A piece of spide silk trails from John Cleaveland’s shoulder. It catches the morning light like fishing line, bobbing in the soft wind and rising with the occasional whip of a car. Cleaveland has just climbed down from atop his 1947 Farmall tractor. He’s ridden it across the highway, illuminated from behind by the rising sun. In sleepy Farmington, it seems like he’s pulled the day into motion, chugging the few hundred yards east from the studio where he lives and paints to his woodyard, the setting of his Saturday mornings. On this side of the highway, the wood-side, he leans against his red tractor and takes a swig from one of the two canteens of coffee he’s brought along. It’s a glary day, and he squints up into the morning.
“Up late painting?”
“Yeah. 2 am.”
Cleaveland still does not notice the bit of spider web sticking to his shirt as he reaches for the pull-start on his wood splitter. There is work to be done.
Those who have driven down 441 will likely recognize the neatly painted sign for “Farmington Firewood,” or, perhaps, they have seen the silhouettes of two round, wooden structures, “stupas” or “round piles” as Cleaveland calls them, sitting solidly in view from the road. Recently, one has been adorned with a striking “finial,” the large ornament resting on the stupa’s apex, rough-hewn from a single round of wood during a duet between Cleaveland and one of his chainsaws, the structure’s finishing touch. As the centerpoint atop the circular, wood-shingled roof, it plays a functional role as a support anchor, holding the roof together, blending structural necessity with a strong, curving profile; it’s Cleaveland’s touch, and it’s certainly beautiful.
If he’s not in the woodyard, John Cleaveland is most likely painting. His recent show at the Carter Center, featuring 26 landscape paintings of places from Jimmy Carter’s book, An Hour Before Daylight, demonstrated the quality of his art, and the work that it took to get there.
Cleaveland sought to transport viewers to where Jimmy Carter grew up. “In An Hour Before Daylight, Carter’s writing was really good at describing people, 64 but it only scratched the surface of the landscape. I felt like I could add to that story. If I could put an image with the words, there could be something more than both… I could give you the ground, not just how hot the sand was, but its color.”
Cleaveland likes to say, “All you’ve got to do is…,” leaving the statement unfinished and the other party at a loss for an answer. He seems to enjoy the cliffhanger, but if you spend enough time with him, it’s clear the answer to “what you have to do” is not in his words. Cleaveland will show you, take a look at any of his exhibitions. In fact, he’s already in motion. He says it best himself, simply put: “Work is my thing... I work.”
And his work does speak for itself, whether it’s his woodyard or in his painting, where, amongst other narratives, he seeks to paint landscapes of “what is lyrical or magical around us… like when you are walking to a creek, any creek, and you look at it long enough, you will find the play of light. There is something beautiful there, you just have to notice it. The painting might not be that creek that you know, but a creek like it.” To Cleaveland, the ordinary creeks and other landscapes that are a part of his life are not “just spots in the woods in Georgia,” they are beautiful and deserve to be protected.
It’s simply “his purpose.” He imagines the shape of his chainsawn finial point, the piece that ultimately holds the round structure together, as resembling a “splash of rain” whose dropletesque form holds a metaphor for the finite time he has to create and hone his craft. For him, “Our existence is but a flash… a finite number of moons.”
Cleaveland’s art is always changing; there’s always a new set of problems to solve. “The round pile I just finished doesn’t look like the round pile I built the last time I did it. Not because I was trying to do it differently, but I was trying to do it the best I know how.” This is Cleaveland’s drive, to paint and create in the best way he knows how, and to do so relentlessly.
