The Angle of Regret

Painters, photographers, and romantics all know that late afternoon light illuminates the choices made, not made, and those lost in time

(Photograph by Jeff Rennicke)

There is a certain slant of light that pierces the heart. When the sun hits just so, it illuminates corners that can, most of the time, remain safely in the shadows, raising sometimes prickly questions that have gone not only unanswered but often unasked.

That light comes most often in late afternoon. The first shadows pooling in the foreground signaling the slow slide into evening. What has been done that day, is done. What remains may never be. It is the angle of regret.

Russell Chatham knew it well.

Paintings by Russell Chatham

Russell Chatham (1939-2019) was a western landscape painter, living much of his creative life in Montana. Grandson of the renowned painter Gottardo Piazzoni, Chatham was a master of mood with a skill set to place him among America’s elite artists and yet, perhaps because he was self-taught, he retained enough self-doubt and unpretentiousness to make his works relatable to those with dust on their boots and horizons not museums in their eyes.

In the gallery bios and art books, you will see him called a Landscape painter. But, what Chatham really painted was something else, something all of us have, particularly when that afternoon light slants just so. What Chatham painted was unanswered questions.

(“Headwaters of the Colorado River” by Russell Chatham)

“No art form leaves us quite so alone with ourselves,” wrote Jim Harrison (who often used Russell Chatham paintings on his book covers). In a Chatham painting, there is always a hint of haziness, blurred edges, and light the color of half-faded memories. In a Chatham painting, you are always alone, even viewing it in a crowd. What you see in those indistinct horizons and half-lit valleys then depends as much on what you see in yourself and how you feel about the choices you’ve made and not made.

(photograph by Jeff Rennicke)

I think of Chatham often aboard the Little Dipper or walking a shoreline in the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, wondering when the light slants just so if I made the right choice when I turned my back on the life of a travel writer to focus on just this one place. I feel it when scrolling Instagram posts of other photographers, listening to friends, or former writer colleagues talk of adventures they are planning to far away lands or those they have just returned from. Those horizons still exist, however hazy, in my soul.

Still, you can’t commit to one thing without giving up something else. Every choice has a shadow, something given up in the selection and pursuit of another. It may not rise to the level of a “regret” with all of the sharp edges inherent in that concept, maybe just a dull ache, hardly noticeable until you are quiet, alone, in a certain slant of light.

It is the “sigh” of the narrator retelling his choices “somewhere ages and ages hence” in Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken." It is what haunts the old fly fisherman in “the half-light of the canyon” in the famous last sentence of Norman Maclean’s novella A River Runs Through It — “I am haunted by waters.” It is the sun beginning to set, the shadows dripping blue and the sky going pink. It is that angle of regret.

(photograph by Jeff Rennicke)

Perhaps it is human nature to look at every stand of trees and wonder what is on the other side. Or, to look at every ridgeline hazy with that blue ache of distance and wonder what the light, or life, might look like from over there. It is one of the physical realities of time and place; you can’t be everywhere, and do everything. Choices must be made and so some things must be given up.

I don’t want to hide from that truth, in my life or in my work, to pretend that there is never a sense of regret for roads not taken or trips turned down, to act as though there are not, and never could be, second thoughts. There are. There always will be. And so when that certain slant of light appears, I don’t look away. I acknowledge it, that longing I feel in a Russell Chatham painting and let it into my own writings and photography. It is there, just as truly as the joy and adventure and beauty. And so is just as much a part of the story.

(Photograph by Jeff Rennicke)

The truth, of course, is that life on that side of the ridge may well have been worse if you had turned towards “the road not taken.” Another choice may have simply left you on that side of the fence looking back longingly pining for the green of the grass you are now standing on.

So it isn’t so much the certainty of your mistakes, more the recognition of other lives that you could have lived - some may have been better than where you are now, some worse. You will never know.

That is the point. That is why the horizons of a Russell Chatham painting, and of so many of the decisions in our lives, are always a little bit hazy. We simply live the questions. We look out over the horizons we have chosen just as the sun begins to slant just so on the far hillsides, feel that sweet pang of our decisions wash over us like the soft touch of shadows, and then turn again towards home.

(Photograph by Jeff Rennicke)

— Jeff Rennicke

To find out more about the work of Russell Chatham, look for his book 100 Paintings or check out one of the fine documentaries on his work.

To enjoy more of the “Little Dipper” consider clicking below to become a paying subscriber if you are not already.