tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11740993103173240982024-03-18T04:02:27.799+01:00l'air de rienlike this blog? become a followercloudsandseahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16100707082729828273noreply@blogger.comBlogger2238125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174099310317324098.post-43772473030147927392024-03-16T03:07:00.004+01:002024-03-16T03:07:53.734+01:00Tolstoy and death and painting<p> <span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: x-large;">This is a reprint of a small piece I posted almost three years ago. </span></p><div class="fauxcolumn-outer fauxcolumn-right-outer" style="bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; right: 0px; top: 0px; width: 410px;"><div class="fauxborder-left" style="background-position: left top; background-repeat: repeat-y; height: 3681.59375px; position: relative;"><div class="fauxborder-right" style="background-position: right top; background-repeat: repeat-y; height: 3681.59375px; position: absolute; right: 0px;"><br /></div></div><div class="cap-bottom" style="background-position: left bottom; background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 0px; position: relative;"><div class="cap-left" style="background-position: left bottom; background-repeat: no-repeat; float: left; height: 0px;"></div><div class="cap-right" style="background-position: right bottom; background-repeat: no-repeat; float: right; height: 0px;"></div></div></div><div class="columns-inner" style="min-height: 0px;"><div class="column-center-outer" style="float: left; font-family: "Courier New", Courier, FreeMono, monospace; font-size: 16px; position: relative; width: 740px;"><div class="column-center-inner" style="padding: 0px;"><div class="main section" id="main" name="Main" style="margin: 0px 1em;"><div class="widget Blog" data-version="1" id="Blog1" style="line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px; min-height: 0px; position: relative;"><div class="blog-posts hfeed"><div class="date-outer"><h2 class="date-header" style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 0px; position: relative;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #bba415; letter-spacing: 3px; margin: inherit; padding: 0.4em;"><br /></span></h2><h2 class="date-header" style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 0px; position: relative;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #bba415; letter-spacing: 3px; margin: inherit; padding: 0.4em;">11 </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #bba415; letter-spacing: 3px;">August 2021</span></h2><div class="date-posts"><div class="post-outer"><div class="post hentry uncustomized-post-template" itemprop="blogPost" itemscope="itemscope" itemtype="http://schema.org/BlogPosting" style="margin: 0px 0px 45px; min-height: 0px; position: relative;"><a name="6879510173466663840"></a><h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0.75em 0px 0px; position: relative;">Tolstoy and Christian Martel, peintre de Montpellier et La Drôme </h3><div class="post-header" style="font-size: 14.4px; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><div class="post-header-line-1"></div></div><div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-6879510173466663840" itemprop="description articleBody" style="font-size: 17.6px; line-height: 1.4; position: relative; width: 708px;"><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PMQlXHCnljI/YQuZmBFWbTI/AAAAAAAANH0/4wHtae7WCS4CIByhS9UkSK444oBRBRUlQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1036/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-08-19%2Bat%2B20.51.57.png" style="color: #0f4c6c; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" data-original-height="856" data-original-width="1036" height="441" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PMQlXHCnljI/YQuZmBFWbTI/AAAAAAAANH0/4wHtae7WCS4CIByhS9UkSK444oBRBRUlQCLcBGAsYHQ/w534-h441/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-08-19%2Bat%2B20.51.57.png" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1) 1px 1px 5px; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 1px solid rgb(238, 238, 238); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 5px; position: relative;" width="534" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">Christian Martel, (circa 2012) oil on linen, 25 X 20 cm</span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">Christian was a friend for about 30 years before he died suddenly two years ago. The way he died reminded me of the short story by Tolstoy, <i>The Death of Ivan Ilyich, </i>which I read in high school so long ago. Though Christian did not at all live an 'ordinary life', as Tolstoy had described Ivan Ilyich, he did live a discreet and unglamorous life. He devoted himself, and all his resources, always, to his creativity, wherever that led him. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">Like many creative people he was extremely sensitive, so touchy that it became a joke between us when he would lower his head and say 'half-truthfully' </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><i>"Oaui, Oaui,, Coffey la Brute!" </i></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">Sometimes he would not take my calls for months on end until he got over it whatever it was that so upset him. But I did eventually stop teasing him when I finally realised that he was so fragile. I tempered my gregariousness and learned to temper my behaviour. I can be that way with people for whom I have a really great affection. Often, I needed to lay off and tell him: </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><i>"Oui, oui, J'avoue qui je suis un Taquinuer au premier rang! Pardon-moi."</i></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">We always made up, that is to say that I always apologised in my light-hearted manner, only then, did we pick up where we had left off, sort of. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">He was a very gifted painter even if I didn't appreciate the skills he had picked up at the Beaux-Arts in Montpellier 500 years earlier while in </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">school. He worked from photos of landscapes and industrial buildings from which he would invent small paintings. I was very critical of this approach to Painting, and let him know it whenever he asked my opinion of something he had done. But I learned to never throw out anything in an unsolicited manner. Sensing my displeasure in something, he used to explain that they were 'tourist pictures' which sold. And he did support himself with the sales of these pictures, but also by teaching small groups of mostly adults each week. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">I admired him for the life which he had managed to create for himself. Life wasn't easy for him. I knew he struggled as an artist but it was mostly with himself, I believed. </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">He was a survivor of his weird childhood. Me too, which is what bound us together. Our difficulty was fitting into a life where most people seemed to have so many other priorities. We both believed in Art, above else.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">He often came and stayed for weeks at a time when I lived at the Bélvèdere in Dieulefit. Each night, we hosted anyone who showed up for dinner. Great wonderful improvised affairs, Summers, Springs and Autumn were a wonderful time outdoor on the terrace. We never ate indoors. We 'rugged up' with extra clothes, as the Aussies say down here. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">So, I have always loved this painting (above). I often told him that too, but he never understood why this one, but not others. It is a complete success as a picture, and now when I stare at it on my desktop, I think of him dead, gone forever. I find it ironic that, for me, this small church became such a great painting because I knew that he loathed churches. In fact, anything, remotely religious he loathed with a passion. Renaissance paintings, icons, statues; lovely and simple, and not even a Romanesque church on hilltop in Nature could move him. No beauty withstood his rancorous disdain for anything connected to the Church. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">Ma foi!! </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><i>Et Pourtant!</i> Ironically, this little church, lit up from his imagination, is so very very lovely on every pictorial level. </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">For it is unified by every tiny squiggle of colour and detail. It is embalmed in a black/red/purple mix of sky gripping it in place. It is this mass of deep colour which allows that pale blue sliver of artificial town lighting on the right side to work so well. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">It is a great little painting, a marvel of invention! If only I could write him this....from today.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">I will not show his other work out of respect for this one picture, though he made so many small lovely things throughout his working life.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">I read Ivan Ilyich when I was seventeen years old, when death seemed a million miles away from me. My teacher was an older man, a really nice guy who I liked. He was very moved by this short novella by Tolstoy, and this in turn, moved me. I understand now, at this later stage in my life just what my elder teacher had perhaps felt for the simplicity in this story of a banal life, even worse, a banal death.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">And this brings me back to to Christian, who had survived Myeloma Cancer several years earlier only to fall down the narrow winding staircase in his apartment building one night. According to the coroner's report he died of a heart attack as a result of the fall.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">I wonder what he would have thought of that ending? Actually,,,, I wonder what any of us would think of our own exits?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />cloudsandseahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16100707082729828273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174099310317324098.post-5653789985691385152024-03-07T04:14:00.001+01:002024-03-07T04:14:25.677+01:00The Japanese architect, meets Billy the kid and Ockam's Razor<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: x-large; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: x-large; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiho4dpBU3nh0zDCe92quP_P_jjHU6bIYHZeD0-wePvxwD22f2OkW9rg5CcziJ-xaN635yAYtcPChbnfLm_NrK8x06xBild4bujGaWgis0WlEVDBzyTSnY6-o0xYCS2tkmcZIpPAWmvVkSUNOBniTTLtdVRwv7V4WgMm4wE9uk-gZ7nCn1uYr57_u4M_97c" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2568" data-original-width="3121" height="501" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiho4dpBU3nh0zDCe92quP_P_jjHU6bIYHZeD0-wePvxwD22f2OkW9rg5CcziJ-xaN635yAYtcPChbnfLm_NrK8x06xBild4bujGaWgis0WlEVDBzyTSnY6-o0xYCS2tkmcZIpPAWmvVkSUNOBniTTLtdVRwv7V4WgMm4wE9uk-gZ7nCn1uYr57_u4M_97c=w608-h501" width="608" /></a></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 28 February 2024, oil on canvas board, 30 X 24 cm</span></div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">A few years ago I read about a Japanese architect who was explaining about the best placement of a garden pathway from the driveway to the home he had recently designed for a couple. He told them that he had not planned for it but wanted to let the pathway "just happen naturally over time" as the began couple living in their new home. </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">Only then would the new occupants figure out where their pathway would spontaneously appear.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">I loved that. And it came to mind the other day during my piano practice. As </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">I've just started another learning a new piece by Satie, one I hadn't planned to memorise, (too much work and time!) I was faced with the notation for the fingering. </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">This is the 5th Gnossienne, and the delicate fingering is really tricky.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><span style="font-size: large;">Like all amateur musicians, I note the fingering whenever I begin a new piece in pencil just above the notes on the manuscript. But they can often change as I look for the better fingering to get me through each measure while preparing for the next one. So like the architect advised his clients, when working this out, I allow my fingers to find the most natural pathway throughout the piece, measure by measure.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">So regarding Painting, I wondered what the correlation might be between this procedure and how I go about Painting. This question asks me to analyse my habits already developed over a lifetime of experiences and to which I don't think I have any answer. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">In this beach series where the focus is particularly narrow, with little or almost no deviations from a drawing perspective, there is a simplicity that borders on the austere because the motif is so Zen simple. In other words I don't have to subjugate myself to a procedure for these sessions. My procedure is already simple.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">But, this architect's advice can work in every other part of my life and it can also sharpen the edge of another of my favourites maxims; Ockam's Razor, already, a practical vehicle for navigating intelligently through Life.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">The picture above is from last week, it's one I like. Initially I thought it too sloppy, but now I'm not so sure. In fact over this past week I've come to really appreciate things about it. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">Below, is another picture from the same night. They have both been big hits on Instagram. Though I like the one above I don't care for the one below. It's a study that doesn't really do it for me at all. I</span><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">t seems to work, everything is in place, but it doesn't grab me, certainly not the way the one above does. So I am trying to see what others see in it. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">One thing I have shared often in these pages is that I really appreciate social media. It is a godsend for painters like me who live like spiders, high up in the corners, out of reach of life below, where civilised, normal people go about a practical life.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">I am continually surprised at what many people like and dislike in my work. I'm never offended just curious. I say this, but I admit that I didn't like someone the other day who wrote me to say that, "all of your pictures look the same". Hmmm, I fumed.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">Of course, I immediately unfollowed him. So, evidently, I am curious what people think, but I don't want to put up with snarky comments that are just made to offend me. After all, I'm not famous enough to be trolled. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">And h</span><span style="font-family: Courier;">ey!, as my cousin Billy in the Bronx told me; "Thump the mother****er" first before he thumps you". This was advice that took me a long to time to exercise in my own life. But then, I'm still alive while cousin Billy was stabbed in the Bronx in a street fight back in the 1990's, so go figure. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">Anyway, like the Japanese architect suggested, don't make a plan, but live first, let the plan unfold in the right place for you. Apparently, Cousin Billy</span><span style="font-family: Courier;"> had the plan but was just too early, and it killed him (just sayin). </span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">In this series, I don't have a plan but I do have a motif in front of me, and I use a simple palette of just five colours. I work quickly without hesitation, and also without conscious thought. Is that a plan? I'm not sure. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">But I'm still not nuts about the study below. Maybe I will change my feelings over time, but maybe not. Feelings about art do change often over time. Things I liked years ago are a no-go now, but conversely, studies I didn't see just a short while back can suddenly look like genius to me. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">Because I'm the beholder, beauty is alway in my own eyes, that's the way it is, it's a rigged system and the painter always wins out in the end view.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh-KRzsVZmz9QkIQCTLNF-iE8s2cRdhc1I7HpY30-KExOt1p3c8LKVlmnCqHKltWvSJapXSvh6jd1Xte3IQ-A1KTNZH-aBBwQQjsk784dX9uyCfc0TXom3YpG3t1k6aKw9bxS4O6nfNcnLWy4zm69viBEGXlqKK-NcMh-ViCiDQiGNy4dEwpKWXC8CCvG10" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1646" data-original-width="2010" height="508" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh-KRzsVZmz9QkIQCTLNF-iE8s2cRdhc1I7HpY30-KExOt1p3c8LKVlmnCqHKltWvSJapXSvh6jd1Xte3IQ-A1KTNZH-aBBwQQjsk784dX9uyCfc0TXom3YpG3t1k6aKw9bxS4O6nfNcnLWy4zm69viBEGXlqKK-NcMh-ViCiDQiGNy4dEwpKWXC8CCvG10=w617-h508" width="617" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: Courier; text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: center;">Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 28 February 2024, oil on canvas board, 30 X 24 cm</div></span><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p>cloudsandseahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16100707082729828273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174099310317324098.post-77883926997682018642024-02-27T04:39:00.012+01:002024-02-28T03:16:02.400+01:00Beginnings and Endings, veracity and tenacity<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEizKGwt44JXGNwAKMSZj0_tiwILw0t0uud4ICg5xZy6jGBBzzFSwJrpASyY6G_9ptniGqGFagGqC-gBYi499X_1b9hZ8jawT_NZgcVGlQRbkfcmqov9ZXiS-nP8DyunL3YetQ1FpcC9H61Oaf3szHWEF6aWCfRU4vKBx5JbKf98butq5ImZn_wZx-_Vvp6p" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2461" data-original-width="2934" height="513" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEizKGwt44JXGNwAKMSZj0_tiwILw0t0uud4ICg5xZy6jGBBzzFSwJrpASyY6G_9ptniGqGFagGqC-gBYi499X_1b9hZ8jawT_NZgcVGlQRbkfcmqov9ZXiS-nP8DyunL3YetQ1FpcC9H61Oaf3szHWEF6aWCfRU4vKBx5JbKf98butq5ImZn_wZx-_Vvp6p=w609-h513" width="609" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Courier;">Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 14 February 2024, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm</span></div></div><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This came one evening about two weeks ago before the sky's initial promise of splendour had died. The weather had been hot and humid, and still is. The sky was confusing by the end of the day but it's not like I need clarity, though with certain weather, there is a kind of mushiness that sometimes overwhelms the afternoon like some weird gravy at the Thanksgiving dinner of my youth.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But hey! It comes with the territory, as my Uncle Frank used to say up in the Bronx.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But here, the beach up on the North Coast of New South Wales is not the Coney Island of my childhood nor is it ever what one could call crowded. With this sweltering weather it looked like maybe 200 people had showed up and dotted the beach as far as I could see and that is what we call crowded. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I had arrived a little late and set up quickly. It became evident that the sky was folding in on itself, a sign that my painting session would be limited, so I figured I might only get one study out of the evening. Realising this had curiously relaxed me somewhat, and given that the sky would not cooperate, like a hungry dog, I quickly grabbed what I could. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Like so many of these things done here, improvisation plays a greater role than viewers might normally imagine. Surprise is the element that binds both the painter and viewer in this hopeful relationship, and a painter like me, is always surprised, indeed. As for the viewer, one hopes for the best. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The session is pretty standard, from the sky I pluck out things which prick my interest and I try with all my heart to hang on to them, but on this afternoon, it seemed a losing proposition. The sky’s transition at this moment of the day is disconcerting, but instead of allowing it to confuse me, I doubled down on an idea I had begun and I allowed it to guide me to a soft landing. This is how memory works for me, but it’s not typical of the way many landscape painters proceed. Most appear to already have the pictorial idea fixed in their minds. They then rely upon a technical prowess to force feed it into that idea in order to deliver it to an end already conceived.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">For others like me, it’s the opposite. I begin with what I see, then improvise, sometimes blindly until the end comes into focus. The idea of the ‘study’ comes to me at the very end. I suppose that this is the Expressionist side of me, though unlike the American Expressionist, I work from a motif in this series because it’s what generates the idea. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And for those who work from photos (of landscapes) I will not even deign an opinion, for this is the lowest form of Painting. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Even Turner, one of the greatest watercolourists of the Modern era, and whose techniques were so extraordinary, they rarely eclipsed his visual memory stored up from decades of improvisation in front of Nature. His watercolours have never be surpassed even in by, what we call ‘Abstract’ painting of the past 100 years.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I am still a rather messy expressionistic painter who appears to love the adventure of painting more than the final result. This fact provides for me an endless stream of surprises because veracity comes in lots of shapes and sizes after all.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></span><p></p><p><br /></p>cloudsandseahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16100707082729828273noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174099310317324098.post-40661074195627903252024-02-24T02:57:00.023+01:002024-02-24T03:38:21.624+01:00A cuneiform kiss<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjsffEMoI5ipO2PIHBmAAjix3ZgE0kXDhiMcT2QmPOpcc9QVnVr0nnAGH5QwtkEec03WKIf61fr0q6-4arleRcDnBaLz8v65tWNmxoo2OnS85irV8woiF641F9ee9Q8q5KaJkbAmHl7gGMiYlSFtRHBF7qOXwDELvNTMYQtCV5acSP1t574y0TKq2OwDgjE" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1481" height="725" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjsffEMoI5ipO2PIHBmAAjix3ZgE0kXDhiMcT2QmPOpcc9QVnVr0nnAGH5QwtkEec03WKIf61fr0q6-4arleRcDnBaLz8v65tWNmxoo2OnS85irV8woiF641F9ee9Q8q5KaJkbAmHl7gGMiYlSFtRHBF7qOXwDELvNTMYQtCV5acSP1t574y0TKq2OwDgjE=w526-h725" width="526" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Courier; text-align: left;">Babylonian clay tablet, 1800 BC</span></div><p></p><div><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">Seeing </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">the Mesopotamian wing at the Met in New York a</span><span style="font-family: Courier;">s a child left me</span><span style="font-family: Courier;"> dazed and transfixed, And being so small, </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">these Assyrian statues and bas-reliefs appeared to me gigantic and other-worldly. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">When my father took me there I immediately made my way through the main hall, and drawn like a magnet, I'd find myself lost in the solemn section of bas-reliefs that lined the walls. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">But these early visits to this new 'mysterious world' right in the heart of a modern city locked themselves into my imagination forever. When in grade school we studied Cuneiforms, and the very beginnings of what we now know as writing, I became further obsessed. I remember that my crayon drawings became childishly imitative of these things. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">Ideas as pictures worked much better for me at that age than the sentence structures being drilled into me by an old bag of an English teacher although I instinctively loved any sort of her untidy chaos on the blackboard. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">So when the New Times ran an article about the earliest illustrations of the kiss, it immediately ignited my long-dormant affection for these clay sculptures. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">Best to read the article yourselves. Though it's a sweet Valentine Day's story,</span><span style="font-family: Courier;"> its the small clay sculpture pictured top, that is the real star.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhsmheaGuiacsM-IYeveeVlSDOGeNKT-7cMKXlby6lx3gXhuEiakFXbl82cbZWkNQyJBgcbD_skQXbEvuRIrg5qKxGK-mU2jk6vxZK3bvklVvQZHqqFKcv9oojdUEv-RYfiZu1lUp2pvLO6RYAVpY6Jag1_h4bsdiM3lmcgNVmtx1veevq6103JGZ5kgRQv" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1010" data-original-width="1698" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhsmheaGuiacsM-IYeveeVlSDOGeNKT-7cMKXlby6lx3gXhuEiakFXbl82cbZWkNQyJBgcbD_skQXbEvuRIrg5qKxGK-mU2jk6vxZK3bvklVvQZHqqFKcv9oojdUEv-RYfiZu1lUp2pvLO6RYAVpY6Jag1_h4bsdiM3lmcgNVmtx1veevq6103JGZ5kgRQv" width="515" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">This (above) is from the vast British Museum collection from Nineveh which is the current city of Mosel in Iraq. Sadly, many of these temples were sacked by ISIS fighters after the American invasion. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">But what I love in these bas-reliefs today, after fifty years of painting pictures on a flat surface, are the curious resemblances to painters such as Van Gogh and Gauguin. Gauguin's use of the flat antique profiles are well known and easily calculable, but also are the wavy seas that Vincent used so freely in his skies. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">These are universal forms and they can be found throughout art history, and just for fun, here is an example from the church at Moissac, in south-east France. Although no longer the bas-relief of Mesopotamia, a full-fledged Jeremiah with a lovely flowing beard adorns a center post of the south portal on this amazing church. My personal regret of oceanic proportions, is that I have not yet visited it, but I will.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh8sFetOMrEPoWWzHIN6_RIGSrXOKVY_AwZiPM743UngY4MAxKeRDcfv2PPXcjUawBoR_wFMycxYA0Gv9qMnPE97TjsRyoyeHrE3xJNcWsmw4htOyzYlKLHdPa6QWyQ6A6XPA1kLfXVlxWR2OGk5bbGUBX3T6N_FTNQLrM5oVwzXpUE07w7wTSgAOMUUkK_" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="672" height="790" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh8sFetOMrEPoWWzHIN6_RIGSrXOKVY_AwZiPM743UngY4MAxKeRDcfv2PPXcjUawBoR_wFMycxYA0Gv9qMnPE97TjsRyoyeHrE3xJNcWsmw4htOyzYlKLHdPa6QWyQ6A6XPA1kLfXVlxWR2OGk5bbGUBX3T6N_FTNQLrM5oVwzXpUE07w7wTSgAOMUUkK_=w516-h790" width="516" /></a></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"> </div></div></div></span></div>cloudsandseahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16100707082729828273noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174099310317324098.post-74193372590937464152024-02-11T02:14:00.045+01:002024-02-20T05:10:43.543+01:00Let them eat clouds!<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgQ54UmjeIVc2aTIKr_4cq5d86KRo46cXCEr8VvVGSdTHya6-1IeWyL4XpbhOcw5nExMMKbvryidVEgcsfGZ-jx1Qth8ZmmrVPg8-keUNb8YB770ewtfA8ZT9SaeRi-TygibK-0kdYIu7xCdrUoQz4CNTGojl9KU9Ct4aA6iBuEB6n5UlgkrFwKNWZ5IlZC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2352" data-original-width="2876" height="419" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgQ54UmjeIVc2aTIKr_4cq5d86KRo46cXCEr8VvVGSdTHya6-1IeWyL4XpbhOcw5nExMMKbvryidVEgcsfGZ-jx1Qth8ZmmrVPg8-keUNb8YB770ewtfA8ZT9SaeRi-TygibK-0kdYIu7xCdrUoQz4CNTGojl9KU9Ct4aA6iBuEB6n5UlgkrFwKNWZ5IlZC=w510-h419" width="510" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 2 February 2024, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh2C6yz27nBVKz5NLLC2O6l6VJVugW7pFrNWcgNbFEU-bHK6j-GXnh2e8yfyNfiq5rIdnT9ZezcRM_1unOZFATAZ9pw10tpMT0RHfNoGdzXD4fP_lzcnh9K-QLxn_zRLx0lc4GEl9wXi6kiChi7f5BiErMfRQR7ESj46BJdeOj8KlYHQSHg5Q2to9a7Kpcq" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2585" data-original-width="3142" height="419" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh2C6yz27nBVKz5NLLC2O6l6VJVugW7pFrNWcgNbFEU-bHK6j-GXnh2e8yfyNfiq5rIdnT9ZezcRM_1unOZFATAZ9pw10tpMT0RHfNoGdzXD4fP_lzcnh9K-QLxn_zRLx0lc4GEl9wXi6kiChi7f5BiErMfRQR7ESj46BJdeOj8KlYHQSHg5Q2to9a7Kpcq=w508-h419" width="508" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 2 February 2024, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm</span></div><div><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">So another great few days this week at the dunes. These three studies came out orderly, one after the other like triplets. </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">Magnificent Blooms that I never seem to capture a</span><span style="font-family: Courier;">nd which make me feel like a certain cartoon character chasing after its arch enemy</span><span style="font-family: Courier;">. </span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">But I wonder if I ever did catch this elusive ‘thing’ I'm seeking, would I no longer need to keep painting it? Or is that just a cliché?</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">I ran into an old acquaintance in town yesterday who used to be in the art game back in London and who was curious to see how I had been spending my time (me too, I'm always curious about this). So I pulled out my phone and showed him the first two images (above) from Instagram. He remarked immediately, </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">"Oh, that's Rothko"</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span style="font-family: Courier;">I replied that another of my Brit-Arty-Smarty-Pants kind of wise guy/gal had also told me this about some of my paintings. But I said it</span><span style="font-family: Courier;"> more politely. </span></span><span style="font-family: Courier;">I guess I can understand that some make this association, (doesn't it give us something to talk about? Or is it simply a way to show off our culture?).</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">Regardless, I take it all onboard. It's easy for me to speak</span><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"> about what I'm up to in Painting, as any regular reader here will recognise, but just the same, I'm sort stumped when I have to speak about myself and a painter like Rothko whom I've only come to appreciate over the past decade. W</span><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">e do both seem to share an affection for thick wide stripes which sort of makes us like cousins.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><div><br /></div></div><span>But, my ideas come to me naturally from the motif, I don't know where Rothko's ideas came from,... were they visions of the desert that jolted him and charged his imagination in his earlier years? Were they ever from a landscape? Like my own, were they memories of the sea and how and where it meets the sky? If painters work from obsessional ideas, where did his come from? </span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">Over the years as </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">I've already revealed, the origins of my own obsessional 'Stripy Thing' seem to come from varied sources. I've always had a thing for thick horizontal lines too, whether from early childhood drawings or roaming the vast landscape of ties on the first floor of Brooks Brothers where all kinds of brightly coloured stripes are gently arranged in their own little coffin-like mahogany boxes and spread out across the main ground floor upon elegant display cases. But this is probably just one place of origin because in the human mind, as all shrinks know, the memory, visual and otherwise, is a mystery.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">Personally, I think it behooves any visual artist to investigate one’s own pictorial memories (and obsessions) because every painter will eventually exhibit uncontrollable patterns early on in their creative youth. Do all painters investigate these visual roots? </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">Some do, while others don't. But the trend in Contemporary Art is a definite YES! This is a new young Art World where personal identity is no longer sheltered away, where no dark shameful secrets and obsessions are withheld anymore. Everything in today's world of digital transparency is an open secret a</span><span style="font-family: Courier;">nd I say sure; why not? Bring it on, but please make it a cohesive, not just indulgent. (SVP!)</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">Yet it's also inevitable that a painter's original (and graphic) DNA will manifest at some point during their own creative journey.</span><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"> Intuition for any painter lies out there on the horizon line, and the faster we row out to retrieve it the better. Why waste time chasing other's dream?</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: x-large; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjVgVICcZ-9gFKNMybfgavjk2ltPbGTzXRDZwnsjRAf7h4P8CyQo3veE664bW2IgSdgUElgFadzifYlKijjkG_-shwH4GcgHprD5PU7SXaoqIwZ1-D5i4ExKxf2jFz708KsDbeqWo4smwyTL5ormhrWTnrV7xHZa9iSSIAuXjEaouZeq7n2C4uEyh80u32P" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2485" data-original-width="2988" height="468" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjVgVICcZ-9gFKNMybfgavjk2ltPbGTzXRDZwnsjRAf7h4P8CyQo3veE664bW2IgSdgUElgFadzifYlKijjkG_-shwH4GcgHprD5PU7SXaoqIwZ1-D5i4ExKxf2jFz708KsDbeqWo4smwyTL5ormhrWTnrV7xHZa9iSSIAuXjEaouZeq7n2C4uEyh80u32P=w564-h468" width="564" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 2 February 2024, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></div><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">Regarding this last study (above), as the twilight began to arrive, t</span><span style="font-family: Courier;">he horizon line was</span><span style="font-family: Courier;"> stripped of excess atmospheric </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">clutter present in the previous two. </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">Due to this, it lends itself to an almost crisp but subtle design. And it is to this aesthetic where my intuition has lately been pushing me to visit. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">Clouds, like four year olds at a birthday party, </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">can be mischievously disruptive to an otherwise clear, calm, blue backdrop. A sky full of clouds of no matter what sort, will generate different varieties of paintings. Indeed, there is a whole genre of 'seascapes'; everything from wispy views of the calm sea to stormy, dark</span><span style="font-family: Courier;">, and menacing pictures that are all considered 'picturesque' for the amateurs of art. </span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">My small study is not that but on some days it certainly could be. There are skies that lend themselves to these genres and I might easily make a more picturesque-looking painting for no particular reason other than it looked just like that. Almost everything depends upon the sky and what it's doing at a particular moment. All, except that there is also my own mood too. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">I think for me, clouds are but colourful outfits worn by the sky, which left to its own devices, would otherwise be just a space; empty and naked, waiting to be dressed as if it were Marie Antoinette. And just like us, on some days it will step out in a fancy frock while at others, a lumpy pair of sweat pants and a hoodie. Like a mannequin in a store window, the sky can wear anything and everything. I've seen its whole wardrobe, trust me.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">As one often hears (though I never, ever believed this myself) that clothes make the person, clouds, by contrast, will always define the sky, and this I do believe, empirically so. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span style="font-family: Courier;">And just as clothes can alter our appearances, clouds too, can be sexy and pretty, elegant and spry, dark and brooding, but </span></span><span style="font-family: Courier;">at the end of day it's all just a cover-up!</span><span style="font-family: Courier;"> Naked, like us, an empty sky will gently reveal its natural state come nightfall. And this is what I attempted to capture in this last small painting the other night.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">And finally, I do admit it; all this sounds so terribly pedantic, probably too wordy and too nerdy, but I assure you that in many ways it's about the essence of how any picture functions because in the end, it's really just about a confined space and about how painters fill it up with colours.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></div><br /> <p></p>cloudsandseahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16100707082729828273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174099310317324098.post-61114002666770124662024-02-06T03:02:00.002+01:002024-02-07T06:31:40.282+01:00Twin sisters, the taming of the shrews<p> <br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEoaz_ubznVFUCoIZz3zZE8cCpRFe2ux-iPgX4cYp8-DLmYSGU_fUNrUwXzv97y9cX1iR9tkzRgYjSkrVXu0KbanNXYxUTwxhSgMxqSI8CC2UTgWA1NMQQ4a7MK7J4UZdFqZUtXNTdMExuRs0GgBFcdH53LCJtjCPDwYzaDRfxGt15AvTXVHI_NC-5DrM9/s2871/IMG_6942.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2348" data-original-width="2871" height="477" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEoaz_ubznVFUCoIZz3zZE8cCpRFe2ux-iPgX4cYp8-DLmYSGU_fUNrUwXzv97y9cX1iR9tkzRgYjSkrVXu0KbanNXYxUTwxhSgMxqSI8CC2UTgWA1NMQQ4a7MK7J4UZdFqZUtXNTdMExuRs0GgBFcdH53LCJtjCPDwYzaDRfxGt15AvTXVHI_NC-5DrM9/w583-h477/IMG_6942.jpg" width="583" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads 31 January 2024, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4XMZauZDaL-mRy6UvQNuLSSVNa3vv2sBRaJXIrpra7iXi-M4MJBh8xibhi618T5H7zeEYHI3qo4fuTr4_CNOrHsw3oHe8Fc5j7F1CM44V6odRoLSiVNWnsz9rQq1hd5IC7VQB31RqCcpluqYkgnrMGCAiohEr59EbQxz4ASmRD53uXjDuDji4YdGOmHS1/s2949/IMG_6957.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2419" data-original-width="2949" height="477" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4XMZauZDaL-mRy6UvQNuLSSVNa3vv2sBRaJXIrpra7iXi-M4MJBh8xibhi618T5H7zeEYHI3qo4fuTr4_CNOrHsw3oHe8Fc5j7F1CM44V6odRoLSiVNWnsz9rQq1hd5IC7VQB31RqCcpluqYkgnrMGCAiohEr59EbQxz4ASmRD53uXjDuDji4YdGOmHS1/w583-h477/IMG_6957.jpg" width="583" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Courier; text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: center;">Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads 1 February 2024, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm</div></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Here are similar studies from two successive nights this last week. I am so grateful to be out there painting again after several months of mushy weather that was not compatible with painting nor with my personality. Yes, one can, and should paint in any weather, but hey! I'm a guy from the Bronx, and as we age we get real fussy, OK?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But honestly, these do not do justice to the 'Blooms' of the past week where the magnanimous gods were so generous to me. And alas, I cannot seem to get anywhere close to rendering their outrageous beauty nor their brazen outlandish elegance. Though they are from different evenings they feel like twin sisters.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">These humid days I have to push myself out of the house to paint down at the beach. They may sound awful to someone in the wintry Drôme, like a whiny, curdled old man who exclaims: "I have to go the the beach just 10 minutes away. Yuck!.." Indeed, it would also come off awfully spoiled to someone living under grey skies of Paris too... Boo Hoo...</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But anyway, this is my life, not at all glamorous nor exciting, but not uninteresting and with a touch of bohemian chill. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So, eventually I gulped an expresso, and before I knew it, I was out the door and leaving my lazy dog of a personality on the couch. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Arriving at the dunes, I unpacked and quickly made a palette. I generally try to give myself enough time to jump into the sea before painting because this is what really wakes me up. The sea is wonderful of course, but also 'rippy', full of fast moving tidal rips so I'm careful after almost having drowned here about six years ago. But as usual, I then began to paint just as the sky was about to ripen. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">For both of these studies, the same thin, pinky line of clouds were crossing the horizon, it was a classic evening. They both began the other night with an unusually strong acrid yellow in the sky, that colour Van Gogh adored, and it does appear from time to time around here. It's so yellow green that it looks like penicillin growing upon a lemon on the shelf. But quite soon, on both nights, all hell broke loose and colours flew around like embers from a giant fire. Pink turned Purple and then into a pale Prussian Blue almost like a faint shadow. It resembled the deathly hue with which some many painters depicted Christ in early Renaissance renditions of the Pieta. Then, as if dead, this ghostly colour rises into the heavens to evaporate miraculously. The sea below, discreetly follows suit, and honestly, it's so fantastical that at times I cannot distinguish between hallucinations and real life. Is it me or God?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But in any event, these skies feel so alive and so unreal at times that I think I'm going to pee in my shorts.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The downside to all this divine ecstasy is that despite these studies that began so enthusiastically bold, so wildly spontaneous and free, I nonetheless managed to tame them as if they were dangerous circus animals. Oh, what a shame! I fall prey to my inner obsession with formal structure and thereby reducing the picture to thick stripes; careful and sure.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It's not always the case, but it usually happens when I begin to over-work a study. I groan when I feel it kicking in but by then it's almost impossible to correct course. Apparently, there is a policeman living inside me along with the lion trainer. I think I need an angel to intervene.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I close with this short bit of wisdom from one of my only heroes of 20th century American Painting, the great Philip Guston. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><i><b>"Everyone destroys marvelous paintings. Five years ago you wiped out what you are about to start tomorrow. </b></i></span></div><div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><i><b><br /></b></i></span></div><div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><i><b>Where do you put form? It will move around, bellow out and shrink, and sometimes it winds up where it was in the first place. But at the end it feels different, and it had to make the voyage. I am a moralist and cannot accept what has not be paid for, or a form that has not been lived through.</b></i></span></div><div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><i><b><br /></b></i></span></div><div style="font-family: -webkit-standard; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;"><i><b>Frustration is one of the great things in art; satisfaction is nothing."</b></i></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Because I'm a wise guy, a smarty pants of the worst sort, I would add a small twist to this right after the first paragraph. Here goes:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><b>"And today, you will ruin what you will succeed doing in five years hence." </b></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p>cloudsandseahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16100707082729828273noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174099310317324098.post-85506234074156028812024-02-03T10:19:00.000+01:002024-02-03T10:19:30.675+01:00Furry friends!<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">Well, because it's the third of February, I thought I would keep quiet for once and let my furry friends speak up.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj70Ei0tVW1V9jrGoI3MKhz03eG6TCvd7ePEbBL3YhG-lK1A-Hg_0-xlhGkqisMG8UIKSexC1lG8BdiDyeevxcnjVEgRSz10JicPwVK6rIz_PyiqFYsJRmgzg7nSmEw8hXwomtlqHhtUvURopuG2qSi101lyH2JmdICSpBIPUNc6PyU_SUlOjerUQ9foYu5" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" height="492" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj70Ei0tVW1V9jrGoI3MKhz03eG6TCvd7ePEbBL3YhG-lK1A-Hg_0-xlhGkqisMG8UIKSexC1lG8BdiDyeevxcnjVEgRSz10JicPwVK6rIz_PyiqFYsJRmgzg7nSmEw8hXwomtlqHhtUvURopuG2qSi101lyH2JmdICSpBIPUNc6PyU_SUlOjerUQ9foYu5=w657-h492" width="657" /></a></div><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; 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text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh1QLzkDJ3ZirwMllMrmRiTZfsw9gafRpSdYkxWx90mjZCA6_PkA0cHml9LaTtCv8r1pKcsu6nRv0BO4S-bTrDElTPoiNyVianPFpCdMsJoDgLIvaoo5uVkd_4BtZ56mdT18NUjIRdbedGppDI3z1kxg7yxvfgFm2bRRoRCF53TNewi07HyHObYRuXC9iGp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2139" data-original-width="2958" height="465" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh1QLzkDJ3ZirwMllMrmRiTZfsw9gafRpSdYkxWx90mjZCA6_PkA0cHml9LaTtCv8r1pKcsu6nRv0BO4S-bTrDElTPoiNyVianPFpCdMsJoDgLIvaoo5uVkd_4BtZ56mdT18NUjIRdbedGppDI3z1kxg7yxvfgFm2bRRoRCF53TNewi07HyHObYRuXC9iGp=w647-h465" width="647" /></a></div><br /> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjsMG4IEGKdHvBWEN3xpeCHRYYhi9e7pzQqbtmwVP94E9jbc-syiVGavXPTuZvwrlrcGssRXerEN2AH4nNc85ClzGFBc4VKVBzjatnEm6lngKpY6Bf90F17nytki8fn3UKeI1dVa5xHxKQm8KJi7ubFKi_D_hF8Ku4i24kvU16yGp8-yqdIzJgCLRG216Ti" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjsMG4IEGKdHvBWEN3xpeCHRYYhi9e7pzQqbtmwVP94E9jbc-syiVGavXPTuZvwrlrcGssRXerEN2AH4nNc85ClzGFBc4VKVBzjatnEm6lngKpY6Bf90F17nytki8fn3UKeI1dVa5xHxKQm8KJi7ubFKi_D_hF8Ku4i24kvU16yGp8-yqdIzJgCLRG216Ti=w641-h480" width="641" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p>cloudsandseahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16100707082729828273noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174099310317324098.post-18096275471693941452024-01-30T06:54:00.001+01:002024-01-30T07:48:01.550+01:00Mike Sadler vs the bully boys<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj9e067yNfBBZ8S2HIEK6YrNTaJOfDdmbiQs3gJPLrFr_Cxk7N2n7edSdR2KA-tn-yxtL-GWny3V8zPa9i7R2PmPqYB3f6-PbM_MWmhT3qniShxjcAnpbo3DrS2jTmg110_9QOMeVmfc_4TAq5jr-CqyLIXy7UG-J6P-012QSyDN8QVz9NliD_W_5TL_VfJ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1522" data-original-width="992" height="922" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj9e067yNfBBZ8S2HIEK6YrNTaJOfDdmbiQs3gJPLrFr_Cxk7N2n7edSdR2KA-tn-yxtL-GWny3V8zPa9i7R2PmPqYB3f6-PbM_MWmhT3qniShxjcAnpbo3DrS2jTmg110_9QOMeVmfc_4TAq5jr-CqyLIXy7UG-J6P-012QSyDN8QVz9NliD_W_5TL_VfJ=w600-h922" width="600" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">What has happened to this spoiled generation? But I won't just single out Britain because this weird world of young (and old) humanity appears to be everywhere. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi7HpBbtrQUvsxTLW_r6euvMPZzPLmx1Dl_2MWv6oO10nXiwbGkVyQa8DZ2rUsDdeVBHatHacvYD0eKhd52plNtf4Hb0aBN6cUrnfpnwQt8u26km9lQpXTllajOIyppSs4e4g3NlOHpNj9-n8uHB94pkrWZdy5TiL1DmtIvVSBqu_W8-oaliNzJ3PI4Lng2" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1344" data-original-width="1254" height="425" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi7HpBbtrQUvsxTLW_r6euvMPZzPLmx1Dl_2MWv6oO10nXiwbGkVyQa8DZ2rUsDdeVBHatHacvYD0eKhd52plNtf4Hb0aBN6cUrnfpnwQt8u26km9lQpXTllajOIyppSs4e4g3NlOHpNj9-n8uHB94pkrWZdy5TiL1DmtIvVSBqu_W8-oaliNzJ3PI4Lng2=w395-h425" width="395" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Courier New"; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">I was so moved by this story (above) about Mike Sadler and his actions as a clever soldier during WW2. I invite the reader to google him to find out more. It's a remarkable story of bravery and heroism at a time in history when there was already a surplus of these traits overflowing the British borders. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">Was it not because they rose to the challenge of fighting off a crazed German nation, that their lives depended upon it? Boys became men overnight, and the British people became united after a decade of political squabbling. It was, as they say, an existential threat, and they took it on with that stoic British sense of pride. Americans too, faced this threat, and they too lost many young men and young gals, but from the safety of their geographical position. My uncle died flying raids to Germany in a B17. He was barely out of school. Europe, as a whole also lost an entire young generation.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">So why are we so different today? Have we all lost our moral compasses? Has our sense of decency been deformed by too much information over the internet? I don't have the answer. </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">But these two fellows (below), who are the grandchildren of what we have always called </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">'The Great Generation' of the post WW2 era are certainly poster boys for this weird contemporary world.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">"Things change", as the philosophers say, it's the way of Nature, of life, and the world. But how sad it must be for British families who had lost so many sons and daughters during WW2 to have to face Newspaper Headlines depicting these ignoble mugs.</span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Courier New"; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large; text-align: start;"><div style="text-align: justify;">But indeed, there are times for glory and there times for cowardice. We seem to be living in the latter, yet in spite of that, there are unsung angels working everyone around us, hiding in plain sight, as it were, from hospitals to hospices, relief agencies to middle schools, so let us not forget these heroic angels when we come across a pair of unworthy bully boys. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></span><div style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 36px; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start;"> </div></div></div><div><br /></div>cloudsandseahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16100707082729828273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174099310317324098.post-82614191337612681542024-01-26T06:01:00.002+01:002024-01-26T06:01:16.927+01:00The greatest Jazz trio ever; Satie, Monk and Bonnard!<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjgVvROy_gPKdhUVHAgd4A-GTrmi2_49WvGT0iBI-NJpEVBfoJl8uSJZDBDz4T5aQZq4TfrFzL0Jy_VrKDhbMRYyKvmIXeY8LrEKM0VS8wcd4CB3TtiM3xUClDjkDD3_2xkXH2B8iPGbToeFZz5v342pKtAHSzwkyidKHcztr_u2_tNjqDX6GZDoQtEZ-c9" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2512" data-original-width="3097" height="486" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjgVvROy_gPKdhUVHAgd4A-GTrmi2_49WvGT0iBI-NJpEVBfoJl8uSJZDBDz4T5aQZq4TfrFzL0Jy_VrKDhbMRYyKvmIXeY8LrEKM0VS8wcd4CB3TtiM3xUClDjkDD3_2xkXH2B8iPGbToeFZz5v342pKtAHSzwkyidKHcztr_u2_tNjqDX6GZDoQtEZ-c9=w599-h486" width="599" /></a><span style="font-family: Courier;">Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 28 December 2023, oil on canvas board, 30n X 25 cm</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">I have hardly been out to the Dunes to paint for weeks now due to the weather. They had announced a hot dry summer this year, with high risk of fires, but up here on the North Coast of new South Wales it has been wet and wild. So I have been in the studio quite a bit and doing different, larger things. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">But here are studies, (two out of three done that day) which came one after the other a few weeks back when a window of sun opened up. I like them both but didn't include the third because it bored me. These two may be simple but they're not boring, for me anyway. They both seem to open up something from my past but my future too, like I'm standing in the middle of the doorframe.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj73ALCUCD1ZYM0-TeTuWyKtPsTNyNVnARh3A6OiHBEJJOGd3tKz4JgUpJ1Xn1YZA_OWInZ5wHFbzt2yPoMRx8xEyOE0Ad2DkjMicba8snxSSjHknPPA-i_9sfusPJS2dbbVPcV7D7LABoFQUvFuq5SrILau3qwp0q4tczXy7bm-Nptisbp7iaky87q_HPz" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2507" data-original-width="3079" height="483" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj73ALCUCD1ZYM0-TeTuWyKtPsTNyNVnARh3A6OiHBEJJOGd3tKz4JgUpJ1Xn1YZA_OWInZ5wHFbzt2yPoMRx8xEyOE0Ad2DkjMicba8snxSSjHknPPA-i_9sfusPJS2dbbVPcV7D7LABoFQUvFuq5SrILau3qwp0q4tczXy7bm-Nptisbp7iaky87q_HPz=w596-h483" width="596" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Courier;">Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 28 December 2023, oil on canvas board, 30n X 25 cm</span><br /><br /></div><div><br /></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">And this idea brings me to music, because with a black coffee each morning, I sit at my piano and practice for a few hours each day purely for the joy of it. I am an amateur and who plays for fun, and I admit it without apologies to all the miseries going on in the world at home an abroad. Though I am mostly learning Jazz harmony, I've also been learning various small things from my favourites composers; Ravel and Satie mostly. Just six weeks ago, </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">I began a new one,</span><span style="font-family: Courier;"> Satie's 4th Gnossienne, and I've just finished memorising it. Like so many other amateurs I really do love this process of learning these small works because of how they cement me into the present moment, day after day, after day. And like tennis practice, it's both cerebral and corporal all at once. The body remembers the bits the mind cannot grasp, and vice-versa.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">For me, at my age, I make every effort to keep the mind switched on by all means possible. And ditto for the body, for which I also scheme to find opportunities to walk more each day as my heart doctor prescribes. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">So regarding music, I'm still like a child, fascinated and curious, but alas, with an older body. My end goal is just to be able to match any melody in my mind with an improvised harmony. </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">Playing another composer's work has its own rewards but to be able to play what goes in my own heart and mind is another thing altogether. How I envy kids who learn instruments!</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">So, while practicing a Gnoesienne this morning something</span><span style="font-family: Courier;"> occurred to me that also relates to Painting too; To get to one I need to pass through the other. </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">Basically it means that for me to really hear a composer like Thelonious Monk, I need to go through Erik Satie.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">Monk and Satie, despite their great differences, are musicians of extreme originality, and they both seem to come from the weirder orbits of their own particular eras much like Vincent Van Gogh from his own. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><span style="font-size: large;">What I wanted to say is that I learn the mechanics of harmony from Satie in order to improvise whatever melodies exist in my head and which definitely go more towards Monk who is from my own period.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">And this brings me to the world of Painting because as a </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">colourist, I needed to pass through Pierre Bonnard, the great colourist of French Painting to understand colour, but also light too. Other painters will choose other teachers naturally, but we all need to find our own guides into the wild world of Painting and music. In other words, we all have to come from somewhere before we can even go somewhere else, </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">unconsciously, or not.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">But for the painter who values colour, Nature is the greatest teacher, but only if one learns to harness its charms. All the answers are in Nature if we, as painters, learn to ask the right questions. Somehow I thinks it's this way in writing Fiction or even writing a ballad too, because like painters using their eyes, writers and composers are also ask questions with their minds and the ears. All creative acts comes from the senses in one form of curiosity or another, and all ask questions of the natural world at large.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span style="font-family: Courier;">So in my roundabout way, I really wanted to say that these two small paintings are in essence, my own two questions of Nature's wild sea and sky here in Australia. Both are formulated by curiosity and craft yet both </span></span><span style="font-family: Courier;">are also governed by my senses. But in the end, th</span><span style="font-family: Courier;">e elusive answer will always be the resulting painting itself. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">To a tourist these paintings might seem similar, but they are discreetly distinct due to the changing delicacies of the sky. A painter, me, in this case, needs to understand just what I really want and need from a motif. If I ask the right questions, I might be led more easily to</span><span style="font-family: Courier;"> a a successful painting which is the answer.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">And yes, I know, all this may sound terribly obvious,,,, but you know, over time, it really does become even more more obvious.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><br /></div>cloudsandseahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16100707082729828273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174099310317324098.post-86188821500081524242024-01-19T04:50:00.006+01:002024-01-19T05:16:04.815+01:00Whistler, an American cloud over Britain<div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhzn-kIIdxTzBapyoT0cWQwTSH9PeFk710ExBo0YmGe1aX0ysD1BpaLPL7C2z_bc12y-8Ha8icmsHAPsyE6sAslGZds8aOCL5K4gaxKOc2la4NQ1W-ZCHyrEgoSqqsH8YvJPkRXFidk9aVI4hqb_eKiU3odKzNzUXneWkdxhzApBHbZjaCr0BQp1YfFtXz5" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2027" data-original-width="3555" height="365" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhzn-kIIdxTzBapyoT0cWQwTSH9PeFk710ExBo0YmGe1aX0ysD1BpaLPL7C2z_bc12y-8Ha8icmsHAPsyE6sAslGZds8aOCL5K4gaxKOc2la4NQ1W-ZCHyrEgoSqqsH8YvJPkRXFidk9aVI4hqb_eKiU3odKzNzUXneWkdxhzApBHbZjaCr0BQp1YfFtXz5=w641-h365" width="641" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Courier;">James mcNeill Whistler, 1834-1903, (American)<br /><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">As I'm apt to say in these pages, if a painting doesn’t get better with time, it diminishes (a fact for all Art, I believe). And here is a picture of such spontaneous clarity that it takes one's breath away. I cannot remember where it came from but it's been sitting on my desktop for years now, and I've certainly already written about it previously, but</span><span style="font-family: Courier;"> today, I see that there is always more to love about it.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">How does a painter render such intimacy within the corners of such a vast and open panorama? The Dutch were brilliant at this style, indeed, they invented it, but with their small brushes, these small pictures can often feel tight, self-conscious and repressed like their Calvinist lives.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">This is clearly a landscape in a more classic vein but it also feels so British, upon whose love for the wild land it reposes. </span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">It's a small study and looks to be done out in the fields 'à la Française' and perhaps executed on a hard panel.</span><span style="font-family: Courier;"> </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">This horizontal landscape painting gives the sky prominence, as if to say;</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">"Everything below is in order, now go play in the clouds and have fun".</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">Whistler's interest, his real love, I believe, are the clouds and sea. This is a painter who, like Turner, and Constable, really loved the 'Northern' sky, the oftentimes savage brutality of stormy spray that allowed these great men to let go and play like children. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">The drawing of the farm (already remarkable) seems to hide shyly away atop a horizon of gentle rustic fields. This is just enough to glue these descending meadows to the playful sky overhead. Playful and rendered abstractly, these clouds appear like watercolour washes.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">More to be revealed.</div><br /><br /></span></div>cloudsandseahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16100707082729828273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174099310317324098.post-43575441355974622852024-01-09T07:59:00.027+01:002024-01-10T13:56:42.417+01:00An amends to Matisse, craft and technique<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">Ok I bashed Matisse so much in my last post I've felt a tremor of guilt these past days. Sacré Bleu! So, with a heightened sense of artistic shame, I shall make amends with a few more images from Paris that reveal his remarkable agility in using paint. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">I actually tried to find images that reflected my critical discomfort with some of his work that might sometimes, though infrequently, seem too 'academic' as per my understanding about art. But honestly, I could find little, nothing of consequence that would help further my thinking in this regard. But, I did find one, a still-life below that illustrates my critique, a real clunker. And yet, the truth for any painter is that, he (or she), must endure the occasional clunkers, even if they arrive at great intervals throughout our working lives. But obviously, one doesn't want to fill one's precious life with too many clunkers.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">And it's true that I'm a critical person by nature, most definitely suited for speaking about art. And yes, I go after laughably pretentious examples of poor work by phoney desparate-for-success painters. These are often people who have all the accoutrements of 'being an artist' as opposed to being a painter with a diligent application of craft. This is akin to people mistaking 'celebrity' at the Hollywood Oscars for serious actors who employ their thespian craft on stage. Okay,,,, I know,,, I know,,, I can get off target, but hey! It's a new year! And with the new year comes new problems, new critiques!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">But lately these days, I have noticed that to be seen as an artist, to be taken seriously as an 'artiste', it definitely helps to look the part; the wild colourful clothes, the wilder haircuts, the adornment of abundant and edgy tattoos! All these things are great for expressing indivuality in this conservative world, but these external identities eventually just fade away with time, just like ours looks (except the tattoos) for these physical artifices cannot in themselves actually produce much substance. Any work executed without some notion for craft will wilt like flowers because one cannot fake the greatness that lies in the ephemeral shadows of permanence. This is especially true when one is armed with just technique, because employed on its own, it's always mistaken for craft. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">So, after all that, here are eight pictures from different periods which show off the immense talents of Matisse, pictures that reveal the mysteries of his craft in full swing. The ninth, and last at the bottom, is what I deem the real clunker, one typical of when his craft doesn't work for him. It kind of sinks of its own weight. But I wanted to include it because I had previously written of this vein deep inside Henry Matisse that could run shallow due to his earnest desire to please a public audience, one which all academic teaching at that time had aspired to please. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">Somehow, in 19th century France, the acquisition of certain painting techniques at the Beaux-Arts was thought to be the integral component for making an artist. And because of this, like so many academic traditions everywhere, The Beaux Arts institution habitually cranked out boring academic painters whose only skills were centred upon this system alone.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">But concerning Matisse, I think this 'vein' deep within him retreated just as the wild animal (le fauve) inside, had progressed with more undomesticated artistic appetite. But, alas, (for me only), by the end of his life, to my regret, his cut-outs (wildly adored by the public) became a step backward into the comfort of domesticity. I say this not without deep sympathy because he was not in great health near the end of his life, often bedridden, and so, making cut-outs was an agreeable compromise. He was such a titan that one cannot fathom how he must have felt to be growing weaker while his artistic powers were still aflame. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">Writing about him suddenly makes me want to re-read his biography in two volumes by Hilary Spearling that I read about a decade ago and loved so much. Maybe, I shall order it on Audible, for some kinds of things are best read while others heard. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj80Ekd0-hiWlUqvpJ1XIcHhdlLrjPwEV9bEqGf4HxC6j1xcO11lW2vQdlpn9fkyijPNh_I2sSE4IYU4NUs5Ge1tbYghJUCWZA3Re5qsmEplJaBO_EOr3BqqtK6eRgqIQ6GnCpmRWKxLLnrJ1zAh2HWhRvynWUbzJfOQTdiwmcql7valJIkjymVGNk-vYmF" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="842" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj80Ekd0-hiWlUqvpJ1XIcHhdlLrjPwEV9bEqGf4HxC6j1xcO11lW2vQdlpn9fkyijPNh_I2sSE4IYU4NUs5Ge1tbYghJUCWZA3Re5qsmEplJaBO_EOr3BqqtK6eRgqIQ6GnCpmRWKxLLnrJ1zAh2HWhRvynWUbzJfOQTdiwmcql7valJIkjymVGNk-vYmF=w632-h842" width="632" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /><br /> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjyHku9Qii_87Fuk-gk6mPANiaTqmgGFiJjiMAU6mMuqVnbxpRCNTUIqkTfvVjDzubblnrLVPmdnG2apd4sRqVhopueMBaYoY6KKD-Y5uboqWDe7_xZM-Cil_6BAN-BPG6W6CoBCQ4zKrOmF19OoQ-tl0NDpo1k5tUcycRedE7yT9zxYrrehwt5RCo1odP9" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="799" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjyHku9Qii_87Fuk-gk6mPANiaTqmgGFiJjiMAU6mMuqVnbxpRCNTUIqkTfvVjDzubblnrLVPmdnG2apd4sRqVhopueMBaYoY6KKD-Y5uboqWDe7_xZM-Cil_6BAN-BPG6W6CoBCQ4zKrOmF19OoQ-tl0NDpo1k5tUcycRedE7yT9zxYrrehwt5RCo1odP9=w599-h799" width="599" /></a></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg_GVBAQWjzA_gjGxCoDU5iqkhumAmlG5uY21kjqtnwyXOsakjUYowlXINc9BcT2XoQHceVAmSWDFKr6RZE6qy1c0T0x5KTFJ_LzT9rlsxcQzdKmCYCJx8GTbpKwcih8xVX006dxuJOAMmpvB3zw9VTr5Ml9gEejZV6ixeNoLG07_3D4eEBbhRpsgCPcQ0S" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="330" data-original-width="400" height="529" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg_GVBAQWjzA_gjGxCoDU5iqkhumAmlG5uY21kjqtnwyXOsakjUYowlXINc9BcT2XoQHceVAmSWDFKr6RZE6qy1c0T0x5KTFJ_LzT9rlsxcQzdKmCYCJx8GTbpKwcih8xVX006dxuJOAMmpvB3zw9VTr5Ml9gEejZV6ixeNoLG07_3D4eEBbhRpsgCPcQ0S=w639-h529" width="639" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh4WNw3wX1-m55RRLS7K9uCr8iBTwGM9u9akWyAGbefzkN8sErdoZ-KVCT5fi5KTMEQo6V6XU9Dvi5uvQhzTh4VSOpYhHHn4iJG4qETARmrDNLXF92WAirRkR4Z5GH_8sG0yFlksN5p2JEP1k1vFN4rbg_0gcd6R__S3qzmKplA-Kh4vuGkc8SjVuxKYr6a" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="471" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh4WNw3wX1-m55RRLS7K9uCr8iBTwGM9u9akWyAGbefzkN8sErdoZ-KVCT5fi5KTMEQo6V6XU9Dvi5uvQhzTh4VSOpYhHHn4iJG4qETARmrDNLXF92WAirRkR4Z5GH_8sG0yFlksN5p2JEP1k1vFN4rbg_0gcd6R__S3qzmKplA-Kh4vuGkc8SjVuxKYr6a=w628-h471" width="628" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjQ8l3kZNINkqx9Vlu1O0jRMbUl8oLnOUzDAZrc4AomFqvxpR-wlcL4xYH0gslAleLFEwob0feu-na1aAnc34o8qiS1-pqMP8MihXUFYpZe7v_W_wrhL1sCmGfceLX8cX96RjkxDOf9uDW1H7k9ssJ6cSenVGbcrYc5aqqh7EsFACsJFu8PNw0Rd5PXvFxz" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1034" height="770" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjQ8l3kZNINkqx9Vlu1O0jRMbUl8oLnOUzDAZrc4AomFqvxpR-wlcL4xYH0gslAleLFEwob0feu-na1aAnc34o8qiS1-pqMP8MihXUFYpZe7v_W_wrhL1sCmGfceLX8cX96RjkxDOf9uDW1H7k9ssJ6cSenVGbcrYc5aqqh7EsFACsJFu8PNw0Rd5PXvFxz=w623-h770" width="623" /></a></div><br /></div><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgQwklr-Dg9y4pbqlU_UvDWAX_MjOWH2ZKCMrEWJBeehr1Jhcm2v2U3KOW_g_AaX4a4Ihw4828AbHVVJwrUXzALzVJmTotTUS79mlihW7IHTfehyOrrOwFAgKufWZIBDP2_ND8IsttbODS4m0x86gyUkml_t-S2zW925JlEVXInYGnh6AfHRrfuT66HCItX" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="187" data-original-width="270" height="419" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgQwklr-Dg9y4pbqlU_UvDWAX_MjOWH2ZKCMrEWJBeehr1Jhcm2v2U3KOW_g_AaX4a4Ihw4828AbHVVJwrUXzALzVJmTotTUS79mlihW7IHTfehyOrrOwFAgKufWZIBDP2_ND8IsttbODS4m0x86gyUkml_t-S2zW925JlEVXInYGnh6AfHRrfuT66HCItX=w604-h419" width="604" /></a></div><div><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhzp647qrdilVAwS4pKaKJCBVCfLXXlxdCoM8C2LsoLnlWVPFUp-PdnKvZnrcS8j_WNlJ8PqNsKTyAcYZdsdtXiPl3c7zjFGRu9aTj0wq5myEuHsjrGV2-7Sk9mMlmwK-jjuQ0ZNd0nPByiqYYesBjQhKnqplf4Mf_ptHtaR7IV_tslmH7YgMuqLuXmzriP" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhzp647qrdilVAwS4pKaKJCBVCfLXXlxdCoM8C2LsoLnlWVPFUp-PdnKvZnrcS8j_WNlJ8PqNsKTyAcYZdsdtXiPl3c7zjFGRu9aTj0wq5myEuHsjrGV2-7Sk9mMlmwK-jjuQ0ZNd0nPByiqYYesBjQhKnqplf4Mf_ptHtaR7IV_tslmH7YgMuqLuXmzriP" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg_KhfaHwxAWJkCjQygY_I-MRdu_ZqiaAdfcnpZ_NYeJjrw1zIVSGx_DmukujTBGMmUNJ2E8GFnQMl7S9SiQjOZ5llVXDgQFWO82LG-zkff2p9WenX8v4ZQ5t3Y0ZLFOEbBLTPGb7mYYMBOA3rbfzXcCx6_3c-XvVScYxnLRqzP3cBngoTuFFaJOWJ2qx_r" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="247" data-original-width="204" height="739" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg_KhfaHwxAWJkCjQygY_I-MRdu_ZqiaAdfcnpZ_NYeJjrw1zIVSGx_DmukujTBGMmUNJ2E8GFnQMl7S9SiQjOZ5llVXDgQFWO82LG-zkff2p9WenX8v4ZQ5t3Y0ZLFOEbBLTPGb7mYYMBOA3rbfzXcCx6_3c-XvVScYxnLRqzP3cBngoTuFFaJOWJ2qx_r=w606-h739" width="606" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhzp647qrdilVAwS4pKaKJCBVCfLXXlxdCoM8C2LsoLnlWVPFUp-PdnKvZnrcS8j_WNlJ8PqNsKTyAcYZdsdtXiPl3c7zjFGRu9aTj0wq5myEuHsjrGV2-7Sk9mMlmwK-jjuQ0ZNd0nPByiqYYesBjQhKnqplf4Mf_ptHtaR7IV_tslmH7YgMuqLuXmzriP" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhzp647qrdilVAwS4pKaKJCBVCfLXXlxdCoM8C2LsoLnlWVPFUp-PdnKvZnrcS8j_WNlJ8PqNsKTyAcYZdsdtXiPl3c7zjFGRu9aTj0wq5myEuHsjrGV2-7Sk9mMlmwK-jjuQ0ZNd0nPByiqYYesBjQhKnqplf4Mf_ptHtaR7IV_tslmH7YgMuqLuXmzriP" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjyEsDNrHcKWbixTUMgd1UMK00hbbtZRUiHGw0cXcDNRvDUNjawsW1N-SDDoYj8OljGUb5doUbfL659L-H8q4ThrdHac0xCsC1obyp858fFOgP6xgiX9yPusKrXN5ellzfDgef6HOM3JKIMOmgB1dY0K79LK8pPVRkRFtDTy8VLfbSrwb8l3_-p8jtDDWAb" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="246" data-original-width="205" height="726" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjyEsDNrHcKWbixTUMgd1UMK00hbbtZRUiHGw0cXcDNRvDUNjawsW1N-SDDoYj8OljGUb5doUbfL659L-H8q4ThrdHac0xCsC1obyp858fFOgP6xgiX9yPusKrXN5ellzfDgef6HOM3JKIMOmgB1dY0K79LK8pPVRkRFtDTy8VLfbSrwb8l3_-p8jtDDWAb=w605-h726" width="605" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhzp647qrdilVAwS4pKaKJCBVCfLXXlxdCoM8C2LsoLnlWVPFUp-PdnKvZnrcS8j_WNlJ8PqNsKTyAcYZdsdtXiPl3c7zjFGRu9aTj0wq5myEuHsjrGV2-7Sk9mMlmwK-jjuQ0ZNd0nPByiqYYesBjQhKnqplf4Mf_ptHtaR7IV_tslmH7YgMuqLuXmzriP" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg9V0hBka-Evz2EbWrLziVl9j1CVgwGjVIXWHNAHAzPSprTsHNCxY5gGDLUY7IgqP0GyOjCupD6cVCCcsVPB7IndKlPWrhSW2BgkHTrUoQcM44-bcKdG1F24ppOkMqB_T9D-fa4x39ASEpVDJbbBDa-LOll55aQHMl0ZrC01EBtlEveoDQjt7tJeXK7IcV0" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="203" data-original-width="248" height="499" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg9V0hBka-Evz2EbWrLziVl9j1CVgwGjVIXWHNAHAzPSprTsHNCxY5gGDLUY7IgqP0GyOjCupD6cVCCcsVPB7IndKlPWrhSW2BgkHTrUoQcM44-bcKdG1F24ppOkMqB_T9D-fa4x39ASEpVDJbbBDa-LOll55aQHMl0ZrC01EBtlEveoDQjt7tJeXK7IcV0=w607-h499" width="607" /></a></div><br /><br /></div>the clunker in question<br /><br /></span>cloudsandseahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16100707082729828273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174099310317324098.post-9574099977928964722023-12-31T11:47:00.001+01:002023-12-31T11:47:55.929+01:00Happy Zoo Year (you know what I'm talking about if you are in America)<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjPvHFpAtnwMHyRqJITzumWxoOiF0aMAMscfhXgrFXPOm-z_uLwj5cxz0lOwdWHueYDJzXDvaBtDou2iPLD7agQ86dzl8rEI3KrmoSmQScC9Ij5VolllXCjm9N9qELoBhupHXCN9GwyFhtksA0f-0vr5wmvimefQeGY-APp64fihStnof_JQuUH4RPieOGA" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2732" data-original-width="2048" height="770" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjPvHFpAtnwMHyRqJITzumWxoOiF0aMAMscfhXgrFXPOm-z_uLwj5cxz0lOwdWHueYDJzXDvaBtDou2iPLD7agQ86dzl8rEI3KrmoSmQScC9Ij5VolllXCjm9N9qELoBhupHXCN9GwyFhtksA0f-0vr5wmvimefQeGY-APp64fihStnof_JQuUH4RPieOGA=w578-h770" width="578" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: x-large;"> </span></div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">Thank you everyone for your loyal fellowship over this past year. It's been fun reaching out to many of you, some of whom I know, and love, but others, whom I love, but don't know yet. (Hey! W.T.F.!!)</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">Have a safe but creative year.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">Love from Cloudsandsea (forever)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p>cloudsandseahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16100707082729828273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174099310317324098.post-11754635241912498552023-12-30T03:53:00.005+01:002023-12-30T23:28:55.958+01:00Marquet, Matisse, McEnroe and Borg<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgNhTaYI1wlFVGQGfmQZahWf7rMlEeJrzgw8tkoTJXmWTmQnl1R5RzBy9krrkFkvAhgeN4K6R4uxMNjMFr00R46wlE0sJz3T73IT_RAJv_aJ6cJjuqhCUqqqBNBTKkZEzTkWwULwpJ12fGH2VKdVBER6gyvNooeJdkcGhKnzhMKmkhC6SEi3tjFG6A0ImF2" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2558" data-original-width="3025" height="526" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgNhTaYI1wlFVGQGfmQZahWf7rMlEeJrzgw8tkoTJXmWTmQnl1R5RzBy9krrkFkvAhgeN4K6R4uxMNjMFr00R46wlE0sJz3T73IT_RAJv_aJ6cJjuqhCUqqqBNBTKkZEzTkWwULwpJ12fGH2VKdVBER6gyvNooeJdkcGhKnzhMKmkhC6SEi3tjFG6A0ImF2=w620-h526" width="620" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></div><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><div style="text-align: justify;">This morning I stumbled across this watercolour while looking for something from Paris back in November, 2018. It's a terrible photo from my phone taken at the Musée Marmottan in Paris. At first glance, I didn't quickly recognise it as a picture by Albert Marquet, yet at the same time it somehow felt so very familiar to me. What was it that I had recognised? Then I perceived that it was that feeling, that artistic sensibility of Marquet uniquely embedded in its DNA through its composition and drawing construction and overall gentle sense of light. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I am a huge fan of Albert Marquet, I've always been since I began looking at his work. He was an unabashed sensualist, and to whom no doubt, I identified with so ardently. I was drawn in as a humming bird is to the heart of the honeysuckle.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Indeed, in my opinion he was far more of a sensualist than his close and dear friend, Henri Matisse, who achieved superstar status late in his career principally because he was far more of an adventurer in the newer and unexplored regions of Painting. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">To be sure, Marquet was more comfortable within the confines of traditional painting motifs, as is easily seen in this watercolour. And because of this he was a 'steadier' painter than Matisse. What I mean is that his brilliance is even-handed. Perhaps I could explain this in tennis terms, if there are any old timers out there; Marquet was to Matisse as was Björn Borg to Jon McEnroe back in the comfortable world of the base line. Like McEnroe, who expanded the game of serve and volley, Matisse ventures far out of his comfort zone (and our own) but can sometimes miss the mark. When he is on, he is the best, so don't get me wrong, I love Matisse, but because he was so willing to experiment, he naturally failed more, often producing stilted and somewhat academic work. Marquet was never an academic, but he was very attached to older certain traditions.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I became aware of Marquet's painting when I was still a child and without any understanding about art yet I was naturally drawn to his work. Why is that? Why is someone drawn to certain works of art? But whatever it is, isn't it great? Isn't it what keeps art alive in our cultural community? </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Much later in life, I fell in love with his drawings which really got me out into the streets where (and when) I finally realised just how much I had always despised actually drawing from the model indoors. Marquet's spontaneous drawings, along with those of Léo Marchutz, were to become my biggest influence later in life when I found my own assurance with crayon and paper. The most coveted book in my library is a thick catalogue full of his ink drawings from an exhibition I once saw. In these drawings I sense that he is a far superior draftsman than Matisse when using ink and brush, though I would decidedly be in the minority on this. Where Marquet is fluid and somewhat 'Japanese' in a 'zen' sort of spirit, Matisse is stilted and dry, as if trying to still please his Beaux Arts professors. Though later on in his life, Matisse did open up to a more fluid way of drawing, it also became more stylised too, unfortunately.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Anyway, as always, there is so much to say about all of this,,,,,,(sigh). I am harsh concerning Matisse, my ideas disturb because after all, he is a kind God for even the Post-Modernists who grudgingly give him a pass despite his love for the figurative world and his colourful love of joy.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But getting back to this watercolour, it appears so generously indulgent. What I mean is that the black boat next to the bridge is pivotal to its perspective as it steers us through the Venetian light of the sea and which gradually recedes into the distance. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I love the pale coloured bridge, full of tiny black, ant-like pedestrians who succeed in placing the 'foreground' really up front, in front of everything else. It's enough to push everything else back into the painting. What a solution! This is what it's all about.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And speaking of solution, is it not the reason why some painters really love certain pictures? Our affection isn't always because a particular painting looks good or because it answers something inside us (though these are reasons enough to love a painting), is it not because as painters, we wildly admire the solutions that are solved within the complex parameters of each picture? And is it not like that for any vocation practiced with diligent care?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></span><p></p><p><br /></p>cloudsandseahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16100707082729828273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174099310317324098.post-89017288180824390142023-12-25T05:32:00.003+01:002023-12-30T03:55:08.325+01:00Happy Holidaze!<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj8Ukzusx9Q5Zz7puKoWTDfZlxrPX_mvbMJOMmzjbqPFJLOXJUEiSBG8BXs7__XSl0pkw_zqoLam6c3YloTMKGbu0mO4mdBSsUt2kB-3OXQ-99I1IC_U-bE-FXJEx3h8fNfKCFk-u8NQGY7nmclMRKW-i21WkXSHDH59YWCVP9loz2sw1O4lFL9ihVisdSA" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="477" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj8Ukzusx9Q5Zz7puKoWTDfZlxrPX_mvbMJOMmzjbqPFJLOXJUEiSBG8BXs7__XSl0pkw_zqoLam6c3YloTMKGbu0mO4mdBSsUt2kB-3OXQ-99I1IC_U-bE-FXJEx3h8fNfKCFk-u8NQGY7nmclMRKW-i21WkXSHDH59YWCVP9loz2sw1O4lFL9ihVisdSA" width="636" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">Though the news is grim these days, (remember, it's always been) so my advice is to live well today, be creative, and find gratitude wherever one can.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">Much love from Cloudsandsea, always</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p>cloudsandseahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16100707082729828273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174099310317324098.post-51055049718838708232023-12-22T04:04:00.017+01:002023-12-22T04:35:45.863+01:00John Coltrane and Julie Andrews got married<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgUUFl1IvE_WEHt3Acy3tsnek72aStQDYxEMPQPZlSVAzDpCTnVsjigHGKMn3OnaqKXVQxyX0GrORDcNn6FuL-ctTXmjo7ZqkXOR3I1GT-l0ANVl_COtNMpMABw81edExN5-xkDsnWpByytFJ1oDmPhZuME0IwPRnc6lGfLomM5qRQGQb637U1yW197QWjr" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2583" data-original-width="3135" height="531" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgUUFl1IvE_WEHt3Acy3tsnek72aStQDYxEMPQPZlSVAzDpCTnVsjigHGKMn3OnaqKXVQxyX0GrORDcNn6FuL-ctTXmjo7ZqkXOR3I1GT-l0ANVl_COtNMpMABw81edExN5-xkDsnWpByytFJ1oDmPhZuME0IwPRnc6lGfLomM5qRQGQb637U1yW197QWjr=w642-h531" width="642" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: medium;"><div style="text-align: center;">Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 14 December 2023, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm</div></span><br /><br /> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgmzUnAoM-F9QHFo1nbGEfR4hnDWUgD14e9dSSV_9yQedp9CzmPq8NJJj_TTF13jNldQ_9rUYnC7JuQr8sKXN6qurmIkHRLnQUudRiAj1ePg1rooK1Px6HUVI3C5UrZpeNhn0cp2zLQvRoSDpON6WwPEtULlHJzQzizIfdsEAg1NWE9q02xGP9sfayxsKbA" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2548" data-original-width="3026" height="535" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgmzUnAoM-F9QHFo1nbGEfR4hnDWUgD14e9dSSV_9yQedp9CzmPq8NJJj_TTF13jNldQ_9rUYnC7JuQr8sKXN6qurmIkHRLnQUudRiAj1ePg1rooK1Px6HUVI3C5UrZpeNhn0cp2zLQvRoSDpON6WwPEtULlHJzQzizIfdsEAg1NWE9q02xGP9sfayxsKbA=w633-h535" width="633" /></a></div>Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 14 December 2023, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm</span></div></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: medium; text-align: left;"></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg2E2KrerDTJLl9eslZuIj0A0D6ICaMw-vWRy8PQY0i2qz-VW-_YVVKSjLJLqeysNPnk1tbX7AZMAW7lxhc362bgJ_0am05O3AAjtR0cBHU414kXFzWquuD8PlKtPA4OYnmqKXulCgA92lE4epAjN94XSstoL0zSCsoB04E1PGfNtOSQDQEObDYaiL43j1M" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2617" data-original-width="3192" height="525" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg2E2KrerDTJLl9eslZuIj0A0D6ICaMw-vWRy8PQY0i2qz-VW-_YVVKSjLJLqeysNPnk1tbX7AZMAW7lxhc362bgJ_0am05O3AAjtR0cBHU414kXFzWquuD8PlKtPA4OYnmqKXulCgA92lE4epAjN94XSstoL0zSCsoB04E1PGfNtOSQDQEObDYaiL43j1M=w637-h525" width="637" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: medium;">Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 14 December 2023, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: medium; text-align: left;"></span></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><span></span>As I approach the end of another year I try to take stock of a batch of pictures, most of which sit on bookshelves in my living room, an orphanage that only grows larger.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">At the start of the new year I have promised these orphans that they will all be varnished in order to protect them against mildew and general mayhem as they grow older. But in the meantime, </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">I will remain a beneficiary</span><span style="font-family: Courier;"> of these colourful skies for </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">as long as the Gods continue to bestow their magnanimous light upon me. I keep thinking that there is nothing more I wring from this old rag but the Muses insist that I'm wrong. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">Here are three studies from the 14th of December which all came out so easily and full of grace, one after the other quarter notes from My Favourite Things that both John Coltrane and Julie Andrews spritely rendered back in the 1960's when Happiness still felt like and real tangible thing. </span><span style="font-family: Courier;"> </span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><span style="font-size: large;">I went through that piece three years ago during the Pandemic when I was learning so many Tin-Pan Alley tunes, all of which gave birth to Broadway musicals. I grew up with these things and I came to appreciate the composers from that era; from Jerome Kern to Rogers and Hammerstein, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Lorenz Hart, among so many. These are still great melodies even if today they may seem old-fashioned but thankfully, Jazz musicians reinterpreted them, and re-fashioned an American musical genre completely unique in the world. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">Several years ago, I used to see a gal in New York who I took to a Broadway show, Carmen, I think. Though not an American musical, no matter, because as the lights dimmed, she turned to me and said: "My mother once told me to watch out for guys who invite you to musicals because they're usually always gay." Ha Ha, I laughed. You gotta love that! And she's probably right too. But personally, in my own case, I've always liked the gals, sexually speaking, ever since I was a kid. But it's true that I have a large feminine side to me that could easily confuse others, women, men, and otherwise. It's the problem of living a life of a sensitive and poetic man while navigating a world of playing ice hockey and football along side macho blokes who had never read Walt Whitman. But yes,,, I'm complicated, and I don't really fit on an American shelf. (Dieu merci)</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">But anyway, though it actually wasn't My Favourite Things that was running through my ears whilst painting these small studies last week, it is nevertheless such a great tune. But the thing is; I always have melodies rippling through my fingers and right down through my feet. Every part of me jiggles and jitters consistently up and down my body when I'm sitting in a meeting and listening to others speak (But hey! Some people chew gum).</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">As a matter of fact, I think, last week I was looking at Have you Met Miss Jones, by Rogers and Hart. It's a simple tune with a group of a lovely few measures cascading gently down through several keys inside the melody. Just</span><span style="font-family: Courier;"> a few delicate </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">passages like these can echo within me for several weeks.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">But, what I really wanted to express without taking everyone for a long ride, is that in these three oil studies, there appears to be a connection through feeling, one I really like, and one that I associate with these aforementioned melodious songs. These are, after all, happy pictures, like so many of these songs and though not in vogue these days, they really do exude the joy of a sunset beach. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">I read recently that Marina Abramović made the claim that no genuine art can come out of happiness. Ouch,,,, though I can understand her viewpoint, no doubt, I disagree wholeheartedly. Who is to say where art comes from? (and by whom?). She is a talented and successful Performance Artist but hey! She's also a bit of a smart pants too. The world of art is like a huge circus tent, and every freak, furry and otherwise is welcome to exhibit. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><span style="font-size: large;">And I would add that despite what loquaciously proficient Post-Modernists insist upon explaining to us about how the purpose of Art today is to make us think; don't believe it for a second, it's not, because if it were, then one could just as well pick up a book on any selected subject.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">And this is because when one is sensitive to the handiwork of any art form; whether it be Painting, Poetry, Architecture, or Music; Rock and Roll, Opera, Show-tunes, Chopin or Satie; the thinking mind dissipates and allows one's heart to open up all the way for the soul to hear. And that my friends, is what Art is really for. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p>cloudsandseahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16100707082729828273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174099310317324098.post-15654097626669337512023-12-18T04:55:00.009+01:002023-12-19T05:15:36.503+01:00tinder box<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiYBrE7lLqWXeBi_YwtcXxJN3njL6_646VFiKt0Rr7oHncaE_4zsjnFGcsSKmaZgEBpi8u6BH42gosAaMNstyeJIHSpQuCNzWxyFRZEiP0ZHMLBpKfy8j9S3vuMK7a5HM-OL0PvOnT9waUSLrVMXHMpWIW0aHfs0dv5-T9H-8V3j7LY4AIxh7zzEA9ULe-k" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1332" data-original-width="1368" height="606" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiYBrE7lLqWXeBi_YwtcXxJN3njL6_646VFiKt0Rr7oHncaE_4zsjnFGcsSKmaZgEBpi8u6BH42gosAaMNstyeJIHSpQuCNzWxyFRZEiP0ZHMLBpKfy8j9S3vuMK7a5HM-OL0PvOnT9waUSLrVMXHMpWIW0aHfs0dv5-T9H-8V3j7LY4AIxh7zzEA9ULe-k=w619-h606" width="619" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Always a sucker for really great graphic design, I fell for this instantly. Obviously, It accompanied an article about all the horrors going on in Gaza and in Israel at the moment.</div></span><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><span>I marvel at the simplicity of the image but also at its complexity at the same time. This innate paradox is something so essential for a art work of any kind because i</span>t speaks to the depth of relationships. It also reminds me that brevity is the soul of wit, as some wise guy said somewhere, (probably Oscar Wilde).</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">In this aesthetic Pantheon, there are great graphic artists but poorer ones too because with talent, like in any art form, there are those lucky enough to possess an original talent, and then there are all the rest. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">The New York Times has the best graphic designers in the business, while their art directors are also the creme of the crop that draw a rich talent pool. </span><span style="font-family: Courier;"> </span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">This is a wonderful image, difficult for sure, and it works best as graphic art, but honestly, I would secretly also like to see it in a museum too.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p>cloudsandseahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16100707082729828273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174099310317324098.post-40424571096962887752023-12-11T11:22:00.003+01:002023-12-13T01:43:38.350+01:00A tale of two cities <p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwPtLpRcVi4InR4XrhDyAQ_4Dwn9slpkhXWxi8bm3Vu3WTdR_XqJP7uk9Cdgno1Mxq9xS6uPAwUuBa73N9eyHVP7Qj71G61IJSfMemhKTrS3mzuPCCpJicHcXvKme8xj3yv8smZSNmF-UPhGvwOpfz4IOpuoWadEHXKR84sJbpja058ZyhCPXDccHB1phl/s840/Screenshot%202023-12-10%20at%2017.24.34.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="840" data-original-width="834" height="602" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwPtLpRcVi4InR4XrhDyAQ_4Dwn9slpkhXWxi8bm3Vu3WTdR_XqJP7uk9Cdgno1Mxq9xS6uPAwUuBa73N9eyHVP7Qj71G61IJSfMemhKTrS3mzuPCCpJicHcXvKme8xj3yv8smZSNmF-UPhGvwOpfz4IOpuoWadEHXKR84sJbpja058ZyhCPXDccHB1phl/w598-h602/Screenshot%202023-12-10%20at%2017.24.34.png" width="598" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: medium; text-align: left;">Untitled, Myocum NSW June, 2017, oil on canvas 150 X 150 cm</span><br style="text-align: left;" /><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: medium; text-align: left;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">In the news this past week there were two articles that caught my attention that concerned the recent sentences handed down by Tribunals in the US and France. Being juxtaposed by arriving in a 24 hour period in the news cycle was jarring.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">In the first, it reported that in France, several adolescents received sentences from just a few months to 2 1/2 years for the beheading of a History teacher in the North of France just a few years back. A the killer, an Islamic fanatic (18 at the time) was given the lengthier sentence of 2 1/2 years while the shorter ones were handed out to his younger accomplices who had led the killer to the teacher.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">In the US state of Michigan, also just this week, another adolescent (15 at the time of the murders) was given a Life sentence (without parole) for the shooting murders of several of his classmates in his high school. This student had a history mental health issues known to both the school and his parents, who had bought him a new high caliber gun the day before the shootings. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">Though different, both sets of murders are horrendous, but I was appalled at just how light was the one in France, and how heavy was the one in Michigan. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">Sending a teenager to prison for life without </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">parole is just as awful as putting an adolescent into prison in France for the beheading at just 2 1/2 years. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">Crazy, in one word. </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">They both miss the mark.</span><span style="font-family: Courier;"> </span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">One cannot fathom the bottomless pain that both these sets of horrific crimes have spread across so many families and friends of these victims. But in the US, there were also many with serious injuries to students.</span><span style="font-family: Courier;"> </span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">Coincidently, just a few days later (yesterday) while at the gym there doing some exercises, there were two tv monitors on that simultaneously held my attention.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">On the left, a report about the horrors going on in Gaza, as we speak.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">On the right was a documentary about the last few years of the third Reich revealing footage of Hitler cavorting around the Berghof, his massive Alpine retreat where he apparently slept comfortably in each day and entertained guests late into the nights watching films with fellow Nazis.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span style="font-family: Courier;">"I cannot seem to escape these dual realities", is what I thought to myself. </span></span><span style="font-family: Courier;">There isn't much for me to add to any go this, I wonder if the Christmas season can wash away some of these dark tales?</span></span></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>cloudsandseahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16100707082729828273noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174099310317324098.post-50847150421415472122023-12-04T09:55:00.004+01:002023-12-05T00:57:49.086+01:00Meeting Andrew Wyeth at the thrift shop<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhNvOvGQTK-E8eMqDqBj_x2hWhFT7oSNuLScmGLzA0c8nvK0oL__FQdiZ3BW5AFqgM0VUJNe-2hmAZnTBOmCkiNmZ2dmmgYck8PWgdLcY32fjjafz6z9TXeoQ61a2ofweAvEj_hdjKuKCpSaDWBtgFMFpP3rYsmzfIoA_brn7pnqyLdSZ0crKqrAqfB650_" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1290" data-original-width="1844" height="472" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhNvOvGQTK-E8eMqDqBj_x2hWhFT7oSNuLScmGLzA0c8nvK0oL__FQdiZ3BW5AFqgM0VUJNe-2hmAZnTBOmCkiNmZ2dmmgYck8PWgdLcY32fjjafz6z9TXeoQ61a2ofweAvEj_hdjKuKCpSaDWBtgFMFpP3rYsmzfIoA_brn7pnqyLdSZ0crKqrAqfB650_=w678-h472" width="678" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-family: Courier; font-size: large; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Courier;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">If one is ever lucky enough to come across a small oil painting like this w</span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-family: Courier; white-space: pre-wrap;">hile checking out a thrift shop, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Courier; white-space: pre-wrap;">and if one is clever enough to purchase it, then one is very, very lucky indeed. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); white-space: pre-wrap;">Like many, I only dream of </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); white-space: pre-wrap;">finding a masterpiece in a thrift store, but as I'm not in the habit of scouring them, it's unlikely I'll find anything. But I do have friends who do, and their homes are full of interesting relics from these outings. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Courier;"><span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">In Europe and America, it's a great pastime to frequent antique fairs and flea markets which I used to do in France when I was younger but not with any real passion. Now, I'm too lazy, and besides, I don't want anything more to clutter my home. But when I read about this story, my envy grows like Pinocchio's nose. </span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Courier;"><span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Courier;"><span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">But I do know one success story. A friend in France picked up a smallish, dark, scruffy looking oil painting in an auction at the Hotel de Ventes </span></span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Courier;"><span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">in Aix, about fifty years ago. I think he paid about $US150 at the time. As he recounted it years later, all he seemed to think at the time was that it 'possessed a certain something' in it, but when he brought it home and cleaned it up bit he found a small signature in red on the bottom right corner; Renoir. </span></span></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-family: Courier; white-space: pre-wrap;">He supposed that it was early, possibly of Renoir's mother. </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Courier; white-space: pre-wrap;">He showed it to Leo Marchutz, our mentor, who looked at it for a long while, then wisely asked, as if to no one: </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Courier; font-size: large; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Courier; font-size: large; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Who else could have done this?" </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Courier; font-size: large; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Courier; white-space: pre-wrap;">I can still this painting in my mind because he had several photos taken of it a few years later when I went to Sotheby's' in New York, to see what it might fetch there. That came to nothing. But </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Courier; white-space: pre-wrap;">I often saw it on a wall in his small home outside of Aix, and indeed with time, it had only seemed to grow more beautiful. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Courier; font-size: large; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); white-space: pre-wrap;">So, although I'm not a great fan of Andrew Wyeth's overall work, I respect him as a fellow artist. This picture, on the other hand, I find very striking, beautiful even the more time I spend looking at it. </span></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Apparently, it was put up for auction recently at Bonham's and even sold for about 150K but the buyer (from Australia) reneged and never </span></span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; white-space: pre-wrap;">paid up. This happens a lot more than one would think in the smaller houses. That's a shame for the woman who bought it at the thrift shop because </span></span><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">apparently being of modest means, that money would have changed her situation considerably.</span></span></div><span face="nyt-franklin, helvetica, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><div style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); text-align: justify; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); text-align: justify; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anyway, I really love this small picture not only because it possesses a particular luminosity in it that sets it apart from so much Painting, but also because there is a formal quality that harkens back to the early Renaissance. Here, there is light, not mere ‘lighting’ like employed for illustrations, but a real luminous set of relationships that create a unity of the whole picture. It is certainly also an upgrade to anything else I've ever seen of Andrew Wyeth's work which has always seemed to me to be more of a fine illustration than spontaneous Painting which I prefer.
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: justify;">As Leo had said about the Renoir, years earlier, I honestly don't imagine that there are (or ever were) too many painters in America capable of creating such complexity in an image. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>It's a remarkable little painting.</span></span></span><div><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><span face="nyt-franklin, helvetica, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><span face="nyt-franklin, helvetica, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">
</span><div style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); text-align: justify; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></div></span></span><p></p></div>cloudsandseahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16100707082729828273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174099310317324098.post-60330931436224292432023-11-30T04:36:00.003+01:002023-11-30T04:36:45.516+01:00Inviting disaster<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjUVdKQGXsCciXudIdd4Xm9wpkSbYrgt96Gu55D63nSt35NOX-6TPajrG0-pr2_mQt5j6OfVm-thVpusLAOPTSiSiLKmlqSnDpQmb0AdSmFOdaJsxa1YUjQVN--TmJvFeJ4iVz2mPEqN94jiKcKb5qQDKMxffqv7gkXj17VNI89hW8KjwxRAwZ1g-6lW0XJ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2404" data-original-width="3041" height="457" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjUVdKQGXsCciXudIdd4Xm9wpkSbYrgt96Gu55D63nSt35NOX-6TPajrG0-pr2_mQt5j6OfVm-thVpusLAOPTSiSiLKmlqSnDpQmb0AdSmFOdaJsxa1YUjQVN--TmJvFeJ4iVz2mPEqN94jiKcKb5qQDKMxffqv7gkXj17VNI89hW8KjwxRAwZ1g-6lW0XJ=w577-h457" width="577" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: x-small;">Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 25 October 2023, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiIm9QzGZTf4otK7mqo2n5fk5QHCkRMXkVdQjIuvB_Qr2xP1KviFvRsR8MuxxGDQ14X4UncrKlNplbuDN2PeAiuLJQgm4ho12LxmpjNK8v0ikmikt7qY_8372AXXEWW32z3ZeBkUknpI3d86kXpvaPBH7sFQ5w1_rGqazIF8sN3LyjTF7zm2Lxd2g3_Y3Aj" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2498" data-original-width="3028" height="476" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiIm9QzGZTf4otK7mqo2n5fk5QHCkRMXkVdQjIuvB_Qr2xP1KviFvRsR8MuxxGDQ14X4UncrKlNplbuDN2PeAiuLJQgm4ho12LxmpjNK8v0ikmikt7qY_8372AXXEWW32z3ZeBkUknpI3d86kXpvaPBH7sFQ5w1_rGqazIF8sN3LyjTF7zm2Lxd2g3_Y3Aj=w575-h476" width="575" /></a></div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="text-align: center;"> </span><span style="font-family: Courier; text-align: center;">Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 25 October 2023, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm</span></span><br /><p></p><div><span style="font-family: Courier; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="text-align: center;"><span><span style="font-family: Courier;">These two studies are from a few weeks back. The weather has been uneven and though there have been evenings when I could have, or should have gone out, perhaps,... but I didn't, I guess because I'm becoming a little bit snooty vis-a-vis the weather conditions, maybe like the apartment dog that refuses to leave the comfort of home for a dog walk when raining, or Heavens! it's snowing and the streets are full of slush. Dogs are hip to to this </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Courier; text-align: center;">when they see the husband or wife wrapped up in galoshes and a raincoat. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">I used to go out under almost any kind of sky, but these days, I seem to be patiently awaiting the luminous light like a snob, and as I've said before in these pages I've painted my fair share of grey seas to last me a lifetime. So non! No more sickly Northern skies or bland seas for me. </span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="text-align: center;"><span><span style="font-family: Courier;">But of course, this could all change, like if I were to begin working out in the landscape again, </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Courier; text-align: center;">where a pale and dull-looking slate sky compliments the very best of the earthy shrub and will usually always accentuate the arid landscape or lush greenery.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier; text-align: center;">In such earthly spots a painter can exploit a range of orange umbers and red sienna's that are born of the desert sand and ground into the mountains. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier; text-align: center;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span style="font-family: Courier; text-align: center;">But by the seaside it's the opposite, for these </span></span><span style="font-family: Courier;">plum reds, yellow pears and lime greens yearn to shed their earthly pigments and want nothing more than to fly away from earth. These tints gravitate to towards the blue-violet spectrum of serenity. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">Like human souls,</span><span><span style="font-family: Courier; text-align: center;"> these colours yearn for </span></span><span style="font-family: Courier;">celestial height as found in the</span><span><span style="font-family: Courier;"> heavenly blue of stained-glass windows at Chartres, for it's all about being cool.</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">I like these two pictures, but especially now after a few weeks have passed as I see they've not lost their 'life' for me. As I can say too often in these pages there is no point in creating any picture that, (unlike perishable foods), does not 'live' beyond its execution date. </span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">One recent thing I've changed is that I picked up some smaller brushes and this has shaken things up for me in a good way. I felt that </span></span></span><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">I needed to get back into a different way of building up an image. I've seen for some time now that I had become too reliant upon larger sweeping swarths of colour and I wanted to get back to a busier, more frenzied set of planes; more unrestrained frenzy actually. </span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">This might be because I've spent a lot of time looking at paintings from these earlier years when I began the series from around 2017 and 2018 (as I am indeed putting a book together from all this). </span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">Here is one from those years to better show </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Courier;"><span style="font-size: large;">what I'm trying to express. </span></span><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">This kind of image may not appeal to the general public but hey,,, who cares?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: x-large; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: center;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjHB9eupm2c96sASkBIkRqXfnPMDC-Nd6PRt_88cGaNbGw3CzL33Te18kPPV9c30XM2IX1f_99_lacqYlZ75UyRwGVTCe8xEThwi2p5G6zmMBxKKDT7GhAmUSQYxWSKIl4nIh4u9nfPTr6XBXhxNQzckqpmd90yU7sBE08MkjBhoq670nheAJ8bhf-RWbbd" style="font-size: x-large; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2755" data-original-width="3287" height="483" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjHB9eupm2c96sASkBIkRqXfnPMDC-Nd6PRt_88cGaNbGw3CzL33Te18kPPV9c30XM2IX1f_99_lacqYlZ75UyRwGVTCe8xEThwi2p5G6zmMBxKKDT7GhAmUSQYxWSKIl4nIh4u9nfPTr6XBXhxNQzckqpmd90yU7sBE08MkjBhoq670nheAJ8bhf-RWbbd=w573-h483" width="573" /></a><span style="font-size: large;"> </span>Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 22 March 2018, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm</div></span></div><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">In this study from March, 2018, there is an almost 'messy' or 'scrappy' aspect to this image. It reveals an expressive struggle between the winning and losing of a picture, and as with any battle, a painter gains more when blood has been drawn. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><span style="text-align: center;">But there is something in this study that I want again in my work, this untidy darkness and messy uncertainty that appeals to the </span></span><span style="font-family: Courier; text-align: center;">insouciance of my personality</span><span style="font-family: Courier;"><span style="text-align: center;">. I want to go back and re-explore this careless sensuality because I sense that I need a sea change, as it were, from too much </span></span><span style="font-family: Courier; text-align: center;">smooth sailing. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">And of course, 'Mark-Making' has become a major sub-genre of Contemporary Art in itself, ever since Twombly then Basquiat, who both arrived on the Painting Scene one after the other, and created mayhem for many, but also changed the way the public looked at Art. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">For me, this Mark-Making school is certainly an extension of Abstract Expressionism, and though I do find it sexy and all, it's too temporal. But also, in front of a 'motif' at the beach it's also not a solution for my way of painting. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">For many artist today, 'Mark Making' as 'method' is a whole way of life in studios and schools around the world but for me, it's</span><span style="font-family: Courier;"> just a means-to-an-end, not the other way around, because after all, I'm still a figurative painter. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">One cannot change course so easily and my process is still a slow progression. My working system cruises along adroitly like an ocean liner whose course is somewhat set, yet re-configured for changes to the actual currents. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">In summary, this study from 2018, also possesses an adventurous spirit and beckons danger and accidents like at night when I'm crossing over the middle line of a road</span><span style="font-family: Courier;"> and </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">inviting failure, disaster even.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large; text-align: center;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Courier; text-align: center;"><br /></span></span></div>cloudsandseahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16100707082729828273noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174099310317324098.post-1389940428741631892023-11-24T15:36:00.036+01:002023-11-26T13:20:42.086+01:00Henri Matisse, and the elegant Autumn<p> <br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjqxJpuD_ZZsG5IXwHGEG4pAZdnbcdaEWswbCwRuHQvdWX2kpRBeRAacpvC9P08N7fwUzdn-N9zCvcKmuRl3hCcySxXHQQOkmM0q-UavJeMmu9HdOfKYgTFIy4rKFTgTaa6x8q70vnW-lgGIH4X50_mwBD-cQck6z1A2tJPOK-vuW80t0FICzAnWr1G2rV/s545/bdm_matisse_paysage_rue_midi.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="545" height="550" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjqxJpuD_ZZsG5IXwHGEG4pAZdnbcdaEWswbCwRuHQvdWX2kpRBeRAacpvC9P08N7fwUzdn-N9zCvcKmuRl3hCcySxXHQQOkmM0q-UavJeMmu9HdOfKYgTFIy4rKFTgTaa6x8q70vnW-lgGIH4X50_mwBD-cQck6z1A2tJPOK-vuW80t0FICzAnWr1G2rV/w666-h550/bdm_matisse_paysage_rue_midi.jpg" width="666" /></a><span style="font-family: Courier; text-align: left;">Henri Matisse, When? Somewhere? or somehow!</span></div><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">One of my favourite paintings by Henri Matisse! </span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">Certainly not one of his groundbreaking pictures and yet </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">it embodies an elegance so deceptively </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">simple and refined that it would easily be overlooked by today's artistic circles which tend to lean more towards a Post-Modernist messaging.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">I have no idea when or where it was done but </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">I might guess somewhere in the South due it's warm light. It feels like Autumn, though a clement one unlike those of the North. Driving through any number of small villages around Provence one could easily stumble upon a village exactly like this one.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">It possesses that fresh feeling like he knew exactly when and where to stop working on it. This is special talent and one that most people (generally the public) ever appreciate much less notice, but painters love it. But it's also a rare gift and one that few painters are blessed with.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">It's as fresh as if painted last week and i</span><span style="font-family: Courier;">t</span><span style="font-family: Courier;"> unveils the unique brushwork of the artist, his personal DNA, if you like. </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">But at the same time it </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">also reveals </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">a picture's </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">skeletal innards like that of </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">an X-ray showing a picture's overall health. Is everything in place? Do the parts all work? And does everything function together?</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">All these things are discreetly hidden away and out of sight, and normally, viewers </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">will not notice any of this anymore than a passenger on a A380 knows much of what goes on inside the fuselage. The art of Painting isn't all airy-fairy, as some think, it's</span></span><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"> the art of craft just like everything else that's made with human hands. And like any craft, it's an aptitude that comes with both love and discipline for the product (which is actually an odd thing to say about a painting, but I just did).</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">Looking at it in this moment I imagine it was painted quickly, maybe in just one session perhaps. </span><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">As a viewer I feel a fleeting sense of haste in it as if a magic wand was waved briskly overhead during its execution. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span style="font-family: Courier;">There is a French expression that </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">comes to mind: </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">"Jeter la poudre dans les yeux" which dates back to an époque when the king and his entourage swept swiftly through small towns without stopping, their many horse-drawn carriages spewed dust into the villager's eyes, blinding and dazzling them. Today it basically means to fool someone, snow them with glitter like Trump does.</span></span><span style="font-family: Courier;"> </span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><span><br /></span></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><span>And this painting is a marvellous example of a space manipulated with colour. Matisse bewilders me like a magician who has surprised his audience by pulling a red rose out of a wife's ear whilst stealing a billfold from the poor husband's back pocket.</span> </span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">The colour palette is remarkably simple. I wouldn't be surprised if it were composed of just a few colours; Ultramarine Blue, Madder Lake, Lemon Yellow, Prussian Blue (to make the black) and Titanium White. With so little, so much can be created in the right hands and with an artistic sensibility. And t</span><span style="font-family: Courier;">hese colours gently appear to caress one another so spontaneously that I'm reminded of Delacroix's description of how the future of Painting would henceforth be based around his notion of 'drawing with colour' (and he was right). This is a kind of drawing disguised as colour that dictates the plan of organisation. </span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">The whole wall </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">of trees on the right side of the painting appears </span></span><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">implausibly uneven and yet it works so well. It has been both flattened and simplified allowing my eyes to keep moving around the picture plane with ease. Below it, a misshapen stone wall recedes like a snake and acts as an anchor for the mass of trees overhead.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span><span style="font-family: Courier;">The farmhouse on the left pulls the viewer's eyes down into the 'rear' of the picture towards the end of the road. It </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">adroitly guides me down and around the bend to the right, out of sight. Then, t</span></span><span style="font-family: Courier;">his bright Veronese green/blue thing (a shutter, or oeil de boeuf?) seems to pop up and come as a complete surprise as if Matisse sensed my somnambulant</span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"> state so he had to wake me up in a hurry. </span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">Above, a </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">'Genoise' frames</span><span style="font-family: Courier;"> the roof of the farmhouse wall by giving it weight that might otherwise feel flimsy. It's also an integral colour that fastens the sky and trees back down to the road. </span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">The colour harmony! Ahhhh,,, so discreet and deceptively simple, it's a great lesson into how colours interact on the colour wheel. It's a sumptuously rich understatement and it almost feels edible. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">As an addendum, I throw this in at the last minute because it reminds me so much of the Matisse though done roughly fifty years earlier. </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">It too, was done in the Autumn and i</span><span style="font-family: Courier;">t possesses that same sort of gnarly spontaneity, but it's far more developed as a picture. Today, it appears to me just a less fluid when I compare it to the Matisse, but this is not a slight, just a nuanced observation, perhaps due to the painterly space between the two centuries. </span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">But, it was one of my favourite things at the Met when I lived in New York. It was also a picture of the rural French countryside that taunted me continually for living my urban life there. </span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTMdMhnFFJzDltkukCcSqG-z7zJ0Z19e9enKuy37rpHBLe-31dcWs3D63sdiKkstRq76gz3ccoeojwSdxqTnr0d683iepZn_GTeCIYkfLHLDPduBzR6SY29vFmOO2RvpweFlCBXpG2hmif_DTa9yL_LaYf_fiklx4PpYV6-jm0dBMBl9nCOhfEwIm3o-kc/s1534/Screenshot%202023-11-22%20at%2013.35.57.png" style="font-size: x-large; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1534" height="528" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTMdMhnFFJzDltkukCcSqG-z7zJ0Z19e9enKuy37rpHBLe-31dcWs3D63sdiKkstRq76gz3ccoeojwSdxqTnr0d683iepZn_GTeCIYkfLHLDPduBzR6SY29vFmOO2RvpweFlCBXpG2hmif_DTa9yL_LaYf_fiklx4PpYV6-jm0dBMBl9nCOhfEwIm3o-kc/w633-h528/Screenshot%202023-11-22%20at%2013.35.57.png" width="633" /></a>Alfred Sisley <span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The Road from Versailles to Louveciennes circa 1879</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: x-large; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></span></div><p></p>cloudsandseahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16100707082729828273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174099310317324098.post-46309207265251100642023-11-12T16:19:00.021+01:002023-11-21T14:51:53.607+01:00Hey lighten up!<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgbL7oOvPo5KYtvrofaWD5ePzJBTJYJrCeyM16CpR5RHp8cHeAIzMoQZAzOnEOI9lr4MvR-L0EuFwP0tUZIGAHNMUA5C4b_3Wdumzbg76vgSucCkaTpKdZEqQV_nFHq6ja46W8k-2c8aQxVifLCnBT6ZYKLBqCvsTQEOgr2yBmqoljLiWOWgFZ6X1QgpKYm" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgbL7oOvPo5KYtvrofaWD5ePzJBTJYJrCeyM16CpR5RHp8cHeAIzMoQZAzOnEOI9lr4MvR-L0EuFwP0tUZIGAHNMUA5C4b_3Wdumzbg76vgSucCkaTpKdZEqQV_nFHq6ja46W8k-2c8aQxVifLCnBT6ZYKLBqCvsTQEOgr2yBmqoljLiWOWgFZ6X1QgpKYm" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgdZ8Q7r0xMvmFGY6j6kaZTM9wGOVPKOAR8pNtbknlJjySL1CKRVN5qgEIKmmJneKYl7LEB0F2pFBgyt9fmBfEUe2F6V1uYGah905_PDcfg7x4ZUZeRKEtBmR11L__Z4WWQVBG9FB93YXdK4AG6V7N7V93GkNz16lpydSaIqhn8LG3-_GdcJaGIuBrr9QVN" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2750" data-original-width="3325" height="404" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgdZ8Q7r0xMvmFGY6j6kaZTM9wGOVPKOAR8pNtbknlJjySL1CKRVN5qgEIKmmJneKYl7LEB0F2pFBgyt9fmBfEUe2F6V1uYGah905_PDcfg7x4ZUZeRKEtBmR11L__Z4WWQVBG9FB93YXdK4AG6V7N7V93GkNz16lpydSaIqhn8LG3-_GdcJaGIuBrr9QVN=w489-h404" width="489" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: medium;">Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 23 October 2023, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm</span></div><div><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjNdNHzOkiDA5Ptb7ZJSAnbWd40Wb6nNf9Nxc5BnGIm_JZx2Z5x4CQblu8YeCXosRFy8bEB1UV_Y5BWlj52AjyE0taRo602QWrxMtfLF2fSe3W-JGhvUnDSyuDDUzZh76oK4KQhukI_0ysE8EHP9-hnYnxpdyZK5uFKwTHcIubgsTLMR-zELR5u9eboMILK" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2470" data-original-width="3035" height="402" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjNdNHzOkiDA5Ptb7ZJSAnbWd40Wb6nNf9Nxc5BnGIm_JZx2Z5x4CQblu8YeCXosRFy8bEB1UV_Y5BWlj52AjyE0taRo602QWrxMtfLF2fSe3W-JGhvUnDSyuDDUzZh76oK4KQhukI_0ysE8EHP9-hnYnxpdyZK5uFKwTHcIubgsTLMR-zELR5u9eboMILK=w495-h402" width="495" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: medium;">Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 23 October 2023, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgBAQz7pir16b7XB0eTZDSZ-hjY3xlWB0uyQs370lMp-v9X0T1S_LenIb6__78vFrDYneRT8qakkt3NJUDN6uz6cbnRuuNP4C-J4k-2bkdjXBw0LSfupyvetvswU-QtDnrDJazI1yhG_1VGzpFxmwEXtViqv7MlO9v-K_UrRPk7lAzS3J5FienUJjVf4qle" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2510" data-original-width="3057" height="406" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgBAQz7pir16b7XB0eTZDSZ-hjY3xlWB0uyQs370lMp-v9X0T1S_LenIb6__78vFrDYneRT8qakkt3NJUDN6uz6cbnRuuNP4C-J4k-2bkdjXBw0LSfupyvetvswU-QtDnrDJazI1yhG_1VGzpFxmwEXtViqv7MlO9v-K_UrRPk7lAzS3J5FienUJjVf4qle=w493-h406" width="493" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: medium;">Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 23 October 2023, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm</span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">Above are three studies from two weeks ago (already!) How this idea of time shakes us down like the local Mafia!! </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">We're robbed of it not at gun point, but stabbed a thousand times a day, and not by tiny sharp things but by the very point of our own lives.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">After all, does it really matter how we die? All that matters, as the wise guys from the East remind us, is that we should live full and rich lives, but still, what is this point of life? </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">And in this wide world, this is even a most luxurious of questions to ask, for most people don't have the luxury of very much free Time nor the temerity to even pose the question.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">In this modern era of such awful wretched human behaviour I confess that I personally feel inadequate in my chosen vocation. Indeed, as an American, I was very fortunate to have had the luxury to even choose my life in the very first place. But lately, yes, like so many friends have revealed to me that, 'everything seems out of whack’. And in America, on top of all that is THE Cheshire Cat of Orange Clowns, that relentless and perfidious cancer cell. But hey!! I try to remind my friends that Life has always been out of our control ever since man first discovered how to make fire on his own. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">Here in Australia, Aboriginal peoples have lived for thousands of years in relative peace yet at the same time surrounded by the random 'cruelty' of Nature. They view their life’s purpose so differently than Western Man because like other indigenous peoples in the America's, and Asia, the stories they have created to sustain their culture and give their lives meaning is ordered through the behaviour of Nature. We of the West, in contrast, have created stories to maintain an order that mirrors the behaviour of Mankind itself. The Christians went even further by creating a God modeled after Man himself, (go figure). </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">Our civilised world has always behaved just out of humankind's control despite everything done to the contrary to rein it in as if it were a horse drawn carriage. </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">To dream otherwise is a fool's errand and a waste of our Time, and our lives.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">"Hey, lighten up!" I hear my guardian angel exhort me.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">Well, what I really wanted to express is that despite the world around us, many of us still create stories through words and pictures to sustain and maintain our sanity through the vagaries of this difficult world in which we live. Some of us do it through pictures just like the Neanderthals, who decorated their caves about 40,000 years ago. They certainly would have had different dreams than our own, but their figurative language was still as original and vivid as our best painters today. </span><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">And because of this, painters belong to one of the oldest vocations in the world. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">The five pictures here are all generous gifts from these Springtime skies here in Australia. There is n</span><span style="font-family: Courier;">ot much else to say about them except that I wanted to capture something of what was 'out there' at the horizon line but also to communicate that feeling to someone else. It's not rocket science as they say. </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">They also might be my own images with which to mirror back at Nature.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">The top three and bottom two are all shown in the order in which they were painted, I think.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjAgk3WOlxPlF5IQknVkyNJ2u6zJ6AzkvmNV5QLEpY82n-X3WFmempuA3qxGlxqQc_bu8uZ9P5WXxyyIRVgoy4kaYvjJ0V3HV856w7XVc_e339u6ycGF_JXxJgDW6GyfFK1v5IuxPwRODMa1O_AAkTf7qRnEqTNm2HJZT48pVy5mjToGTHdNdOgcIQnWapu" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2415" data-original-width="2934" height="413" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjAgk3WOlxPlF5IQknVkyNJ2u6zJ6AzkvmNV5QLEpY82n-X3WFmempuA3qxGlxqQc_bu8uZ9P5WXxyyIRVgoy4kaYvjJ0V3HV856w7XVc_e339u6ycGF_JXxJgDW6GyfFK1v5IuxPwRODMa1O_AAkTf7qRnEqTNm2HJZT48pVy5mjToGTHdNdOgcIQnWapu=w500-h413" width="500" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: medium;">Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 27 October 2023, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm</span></div></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiQ4u5CskLJEpWjpOLGO6yvgTIO4zANB2RJrBweHHkbtD08tEcbMgw8DMIob1BcmOx9rMR3gpIi8wL19ysZhgOiZqA8t_hqFrE_2QI3vlO04jLdnZV_9f4g8yDDfqxbQKW8Ay_TwUiu7iOl0EJLpqbAhkqmBdAXqAmq3mlCD-LP7iZ6-QtGTYGEsAXZH8pE" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2602" data-original-width="3114" height="415" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiQ4u5CskLJEpWjpOLGO6yvgTIO4zANB2RJrBweHHkbtD08tEcbMgw8DMIob1BcmOx9rMR3gpIi8wL19ysZhgOiZqA8t_hqFrE_2QI3vlO04jLdnZV_9f4g8yDDfqxbQKW8Ay_TwUiu7iOl0EJLpqbAhkqmBdAXqAmq3mlCD-LP7iZ6-QtGTYGEsAXZH8pE=w496-h415" width="496" /></a></div>Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 27 October 2023, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm</span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>cloudsandseahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16100707082729828273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174099310317324098.post-61997396157846475132023-11-02T04:35:00.002+01:002023-11-03T15:58:01.166+01:00Fire Exit<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha8MUCYR0fbFPA6Fj3PtMJZ_UNaqblnNhqjm11ShWcwia5wEsTMh3-2GdooAf0QEP3-hzqVMILBbBWtTMtZBGNK-wWa-hQA-dAK1STwY_Vys4Nl8a7qFMiqs13c1zrm9rSU7XDD9h9hceX_slqtfFianrBo9WHt3-pasvIltxTgkmVK0_M6EJzI0OAH6f_/s2968/IMG_6300.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2478" data-original-width="2968" height="447" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha8MUCYR0fbFPA6Fj3PtMJZ_UNaqblnNhqjm11ShWcwia5wEsTMh3-2GdooAf0QEP3-hzqVMILBbBWtTMtZBGNK-wWa-hQA-dAK1STwY_Vys4Nl8a7qFMiqs13c1zrm9rSU7XDD9h9hceX_slqtfFianrBo9WHt3-pasvIltxTgkmVK0_M6EJzI0OAH6f_/w535-h447/IMG_6300.jpg" width="535" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 18 October 2023, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><br /></span></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRfd_op691w8R0SD2_EZywmyojcGJdNDvLo-82EvBtQvvpznHGpje4diWdnNVkPXOYBDeCK9VmhapeqfT2alJkfso-iu88UxGtaKpEM3LvvYdiZqdYwLP58c8VxjsFrB_waZn3KAK4jE3Tr_n42rSwDaAROWu4-pYYdTz3UM1Ut-JiISCHq4bQNfp8oOjt/s3351/IMG_6299%202.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2758" data-original-width="3351" height="436" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRfd_op691w8R0SD2_EZywmyojcGJdNDvLo-82EvBtQvvpznHGpje4diWdnNVkPXOYBDeCK9VmhapeqfT2alJkfso-iu88UxGtaKpEM3LvvYdiZqdYwLP58c8VxjsFrB_waZn3KAK4jE3Tr_n42rSwDaAROWu4-pYYdTz3UM1Ut-JiISCHq4bQNfp8oOjt/w531-h436/IMG_6299%202.jpg" width="531" /></a></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 18 October 2023, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">These are from two weeks ago when there was a fire that began on the outskirts of Byron Bay and made its way all the way up to Brunswick Heads, where I paint, I guess about 15 kms or so. Unfortunately, a wild Southerly was blowing which accentuated the situation. For a week it steadily crept along the beach but then, like a clever dragon, it dove into the peat below the surface, and so for now it's burning underground. Not peep out of it for a week now, no smoke, no nothing. I didn't know there were peat bogs here, but I suppose they are pretty much everything where there have been forests. Duh.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">In any event, I mostly avoid painting when there are fires around because, though it looks beautiful when the sun lights it up, it quickly goes a sepia brown and mucks up everything once the sun sets. It's what some of us call 'local colour', and it can ruin all the natural colours in the sky. So, consequently I avoid it when smoke drifts overhead from anywhere. But it's fire season and it's quite dry already, but hey! It's better than an earthquake cracking open the beach or a ground invasion.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">In the top one that was painted first, the smoke still looked kind of sexy pink so I just made a quick study of it to compress these wide colourful stripes like I was a dressmaker working on a pattern. I like it. It's the sort of picture I dream about all the time, a synthesis of this twilight sky. And like the seamstress, I adore the texture that it evokes. As all painters (if they are self-reflective) my pictorial obsessions are always being freed from the bonds of my mysterious childhood. The key is to become aware of them, then exploit them completely. Mine are centred around a sort of graphic sensuality, among a few others. But if one looks at any painter's oeuvre, this is discernible to all clever amateur sleuths of art because the creative fingerprints of our DNA are readily visible.</span><span style="font-family: Courier;"> </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">The second picture was painted after the smoke switched direction and infected the rest of the sky and sea and all around me. Helicopters were scooping sea water using drums that resembled tiny thimbles hanging by wire perilously below them. For several hours there was a continuous buzzing back and forth in front of me like they were yellow jackets collecting mud on a hot summer day. I painted somewhat blissfully oblivious to the circus around me because there was nothing I could do about any of it.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">And tourists too! They all came out with their phones to take selfies, sometimes of me in the background, go figure. I am such an odd relic out there braving the wind, the fires, and whatnot. Painting out there alone on a dune, people passing by hardly know what to think of me even on normal days. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">But this second study opens my imagination now to reveal the stale smokey and diaphanous atmosphere of the night, like in a boudoir of a 1950's film. Perhaps in this sleazy Hollywood hotel, a sulky blonde in a silky negligee stands by an open window, bored, and looking out at nothing.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">And in this picture I got a little lost but gradually felt my way around the smokey haze until I found the fire exit, then finished it. Whew.....</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: Courier;"><br /></span></div>cloudsandseahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16100707082729828273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174099310317324098.post-77577321126929273112023-10-28T10:15:00.032+02:002023-10-31T06:25:18.606+01:00Divine arrogance, Vive les artistes!<p style="text-align: justify;"> </p><p style="text-align: justify;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhtX64QHsKwuZgxSw3sYJkyPFOSo0Fw1txa0Fy5gN75GS5yiwjJP_GM2BJEctaw1YXbTGZAdHNQESFG1lOVlPstm4_ywA0ECdW_VExKv4P7dvs1EoqAyJfutyhzOTczlirxG6bjiHG97MUT7QA6JkrA4fL5Tc2Smp-uZnmOWB-183SnRsz3GEOVESDvZlMu" style="font-family: Courier; font-size: xx-large; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="705" data-original-width="540" height="551" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhtX64QHsKwuZgxSw3sYJkyPFOSo0Fw1txa0Fy5gN75GS5yiwjJP_GM2BJEctaw1YXbTGZAdHNQESFG1lOVlPstm4_ywA0ECdW_VExKv4P7dvs1EoqAyJfutyhzOTczlirxG6bjiHG97MUT7QA6JkrA4fL5Tc2Smp-uZnmOWB-183SnRsz3GEOVESDvZlMu=w420-h551" width="420" /></a></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: medium; text-align: center;">Titian, Portrait of Pope Paul III, 1543, Museo di Capodimonte, Napoli </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">There is a wonderful anecdote about Titian that I've always loved. During one of his sessions while he was painting Pope Paul III, he dropped one of his brushes, then he apparently waited until the Pope got out of his chair to pick it up before continuing his work. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">The humility of the Pope is astounding, but the arrogance of the painter is divine. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">Chutzpa! As we say in New York, but then t</span><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">his was a period in history when Court painters were kings in their own right, their currency was their talent. But I suppose that today's contemporary art stars also garner the same status if not the same currency, because status these days is rather cheap.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">I once spent two weeks on Capri back in the 1980's while on a painting trip. I found a funky sort of Art Deco hotel overlooking the port where the ferries come in an unfashionable area. It was inexpensive in those days and also quite simple and unpretentious, and I loved it. This was long before Instagram had arrived and declared that stars had been there since before Christ.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">The Capodimonte in Napoli, which I discovered on that trip, is a magnificent museum and it houses some of the best of European Painting. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><span style="font-size: large;">I would take the ferry into Napoli about every other day or so when I wasn't painting on the other side of the island. This was a great solution for visiting both Capri and Napoli, but also far less stressful than staying in Napoli with a VW. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">I would take the hour long trip across this infamous bay and alight at the port, ready to be a tourist. I prowled around the city and also I went to the Capodimonti several times during that trip, my only one time in Napoli. On one of the top floors one walks into a large room where, I think, I counted about a dozen Titians around all the walls. I was spellbound. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">Among so much beauty there, is also one of my favourite things of all time too, a full length portrait of his daughter Lavinia, whom he used as a model for so many of his larger thematic pictures. It's a real gem, and this small detail of her head, survived decades by living on the inside cover of my small Filofax address book before the arrival of i-cloud. Now, her beatific expression is affixed to one of my tall white IKEA kitchen cabinets along with other relics of my possessive past that randomly decorate my kitchen.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXpwA380ofkXH7AFd21ClWV2kdpGW9AxRghVSeLlp8l4w92TWTiM6o1A__GzUYJludfy-q_5Ibb84vfAkZurxAycgWSAzPP_H3YYO-WC3RfjTd6Mwi-T-0Mf2st6gBCY0hclwB6gQZGkMcU62RdxzPBncZ_1iaA74lcXAIptsV6AL0vyZNEwwM80P-bUxV/s3894/IMG_6358.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3894" data-original-width="2499" height="791" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXpwA380ofkXH7AFd21ClWV2kdpGW9AxRghVSeLlp8l4w92TWTiM6o1A__GzUYJludfy-q_5Ibb84vfAkZurxAycgWSAzPP_H3YYO-WC3RfjTd6Mwi-T-0Mf2st6gBCY0hclwB6gQZGkMcU62RdxzPBncZ_1iaA74lcXAIptsV6AL0vyZNEwwM80P-bUxV/w506-h791/IMG_6358.jpg" width="506" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: large;">But like so many other jewels hanging on those walls is also one in particular that lives on my computer desktop, a small portrait in profile by one of the greatest Humanist portrait painters of all time, Andrea Mantegna. I cannot resist displaying it here. It's as modern as Matisse but I've already written about these two painters together in the same spirit a few year's back. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwWpL8uPl-7IEoqVI8l-psuiebidGPBhvNGvisUMpUChoG2aXlwPotpQq978cYhsgs1bTnhev8nsrEWyXVIWSc-rqHvv6fyM2IsXJhHxPAOBDZ3OkbSHzxhF03GQmc8_nV4Q-ZYA0V6m7yuWkdfTKFK2c2cZGTpVFQi8NiqFsD-rFBiw4cwfv6uSFkXnTN/s1700/Andrea_Mantegna_111.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1700" data-original-width="1198" height="710" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwWpL8uPl-7IEoqVI8l-psuiebidGPBhvNGvisUMpUChoG2aXlwPotpQq978cYhsgs1bTnhev8nsrEWyXVIWSc-rqHvv6fyM2IsXJhHxPAOBDZ3OkbSHzxhF03GQmc8_nV4Q-ZYA0V6m7yuWkdfTKFK2c2cZGTpVFQi8NiqFsD-rFBiw4cwfv6uSFkXnTN/w502-h710/Andrea_Mantegna_111.jpg" width="502" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><span style="font-size: large;">So what the heck, here are a few other things by Mantegna because in this crazy digital world, we need more depictions of real Humanism. I really love these things. They are the best of the best.</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie5z_6evrR-qIriSyG2t0is3Km_jMYbIaItqAN9Q4nXe9_anuU_uxlBlj_JtlmQt37tiVM8tbRpwVfSswmec2xCl-qj8DqW2HnEmk68KhVcCVYCjYzWa1wJjOeddQMH7vReJFrTL9xG2bnhY-SxFkfSMaFWVf8REiZBqE_3Wx7AfzXN6y_-0EHdT6GDR4I/s253/images.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="253" data-original-width="199" height="653" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie5z_6evrR-qIriSyG2t0is3Km_jMYbIaItqAN9Q4nXe9_anuU_uxlBlj_JtlmQt37tiVM8tbRpwVfSswmec2xCl-qj8DqW2HnEmk68KhVcCVYCjYzWa1wJjOeddQMH7vReJFrTL9xG2bnhY-SxFkfSMaFWVf8REiZBqE_3Wx7AfzXN6y_-0EHdT6GDR4I/w514-h653/images.jpeg" width="514" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNFQuKhdhgV8F17ecPrP38kTTzTkvtqHeoMAj7NlHi2nmnEqYQwN4vDp3PvuPQgAqRWWWkkD4R3C0ExxaVxE3CxY45mmjApbfv6p3Xdo69-Yb289-M2L9swUt-gcShADwOSA4hzPZjTA6fgEgIZ-ACcxV2P7cmZkDhtiy3cVmYIUVFz3wnMjKFyoEbojsz/s239/images-3.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="239" data-original-width="211" height="584" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNFQuKhdhgV8F17ecPrP38kTTzTkvtqHeoMAj7NlHi2nmnEqYQwN4vDp3PvuPQgAqRWWWkkD4R3C0ExxaVxE3CxY45mmjApbfv6p3Xdo69-Yb289-M2L9swUt-gcShADwOSA4hzPZjTA6fgEgIZ-ACcxV2P7cmZkDhtiy3cVmYIUVFz3wnMjKFyoEbojsz/w516-h584/images-3.jpeg" width="516" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdCtG9A4Icj0-jKbS_BHA_aFDirCzZTWfsTNMKxUTZc48-WoJXllsD9QjT-DRrZRE57QozZK0szVo41Dc9vCurxbq6d-9mAZtCT5q0nClIC1IcBhQKbQjsr4kxIAdDUOW1h3m5uknnqMjXzLy0DpUhDEytOhUwHkGdiGZaVG4X_0Gyd7rbRyvtlqC5dRMe/s274/images-1.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="274" data-original-width="184" height="772" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdCtG9A4Icj0-jKbS_BHA_aFDirCzZTWfsTNMKxUTZc48-WoJXllsD9QjT-DRrZRE57QozZK0szVo41Dc9vCurxbq6d-9mAZtCT5q0nClIC1IcBhQKbQjsr4kxIAdDUOW1h3m5uknnqMjXzLy0DpUhDEytOhUwHkGdiGZaVG4X_0Gyd7rbRyvtlqC5dRMe/w517-h772/images-1.jpeg" width="517" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgod6h61UF06Ij-cma1qN7UieqZnnejYX7uhCygkBgDTUOruU2UmusOE0KB08DJLTaDrRkli1ssGSWP6nUxULDD51uN08wBdCJNky4oPtbp1ANDbyWKS6qiTDlXdTnoUgCkUyur0AHHnmwan0OW60WrQcZ3A080TlzWkE3ov9YnYwwretyqppZKrH5gHdaC/s296/Unknown-3.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="170" data-original-width="296" height="297" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgod6h61UF06Ij-cma1qN7UieqZnnejYX7uhCygkBgDTUOruU2UmusOE0KB08DJLTaDrRkli1ssGSWP6nUxULDD51uN08wBdCJNky4oPtbp1ANDbyWKS6qiTDlXdTnoUgCkUyur0AHHnmwan0OW60WrQcZ3A080TlzWkE3ov9YnYwwretyqppZKrH5gHdaC/w517-h297/Unknown-3.jpeg" width="517" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgii2b2X1nnfc0wFQHG3iUpY5sjdPJLiYRZ-LwPqLlnXZIz8eOwBR262P2G3YmCuQdOzIP3ffA9oAOdgkuhPnFSJ1akdRu1Zx2IaI2WbxH5bhVVyuCA8b6rFYuRg2JHG9wpa5H8o29vXODSKoiBJzFtf7lIZyQ-1zSdpNxd1M1-U6Uh68fgJW65M0VzMWBQ/s242/Unknown-4.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="209" data-original-width="242" height="449" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgii2b2X1nnfc0wFQHG3iUpY5sjdPJLiYRZ-LwPqLlnXZIz8eOwBR262P2G3YmCuQdOzIP3ffA9oAOdgkuhPnFSJ1akdRu1Zx2IaI2WbxH5bhVVyuCA8b6rFYuRg2JHG9wpa5H8o29vXODSKoiBJzFtf7lIZyQ-1zSdpNxd1M1-U6Uh68fgJW65M0VzMWBQ/w519-h449/Unknown-4.jpeg" width="519" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYkr9JcyvhopIjMzBs3_-QiP3lZ4ion9uLdrJuyQcjysYvwLGDKDmZEsTI6vzig12HAKbs8qCZz8Y2O-zq_ICxUXJXkcbK1g8Wn-eJMZtL8F6befblRRsBBN5rI4wbVqcS89rwM4ZAYJNIb0CeJD3W7WvHi1y8nMgRjsJ_L3EGC2a-N1F2ucWycfsvk1Na/s259/Unknown-5.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="259" data-original-width="195" height="690" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYkr9JcyvhopIjMzBs3_-QiP3lZ4ion9uLdrJuyQcjysYvwLGDKDmZEsTI6vzig12HAKbs8qCZz8Y2O-zq_ICxUXJXkcbK1g8Wn-eJMZtL8F6befblRRsBBN5rI4wbVqcS89rwM4ZAYJNIb0CeJD3W7WvHi1y8nMgRjsJ_L3EGC2a-N1F2ucWycfsvk1Na/w520-h690/Unknown-5.jpeg" width="520" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">And speaking of artists, and the reverence which they commanded in the cultured life of a great country like France for instance, where painters, writers, musicians and other notables in the sciences,</span><span style="font-family: Courier;"> </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">were revered and celebrated enough to grace their bank notes back in the day of the French Franc.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">Before the Euro arrived in 2002, Delacroix appeared on the 100 Franc note </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">throughout the 1980's </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">before Cezanne replaced him on the last one before the Euro. Both the writer, Saint-Exupéry and the painter, Quentin de la Tour appeared on the 50 Franc note but I forget when. Debussy on the 20 Franc note, Berlioz on the infamous 10 France note which I remember well, all these were lost to the Euro, alas! </span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">But on a reassuring note (no pun intended), </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">shoppers are encouraged to caress the beautiful face of Giacometti that graces </span><span style="font-family: Courier;">the 100 Swiss Franc note that came out in 2019.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO1ORWB5EBsshXICPZQHDhZO0hgCa0THHNYwIBCKqGKJoozI57CFuuHkfmRR8aDa2flAI7usnJTtR8tiwo8gJaLJvZsXpgofxl6I2qig5NmYOVJQnyUXxtHCkKZN7U09aPCfndFWEIkPcHc61FAVsoijYfMTJKO5gtvvlY5aDlIVxHmcvhKRH_UcFamCFO/s310/images-3.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="162" data-original-width="310" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO1ORWB5EBsshXICPZQHDhZO0hgCa0THHNYwIBCKqGKJoozI57CFuuHkfmRR8aDa2flAI7usnJTtR8tiwo8gJaLJvZsXpgofxl6I2qig5NmYOVJQnyUXxtHCkKZN7U09aPCfndFWEIkPcHc61FAVsoijYfMTJKO5gtvvlY5aDlIVxHmcvhKRH_UcFamCFO/w526-h275/images-3.jpeg" width="526" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><br /></span></span></p>Vive les artistes!</span></span><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p>cloudsandseahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16100707082729828273noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174099310317324098.post-51344119150011992382023-10-22T10:30:00.004+02:002023-10-31T06:32:37.244+01:00a safe dry place<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidrYDQbh0lMzC_FsHijqfDqKmz1OaOGhR2XdqrzukOCnGgUM6mgEX2mSiQPbcpu8uU2-b_H5ltO6pIxd4qr3quCMfrOAnz4YupuAIDTcrnlytwUbdmbjpX586LTY5Dgyyr7XKbcIGfwMFqC7xxpV8JDOaNbqEVpH0xpJ_QoXypuyM1P9G6hsj6C-EYdyvY/s2698/IMG_6301.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2698" data-original-width="2668" height="556" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidrYDQbh0lMzC_FsHijqfDqKmz1OaOGhR2XdqrzukOCnGgUM6mgEX2mSiQPbcpu8uU2-b_H5ltO6pIxd4qr3quCMfrOAnz4YupuAIDTcrnlytwUbdmbjpX586LTY5Dgyyr7XKbcIGfwMFqC7xxpV8JDOaNbqEVpH0xpJ_QoXypuyM1P9G6hsj6C-EYdyvY/w549-h556/IMG_6301.jpg" width="549" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: medium;">Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 2018, oil on canvas board, 30 X 30 cm </span></div><p></p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT;">I had actually thrown this out into a pile of paintings outside my studio to be torched months ago when I suddenly saw it a few days ago wrinkled a bit and looking the worse for wear. After looking at it briefly, I thought, «Yes, this past week, this is how I’ve felt trying to paint here, so protected, and far from the suffering people everywhere else in the world». So I took this photo and brought the painting inside for keeps.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT; font-size: large;">I'm glad I did. Sometimes I cannot "see" anything in a work, I just see the failure in it. Now, I don't pass this off as anything of great value, but I do see something of which perhaps I had not intended at the time. And this is always a personal thing for any creative person and his/her work. As I often say in these pages; it's Time, the ultimate arbitrator. </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: CourierNewPSMT;"><span style="font-size: large;">So this scrap of a picture, somewhat mildewed but otherwise intact, will find a safe, dry place inside my studio like it's a stray cat from the cruel hard world outside.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><br /></p>cloudsandseahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16100707082729828273noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174099310317324098.post-51818275820001530862023-10-20T04:15:00.009+02:002023-10-31T06:37:58.725+01:00Paintings speaking softly <p> </p><div style="font-family: Courier; text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: xx-large; text-align: center;"><span style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2651" data-original-width="3260" height="434" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjxfamDNN7Y_3pQGwJF_ReavxYxOh9TOZemdpcoRuYaNpcU0iECq3T34H1VflCkNVawdKsQ4L5Z8YP6XRNf9Ofi-wLxzLeffSH166ei1_R4a42Kp_2v9LaPvB_WOLPnu-xJaVSzLZKf2UbcyuMHXj35tUYYpnV2_7EZtyJxY_S_TMmP3Lx0zP7YUcc26wk3=w534-h434" width="534" /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 14 October 2023, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div></div><div style="font-family: Courier; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><div><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">The other night was one of those perfect painting evenings! The Bloom seemed to go on and on for ages perhaps due to a bit of humidity on the sea surface that blurred the feathered colours that</span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"> scintillated like when stars shimmer, </span></span><span style="font-family: Courier;">changing colours against a polished black, moonless sky. I made six studies, four small ones and two larger ones. This one above was one of two larger ones done after the others. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: Courier;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Courier;">There was delicacy this night as if I were a watching a young Russian girl dancing to Igor Stravinsky's The Firebird, that thematic, sensual melody winding its way from my palette, up into the clouds like in a Walt Disney cartoon. Whewww.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Courier;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Courier;">Anyway, as we say in the Bronx, you hadda be there!</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Courier;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_hnDpdlhvKWNxxUDDNko6WakcYP6HY2WkAMVSI-7QaI9qKdmjKUIJKrjRJw9Qxi2siOSKLwH53SFpalxLmSSCjoaA4UTSBAm-XixzovRO7fxcAUf9nv_h_lNqnab1j0jw3kUfMJ63vBVO7rQ-5Iet3h8xXXNgeutCzcD5PBM8vSZLNOkGKTrfzDlcMFPt/s3092/IMG_6260.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2421" data-original-width="3092" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_hnDpdlhvKWNxxUDDNko6WakcYP6HY2WkAMVSI-7QaI9qKdmjKUIJKrjRJw9Qxi2siOSKLwH53SFpalxLmSSCjoaA4UTSBAm-XixzovRO7fxcAUf9nv_h_lNqnab1j0jw3kUfMJ63vBVO7rQ-5Iet3h8xXXNgeutCzcD5PBM8vSZLNOkGKTrfzDlcMFPt/w541-h424/IMG_6260.jpg" width="541" /></a></div></div></span></div></span></div><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="font-family: Courier; text-align: justify;"><span><div><span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads 14 October 2023, oil on canvas board, 25 X 20 cm</span></div></span></div></span></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><div style="font-family: Courier; font-size: x-large;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Courier;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Courier;">There are certain evenings like this when I have felt that all the anguish of painting pictures in this difficult world, one too full of life and death problems for so many unfortunate souls everywhere, can suddenly dissolve in a second, from time to time. Honestly, this past week has shone a spotlight on the inhumanity of humanity. I don't know anyone who hasn't witnessed a profound emotional response or an opinionated debate, either at home or in the media. As far as I can attest, there are just too many loudmouths with mics in basements all over the world. Hmmmm.</span></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><span style="font-size: large;">Meanwhile, above, and on earth, unknown to the miseries of so many people, there are lots of painters who still attempt to capture an essence of humanity, coaxing it gently, sometimes with great difficulty from the earth, as if soothing a distressed infant. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><span style="font-size: large;">I will not add anything more, I'll let the pictures speak quietly, as often paintings do.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: Courier;"><span style="font-size: large;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgIld5iJ0VPz3WLzbi0Dppub4zK_EoMZI1GB9itsiieF7rjY8ZsIEjJ9s7uhajaMnBALJ0KzF7ZqA_jLL3XL5rsTwmvU9dQt8YDSG8wfehpyZwG1C1cIyOrUK443nrRd8sWkWwMDa84PJM7ndpKRvmaZBHfPGPamslXpSasZ4QlQaUbokRaOXHDOGiBIi8E" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2570" data-original-width="3283" height="422" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgIld5iJ0VPz3WLzbi0Dppub4zK_EoMZI1GB9itsiieF7rjY8ZsIEjJ9s7uhajaMnBALJ0KzF7ZqA_jLL3XL5rsTwmvU9dQt8YDSG8wfehpyZwG1C1cIyOrUK443nrRd8sWkWwMDa84PJM7ndpKRvmaZBHfPGPamslXpSasZ4QlQaUbokRaOXHDOGiBIi8E=w541-h422" width="541" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Courier; text-align: center;"><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 14 October 2023, oil on canvas board, 25 X 20 cm</span></div></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiS747iPo_1PNRm_9Dq2yq4X8_OcJ6u8f5WullHeFQQWGWqco7KwL1RLDpTA5JaYIP36TZqVZoiOQRAt_r0IAQq2RDPOesztsVwg0FlenmSiao03hOynnucHHxsXqXSUcG1IfNlFmVyPCpPpAy2Zm5SRO9Yhvyypnn8gFe1SQGkbixcPz_5leEyHElDgqNN" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2589" data-original-width="3329" height="422" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiS747iPo_1PNRm_9Dq2yq4X8_OcJ6u8f5WullHeFQQWGWqco7KwL1RLDpTA5JaYIP36TZqVZoiOQRAt_r0IAQq2RDPOesztsVwg0FlenmSiao03hOynnucHHxsXqXSUcG1IfNlFmVyPCpPpAy2Zm5SRO9Yhvyypnn8gFe1SQGkbixcPz_5leEyHElDgqNN=w544-h422" width="544" /></a></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><span><span style="font-size: medium;">Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 14 October 2023, oil on canvas board, 25 X 20 cm</span></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Courier;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: xx-large; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgagyiGBOK_AEmonKQ1snDtpKWCZf83FWXwDmmsgUEgf7XK6--Qy8x_XP9c8L14xhOoRNv7CMS9BKtBTkwystld37Ocb_i9JEIRap7NRUtcx0Iav6DGrt1pLSC6kTTGk9hrQy6cZZ26aVWGmd9zfkLekq4yQZFNSiBSS42MHCTSljbFrKHKA5j5xNNA0VMd" style="font-size: xx-large; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2618" data-original-width="3327" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgagyiGBOK_AEmonKQ1snDtpKWCZf83FWXwDmmsgUEgf7XK6--Qy8x_XP9c8L14xhOoRNv7CMS9BKtBTkwystld37Ocb_i9JEIRap7NRUtcx0Iav6DGrt1pLSC6kTTGk9hrQy6cZZ26aVWGmd9zfkLekq4yQZFNSiBSS42MHCTSljbFrKHKA5j5xNNA0VMd=w539-h426" width="539" /></a></div><span style="font-size: medium;">Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 14 October 2023, oil on canvas board, 25 X 20 cm</span><br /><br /></div><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Courier;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Courier;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj4UaY_1WCoJJz1TepSbgNz_WHlQfx5vjp_cnaYwjp7UyfDLLTNY0eEhilw-0HT89P4rlUx1JO32ea4fMTmKS4NW77OnFjaaAm1ReJIQFja3eNK1j04X_-Kmzt85bZkepkUI5DwCq0qOGZMLH2AQ8XU2Yb_yB-OO36mPhUY091blOrWjHkfkd7tMuqRJOxz" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2628" data-original-width="3124" height="456" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj4UaY_1WCoJJz1TepSbgNz_WHlQfx5vjp_cnaYwjp7UyfDLLTNY0eEhilw-0HT89P4rlUx1JO32ea4fMTmKS4NW77OnFjaaAm1ReJIQFja3eNK1j04X_-Kmzt85bZkepkUI5DwCq0qOGZMLH2AQ8XU2Yb_yB-OO36mPhUY091blOrWjHkfkd7tMuqRJOxz" width="542" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Courier;"><span><span style="text-align: center;"><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 14 October 2023, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div></span></span></span>cloudsandseahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16100707082729828273noreply@blogger.com0