The Torch
It's not easy to carry the torch of art. It is an all consuming fire. It is demanding because "it" knows how much it gives back. I've been at this game for years and only now am I beginning to see the underlying light buried within. There is inside a most remarkable freedom. The most important thing for me was to believe that it was even there. The more I worked the more it revealed itself to me. Now and then there are moments of ecstatic joy. I never know when it will arrive and am always dismayed at it's mysterious departures. But one gets called back into it again and again. There is something in the creative act that bares witness to the very pulse of life. In that place you go beyond yourself. You dance with your own soul and so come to know it. In short, art is a priceless adventure and well worth the effort.

Playing the Instrument
For my part I desire only to paint. Life has narrowed to these singular events. Performances with the brush. Gig to gig. Motif to motif. The pictures that are born are only testimonies of the dance. Witnesses of things found and lost. I am amazed at how natural the process has become. The palette has become a kind of keyboard where colors and line are played in musical composition. The subject is a score on paper. Notes waiting to be played. The strange thing is the urgency of the process. This desperation to indulge in the mystery. To create you really have to narrow choice. Ironically in the fine line of reason infinite possibilities emerge that seem to be all your own. What emerges is a the sense of inner freedom. Liberation from the tyrannies of time. So this is serious business. They don't teach this in art school. You got to find it on your own.

Performance
The core of painting lies in performance. The energy of it's creation is found in the determination of the painted stroke. Every mark should be unique. Sometimes you lead the brush and other times the brush leads you. This is a constant dynamic that requires an intuitive response and the perfect balance is often illusive. In the opening one tries to find the underlying energy of form and color upon which to build. It is often a dark and vague place but surprisingly sensual in the embryonic alchemy of paint and oil. There is no definitive commitment yet to the greater model only the moment giving birth to new life. It is sometimes hard to know if you have gone deep enough or if you will find the way back out. You are throwing yourself into a cauldron of mystery, this the great leap that brings you back again and again. It is a fiery furnace that drives itself in endless motion, giving energy and requiring the same.
 

Impressionism
The young painter Paul Cezanne once asked his mentor Camile Pissarro, What is the meaning of Impressionism? Pissarro answered, An impressionist is someone who never paints the same picture twice. I responded to this dialogue by taking the title Impressionist for my upcoming exhibition of paintings Roderick Smith Impressionist I understood Pissarro’s comment at the core. Impressionism is more than just about light and color. It is about being able to step out of the bounds of time and enter into a personal encounter with what we see. The nature of working in the elements of light and weather is that we soon become vitally aware that things are changing from moment to moment. I see this as an opportunity to engage the transitory reality by dancing along with it. I reject the idea that Plein Air painting is a learned technique or formula that can be applied to create a picture from nature. Fundamentals are surely involved but this is something completely different. Knowledge of the painting arts in landscape for me is a tool for venturing into unknown realms where reiteration is not a goal nor a reality. The world outside ourselves in the urbanscape and in nature are ripe for interactive process. The sun screaming across the sky being chased by clouds challenges the northwest painter to try and ride the movement and not loose his footing. It is an exhilarating contest that plays out like a dance couple lost in the music. For the past four years the world of landscape painting has carried me far and wide. The upcoming exhibition will feature some thirty paintings from Mexico, California and the Northwest. They are performance pieces and carry with them the strong insistence that the brush stroke is the energy of the moment and should not be lost.
 

Freedom in Action
Monet describes his process as engaging forms of the motif not for what they are but for the actual sensation of what they display In other words he felt he was most free when he wasn't trying to recreate the thing but rather record the sensation of seeing it So a house on a river might just be an orange square with a yellow twig for a roof. I am trying to paint that way, out of mind, that is with as little intellectual baggage as I can get away with. the dancer flying across the stage surely is not thinking about some technique or some lesson he is suppose to remember, he might get hurt if he does. For me painting is about freedom of the spirit pure discovery, epiphany, ecstatic moments. What little I know about painting I have gleaned for this one purpose. The painting itself is hoping to become a talisman for the display and celebration of these goals. Herein lies the problem. To succeed a painting has many formal attributes that must be managed I think drawing is the best way to deal with and get rid of these troublesome academic issues In the field I do way to little of this as I am bursting at the seams to "fly away" my goal is to hold back from painting and draw my way to the "stage."

A Painting from the Coast
"Bone Yard of Wood" was created "plein air" on a small 8x10 panel. Strewn in a heap, an impressive stack of weathered driftwood gathers at the mouth of a small river entering Indian Beach along the Oregon coast. The color of weathered timber runs the palette. Deep blues and violets attend  the shade and the massive old sticks light up like neon in orange and pale yellows at the hint of light and then when the clouds stack just so they lay there like the bleached bones of prehistoric leviathan here the game is "deep" no lagging behind, winsor blue steps upon the stage. a feeling emerges from within, you start drawing again when you thought you were suppose to paint, it's only when your strokes are free and groping the unknown, that the pleasure truly lies, it's beyond sight, it's the way something appears and sets a tone, visual musicality, you let yourself go, following the lead of vision turned into paint, delicious intercourse of color and shape, the glowing presence of a muted dyes gives life to the body and you hover over this wide embrace.

Pleasure of Painting
I paint like a demon but as I have said before it is in some ways a fools paradise. Highly addictive and a feeling emerges from within, you start drawing again when you thought you were suppose to paint, it's only when your strokes are free and groping the unknown, that the pleasure truly lies, it's beyond sight, it's the way something appears and sets a tone, visual musicality, you let yourself go, following the lead of vision turned into paint, delicious intercourse of color and shape, the glowing presence of a muted dyes gives life to the body and you hover over this wide embrace.

Dancers of El Chorro a Painting
Upon the red and yellow terraces they arrive like butterflies in the garden. Magically the music brings them into perfect step. Their light cotton dresses rise and float in the twirling motion and in the golden twilight they vanish into their perfect bloom.

From the Abandoned Orchard
The siren's howl upon the slopes of Mt Angel. When the bells of chapel ring, when the geese honk southward overhead, when the lone tractor pulls into a distant field, the noise is deafening. Crooked branches intertwined. Apples fermenting. Yellow bits of color fall. A sad parade. In the distance the volcano shivers waiting for its heavy blanket of winter. The earth spins forward. There are tremblings underfoot. Steady now. Lean forward. Scrape back all which you have given. Dig for more. It's all passing before your eyes.
 

Tough talk on Landscapes
What you say about looking at life in the abstract rings oh so true with me. Applied to painting it is that moment when you realize you have to scrape down all your marks and step back and see what the composition looks like again. On canvas you can't take all the paine build on that.  That's the basic process of painting. That's why I never consider paintings that fail for any reason to be a failure they remain a kind of enigma towards the future they come around again and can contribute an unexpected fury beneath another work that if taken advantage of can create images of considerable power I call it underlying' integrity."  When you look at serious paintings in the museums they have this "subrosa" this thing beneath. Nice little gallery gift shows with nice little landscapes often don't. They settle for the expected image the one determined from the start the one that technique will give you every time over and over again. They die before they are born. Great lives are built of personal struggle and the courage to go into the unknown. These lives take full advantage of the high drama of their own existence. Tragedy gives way to ecstasy These souls brave the borderline. There is always something emerging. Something never seen before. Something of real value. A truly living soul.

Misc

I paint directly from nature, attempting to capture the spontaneity of the moment. I work in a balance between the objective aspects of the forms seen and my emotional reactions to them. My hope in these works is that they might resonate with an energy that is physically tangible, a sensation of light captured and held by the movements of the brush."