Earl Remembered

August 17, 2005

I do not have the citation in front of me but somewhere in Earl Stroh’s critical writing, or in a statement from a catalog of one of his numerous exhibitions over the years, he said that serious art is always ethical. True or not, that is precisely how he did the work, lived the work, for a full lifetime.

Most of that life was spent in Taos; at the Wurlitzer Foundation, then at his elegantly simple home in Talpa, which was as much studio as house. But he was singularly a citizen of the world; grown as an Easterner in Buffalo, New York, lived in New York City and Paris, trekked through Bolivia, hospitalized in Rio de Janeiro and traveled throughout Europe chasing the wisdom of his predecessors in art. Examining now his intricately accomplished paintings one is hard pressed to find who he always said was an early influence in Bruegel the Elder. But he is there, as are others Earl deemed fit for an ethical provenance.

At a party in Denver for the unveiling of what is now his last completed oil, Earl disdained the meaning of any particular painting. For the meaning was the work, and so to be worked at, completed, and certainly not talked about. Perhaps that is the ethical aspect he embodied, a philosophy partly influenced by the Austrian novelist Hermann Broch and his novel, Earl’s beloved “The Death of Virgil.”

Because of that belief he was not shy of being critical of the work of others. But in degrees. The accomplished and acclaimed were dealt with a heavy hand, there position being one dedicated to principals, in his world. The most damning judgment in his vocabulary was Kitsch, and if work did not meet the standard it was most definitely Kitsch. Beginners were handled surprisingly gently. Late in my life I began to paint and took some feeble attempts to Earl for a critique. I was a bundled of nerves as we sat down to look. I came away gratified. “This is good,” he said, “but let’s make it better.” And his suggestions did – moving the rhythm to something more distinct, more palpable, helping the painting breath.

In 2004 the Harwood mounted a show of his monumental “Makimoto Suite,” a lithographic triptych that is as intricate a print work as may be visually possible in the medium. On one wall was hung the lithograph. On the opposite wall was a silverpoint drawing replicating the complete lithograph. In between on the side walls were the individual prints from each stone in the piece – a dramatic display of the vision involved in building the whole of the artwork. I had missed the opening of the show but visited several weeks later and toured the quite museum on a weekday afternoon with Earl and David Witt, the then-curator at the Harwood who had mounted the show. That experience was extraordinary, hearing from the horses’ mouths – both artist and curator – about how a man who professed to be lost with the logic of math had played this magnificent 3-dimensional chess game in color. Earl was extremely pleased with the logistics of the show and praised David’s care in treating his work. It was the first time he had seen his suite framed as he had envisioned it all along. His work did not end until the hanging and only then was he satisfied.

Life was not all work, but it was all of quality. Earlier in his years he enjoyed cooking, hunting wild mushrooms for the feast, and later, simply eating. He would reign at the smoking table in the Trading Post Café, watch the sunset from the patio at the StakeOut, pour a Pastis at home while talking with friends, and relish the chance to tell ribald jokes. Emily Ruffin introduced me to Earl years ago when we first became neighbors in Talpa (he thought her design work “superb”) and I was delighted as the filthy jokes began over dinner at Lamberts, expecting to be shown the door by an outraged Zeke. We were not.

His now famous phrase describing how he knew when a painting or print was done, “It tells me,” has come home for good. He had been working on a large oil painting for years now, sanding it down, rebuilding the layers of paint and the movement of lines patiently, critically. Two weeks ago he was getting stronger after the latest round of hospital stays, readying to work again and finish it, already planning the next work, another large canvas in white. Instead, the great creator told him he was finished – completed. His life and work is now bound to the cultural history of New Mexico, finished before that painting, but full and ripe.

Pete Warzel lives and writes in Denver. He has known Earl as friend and neighbor in Talpa for many years. Pete has published fiction and nonfiction in national magazines and is a staff writer for “Southwest Book Views.”