My Heart Dreams of a Sea of Stars

This painting is titled My Heart Dreams of a Sea of Stars. Click on any of the images in this post for a larger view.

After a long winter where it seemed that I wasn't getting anything done, I've now finished my second painting this spring. I had started it in the autumn but set it aside for a few months until I could focus on it better. This is the third painting of my friend Norma in a boat gliding in the night with a gramophone playing of a series of four paintings so far of people in boats with gramophones in a night sky. Why do gramophones appear so much in my paintings? I think it's because the outside horn gramophones are the perfect blend of romance and technology. They were comparatively portable and gave people who did not have musical talent a way to share music with a loved one. Some of that music can be heard on this blog's music player in the form of a block of songs by the Irish tenor John McCormack who in his day, was an international superstar. McCormack sang both opera as well as more popular songs including his famous and somewhat spooky "I Hear You Calling Me", a ballad about someone pining for his love who has crossed over.


In the more fanciful paintings I'm doing, the gramophone is not only a symbol of romance but in a way an almost steampunk (springpunk?) propulsion system as the sound waves coming from the morning glory horn somehow propel the boat across the night sky. One might imagine the boat would move faster or slower depending on what was spinning on the spring powered turntable.

The gramophone is once again my 1907 Columbia BI Sterling. I'm rather partial to the Victor outside horn machines of the same era, but I actually own the Columbia. Those who are experts on these machines probably have noticed that my Columbia is missing the turntable ring and that the crank is in a slightly odd place. That's because the original motor was replaced with a double spring Victrola motor and the modifications were made with great care and to the untrained eye appear as original. The cabinet was refinished by Roger Rudd of the Kentucky Antique Phonograph Society and a reproduction "Columbia Disc Graphophone " label affixed to the front. I bought the machine from Brian Gorrell, a friend of mine who with Roger restore old gramophones and other antique phonographs. I got this machine knowing it was modified from the original and because of that more affordably. The stronger Victor motor probably plays better than the original. With a fresh needle and a good record it plays as well as it did in 1907.


Now if I could only paint metal more convincingly. I'm getting the mass of the horn, but I'm still having trouble getting that metallic surface right. Maybe my brush strokes are too rough or thick or something. Sometimes I do subjects multiple times because it's as simple as trying to get it finally right. Of course it would be easier to paint Victor machines with their black morning glory horns but their unique petals present other interesting challenges. I've been painting the Columbia more because I have it in front of me instead of relying on my photographs of other machines.

More often than not, it is because there is something that continues to fascinate me about the people I'm painting that causes me to seek often unsuccessfully for that definitive statement of what that person means to me especially loved ones. The emotions felt inside always render pale any attempt at painting them. Is that because my feelings and the pressure of self imposed expectations are too complex to paint, or is it because I need a lot more serious art training than I got at Berea College 24 years ago? Probably a mixture of both. The 1980's were not a particularly good era for artists wanting to be a Pre-Raphaelite but that is a subject for a different blog entirely. I do know that some of the people I love most are the hardest to paint, not only because of my expectations but sometimes theirs as well. Maybe someday I can get out one of those pictures and say to myself "why didn't I finish that?" and then have the whole painting fall into place.

Whatever the reason, I do not intend to let my current limitations as a painter stop me from trying to do better.

My Heart Cries Aloud For Thee--the portrait of Barnabas Collins

I have wanted to do this painting for a long time at least as far back as the days when I had my studio in the tower of Loudoun House, the 1852 Gothic villa that is a sister house to the more famous Lyndhurst where the Dark Shadows motion pictures were filmed in 1971. Dark Shadows fans remember well the original 1795 painting that hung in the foyer of Collinwood, and of the 1967 painting Barnabas commissions from Sam Evans. I wanted to do something different from either of those paintings. This portrait is set in the 1897 storyline era. I imagine a moment where Barnabas has found Josette's music box and he contemplates giving it to Rachel Drummond who bears a strong physical resemblance to his long lost Josette. The music box after all these years still works and its delicate melody sends Barnabas into a sad reverie.

Most people who remember Barnabas remember only the fanging and how sinister he seemed, yet he was even in the early episodes a much more complex figure and played with great humanity by Jonathan Frid. I was one of those kids "who ran home from school" to watch Dark Shadows but even as a six to eight year old child it was never about the fanging for me. Yes, when Quentin turned into a werewolf he was scary though Reverend Trask was far more frightening in the way he destroyed innocent people with maniacal glee without having a single bit of supernatural power.

However, it was Barnabas' sad longing for Josette that resonated across the decades.

Again, it wasn’t about the fanging, the ghouls and the werewolves. It was about one person whose only desire was to go home to his beloved and to his family. Imagine waking up in 1967 after being locked in a coffin since 1795 and you see a world that is both alien and familiar. Faces that you know inhabited by the souls of strangers. You want to find a place in this new life, and you don’t want your family to know what you’ve become. You were a good person driven by forces that sicken you even as you find it almost impossible at times to stop what you’re doing. As Barnabas once said to Quentin as a vampire he had his needs but they disgusted him. Just as you almost completely lose your conscience, the one person you love even more than Josette saves you–your little sister Sarah. With many mistakes made along the way, you choose a path back to being who you used to be even if a cure for vampirism is never quite permanent.
Not only do you have to learn the social customs of the new era but also how language has changed, the mysterious electro-mechanical devices of the 1960's. More importantly, once Barnabas began the path to redemption, he had to learn how to trust again, how to love without inviting the destruction created by his curse. Unlike Quentin Collins, Barnabas' curse was the result of perhaps giving his heart away too easily. Too much of a romantic, even during a romantic era.
All of this was running through my mind while working on this painting. I didn't want to just copy a photograph. I watched hours of Dark Shadows tapes, borrowed my very cool neighbour's DVDs of the 1897 storyline and found inspiration in fan made music videos on You Tube. The end result was a composite of many images to coalesce into Barnabas holding the music box and remembering and longing.

The immutable longing for love.