It's a Very Private Picture

Abstract

Michael D. Hall In the weeks since Bert Hemphill passed away in May of last year, I've spent considerable time thinking about this very special man and his influence on my life. Remembering Bert, I suddenly saw, in my mind's eye, one of the most paintings in his collection-Stag at Echo Rock. It is work that Bert referred to as a very private picture. My epiphany was the realization that in expressing my own private interpretation of this picture, I might publicly share my lasting impressions of Bert Hemphill and his many gifts. Stag is classic late-nineteenth-century folk art painting by an unknown artist. It depicts buck deer standing in the middle of country road that winds around rock formation, turns across bridge over small stream, and disappears into the woods beyond. At the lower right of the painting, the heads of two harnessed horses tentatively intrude into the scene. Winter snow blankets the landscape and the startled buck stands stiff legged in the center of the composition. Staring out at the viewer, the deer seems uncertain whether to freeze in the path of the oncoming horses, or to flee from them. Bert's favorite adjectives were wonderful and marvelous. He used them both every time he talked about Stag at Echo Rock. For it is, indeed, picture that inspires wonder, and one that prompts us to marvel at the inventive originality present in the best folk art. Bert profoundly identified with this painting and referred to it as one of the crown jewels of his collection. On another level, perhaps he understood it as visual metaphor for the whole of folk art. We will never really know what he saw, but revisiting this painting we can remember the Bert Hemphill I knew and loved-a man utterly absorbed in his own never-ending enterprise of self-invention and self-discovery. In my view, the deer that dominates Stag at Echo Rock is one of those awesome prototypical figures that ties folk art to the very nascence of art itself. The stag evokes our real and imagined memories of the bison and deer that swirl across the cave ceilings at Lascaux. The stag represents everything Bert admired in primitive art. It appears at Echo Rock like phantom-a creature like the unicorn, more fantastic than real. The stag is much like Bert: shy, elegant, magical. The stag is folk art the way Bert talked about it: mysterious, powerful, nimble, and elusive. There are other metaphors at work as well in the painting, particularly the tangled forest and the road. The road intrudes human presence and purpose into the landscape. The forest signals the mystery of nature-the natural realm where instinct rules. Bert loved art history and the control that great artists bring to their aesthetic endeavors-