Inmates without doctors

6 September 2020

Inmates without doctors

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 31 August 2020, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

This came from an odd experiment the other night. I had gone out to paint with an idea in my head without paying attention to the motif in front of me. I wanted to impose a visual idea upon the session which is already an il-fated proposition. But because this idea had come out of something I had seen in the sky the night before I couldn’t erase it from my head. Maybe like a child, I had wanted something to appear so much that I imagined it would magically re-appear again the following night. 

So on the palette I was also trying to prepare for a sky of a few olive coloured clouds I had seen the previous evening. I was so sure would they would re-appear that funny enough they actually did briefly at the end of the session, but quickly dissipated at dusk when I had already finished and even forgotten about the clouds. But even still, I left with this study that for some reason reminded my of a sticky date pudding.

But I like it anyway, it feels compact and centered around the nebulous block of sea that I had just left in its deconstructed state. I packed up a little early because the sky had died out but to be fair, I was also distracted by an eccentric fellow who has dug out a small camp not ten metres down below where I paint in the dunes. He sleeps on the beach each night in a kind of foxhole in a warm swag, and when it rains, under a colourful canvas top that distracts me. He has showed up these last few years for several months at a time. He is fabulous fabulist, and for a while, he had me going. He was a secret millionaire, a yachtsman, a learjet pilot, an entrepreneur with several properties around he world, etc, etc. He amazed me with a steady stream of carefully crafted name drops , one where stars fell under his magnetism and who put him up for weeks at a time on visits. But, Australia, in the end, is a small pond where all the minnows know each other so I through friends eventually figured him out soon enough. Yet I liked him at the start because I like eccentric folks in this square world.

Sadly, he was always trying to get away from this ‘horrid’ country and back to some unnamed Italian town on the Amalfi Coast. I, on the other hand, had only just arrived here, and I love Australia. But somehow, through his charm and my laissez-faire affection for oddballs (not unlike myself), I left ajar the precarious door to reason and let him into my life likeI would a stray cat.

So the other day, he had come to say hello while I was painting. He quickly launched into a nervous pitch about how the skies were crawling with UFO’s. Apparently, he watches them intently each night from his small foxhole and he loves to tell anyone about how amazing they are. When I arrive to paint in the afternoon I’ll hear about how fast they move until “they stop on a dime” hovering over the horizon but then, just as quickly, they’ll zip back overhead glowing with colour. They return to repeat the same patterns again, and again, much like his fabrications, over and over again.

So as the weeks and months have gone by and the UFO”s have gotten bigger and faster. I smile and feign interest because, like I said, he was kindly, a little crazy, yes, but a gentle soul I thought nonetheless. There are lots of curious souls who inhabit the many small corners of life around here in Brunswick Heads. They are off the grid, as they say and ‘doing it tough’ like they say here in Australia. 

As I move through this contemporary life of craziness, I discover that it’s often hard to discern the bona-fide inmates from the straight civilians in this seaside town. And, I sometimes wonder if there is there a doctor in the house, and would they even make beach calls? But at the end of the day I look at my own life, and is painting this mysterious sky any different than watching for UFO’s each night? 

Like all artist’s I know that Imagination is pretty much everything but not everything at the same time. Somehow, we need to be tethered to the earth if even to have a roof over our heads and enough money to buy food each each. But I’ve wondered also just how long can all this last? Rents are impossible, andI don’t know many poor souls could live in a foxhole on the beach for too long. We are coming up to the end of winter and there are too many young mothers with children who sleep in cars and camper vans around here. It’s heartbreaking. Like they say in Australia, “They’re doing it on the tough”. 

Be gracious everywhere is my prayer

4 June, 2020

Be gracious everywhere is my prayer

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 29 May 2020, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

While America seems to swim in turmoil at the moment, I find myself in Australia living a quiet life near the sea centered around Painting and far from the chaos. Many years ago, all of this would have certainly raised my anxiety levels enough to paralyse me but I changed, although maybe aged is a better description. Resistance to mask mandates for protection against COVID-19 seem to be right up there with racism as a social divider. I’m old enough to realise that there is little to nothing I can do to make our society any better than to simply be a person who is respectful of others, kinder, and without consideration of race, gender, or religious denomination. Be gracious everywhere, is my prayer. And yes, I’m a polite, old school American liberal. 

This painting, was the last of three from the other evening. The session had seemed to be coming to a close and I was about to pack up when I looked up and saw a pink field within grasp high in the sky. It could have been my last handhold before reaching the summit so I decided to grab another board and tempt fate.

A winter chill set in and I regretted not wearing a second tee-shirt under my hoodie. The warm ‘glow’ was evaporating from the sky and twilight appeared like a stealthy thief yet something skeletal of it remained in my memory. It was a bit like when you have stared at a bright colour for the longest moment but then quickly turn away and see its complimentary replacing it in your mind. 

This hint of colour was just enough to allow me in to improvise this small study. The ‘bloom’ had mostly faded away by now but what remained in my perceptive field was enough to allow me to invent this. It’s pretty straight forward, perhaps even a little too much so, maybe too conventional even, boring perhaps. But looking at it this morning, it looks pretty straight-forward, nothing to write home about, but correct and works well ticking all the boxes. 

I think paintings like this just pop up once in a while by there own volution as if to say to the painter: “You may not have wished to paint an image like this today, but we, the Muses did,,, so there!” 

It’s funny how, like in a Communist country, you never get what you want, you get what they give you. I’m pretty used to this. It’s one of the more quirky facts about Art. So like every creative person, I’ve become adaptable. In my van, I was driving through Bulgaria back in 1986, and stopped in Sofia one evening. Tired and just looking for something to eat with no fuss I found a pizza joint. To my amazement there was only one kind of pizza on offer; cheese with meat. Being a non meat-eater I ordered two to go and had to scrape off the meat and get outta town as fast as I could.  

But there is a ring of truth in this small study regardless, because it’s so simple and everything in its right place. There is a foreground, clearly delineated, and the grey clouds sit comfortably on a firm horizon. By this I mean that the process was authentic. I often need to re-assure myself with sentences like this whenever I’ve just done something a little boring. But the more I look at it, the more interesting it becomes as a picture precisely because all these mundane elements appear to work somehow together so fluidly. The truth is that when you paint a lot, there seem to be less fireworks. Like a regular sex life over the years, the act can often be just a cheese sandwich and not always caviar. But this has gotten me into a lot trouble when I’ve tried explain that to various partners. 

And yet, like a partner one has loved through thick and thin, it may also be why a painter returns again and again to the same motif at the beach. Not only has this twilight sky proven its fidelity, but it’s shown me my own innocence and vulnerability in front of such beauty. The pink glow at dusk, a young woman’s blush have killed this painter.

Addendum: I really like the sky, those small spontaneous blobs of blue violet that break the swarth of Pink field high above. They were the reason I wanted to attempt this image. To have seen that, and actually painted that whole zone is enough to make a painter happy for a week at least.

Searching for a family of light

28 February 2021

Searching for a family of light

South Beach, F.I. August, 1974, oil on canvas board 20 X 15 cm

This tiny painting, (approximately 15 X 12 cm) was made sometime in August, 1974, at South Beach, Fishers Island, N. Y. It was my favourite beach and like Brunswick Heads, it too was almost aways empty. The dogs loved it as much as me and my brother, who took them most evenings for a walk there. I was introduced to painting in France that previous year, and I was learning to paint out in Nature for the first time. This was one of the rare survivors I managed to keep from those weeks in August. 

It interests me today because it reveals something about my emotional investment in deserted beaches by the sea. It’s also a reminder that like many others living by the sea, I’ve always been enamoured by the light over the ocean at all times of the day. It’s as if I expressly became a painter in order just to emotionally connect with life through these elements. This tiny little image marks the very beginning of me being an artist and not just a painter. This is because my love affair of working at the sea appeared to go deeper than just painting. There was a personal connection with the elements not just with a conceptual one. 

I remember working on masonite at the time which I had clumsily coated with gesso. They were small because I felt small in my life at the time. Like everything that’s really personal in life, it’s too complicated to explain. But, I had small my ambitions, if any at all, and looking back now, it’s perhaps so that nobody would notice me. 

I was only there for a month that year and I only went back a few more times before France swallowed me whole. Most of these studies that August were done on masonite but for some reason, this one could exceptionally be a small canvas board. I don’t have it anymore as I offered it to a friend in France who had liked it. 

By this time, I was already under the early influence of Cézanne’s watercolours, and so this is apparent in the delicate handling of everything. The drawing is almost minimalist and there is a paucity of material which lends itself well to a pale sky. There is a real distance established between the foreground, middle, and background, though it's quite subtle and almost imperceptible. Looking at it now after so many years I am simply amazed that I was able to paint it because today it seems even well beyond my pay-grade, now fifty years on. I know this because I have floundered and failed from so many other motifs which were far easier things over the years. 

What I cherish, is it’s light, a white New England light of the fading summer by the sea. And thus today fifty years later, I find myself painting from a dune at a beach on the rim of the Pacific Ocean. The beach looks almost the same, nothing but dunes as far as one can see much like at Fisher’s Island on the Atlantic ocean. But here, the light is more vibrant and generally less subtle than up in the Northern Hemisphere.

Below are two studies from a few nights ago that reveal that I’m still quite obssessed with light, and its effect on the sea and sky. Done within days of each other, they also display the great variety of weather that churn through here on the coast in any season. They also have distinct personalities because I’m a painter who adapts to whatever Nature throws at me. That is the nature Art.

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 27 February 2021, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 22 February 2021, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

To mask, or not to mask

13 March 2021

To mask, or not to mask

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 29 May 2024, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

In spite of the rain pouring off and on for weeks now, there have barely been a few windows of light. It sometimes pours downs so hard on my steel roof that it feels like I’m wearing an infantry helmet. But when softens down a little, it’s becomes a piece by Steve Reich. The grassy lawn around the house is spongy and it soaks my ankles, so there’s been little painting at the beach these days.

And COVID has hit the area hard and everyone is either anxious or angry, they either wear a mask or they wear defiance. And so the vaccine fight goes on, but one thing is sure, everyone is depressed either way and lonely from everything I hear through the grapevine. I’m a kind of a solitary guy so I’m somewhat adrift to the rhythms of  life in this community and hardly an authentic gauge of truth or sanity around here. I got vaccinated and that’s that. In these matters I’m quite conventional so I don’t have an opinion about others.

Surprisingly though, despite all this turbulance in the air, in just these past few days, the skies have cleared and it has allowed me to get to the beach to mix a palette ‘for work or recreation’ purposes’, so the regulations dictate for us all around here. That said, in theory, we are all in lockdown though it hasn’t really affected me coming out to paint at the beach. This is rural Australia after all, and anyway, I still need my dose of heavenly breezes upon my face.

This was the only one from the other night because I scrubbed out the first. This is only the second or third time in the past few years that I have abandoned a picture. I just lost it, and like the drowned swimmer I recently witnessed here on the beach, I just couldn’t ressurect the light in it. Death, alas, is the same for everyone, but still, it put me in a bad mood briefly. 

So, I then started this one, hoping to reset my mood. It has a feeling in it which I like. I had fun with these gentle clouds that channel my love for strawberry ice cream. At the same time there is also an uncertainty in the way in which they were painted, I think because I was unsure how to treat them. The colours were changing so rapidly and they had to be synced up with the changing sky that was shifting into gold. It was tricky, but this spontaniety forces whatever skills I can muster to follow the colour wheel into dusk. After all, Nature provides the map to all the answers if I’m clever enough to follow it without prejudice.

Addendum; We all wear masks now when we’re out and about. It’s a curious atmosphere, but of course, many don’t, which is also another curious thing. But I caught myself in a mirror the other day at a store with my mask covering most of my face and I suddenly thought to myself;  ‘Wow, I’ve never looked so handsome!”.

Marquet, Matisse, etc

 

22 October 2023

Marquet, Matisse, etc

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 29 May 2024, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Weather has finally cleared after a week of rain and I was able to get out two nights ago to make this painting. It so reminds me of Albert Marquet, a painter I’ve always loved. Once in a while I come up with images that feel strangely inspired by him even if he wasn’t remotely on my mind. What was it, I wondered, that felt so familiar in this picture? How do I define it? Looking at it this morning, I perceived that it was really just a feeling. Sometimes, pictures whatever their size or importance, elicit artistic familiarity through any number of ways. Technically, I could note that he used a lot of white paint which he mixed into all his colours giving his pictures a feeling of a soft overall harmony. Here in this painting of mine, it’s also through a gentle sense of light that permeates this simple image. Does it share with Marquet a sensuous thread of artistic DNA embedded in the surface? Maybe, but anyway, it reveals to me an overwhelming emotional complicity with his entire oeuvre. Something else too, I like its subtle plasticity ingrained  in each element of the picture. 

So to say that I am a huge fan of Albert Marquet would be redundant at this point. He was an unabashed sensualist, to whom no doubt I identified with so completely even as a child.  I was drawn in like a humming bird to honeysuckle.

Indeed, in my opinion, he was far more of a sensualist, more intuitive even 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 than Marquet. Matisse, like an inveterate scientist ventured into newer and heretofore unexplored regions of Painting through experimentation.  

To be sure, Marquet was more comfortable within the confines of traditional painting motifs, and because of this, he took less chances. He was a ‘steadier’ painter than Matisse but one who perhaps reached less heights because of it. 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 base line tennis.. Like McEnroe, who expanded the game of serve and volley, Matisse ventured far out of his comfort zone (and our own) but couldsometimes 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, despite his traditional craft, was never an academic. unlike his good friend Matisse, he was tethered to older, more traditional means of expression. he was a true Romantic unlike Matisse.

I became aware of Marquet’s painting in my father’s books when I was still a child with no understanding of painting. I was just naturally drawn to a feeling in his work. Why is that? Why is someone drawn to certain pictures or even certain painters? Whatever it is, isn’t it grand? Isn’t it what keeps art alive in our cultural community? 

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 and the still life indoors. Marquet’s spontaneous drawings, along with those of Léo Marchutz, were to become my biggest influences 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 Marquets 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 judgement. Where Marquet is fluid and spontaneous and in a ‘Japanese zen’ sort of spirit, Matisse is stilted and dry, as if still trying to please his staid professors at The Beaux Arts in Paris. Though later on in his life, I think when Matisse began painting more fluidly, he did open up to a more spontaneous way of drawing. His pencil drawings are wonderful.

Anyway, as always, there is so much to say about all of this,,,,,,.  It’s true that at times, I can be harsh concerning Matisse, and my ideas have disturbed a few friends because, after all, he is a kind God, even to the Post-Modernists out there who grudgingly give him a pass despite his colourful love for the figurative world of joy. But is it not for this reason why some painters (and public) really love ao many of his pictures? Is it not for this kind of colourful love of joy? Our affection isn’t always because a particular painting looks good, or because it answers something deep 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 by each painter? And is it not like that for any vocation which is practiced with diligent care?

Addendum:

Matisse and Marquet were very close friends throughout their lives. They wrote each other continously for decades. I’ve read their correspondance in two small books published in France, and they are the kind of small books that gives one hope not just in Art History but also in humanity and the fraternal necessity of community.

Grace in all her forms

 

14 April 2024

Grace in all her forms

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 29 May 2024, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Despite my secular demeanor, I confess (sotto voce) that I have an angel in my life whom I call Grace. She circles around me somewhat invisibly I think at all hours. She’s 24/7, like an Emergency Room, and she is available for a chat, zoom, or interrogation at any moment of the day. She’s omniscient and not shy about showing up at moments when I least expect it. Like a trained hawk she comes instantly when I call out. For example, when I’m about to serve on the tennis court, I’m down 0-40 and in a pickle, I’ll often ask her (politely) “Grace, give me an ace”. To my surprise, she frequently obliges me. I don’t believe in God but I have come to believe in angels.  

The other evening at the beach she showed up as a magpie, but the day before, as a young bush turkey who hung around me for almost the entire session, snooping around my backpack, but believe me, I’m not the superstitious type, not paranoid, nor narcissist or conspiracist. I’m just a painter who has faith in what the Greek poets used to call the ‘Muses’. We mortals have the paws and claws to navigate the hills and dales of earth but they hold the wisdom in the wind.

That said, Grace, for all her generous wisdom and strange beauty, has a voice like Wilma Flintstone. “Coffee Cake!” She calls me out, chiding me gently with her hoarse and coarse voice about something I’ve said inappropriately to someone. But bowing my head, I take it like a novice monk. She’s calm but stern, and she shows exasperation in any number of ways when I don’t pay attention. Though I‘m a grown man, she appraises me with irony like I’m a six year old after spilling jam all over my Sunday best. But that’s just the way it is for us mortals, it’s a contractal thing, I think, and we just have to take it. But for my part I’m all in.

But that’s only one of the many sides of her, for she is joyful too, like when I’ve done something well, especially on the dunes after a productive session. And she’s full of mirth too, at times with the mouth of a union guy from the Bronx. But her humour is wicked, because I couldn’t abide by an angel all stony and cold like in the churches of my youth. But, to be frank, I haven’t quite figured all this out yet. It’s still kind of new for me, and I’m just going with each moment because I see that my life runs smoother with an angel hovering overhead.

This study is the second one of two pictures from a few nights ago. Though I don’t generally spend a lot of time on these things, each of the two, took about twenty minutes each, which is a lot for me. And this one like the first, is a little more developed than usual because I’m piling on more pigment in layers. I’m throwing paint over wet paint which is somewhat tricky. Some are quite skilled at this way of painting but I’ve never been, not in a short session anyway.  

It was a magnificent ‘Bloom’ but it didn’t last long. When I began, it looked like it might it stretch into the night but it petered-out quickly, probably due to the half moon which was watching benevolently overhead. Still, I’m happy with it. It’s more developed than much of what I’ve done in the series. Have I developed more trust in myself that I won’t lose my way in the picture? There is alway so little time to catch something and make it work. Perhaps, all I need is more confidence and faith in myself. 

But to be out again and painting at the beach is both a great pleasure and privilege. After so much rain these weeks (and months), Grace continually reminds me not only to be grateful, but graceful too. And this I find funny because it’s an adverb that few of my friends would ever attribute to me. I’ve always been a bit maladroit due to my uncertainties of living in this lanky body of mine. Her reminders are heeded. I know they’re not admonishments but more like gentle mantras whispered into my ear when she is the wind.