Look into the flickering flames. What do you see? Some see their future. Others their past.
In the novel Blood Meridian,the late Cormac McCarthy saw the natural order of the world. “The flames sawed in the wind and the embers paled and deepened and paled and deepened like the bloodbeat of some living thing eviscerate upon the ground before them and they watched the fire which does contain within it something of men themselves inasmuch as they are less without it and are divided from their origins and are exiles. For each fire is all fires, and the first fire and the last ever to be.”
Firelight for the Long and Dark Journey, oil on linen, 24 x 20”
Grant Gilsdorf, the Ohio-based figurative painter, took a long look into the fire and could faintly make out formless shadows that represented all that is unknown. “Fire is an interesting subject because it emotionally resonates with everyone differently. It can be passion, pain, tragedy. It can be purifying,” he says. “That kind of tool, one that can be anything, is very interesting to me.”
The painter’s fascination with flames started in his dreams, which were “weird and vivid.” “I was sitting on this shore. It was evening, sort of twilight with an overcast sky,” he relates. “Across the horizon on the water, this boat was burning. It was unsettling, but also comforting and beautiful in my dreamspace. That image is what started it. I just surrendered to its power, and I didn’t assign any arbitrary meaning to it. I just let my deeper intuition take control.”
To Give Light You Must Endure Burning, oil on linen, 20 x 16”
What Gilsdorf did next was part of that intuition: he brought those dreams into his studio. The ashes of those dreamed flames became the foundations of his newest works, which will be shown starting November 1 at RJD Gallery in Romeo, Michigan. The show, titled Finding the Light, uses fire in every piece. There are burning trees and even that burning boat from his dream, but there are also scenes of figures holding fire or flames bursting from flowers. The artist enjoyed exploring one single idea and seeing where it would take him.
In Bloom, oil on ACM, 12 x 12"
“It’s unique territory for me. It really punched through the subconscious for me. I had to trust that the meaning would reveal itself to me eventually. I was painting, but not sure where I was going with it. The pieces came instinctually. I became a conduit for something magical,” he says, adding that he felt as if invisible hands were guiding his path.
It was only later that he felt like the pieces’ true purpose revealed themselves to him. “I view them as hopeful. There is a sort of unconscious yearning in them,” he says. “It’s a dark world we live in right now. It’s hard to be optimistic, but there is no time for pessimism because time is fleeting. The flames can guide us because the fire is the great presence.”
Keep a Little Light Burning, oil on linen, 14 x 14"
Gilsdorf, who teaches art at a public high school in Columbus, Ohio, says he tried not to go overly deep within each individual piece, mostly because he still felt that fire could be representative to so many different things, each dependent on the person looking at the work. He points to Carry the Fire, which shows a hand holding a lit candle as wax drips from the palm. The image has many narrative possibilities, the artist says.
Carry the Fire, oil on linen, 18 x 14"
In other paintings, the focus is less on the story and more on the beauty of his flames. In Bloom, with a flame appearing on an opened flower, is one example. Firelight for the Long and Dark Journey, showing flames consuming a tree in a twilight landscape, is another. The works can reference life, as in Keep a Little Light Burning, and also death, as in To Give Light You Must Endure Burning, which has a burning boat as if to suggest a Viking funeral.
Embers at Dusk, oil on ACM, 14 x 11”
“Fire is a versatile and important element in life and the same can be said for its role in art,” says Joi Jackson Perle, RJD’s gallery director. “It can light the way, signal danger or symbolize the fire within us. Grant Gilsdorf’s works in Finding the Light present all these moments in the most stunning visuals that capture the mesmerizing properties of fire.”
Gilsdorf’s show will continue at RJD through December 4. —
RJD Gallery 227 North Main Street • Romeo, MI 48065 • (586) 281-3613 • www.rjdgallery.com
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