22 February 1993
Dear Phillip:
What a joy to receive your letter. This envelope of yours is surely packed with a lot of news. Your family is now situated in a kind of paradise! The land, the hills and vegetation must be beautiful. Your wife is teaching. And you cannot find work. For a while, this may be a blessing in disguise? Working, thinking as an artist, that means to sense life as it is. Few artists are truly artists - because they cannot, will not sense life, clouds, mountains, plants, children, people as they are. Why not? Why can these many people not sense life as it is? --preconceived ideas? You bet! In a rush? You bet! once in a rut there is hardly any chance that these people ever come to their senses; ever.
Proof? Well we may look at what Nixon called the silent majority. Silent? Perhaps the more appropriate term would be = silenced !!! Well, you are still thinking and aware. NOT lost yet. Keep up, keep your head above the water, look at life between the rocks, between the leaves of your environment. And I gather you are taking your children with you when walking into this island paradise. Ask them what they see. A Gecko? A lizard? A bird? -what kind? what color? what pattern? what does it live on? The same when we see people = what do they think? Why do they think money-? and not: how can I help you? or how would you like it if I make you so free that can tell me what you think of me! And what we do together, planting a garden, a forest.
Your work, as represented in the photos, show me a person whom we in older time (60 years ago) would have called a master. A master knows/how to/make things work in a given setting. That includes the Zen masters. ONCE a very rich lady in Canada addressed me with that word. I sort of shivered. I thought it inappropriate for me, since I never thought of, to have mastered anything -forever growing into what there is- to let "things" "speak" for themselves. Never a system or structure or method. That is all delightful = the older I says to the younger = teach me.
Perhaps in your remoteness, removed from the self accelerating stimulus of a hectic civilization you may discover what Cezanne (the only painter who did?) discover when he painted simple people, simple landscapes. (If I dare make a verbal statement: and as a fool as I am, I love to dare) Cezanne in his way, and Van Gogh in his, and Gaugin never, neither Renoir or Matisse or...
Cezanne in his way discovered what every mother knows by heart (until civilization tears it out through education and indoctrination?) that things out there = every single thing is connected with all there is in a most magnificent, enticing way. This I can see too in your work. (only?!!) Cezanne kept the image, the pattern, the direct connection to the very "thing" which was his cause for looking + thinking + feeling + action. He celebrated life, he was in an overwhelming way (illegible) of the interwovenness of all there is = stone, air, plants, animals, and stars (i.e. our sun, light, room to be in.)
You know all this too well. So? Do not lose it, strengthen your self in it. How? By talking with the children of the land with the land with the water with the people
no comma
Now I will go back to my lump of clay. Then to town to mail this letter. Then up into the hills, two feet of snow. I do feed the birds, rabbits, squirrels and deer, one raccoon and one very old (big) opossum.
Designing a foldable (collapsible) modeling stand to take with me on the airplane - to Europe. The first try weighs 40 lbs, the second 22 lbs, now the third try...? I'll let you know how I make out.
In the meantime, keep your wonderful spirit refreshed with mountain air. Perhaps when convenient I may be able to save enough and visit you over a weekend? Greetings to your dear wife and the children. Soon I will write you again Phillip and send a few photos. Thank you for your photos.
Love, Wolf
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