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The Winter of 1979 was a cruel time for Bill Rane. He was broke.
He had lost, but only for a time, those things that mattered most to him personally--much of his family--and, particularly,
his wife. The World had yet to discover his artistic merits. He did not know many of the Taos folks.
He really had no one and nowhere to go--except Taos--and it did not take long. He spent that first Taos winter
living in Taos Artist Tom Noble's studio as he could afford no alternative. The weather was cold but the welcome was
warm.
Bill spent a quick slice of his every morning over social
coffee at Taos' Main Street Bakery where the working artists gathered over conversation, conjecture and a pinch of jocular
humor for measure--just in case intellectual pursuits didn't matter after all. He would leave the shop, with strong
regrets to his companions for a departure prior to a complete resolution of the day's urgent issues--stopping along the Rio
Taos Pueblo for a face splash of fresh cold stream water directly from the river bed, a sort of sacramental ritual to
welcome the day, arriving at his studio just as the optimal morning light first poured through his vast bank of north facing
windows--spreading the strong spectral values that have made Taos legend for the quality, the magic substance, of its
light.
Around eleven in the morning, or even as late as noon, on a day
where he might have concentrated so hard on his work as to become forgetful of time itself, he was off for his
first break of the day involving, perhaps, a light lunch and small nap or a short trip back to town to the hardware store
or, even, later in his life, the Wal*Mart. For Bill, any lunch would be the first calories for the day, except for coffee
sugar, as he did not enjoy the ritual of morning food focusing instead on intellectual stimulation, companions, and his morning routine
that brought him, always, back to his canvas. | |
Once well settled in Taos, Bill loved all things ancillary to his work--the art supply store,
the abiding landscape, the unique Taos light, the joy of other artists and even the controvery of competing styles and philosophies
among the artists--the so called "art wars". Once he established his own gallery, he loved meeting the public directly
in the hope that they would bring news of the flotsam or the jetsam from some "unlikely" development in archeology,
anthropology, or psychology. He took pride that not one but two of the then leading academic college texts on
group psychology featured a Bill Rane painting on the cover.
He had an intense interest in everything and read like a Rocky Mountian stream trout
in oxygenated cold water when the small insects are in full hatch. He always incorporated any new information or theory
into his comprehensive view of the cosmos--leaving nothing-absolultely nothing-out. He was an intellectual combine capable
of breakdown, digestion and synthesis far beyond the "normal" perceptions of the everyday faire. The only material he could
not abide was news of the wholely mundane or the entirely mediocre.
He lived in that New Testament Admonition--the one that values both the hot and
the cold but rejects the luke warm. His embrace of life embodied a similar view of the light and the dark. For
Bill, life was found in the play of so called "opposites". Static values in the middle did not interest him--all
else was fair game.
His view extended to his painterly philosophy and approach. He, particularly,
viewed "abstract", on the one hand, and "figurativeness" (or "realism"), on the other, as simply the same
coin--if, possibly, one each of a particular side. He sought to dance between such "opposites" without
ever resorting to compromise to an homogonized Pablum of the muddied middle. That was sin in his
World.
His work, for him would always resonate between those pesky alleged
opposites--here and there, present and future, subject and object, far and near, color and form, overt symbol and mere suggestion,
man and woman, course and urbane,human and animal, conscious and subconsious, collective and individual, earth and sky, edge
and body, reality and fantasy, void and substance, raw and refined, masculine and feminine, ancient and Western, tragedy and
redemption, massed color and color of the edge (or meeting), texture and flatness, Classic and Modern, the infinite and
definite, East and West, Catholic and Protestant, Judeo Christian and Islamic, the past and the future--the "opposed
pairs" were endless and could always be counted upon to provide the tension, the struggle, and, above all else, the play,
the resolution and the meaning. Ultimately, it seems likely that, for Bill Rane, the greatest such unitarized
'pair' would be the 'painter' and the 'viewer'.
And so after a hard morning of wrestling such beastly duos, and
then a break for relief, he would, now--into the later day, return again to his much loved work.
The lesser afternoon light was tricky and should not be fully trusted.
He would want to work one good long stretch until say, about three-thirty in the afternoon. Then it would be time
to break again. But even until sleep, he would keep thinking of his active canvases, making a few adjustments and checking
the work against that troublesome later-in-the-day light and even man's artificial electric lights. But it was important,
once the darkness started to come back into the light, to have great restraint in actually executing. Until
the morning light came again, late afternoon and particularly, goodness, evening illumination could bring a rash
decision of line, color or form and might wreck the whole day's good progress already achieved.
Observation in bad light was good, even necessary, and slight adjustments
could, and should be made, but big actions, large decisions, should always wait until the return of that special
light--the light that came only with the dawn and culminated from the midmorning until noon or so. He knew this was
true. But, at times, he could not resist and the light of the new day would bring bad news. Corrections would
have to be made.
Around four o'clock it was time to think of dinner. If Bill avoided
breakfast, he loved dinner. There might be time to run to the store for a slice of fish or something else fresh--say
produce. The preparation of the evening meal was a haute ritual affair for Bill--the product always
a beautiful presentation. If such a meal might ever be lacking in substance--that was one thing, but
that it should ever lack in visual presentation and careful consideration of color, form and texture upon the plate--that
was not acceptable as anything less than beautiful food would, for Bill, be an insult to his company--and he
treasured the company of his evening meal.
It was all about the company. Any person to share the
evening meal was company for Bill, wife Judith, children, other artists, buyers or collectors, extended family of any
kind, he would want to set that gorgeous plate all the same. Sometimes, as with his painting, he would struggle,
frustrated, so hard as to visually please that he lost his own appetite. Those were the rare occassions,
upon making that almost formal visual presentation (of the beauty of sustanance prepared lovingly and provided sincerely),
when the only meal he could abide would be to diggest the pleasure of watching the others
feasting on his created, colorful delight. Did they like it, was it beautiful?
Once the final darkness came over the day, Bill's studio house (with
fourteen exterior doors, most with large windows, and with a vast and innumerable number of structural windows, french doors
and window banks) could not avoid the deep darkness that came over the Taos sky. No reason for any despair, this was
prime time for his voracious reading. Thanks, in some measure, to his fond relationship with his
beloved daughter Rosa, who lived her life in bookstore management and promotion, he never lacked for the absolutely latest
in the varied fiction, literature, and paper bound intellectual, or experimental, discourse. But, just as often
he might be rereading, or discovering anew, older works or, even, ancient classic ones. Later in life, television
was fair game, too, particlarly political shows, educational television--travel and discovery faire--and any movie outside
of the mainstream --particularly movies that either reflected or challenged his complicated aesthetic sensibilies.
And the next day he would do it all again as if nothing had happened
or changed from the day before--but the canvases had changed--they evolved one brush stroke, one color choice, one
insight, one decision at a time.
For Bill being meant looking, seeing.
He loved looking at his work in every conceivable and different light--night light, electric light, the light of the day,
the light of the morning, the midday, the dusk, light at the dawn and the noon hour too, reflected light, shaded light, dwindled
light, almost to total darkness, the odd light thrown by the reversed reflection of a painting in a mirror.
Bill could identify a hundred more kinds of light or lighting condition.
He lived his paint in those years.
Taos opened to him. He began to have financial success and stability--at
least for him, however modest to others. It was a pecuniary success that had escaped him in his earlier life.
For once a public formed that, for him, seemed to understand his work
and approve of it--and of him. He began to know a happiness that had elluded him, at least since his time with Judith
and children in La Luz in the early 1960's, before Toronto and before Socorro.
Gradually once settled in Taos, his family began to reform and he believed
that he was in the right place.
He was always grateful to his wife Judith's financial provisons
in keeping some "real" employment in earlier life of the kind that he would not, or could not, abide and he
was glad, even delighted (and manly proud too) to have the chance to repay that consideration--hoping that she elect
to stay away from what he could only concieve would be the pressures or tenacious mediocrity of a day
job--besides he loved Judith's company. He wanted to think that the repayment included fully any interest or penalties
that might have accrued necessarily. He would not begrudge that; he loved her, and
none the less for her sacrifices, and that was beyond all else. It was a debt of deeply personal loyalty that he abided
without question or hesitaton to his last very last breath on a rented hospital bed thrown in the middle
of a hodgepodge pond of paint, canvas, scraps, magazine interviews, newspaper articles, gallery announcements, electic
lights, books,completed and unfinished works of all size and media, artist's monotyping press, massive flat print drawers,
ink, papers, electric extension chords, chemicals and cats--all accented strongly with an unsurpassable view of the awsome,
powerful, Taos Mountain and the chamisa mesa with its descent from this hill, Bill's Hill, down and into the
green, in summer, golden in winter, Taos wetland below--a wetland that always revealed every few days yet another shade
of color or texture--no matter the season at all.
In living in Taos, he understood that he was in dialog with his
public--not the fawning, adoring, mindless public of celebrity, but a cautious, clever, intelligent, restlessly searching and
always loving public troubled by, enthralled with, and deeply interested in, the very same creative subjects and issues
of his abiding plesaure, struggle and drive.
Occassionally a visitor, or even a family member, might make that
obtuse interrogation heard in Billy Joel's Piano Man... "man what are you
doing here"? in Bill's direction: Paris, New York, London, Berlin, Prague, Los Angeles, the Cote
d'Azur, anywhere on the Mediterranean, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Latin America, Jerusalem.... those were
the unstated suggestions.
Bill must have thought them mad. Maybe, maybe, if he'ld gone that
direction--before Berkley, before Carmen, before Judith, before New Mexico, before Guatemala, and, perhaps, above
all, before all and each of the eight children he loved so deeply--but not now. He knew
that he had found his spot and he was not looking for another--having suffered as he had, Taos was the prize and he did not
plan to give it up.
In Taos, he had many contacts with remakable people of every kind from
"steerage to Captian's table". He might only spend one afternoon with any given compadre, never
seeking them or seeing them again, but for him, if the intercourse had reached a certain level of integrity, he would ever
think of the conversant companion as "family" or a profound associate of some kind highly valuing forever
the experience had. But, in keeping with his unique approach to all matters of art and living, he saw no reason to chase
such relationships or to keep written correspondences. Until quite late in life, even phone communication with
family was ackward for him. Intercourse meant being together--face to face.
One conversation with any given angel of circumstance was more than
enough, it was a kind of unlikely miracle all its own. If he had fallen in love with the thoughts, mutually shared
and developed, or with one or more of those he had engaged among; in did not matter to him, as far as trying to
recreate that, because recreation was an impossiblity, and absurdity, to Bill. The connection had already
fully fruited and any later reconnect should not be ruled out but, likewise, in his view, it was a silly waste of time to
try to force the universe to give a repeat performance. He was on to the next experience.
In this manner, Bill was easily misunderstood because, for
him, the time of artistic and intellectual intercourse with another person, or group, but usually just a single person, was
among his greatest joys. Others sensing this in him, and also valuing their experience with him, would assume
that some enduring "forever" relationship had formed as if there would be regular club meetings. But for Bill just one
moment was "forever" enough--no club meetings.
It was not that he did not love the folks he so engaged, and who had
engaged him, but there would be no follow up phone call, no invitation to lunch and certainly, certainly, no birthday
cards. He would not even keep track of the days for himself or his own birthday, how could he be expected to notice
such matters for others? If folks were hurt by such things, he, too, was all the more confused--even hurt.
He especially celebrated companions who shared his view that a ten
minute relationship could encapsulate the totallity of all, leaving permanant alteration in each, without attachment to the
time-space nature of the meeting itself and without any future expectation at all.
As a result of his peronality, his life view, and his ability to deeply,
deeply connect with others, even "strangers" in the solitary present moment; Bill enjoyed the very highest, most evolved,
most insightful, that others had to offer. He got the best from pretty much any visitor into his world. It
was as if, if their life yielded only fifteen quality minutes (out of an entire life span) on that highest
plane, it would be no surprise if Bill shared in those sparse moments.
Many of these individuals were brilliant people, themselves, who
seemingly, somehow, rarely had found an opportunity for discourse on this level--he became their confessors--their savant
for every subject. Some times there were individuals who spent their whole lives avoiding the issues, or pleasures, of
their deeper being and evolution. But, they could open up and share everything with Bill in just one quick conversation
on one seemingly random afternoon under the New Mexican sky. Often times Bill found that his visitors sought him or
Taos at a time of some difinitive life juncture for them such as marriage, divorce, bankruptcy, birth in the family, the
death of a child or parent, news of a grave illness or some other profound change whether "postive or negative".
Sometimes he would muse upon such times thinking of a imago he called the "Laughing Buddha",
not to laugh at the troubles of others but to see the cosmic humor in it all. Oh, the Laughing Buddha, Bill would
think, he laughts "how marvelous you have cancer... how magnificsent what a powerful experience and opportunity". Ultimately, all
experience was positive in Bill's estimation and humor not just the highest intelligence but the greatest tool. Taos,
that remote but storried, sophisticated and, legitimately, legendary Prima Donna of the American Art
World was the perfect place for it All(sic).
His visitors came from around the globe. They were artists;
scientists; titans of industry and commerce; jilted heirs and heiresses; writers; restaurant-table waiters, literary
warriors and want-to-bes of varied stripe; politicians; Hollywood--as well as wild indie--producers
and directors; journalists; disillusioned but brilliant souls jaundiced to drug dealing or other such dark faire;
oddly expressed intellectual rascals of unnumerable form roughly akin, for example, to Ivy League Ph.D. "drop
outs" turned "professional" hitch-hikers, dog walkers or housesitters.
Coming upon the precarious and visually stunning "Camino Militario",
from Espanola and the lowlands below, around the horseshoe curve bend of the road aspiring out of the canyon to the highest
of mesa--so much a new experience that an occasional midwesterner could drive no faster than ten miles an hour because
they had somehow succombed to the flatly false notion that their car might just slip off the pavement
directly into the Taos Canyon river bed of the Rio Grande-- and then emerging into the negative ions and thin air of
the charged elevation marked by the ancient primal beat of the Taos Pueblo People, they had already been "broken
in" and "softened up" and they were ready to talk serious existential turkey.
If they had started the horseshoe curve climb angry, or full of
themselves, the arduous arrival and the Taos Mountain would take care of all of that. The journey would leave them vulnerable--"shields
down". And, if they came as seekers, in meeting Bill, they were rarely disappointed.
Finding him in his studio on Blueberry Hill, or, in later years in
his Ledoux Street Gallery, whether stoking a fire in the cold, sipping hot coffee and cigarette, or sitting in the patio,
lemonade at hand, in the summer, they were ready--and so was he. Meaningful business quickly ensued.
And the Taosenos, ah, those Taosenos many of whom chose to stay after
some strange and supposedly temporary arrival of their own; they could be counted on to fill in the gaps and take the whole
conversation on to ever higher dimensions.
There were also, however, the rare adversaries; fewer in Taos
than in his years in Southern New Mexico, or in his Toronto time; who instantly became antagonistic that such a man (In their
view: a "sorta" ultra intellectual "Freak" who created cultural scandal out of whole-cloth--an oddity
of some seemingly far removed, possibly scarry or dangerous, extraterestrially alien race) ought be allowed to breathe
at all. Such people were not be underestimated in their potential for harm.
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