

Markings, No. I (Week 2-6, Reworked)

oil on canvas, 2020

22" x 28"

There is nothing I cannot paint over.
-Richard Diebenkorn

---

The unsettling feeling of dissatisfaction coupled with a curiosity surrounding a life unknown to the present one, I set to the task of risking what was for what could be.  In so doing, I am able to give the painting its full meaning, and myself the courage to trust in what I do not see, but know to exist.  

Each mark I make develops a memory within the work and my process, regardless of whether or not I layer over it.  The mark is forever a part of the whole--merging with the new and engaging with it, holding both permanence and impermanence.

-OH

↟ ↟

North Star

December 15, 2018 - A Brief, Quiet Respite  

(art installation: Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirrored Room—The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away, 2013)

---

To be uninhibited by language, by the obstacle of stringing together words and phrases in order to achieve a satisfying degree of expression . . .

Painting had erased the tension I too often felt marred my flow of expression--the tension between the initial moment of feeling and the goal of articulating it.  There seemed to be these unidentifiable words murmuring just below the surface, waiting to be delivered in writing.  As a result, my external attempts to translate the internal in its most unadulterated form met a great deal of challenges and seemed overreaching on most days.

However, painting was the process that allowed for unobstructed first strokes and fluidity.  It allowed for immediate expression without the immediate need for words.  Painting transformed the poems of my soul into raw, honest, physical entities that could be shared with an audience.  They were my wildlands.   

Painting provided more than just a means to organic expression; it gave me purpose, made me resolute.  It set a path that I believed I could follow until dust to dust.

But somewhere in the recesses of 2018 and 2019, my compass stopped working.  Eventually, I let it slip between my fingers.  Maybe I abandoned it.  Regardless of what exactly, everything came to a grinding halt last spring.

You see, trauma holds the power to change everything, including the parts of us we work to sustain and keep engaged through all the years that matter.  When the trauma is deep enough within the psyche and pierces the spirit we once believed to be indomitable, it is only a matter of time before the small crack becomes a loud shatter.

I do not know a lot at the moment other than I have lost my strongest sense of self, truth, trust, and purpose.  I do not recognize the person who now greets me at each reflection: withdrawn, uninspired, burdened with experiences and trauma she wishes she could erase.  To be left meaningless and questioning God is a heaviness I have had to carry quietly. 

Yet, even as I am feeling the brunt of a fractured existence, I cannot deny there is a speck of brilliance present--a still, small voice that continues to encourage me to defy the odds.  Like the very stars that dot the night sky, the very bodies that bring respite in chaos, it tells me a story of profound beauty in the seemingly endless darkness. 

“In spite of everything, I shall rise again; I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.” - Vincent van Gogh

---

↟↟

 

Ten Years

Interlaken, Switzerland - Double Exposure

This year — this decade — will soon pack up its experiences and many lessons, and set sail for the place where the present converges with the past, where younger memories lace fingers with older ones.  Unseen, but it exists somewhere in between the sky and land, the land and sea.

2019 held me in ways I never knew possible.  Its linear form was more undulating than straight, with high peaks and low valleys.  It was a year of simulation — of characters and situations seemingly drawn from the innumerable books I have read through the ages, the stories I have heard.

I witnessed and felt an overwhelming amount — in places that spanned two continents, five countries, seven states, one province, countless towns, and a long string of national parks.

I grew, I dealt, I shattered; I managed through all of it.  This year, as well as the last ten.

I discovered time has a strange way of revealing ungodly truths.  The truths that end up breaking us wide open — sometimes wounding and changing us in ways that go on forever.  Truths about others, about ourselves, about humanity.  It can be a difficult obstacle to find our footing when the dust settles, but how we choose to move forward is part and parcel to our rebirth.

As the new decade approaches, I see the experiences and lessons from the last ten years as a form of magnetic energy.  A push and pull to new heights — encouragement to grow into the person I am. 

2010-2019, you were memorable.

↟ ↟

--

(more photos from Europe to follow)

The Color of Space & Time

San Francisco/Cayucos - Double Exposure

July 2019

I would be stopped at an intersection, observing the rush of the cross traffic, pondering over the small ways in which the world moves about--being no more remarkable than the bowl of fruit that sits on a kitchen table.  That is when something catches me on the inside.  Disrupts the ebb and flow.  It does not take much.  Maybe a thought.  An image.  A sentence.  Someone across the way.  Reminders.  From a distance, I see the water beginning to stir.  A wave is approaching, one with which I am all too familiar.  I know it by the particular tension it emits, a tension that seizes the body and refuses to let go.  Alas, there is no breaking free of it.

So I oblige.  I make room for the crash as the wave gains momentum.  Sometimes, the process lasts a week.  If the stars are in my favor, the wave breaks after several days.  During this period, I swim in perpetual night.  Time continues to march on while I live in ages past. 

I often wonder if the universe is upset with me.  If, perhaps, I have committed some unforgivable sin that justifies the haunting ruminations and recurring memories, which are saturated and riddled with yearning. 

I look out into the ocean and marvel at her unparalleled, unyielding beauty.  It is a strange truth to know that while this endless mass of water harbors millions of living organisms within her, she holds the sovereign power and ability to swallow anything. 

The waves are merely her taskmasters, your wave merely my own.

↟↟

An Open Road

 Upper Glacier National Park, MT

July 11, 2019

Montana.

I enjoy being on the open road alone.  I enjoy it immensely.  In exercising privacy and absence from the company of others, the pressure to be everyone else’s definition of “a person” flitters away and I am reintroduced to myself.

And how much I prefer quiet solitude over the whispering multitudes.

Seven states and over 3100 miles later, I returned to San Francisco after spending a week on the open road — the pinnacle being upper Glacier National Park in Montana.  I camped wherever I could stake a site and woke up to views of the best kind: towering pine trees and mountain ranges nestled among sleepy skies.  I delighted in the still moments during morning twilight — laying in my sleeping bag, looking into the endlessness of earth.

I drove in and out of different towns, teetered on mountain ledges, charted and touched lightly the unfamiliar places, observed the glimmering gold of lakes and rivers.

Grand Teton, Yellowstone, Glacier.  There was not a shortage of national forests in between them.  Wyoming stole my heart.  The Montanan landscapes were everlasting.  Two showers in the span of eight days.  Daily fasting with discipline.  Hiking alone through grizzly territory.  Herds of bison, a couple of elks, a mountain goat, two foxes, three bears (two black, one grizzly), and countless horses.  After years of preparing, planning, and putting off this expedition, being able to experience the northwestern US without distraction from any cohort felt (for lack of a better or more succinct word) right.  

It was personal — this trip.  I had no wish to extend any invitation.  This was a retreat into the rehabilitating elements of nature and the aloneness very few know how to navigate and embrace.  I think it to be something remarkable when one can find happiness and contentment in sitting by herself, disconnected from the vast majority of her fellow humans, being fully present and feeling the shifts in life's fleeting moments.

It is a challenge to articulate and explain the true context of my experience.  However, amid the deep lack of, instead of finding it jarring, I find the blank space to be more than enough. 

↟↟


(additional photos to follow)

 

Wanderers

 AS: No. 3

mixed media on paper, 2019

24" x 22"

(from Alexander Supertramp series)

Across the way, the ocean roars and rumbles
It softens just enough
for whispers to make it out of the night
An exchange
between rising sun
and luminous moon
quiets the land, anchors it
All is still
the quiet reverence of promise.

Write me poems from wherever you find yourself
and they will be heard even unspoken.

Sometimes,

Lee Vining, CA - A Couple of Autumns Ago (on 35mm film)

everywhere seems like nowhere
and nowhere
feels like
home.

I'm still figuring out things.
I collapse into long periods where I withdraw from
people
places
the entire world.
Usually, they are preceded by longer periods of
hyper-activity and production
spearheaded by unspeakable
sadness.

I don't know.
I'm not sure.
Maybe,
one day I'll figure out things.

---

↟↟

Gray Space

Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah

Entry from February 27, 2019:

I was long convinced that all matters could only be summed up into one of two categorical colors: black or white.  A theory that allowed for minimal questioning and overthinking.

Recent introspection and reflection have helped me to acknowledge the overwhelming amount of gray between the two ends--a space beckoning to be considered, understood, explored.

Last night, in the midst of pondering the nuances of the temporal and fleeting, I was met with an epiphanous evening song--one that was altogether familiar and distant.  It was a song I had hummed along to for years, a song as elusive and mysterious as the nightingale.  As I attuned my ears and opened my eyes, I could finally hear the words come through and see every note within its measure.  I fell asleep to the glorious sounds and flapping pages of an unfolding composition.

I have been peeling back layers in an attempt to see past what I always thought could only be one of two parts.  I am taking time to plant and sow new life, to listen to the natural vibrations of the earth.  The path the wind carves.  The silence that follows a storm.  The colors that paint the land at dusk.

I know with the utmost certainty that there are experiences and life lessons waiting for me beyond the perimeter of San Francisco, the topography of California, the coastline of the Pacific, and the borders of North America.  Somewhere far removed from the humdrum of this current existence, there is something greater, something more.

Here's to finding it.

--

Teacher

 AS: No. 1

mixed media on paper, 2019

24" x 22"

How does one accept a lesson in grief?

By our mere humanness, we deny it.  

Refusing to be its pupil.

Protesting against its movement, its colloquial speech.

Scribbling over its illustrative diagrams, layering papier-mâché.

I wonder this: what does life offer to the one who accepts the lesson, even learns from it,

yet finds himself in continual conflict with his teacher?

Can a lesson be taught if the process does not reach completion?

Is there a dimension of grief that remains?

It is a longing of the deepest measures for the one who wishes to let go and return to himself,

to function and desire life again

without being reminded that grief is still present.

--

Opening up 2019 with a series very close to my heart.

Alexander Supertramp

A visual body of work exploring the meaning behind Chris McCandless's words, "I now walk into the wild." 

↟↟

(edited)

Poem to the Unknown

I witnessed, I felt
absolutely everything, and
nothing.
How strange it is, to be left so hard
in an attempt to remain soft.
A year of deconstructing, re-imagining,
rebuilding and finding again the purpose of
this person.
As with the unfinished painting that sits
on an easel, and its painter who has receded to
the back wall, this is, and continues to be,
a work in progress.

---

A note to my 33-year-old self:

It was a year of broken lines.
Yet, you managed. 
You connected the breaks, and
you repurposed them.
You are more courageous than you
allow yourself to believe, more fearless than you let on, and
infinitely stronger than the demons that enslave your mind.
You are capable of love.
And you deserve love.
Happy 34th.

-OH