31 December 2022

The Titanic, and the year-end clearance sale of old ideas

 

Evening Prayer Brunswick heads, 15 December 2022, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm


Evening Prayer Brunswick heads, 28 December 2022, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Here are two parting images to finish off the year 2022 which has been good to me in terms of creativity. 

The first study is from two weeks ago but the second one came at the very end of the session just the other night after I had cleaned my brushes and was about to clean the palette. But I kept looking up at the sky and seeing something so interesting that I thought I needed to try another, even a quick one; Grab it, and throw it down on the hard rubber mat like they do in Fake Wrestling, or so I imagined, that I imagined at the moment.

The sky had lightened as it will often do after the sun has shot its last rays high up into the back of the sky from the West, and it brightened briefly before descending into the dark night. And having seen this effect so often it almost always makes me think of the Titanic, which towards its final end, went down bow first and leaving the stern to rise up out of the ocean at almost 90 degrees into the starry night air before breaking off, then collapsing back into the black icy waters of the Atlantic. 

(Well,,, enfin.....I guess you had to be there) 

So I rapidly made this study and left it in its current fragile state as a souvenir. I long to be able to get there quicker, more efficiently, and with more ability for each of these studies.

And because it is New Year's Eve, a date where regret seems to seep into our thoughts, and where they too, will turn into tears of champagne and spill out of us. But painters should always dream of tomorrow regardless, because one can always wish that they had learned so much about both Life and Painting so much earlier in their lives. It's a natural regret but not one worth lingering upon because in the future, as we know, anything can happen. And isn't it about clearing out today's ideas to be ready for tomorrow's?  N'est-ce pas?

I wish everyone in these small pages a healthy and creative New Year 2023.


2 comments:

  1. Great sentiments, and yes important to make way for the new: to be a blank canvas - so to speak - in the new day.

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  2. I hope you have as much fun making room for the new as I am! To a happy, healthy, calm, beautiful 2023.

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