An Interview with Roderick MacIver, founder
of Heron Dance.
by Annie O'Shaughnesy
Rod’s story is a familiar one, but for those new to Heron
Dance these are the basic facts of his life: Born in Ontario, Canada, Rod
left home and school as a teenager to hitchhike all over Canada. He lived with
and fought forest fires with Indians, and spent a summer alone in a remote fire
tower in the Canadian woods. He came back to civilization at 17 years old and
sold encyclopedias door to door. He moved on to buying and selling real estate,
started his own investment research business on Wall Street, got married and
had two sons. After burnout, he moved to the Adirondacks to write a book based
on interviews of “free spirits” — people living outside the
lines. After his marriage ended and cancer almost killed him he began Heron
Dance in 1995..
AO: In issue 19 you wrote in the section you used to call Journal Notes: “I
have two entities in me. One is out in the world, talking, doing. It’s moving and shaking and making dramatic gestures, articulate
arguments and impressive statements. The other is quiet. It’s being, not
doing. It’s watching. Waiting. Loving. That Quiet one knows so much if
I could only slow down and listen.” You wrote this 5 years ago. What has
changed and what has stayed the same?
RM: Heron Dance is bigger. I still
struggle between two basic entities inside me. I think many people do. On the
one hand Heron Dance is a spiritual undertaking that is an effort to bring something
of beauty to the world — it comes from a soft place in me — on the
other hand it is a business with employees, suppliers, bills, debts and a bank
account.
In addition, expressing myself through words has taken a back seat. The natural
world and my art now occupy my thoughts and dreams. Trying to express myself
and my life through my art has become the dominant aspect of my work life. I
am trying to do with my art what I imagine in my mind. I keep thinking that
I am close and then I sit down to paint and realize, “Auch! I am a long
way away!” But, this challenge is what makes it worthwhile and a challenge
I love. I believe if I just spend enough time at it, what I see in my mind will
ultimately come out on the paper.
Interestingly, I have realized that what may inhibit my painting is some belief
I hold that this true expression of myself on paper may not be saleable!
AO: Oh?
RM: But we’ll have to see. You just don’t know. Because what I
want to do with my art is crude and rough and quick. It looks like what I see
in my dreams at night, when I dream of nature — that’s what I want
to be able to create with my brush. But when I try to paint it I think, “It’s
too rough. It doesn’t look enough like a loon so let’s get out the
white paint and fix it up.” Whenever I get closer to what I want to do
with my art, I look at it and say, “Ech…nobody will like that. It’s
too simple.” But, I’m determined that some day I will relax with
it enough to make it work.
AO: In the early days you painted in the sidebars and breaks to make Heron
Dance more interesting. Some of those early paintings were pretty rough. Was
there a certain point when you made a conscious switch from illustrating to
painting, when you said to yourself, “Hey, you know what… I am an
artist”?
RM: Probably not, but interestingly, some of my favorite paintings are from
the early days. I painted the heron that is in the masthead before I published
our first issue. I liked it then and I still like it, but I painted it at least
300 times before I got one I liked. I painted that heron morning, noon and night.
You could tell me I painted it a thousand times before I got that one and I
would believe you.
AO: I think a person is an artist once they commit to their art form and allow
themselves the time to work on something over and over. That is difficult for
many of us to do — to allow ourselves the time and make that commitment
to our creative spirit.
RM: Yes. That’s a good way to describe it. So I guess I am an artist!
That’s it. That’s the moment. I just had it. I just realized that
I am an artist!
AO: Is there anything else you want to say about your art?
RM: I think I am slowly beginning to learn which of my paintings reflect what
I am trying to express as an artist and as a human being.
I heard a biographer of Miles Davis being interviewed on the radio, and he
was asked something like: “How could a guy who was apparently so selfish
and unkind to so many people, who could be such a son of a bitch to 99% of the
people he had contact with in the world, play such soft and beautiful music?”
And the biographer answered, “He played music like the person he wanted
to be.”
While I think I may be a gentler person than Miles Davis was, I think what
I like in my art when I can create it, is what I most want to be: gentle, clean
and clear, simple and direct, but still subtle and soft. But I am often not
that kind of person, so many of my paintings do not have those characteristics.
