The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the present, and the only prophet of that which must be, is that great nature in which we rest, as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, that Over-soul, within which every man’s particular being is contained and made one with all other, that common heart.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Over-Soul”
If you have a chance between now and Oct. 18, you should drop by Little Rock’s Cantrell Gallery and take a look at the John Deering exhibit, “The Arkansas Traveler.” If you do, you’ll experience a series of beautifully rendered, unsentimental yet peace-inducing scenes of daily life in and around our natural state.
If you know John Deering only from his work for our newspaper, you probably already understand that he’s a versatile talent of the first rank. But you might not realize exactly how deep his soul runs. You might think he’s only an excellent illustrator—you mightn’t know he’s a great artist.
I’m not sure John recognizes this; he’s a helpful and humble man who simply does his work. I think he cares as much about the drawings he does for the newspaper as he does the paintings and sculptures he does on his own time—I think that it must be all the same to him. (I shouldn’t review his work without mentioning that I count him as an inspiration, a friend and a mentor.)
One of the paintings in John’s show is particularly dear to me; it is based on a photograph my friend Paul Bowen took of Karen and me while we were walking our three terriers down Kavanaugh Boulevard, something we do every day when we’re home.
Were I looking at the painting with any distance (which I cannot attain), I would probably talk about the greens and golds and the play of shadows and light, or maybe how the arcing sidewalk carries the eye down and right across the canvas. They say we are programmed to look for representations of faces (our likenesses are impressionistic but recognizable; we could be any couple but we are most definitely ourselves) but I find myself drawn to the three fuzzy figures at my feet.
You can deduce something about John’s skill and intuition in the way he—with what looks to be a few quick strokes— has apprehended the essential spirit of Paris, Dublin and Audi. They are energetic feists of flesh and fur, surprisingly intelligent little beasts who strut through their neighborhood with the impudent confidence of little hip-hop impresarios. Nothing has ever hurt them, no one has ever failed to defer to their indomitable cuteness. So far as they understand, they are bullet-proof, and I intend to do my best to preserve their illusions.
I think what John is trying to do with this series of paintings is to tap into little moments of routine sublimity, those times when the devices that insulate us from the world around us dissolve and we become—as the transcendentalists say—“one with the universe.” Moments when we forget ourselves.
And we forget ourselves when we walk the dogs. One way to approach nirvana is through sheer repetition, and by conservative estimate, we’ve made the trip that John depicts more than 5,000 times since we moved to Hillcrest. The dogs have rotated out—we’ve traded 180 pounds of Coal, Bork and Sherpa for about 50 pounds of rescued terriers—but the steps are familiar. We have worn the sidewalk smooth along the Allsopp Park Promenade; over the years we’ve probably picked up $100 in change from the silicate sparkle of the gutter. (Dublin is the chief money hound — I’m not counting in that total the crisp $20 bill she presented me on Walnut Street one evening.)
We do not do it for the dogs, although we say we do and we insist on their company. If anything, their eagerness stays us from skipping or postponing an outing. We are famous locally for being caught in downpours, seeking shelter on neighbors’ porches or straggling home with soaked fur and chattering teeth and sodden T-shirts plastered to our backs. (Heat does not stop us, though when it tops 95 or so Paris might insist on cutting a walk short by taking the path that hugs the fence by the Ozark Point Water Treatment Plant.)
I do not know if they enjoy the walks as much as we do, or if we only impute an eagerness to them. Maybe they don’t want to walk, they only want to be with us. (But Sherpa, who never seemed to much care if we were around or not, would even in her dotage straggle down to the gate when we began to harness up the others. She walked with us until she couldn’t, and then we towed her in her wagon. She wanted to go.)
This crew is still relatively young— sisters Paris and Dublin are 6 years old, which seems impossible. We have had our Audi for three years.
I know that nothing lasts; Coal and Bork and Sherpa and others are gone, some of the people and all of the animals I knew as a child exist only as dim memories. But, for all practical purposes, everything’s eternal too. So long as memory blinks, so long as we can close our eyes and see. And if the world ends and there’s only some cold black hum with no one to perceive it, so what? We’ll have lost nothing for having lived this way, for having incorporated these creatures into our lives.
What John has captured in his painting is a moment of tranquility and grace, a moment that’s no less holy for having been so lightly spent. For in that moment, there is no me but only us, a common heart that I’d argue animates us all, whether we fall within the frame or not. Whether we can untangle sense from these marks or not.
John started to call his painting “The Three Graces,” and then, as is his prerogative, changed his mind. But I think I prefer the working title, which alludes to Antonio Canova’s statue of Zeus’ daughters, Euphrosyne, Aglaea and Thalia—minor goddesses of beauty, charm, creativity and joy. For that’s what my girls are to me—“they maketh my spirit to shine,” and I love them.
John somehow got all that into his painting. He is the real thing.
pmartin@arkansasonline.com
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