We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust. The poet Rumi gave us these prescient words in the 13th century, and as true and beautiful as they may be they don't give you much to hang a hat on. Seven centuries later and the situation in which we find ourselves is every bit as peculiar. For although we have learned much, the true nature of space and time, the very fabric of our existence, remains elusive. The heavens are still very much a mystery, and all the hard-won knowledge we have secured through painstaking study and observation has only served to heighten that mystery, to make the universe seem even more incomprehensible. There are more galaxies, more stars, and (we're finding out) more planets, than we can ever in principle count; and that's just the universe we can see. Space is expanding outward at ever greater velocity, and past a certain distance it's expanding faster than the speed of light, such that we will never see all that is truly out there. This is big mystery, and it's right above our head. All the time.

We must remember that daylight is the exception, that night rules the universe. Every twelve hours or so, as our planet spins on its axis, we turn to face head-on the light of a nearby star, which due to its astronomical proximity is blinding in its intensity. But drop us instead at any random point in all of space, or even within our own Milky Way, and the odds are overwhelming that we would be very from any star, and therefore in perpetual nightfall. A dreary prospect perhaps, but imagine the unceasing spectacle in the sky we would get to witness. That same spectacle is available to us every night, and if we are fortunate enough to be in a remote place at the right time then we get to see it in its full glory. In those moments we can get a real sense for the granduer and the immensity of it all, we can truly appreciate that this is the situation in which we find ourselves. Stuck to a ball, floating in space, expanding outward with verve. Toward what, who can say. From where, no one knows. It's not just something to take in while you're camping, it's always there, the stars are always there, the mysterious spectacle never abates.

All summer long these flowers sat under a tree in my neighbor’s yard, proudly displaying their vivid color for all to see. It wasn’t until I noticed them in the cool light of an overcast autumn day however that I was truly struck by their beauty. For a moment I stood transfixed, arrested at the sight of their simple truth. Trees get all the glory when it gets to be October, their dazzling foliage inspiring artists and non-artists alike, but this little plant, humbly stating its case under the protective arm of a large pine, spoke to me at a deeper level. October is the month of my birth, and these half-wilting Inpatiens, not to return next year, reminded me of the impermanence of all things. Its scattered petals a reminder that all things borrowed from the earth must eventually be returned; would that they be returned as gently as a flower falling to the ground.

Francis Bacon said the job of an artist is always to deepen the Mystery. I’ve always found it meaningful that he used the word deepen. Not discover, or reveal, or even expose, because he knew that no such probing was necessary. The mystery is out there in plain sight, everywhere, all the time. What is necessary is only to deepen it, to offer it in more stark relief.

Mystery in a painting can be achieved in many ways. At a purely technical level I think of it as a blend of complexity and suggestion. I try to achieve this blend by allowing the paint to show itself in all possible manners. Artists layer their paint on the canvas, and for me a good painting has all the layers that are possible: from very thin washes of pigment to thick impasto; from large brush strokes to tiny flecks, from transparent to opaque. It also has a looseness to the brush work and an apparent randomness to the way the layers are laid one over the other. All this layering and brushwork creates ambiguities in the painting that become opportunities for the viewer to engage in the mystery of not just how the painting is composed, but perhaps in the deeper metaphysical mystery of how we perceive the world around us.

I don’t attempt to describe everything with complete specificity, either. I intentionally leave areas of a painting less finished. If this is done just right, the juxtaposition of finished and unfinished areas can tickle the mind, like a good puzzle or mystery. And we love puzzles! But it is a tight rope to walk indeed. Too much specificity in a painting kills the imaginative spirit. Not enough of it destroys the implict trust between viewer and artist. And this trust is aboslutely paramount: you must believe (in an instant, that's all I've got) that I knew what I was doing, otherwise what I may have hoped to call mystery you may simply call a mistake.

This past August my wife Rebecca taught an evening NIA class at All Souls Interfaith Gathering in Shelburne. Familiar with the location I decided to tag along with my easel to see what I could see. The sunsets turned out to be amazing, one better than the next, and five rainless Wednesdays in a row in Vermont is a miracle in its own right. So I did five studies, four of which captured the sunset reasonably well. All of them were done within the span of an hour and a half, literally as the sun set and the light faded. There was little time for contemplation or correction. As such, I consider them true plein air studies, in the purest sense: no careful drawing and no predefined plan; just my immediate reaction to the colors and shapes before me.

All Souls Study 3 has a pencil line peeking through on the left side. I initially planned to use a more square canvas, but changed my mind to include the extra few inches on the left. I figured the pencil mark would get covered up but in the rush of capturing the scene some of it was left showing. Normally I fix this kind of thing in the studio, but I decided in this case not to mess with it any further. Sometimes a study done on location feels like an unalterable moment in time, like something fortuitously and fleetingly captured (maybe even stolen) and is not to be tinkered with or altered after the fact. For this reason all four All Souls Studies stand as they are, exactly as they did in August, equally full of the beauty of a Vermont sunset as well as the hits and misses of the artist trying to capture it.

All Souls Study 4 is nowhere on display. It was an experiment in transparent washes using several modern pigments, with names like Quinacridon and Dioxazine, that are new to my palette. It was a complete disaster. For a true artist, of any kind, it is never enough to simply rely on what one has already learned, to simply accept what one can already see. I am constantly trying to push the medium further, to push my vision further, to see how I can more effectively convey my intention. Part of me would like to say that given the primacy of this kind of experimentation All Souls Study 4 should be displayed, for better or worse, to bear witness to the artistic struggle. However, the uncompromising critic in me says that while a pencil mark on an otherwise spirited rendering is one thing, showing off failed experiments and lapses in focus is quite another. These are best left for the artist to ruminate on alone, and for others to uncover ages hence, or at least after I’m gone.