Life Seasons

Edie Carpenter, Curator for Green Hill Center for NC Art writes of my recent work, "Rod Cooper's small paintings of cyclones seen in silhouette against a glowing horizon speak to man's fascination with nature's power to seduce and destroy.  Like the calm after the storm his new studies of coastal scenes explore a different register of emotional response to landscape.” 

My show of current paintings, titled Life Seasons, in the shop at Green Hill, opens March 15 and hangs through April 15. In these small paintings, I have tried to capture moments in time, markers in my own life. I am completely fascinated by the movement and forceful power of nature. My paintings celebrate the colors of light and of darkness, and our solitude in the face of it.

Carpenter has a keen eye. The past few years have sometimes been tumultuous and stormy. The cyclone and storm paintings reflect that darkness and sense of solitude. My most current work has veered away from darkness and into a brighter palette of quiet acceptance, and silent movement. The newest have a more abstract, ethereal surface, as I push toward the next phase of my creative journey.

My Last Exhibit

The 1976 News & Record story headline read, “Hope for Future Grows on Green Hill.” The writer was discussing the opening of an exhibition of two young artists at the fledgling art gallery, Green Hill Center for NC Art, displaying her pastel use of the puny pun. That rainy afternoon opening was held along with the annual meeting, which was directed by the late UNC-G Artist and Professor Bert Carpenter, with over two- hundred people in attendance. Their budget for the new fiscal year was twenty thousand. The article also discussed the budding Alamance County Firehouse Gallery where a young Rod Cooper was curator of creative exhibitions of NC Artists that were bringing in large crowds to a new audience. The N&R critic loved the work of friend and co exhibitor, Robbie Tillotson, praising his style. Her feeling in one sentence toward my work was that I had not yet defined or shaped my voice or sensibility with the brush and pencil.


That afternoon of the opening was glorious in the rain as all my friends and family came and wine flowed, followed with a fun fete. A week later, the same sad writer wrote yet another article, a critical review praising Robbie and questioning my work. That prominent article in the Sunday edition was completely devastating in my mind, convincing me I had no talent or future as an artist. I hid in a deep depression for weeks, wanting to see no one. Not long after, I put down the pencils and brushes. Up until then, I had rarely questioned  my talents. I allowed one silly article to destroy my little world. The writer was totally correct. I had not yet found my voice or style, and gave up that part of my life much too easily. Looking back, I do not regret my actions, because life took other interesting, creative turns.


Robbie Tillotson was living in NYC at the time of the show, hosting college art students in a west side loft owned by a North Carolina university art department. I had met him during college, where he was bullied, scorned, and thought by most as being mad as a hatter. His art was brilliant, and his figures so edgy with color so acid they were almost painful. He towered tall over the heads of everyone with his huge Afro hairdo, platform shoes, velvet jacket and sometimes a boa or long scarf. He was a recognizable Greensboro figure when he a student at UNC-G, getting his masters degree in painting. Robbie achieved fame as a painter and as an actor in New York, burned hot like a blue flaming star that was extinguished much too soon and way too young. He was a friend and character who breezed into my life and out like none I have ever met before, or since. It was Robbie, who took me to see Andy Warhol and the factory. He was right at home in the circus-like shadows of the seventies sexual revolution. It was Robbie who talked me into buying the now funny leather boots one eye-opening 1972 day in the West Village. Outside, he was all flash yet inside was tormented and masked as the figures in his multi-media drawings. If he had survived, his work would now grace every major museum in the country. Two important young artists who saw Robbie’s solo 1981 exhibition in NYC were greatly influenced by his work. Those men were Keith Haring and Jean Paul Basquiat, who became important artists in their short lifetimes. Portraitist Alice Neal painted a now iconic portrait of Robbie. He led the way for many like the Pied Piper he was.


Green Hill Center for NC is now a preeminent North Carolina Gallery showing the finest contemporary art being produced in the state. I am honored to be showing again 36 years later. It's a bit scary to exhibit after so many years, but my mantra is simple, "what you risk reveals what you value." This time around, my old hide is a lot thicker, and I won’t be so easily discouraged by newspaper critics or my very worst critic, myself.

My terror

Terror

On the fifteenth of March, I will once again ‘reveal’ my soul to the world. The last time I did a reveal was in 1975. Back then, the show was a two-man exhibition with another artist who went on to become a very successful painter in NYC. There was a review of the exhibition in the Greensboro News and Record, and his work was praised, and my work was questioned. By ‘reveal,’ I mean the sheer terror of an exhibition of your own artwork. This show is throwing my soul out there for all to see. There is nowhere to hide now. 

I put down the brushes a long time ago to build a company and raise a family. There was no time for painting in the ensuing years. Since retirement, painting has become my profession, and when asked, “what do you do?,”  I say I am an Artist. I started professional art lessons when I was ten, but painting is not exactly like riding a bike. One I started again, I have fallen off many times, and often overwork a canvas or get frustrated with the brushwork skills I cannot force my hand to accomplish.

My show opens on the Ides of March, in the Sales Gallery at Green Hill Center for NC Art, and there are supposed to be 20 or so paintings due to hang on the 13^th. I am so honored and thrilled to be having a show after all these years, but the Ides of March does have a few fearful fates. Caesar was murdered in the Senate on March 15. As the days pass on my calendar, my dreams are terrible nightmares. Caesar asking, “et tu Brutus?” Another recurring dream is that I am naked in the gallery and pretending no one notices. The third terrible dream involves critics laughing loudly behind my back, saying, “jeez, what a hack and an old fool.”

There are 14 paintings ready, and most of those are at the framer. There are eight more canvases with under painting started or halfway done. I work on multiple canvases at once, as oil paint dries slowly. Today, I thought I had finished a canvas, only to overwork it until it was mush. When that happens, you either toss them in the trash or sit them in a corner, waiting to see if the inspiration will ever come again. What my mind and hand do beautifully on a Tuesday, can be a disaster on Thursday. On Sunday morning, I may be on fire, only to be pissed at myself by Sunday at noon. When I am hitting the high notes, hours pass and I am totally absorbed in the work. When the brain does not click, I become morose, and start comparing my work to other artists, which is always a disaster. Am I being a bit hyperbolic? Too much drama?

Do not mistake my intent. I call my painting and retirement, “my third act,” I am incredibly blessed to have talents that allow me to do many creative things. I truly do hope people who come to my show will like the works, and purchase them. Green Hill is a passion, and I hope commissions will help fund the gallery in these troubled times. My last hope is that I leave behind a small legacy of art, so that my grandson can someday look at my work and know a little about his grandfather’s soul.

Epiphany

Christmas started slowly, building momentum, and as the days grew shorter, time began to fly toward and beyond the solstice, making Christmas and the New Year seem just a blur of the imagination, to the point where I wondered, was it a dream? On this twelfth night, there is finally a moment of quiet to place in words all the wonder and wonderment of the feasts of Saturn and Saints.

The balmy month of December began indoors with hanging hundreds of plastic snowflakes, as party décor for four hundred guests at Green Hill Center's Winter Show. It was a work of love. No snow this year, but flurries of party invitations. It seemed we were stepping out every night for weeks. Watching the holiday through the eyes of my four-year old grandson was extraordinary, and with a child’s sensibility comes wonderment, and sublime merriment. We watched him sing like an angel in the school holiday program, and listened patiently, as the Santa gift list changed daily. His mere sweet presence made our days joyful.

On the morning of December 24th, just after the sunrise, I watched a hawk in a tree twenty feet from my studio balcony. We were eye to eye, and we watched each other for a long time in the crisp, cold air. I wondered aloud if this Coopers hawk was an omen of good tidings sent from the better angels or spirits. Evening found us at home alone for the first time in our marriage. There were last minute preparations for Christmas dinner, but mostly we just lived for the moment in that crystalline glaze of wonderment that only happens on Christmas Eve. Some glamorous guests dropped by later in the evening, and we drank wine and nibbled by the encrusted Christmas tree. On Christmas day, there were ten at our table, and we dined on prime roast beast and fixings courtesy of the chef at Printworks Bistro. I called the meal, “Easy-plate-and-serve,” and it was certainly easy to enjoy and delicious. After desert, the frantic unwrapping of beautiful wrappings ensued, and the younger men in the family began to assemble toys in earnest. Nothing brings out more fun in a group of all ages than playing with little boy toys. Later, everyone slipped back for little more double chocolate cake or apple cranberry pie, or just a sip more champagne.

To wrap up the holiday up with a shiny silk bow, we were invited at the last minute to the coast with a dear friend, and spent New Year’s eve, and the first day of 2012 sunning ourselves in the balmy bright  winter light. In celebration of the New Year, we feasted on oysters, washed down with Prosecco. On returning home, I decided to paint while the beach and sky imagery was still dancing like sugarplums in my head, and spent the first few days of January painting many canvases. After celebrating the end of the season this evening with good friends, I can look back on this night of Epiphany, when the kings paid homage to Christ, when the Yule log burned low, and when the ancient Saturnalia solstice celebration ended. As I look back this starry night on the good fortune of the year passed, I am full of wonder at how truly blessed I am.