When I looked at a tree , it became a flame of rhythmic lines bursting out of the ground .”
Morris Graves
Morris Graves
he was attracted to tempera and gouache , but he never abandoned oil paint . Loosely drawn nudes , reminiscent of Blake and Michelangelo , float and fly and sometimes overlap . Martha Kingsbury wrote that “ The open periphery of the paintings sometimes contained moons , suns , planets , or comets , around a vortex of luminous tangled matter . The vortex or vortices were often dominated by wraith-like forms of humans and rocks , exemplifying the poles of earthly existence and implying all intermediate forms … throughout the decades , his colors persistently suggested a holocaust also : sooty umbers , chalky off-whites , acidic ochres and reds .”
Although he had only an outsider ’ s interest in the Eastern religions espoused by Tobey and Graves , he appreciated the concept of seven stages to Nirvana —“ and as soon as you realize that you ’ ve reached the third or fourth stage then you know that you have to go back to the beginning and start all over again .” He approached painting much the same way , working in bursts of energy for days and even weeks , moving on to new paintings while the old ones were unfinished , producing as many as 30 pictures and selecting only two or three as worthy of his signature . He would return to the others , weeks or even months afterward , but few of them left his studio . At least half of his paintings fell below his standards and were destroyed .
The article in Life brought the four Seattle artists together and tried to find common ground among them , “ They embody a mystical feeling toward life and the universe .” The article referred to the time Callahan spent during the war , watching for forest fires from a tower . What he saw made him “ sense the symbolic aspects of the nature that surrounded him . The turbulent clouds suggested the unending struggle of humanity , while the rocky slabs below symbolized the social bonds and customs imprisoning men .” Tobey is quoted as seeing Chinese calligraphy reflected in nature . “ When I looked at a tree , it became a flame of rhythmic lines bursting out of the ground .” Anderson , it says , was inspired by “ the grey , weathered tones and flowing twisted lines ” of driftwood . Graves had taken three trips to China and found in ancient ceremonial vessels , “ visions of the inner eye .” He found that “ the luminous lines and colors of Oriental art … suggest the shimmering mystery of their spiritual life .”
The article brought the world ’ s attention to the art of the Pacific Northwest , but it also gave the impression that Mark Tobey , Kenneth Callahan , Guy Anderson , and Morris Graves were the only significant artists in this region . There were many other superb artists in the “ Northwest School ” of the first half of the 20th century , including Ambrose McCarthy Patterson ( 1877-1966 ), Helmi Juvonen ( 1903-1985 ), Paul Horiuchi ( 1906-1999 ), George Tsutukawa ( 1910- 1997 ), Hilda Grossman Morris ( 1911- 1991 ), Carl Morris ( 1920-1993 ), Margaret Tomkins ( 1916-2002 ), and William Cumming ( 1917-2010 ).
They don ’ t have much more in common than the region in which they lived and the enduring quality of their work . Time may yet elevate them all to the fame of the “ mystic four .”
48 ART CHOWDER MAGAZINE