Mallarmé, and the effect of dusk

6 April 2020

Mallarmé, and the effect of dusk

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 26 September 2020, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

It was near clear the other night and I had fun. It was a gentle, humid sky held in a thin diaphanous veil of pigment, the kind of sky I love working from. Like many from this series, its drawing is ultra simple, and when clear, empty of much drama. Others, with a more complicated drawing can be more theatrical as when clouds swarm the sky, but this one merely hints at the suggestion of any substance.

At University, I must have skipped the lecture on the Symbolist poet, Stephane Mallarmé in French Lit class but I certainly came across him later on when I read about Impressionism of which he was a huge fan. With wonderful clarity he wrote about Painting during this revolutionary period of the second half of 20th century France. But come to think of it, when has France ever not been revolutionary? The country seems to be in a perpetual state of revolt because the French are serious thinkers, and as Zen monks warn us, thinking a lot leads to frustration, (just sayin).  

So recently, perusing the world through Google, I came across a small piece that Mallarme had written about Manet. He described how The Impressionists had changed the nature of Painting. He marveled at their explorations into light as if they were scientists foraging through the metaphoric and transient substance of the air itself. He described the vibrant colours and the play of light in a painting as both a fusion and struggle between surface and space, between color and air. I liked that and it really resonated with me.

His own investigations into the ephemeral sensuality of poetry appeared to parallel their own work as painters. The air, as it occupies an empty space, seemed to be a counterpoint to Mallarme’s work as a Symbolist poet. This new young generation writers and artists would soon send 19th century Realism to the guillotine. For the first time ever, the viewer was to become a participant in the Art because a landscape, portrait or poem, was no longer merely a decorative account but an existential examination. For these ‘Modernists’, Paintings and would henceforth became an interaction that elicited a response from the public. Every Art form was changed forever, and with one small pirouette, Post-Modernism was already born.

Expressing the inexpressable, was already something Mallarme had himself become obsessed with it, and he looked for it everywhere in both painting and poetry. To bypass an out-moded form of Realism became a ‘cri de coeur’ for these new artists. And what could possibly be more inexpressable than to paint the air itself?

In this study here, I found myself taken in by the soft quality of the velvet sky, but as with many of these studies, it’s the air itself which is what interests me the most. It’s the tiny thread that connects all breathing elements here on earth. And as a painter, it is the most purplexing element to work from and render. This resonates for me perhaps because, like the accidental Symbolist that I seem to be, many of these pictures display virtually no content save for the water and air that make up the subject matter.  I wonder what Mallarme would think of it?

In the painter’s world, the sea, being water, reflects back the ‘coulour’ of the sky overhead. In Malarme’s world, the sky becomes an empty pause, either an unfurnished phrasing of Debussy or a vacant space in one of his own poems, for this is the essence of Symbolism, but also the birth of Minimalism to arrive shortly.

The painter’s sky can appear invisible, but at certain times when he allows us to look up through it into space, we can see that it’s mostly gaseous in its various guises, and it provides the painter with a gluey substance with which to capture light from the sun. High cirrus clouds at dusk perform this task with grace and they give the painter a handhold onto the air itself. 

Sisyphus stumbles, and phoenix rises

29 September 2020

Sisyphus stumbles, and phoenix rises

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 26 September 2020, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

This is a very curious image but because it caused me such strife the other night I like it. So fleshy! It’s a strange and unusual colour harmony even for me. Despite the pink and orange hue of the sky overall, it has a muted cool harmony that can’t seem to warm up the picture. The sea is a frigid bed like a love affair long past its expiration date.  

It's been a very long while since I've wanted to throw a tantrum and flip a canvas board into the sea or forest behind me while working but I did come close to it the other evening. In my previous life as a snowflake when I took my feelings way too seriously, I used to act out a lot but I've calmed down thankfully over the years. Now, at least, I’m supposed to know better, so I’m calmer in theory, more reasonable, and at least measured. I became a grown-up! But, truthfully, when a painting has gone South, it can turn even an adult into a lunatic in minutes. So remarkably, this is a study that I nearly murdered, but somehow it survived to tell the tale. 

Over my lifetime, I have jettisoned canvas boards over cliffs, thrown them into ditches, into trash bins, and even into the Grand Canal in Venice. Only rarely, did I possess a hint of guilt for my recklessness that I selfishly inflicted upon poor the Mother Earth. Each time I'd find myself in such wilful rage that I felt like a tennis player at Wimbledon destroying his racquet after losing a match. But it's funny thing isn't it, that it’s always the guys that do this, never the gals.... Just sayin. 

How to lose anything with grace, isn’t that our problem in this competitive modern life? Facing failure in anything is tough, just ask Donald Trump. When the Muses laugh at you from high overhead there’s really nowhere to hide. Fortunately, my own tantrums were always exercised in private. But, like I said, I’ve changed a lot of over the past few decades, indeed, so much so that now when I’m on the cusp of losing a picture I take a breath, step back, and assess the situation like a real grown-up. This is that poignant moment when I decide that I have absolutely nothing to lose and I need to let go. As the Zen Wise Guys in the East would say: “We’re already dead, so what’s the problem?” 

A friend always used to remind me of Sisyphus when I complained about problems. At first, I didn't mind, but after a while it annoyed me. But then I got it. To come back from the brink of any kind disaster, as anyone knows, is a wonderful thing to witness. Isn’t that why we all love sports? 

These days, mostly, when struggling with a picture, I find myself pushing and pulling at an image. It's a battle at times, but not one I run away from anymore. I can honestly say that I’m no longer tied to fear in this painting racket, my brushes just comfortably go to work on an picture like a cat kneading a wooly sweater. And funny enough, like the fear of failure slips away, so does the idea of success. This is a sweet by-product of the process.

Sometimes in a flash, I can still see that young child in the corner of a classroom trying to pound a square peg into a round hole because after all, it was always me. Yet today, out of all that furious frustration, a phoenix has arisen. When problems arise with a picture, my brushes in hand, find an easy pathway back into the painting, punching it at times but kissing too, in a confused passion. And though the sky, like in this image has lost its rosy ‘bloom,’ I motor on, on the fumes of memory because just like for a writer, memory is also everything for an painter. After years of both failure and success, intuition is born, and it's one’s boundless grace.

Like with this somewhat scrappy-looking image, so many of my studies are scarred with uncertainty, and although it may not be visibly apparent, in my head at least, they always live on like clumsy answers to the great problems of Painting. Suddenly, I think of an image of a Great White Shark that one might see these days in countless videos everywhere. If the shark is old and big enough, and it's been around the block a few times, it'll also be scarred and beaten up because like Art, that's life and death. 

All creative acts for me had always seemed to have been like a final exam, one to be feared, one for which I was never prepared and would invariably fail. For me today, they're just workbooks full of ideas and messy notes, some that work, others that may not. In truth, whether or not they pan out is less relevant than the direction to where I'm headed. Again, wouldn't these Zen Wise Guys from the East, declare it was always irrelevant from the beginning? 

Curiously, I've learned a lot about all this stuff just from tennis. I may be a crap tennis player, as the Brits would say, but I'm always improving. Isn't that the whole point of learning anything? Isn’t it the skirmish with one's self that's the issue, not one against an opponent? A tennis coach might disagree, but hey! At the end of any friction I might rub up against in life, can I ask myself if I was brave, or just a cowherd? 

So I admit it, this painting was touch-and-go to finish. It was a particular sky, and what I mean by that, is that I didn’t get a clear idea of the colour harmonies. Normally, I would fake it and get on with it, but for some reason this sky confused me. And yet, here it is finished, and I only hope it's alive enough to be plausibly real for someone to see, then feel. I’ve kind of warmed up to it, but we’ll see in a year or two. "You never know about paintings"... my Aunt Maddie would say, and she knew a thing or two about Art.

The God of Light

4 October 2023

The God of Light

 Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 11 April 2024, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

“Light doesn’t know itself until it comes into a room.” Louis Kahn, architect, 1901 - 1974

Who could not love this lyrical quote by Louis Kahn? Personally, I like how it relates to my own pictures, which despite their size, are full of unbridled light. What comes to mind particularly in this regard is that the canvas board, at a mere 30 X 25 cm, is the room, and it's both the structure and the restraint holding in the light. 

Louis Kahn was a brilliant architect and creator (who also made two separate families concurrently, unbeknowst to either one of them). So, evidently he had a few quirks going on, but he was nonetheless very successful and a heavyweight in architectural circles. His buildings were rather masculine and muscular, and he used a lot of cement in his career to prove it. He worked around the world, but one of my favourite buildings is the library which he made for Philips Exeter Academy though I’ve actually only seen it from photos.

But in any event, this quote rings a special bell for me  because I didn’t know what light was until I arrived in the South of France as a student began painting there in the countryside. I had been there before as a child, and I’d certainly seen works by Cezanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh and Monet in museums, but I hadn’t actually seen what they saw until I began to paint there for myself. To be really truthful, I didn’t know myself until I became a painter.

To take this allusion further, I wonder if perhaps God didn't even know herself until humankind created her through Art. 

One can see this everywhere around the vast and complicated world, but mostly in those cultures that still feel gratitude for a deity at having created them. In today’s revisionist culture, isn’t it tricky to have to wade into all this murkiness to find light? But I do, because I myself, share this feeling of gratitude. God is a complicated idea to even mention in polite society. I’ve been a fan of the cryptic notion that ‘God is a mystery, and that only through mystery can we know God’. 

One might need an imagination to swim naked in this realm of philosophy. Would it not perhaps be the same inspiration that engages us whenever we walk through our favourite museum? In fact, I sense that if more of us made the time to lean into our own imagination, the happier and more creative we’d all be, imagine that? 

So, OK, what I really want to say is that this quote of Kahn’s, like a Freudian slip, indicates something that relates to his own feelings about humankind’s relationship to Nature. 

Does Kahn believe that humanity completes God’s incomplete vision for this world? Or does God need humankind to complete its vision’? If so, I like this the best because it speaks to so many churches, temples, mosques, and all other holy sites around the world. But despite this, and however one thinks of God, it has little to do with religion or the Church, though many might not agree. For me, like I said, God lives in the creative realm of imagination, not in the world of humankind’s construct of religions and doctrines. That humankind has created these places in which to worship and pray seems already extraordinary to me. They had to have been first imagined, then constructed, in order to please their chosen deities. But actually, I certainly didn’t wish to wade into all this except to say that I’ve always loved the spaces of churches, temples and mosques in my small travels around the world. But, I'll also add that every space on earth can possess the sacred if we are invested in that particular outlook. Everyday, we humans walk around naked in the sacred whether we know it or not.

But there are extraordinary places where the sacred and the profane all converge. I remember visiting the Romanesque church of Vézelay a few years back. Inside, it felt like a large and lively space full of sunlight. A few weeks later I visited the small austere church in the village of Conques, finished in the 12th century. In extreme constrast to Vézelay which had felt to me like a vast and sumptuous living room in the home of some very happy British family, this dim compact Romanesque church gave me the feeling of being locked inside a crypt. And yet it too, also held for me an air of the sacred. It’s stained glass windows were updated in 1994 by the French artist Pierre Soulages, which at the time created a great commotion due to his ultra simple ‘modernist’ design in pale off-white and greyish nuances that emptied the church of colour. I’ve never been moved by his paintings or drawings, his entire oeuvre leaves me cold, but in France, he still holds a high place in the Pantheon of Contemporary Art. That said, I absolutely loved what he did for this small church, and it’s a reminder to me that every space houses a unique tonal structure of its own. 

To clarify why I think of all religious sites as both sacred and profane, it’s because they were built by humans, perhaps with high ideals, but humans nonetheless. And the Middle Ages, let’s be honest, were dark ages, and dark instincts. It would have been an especially grim time to be a craftsman working on a church all one's life for the sake of the Church.  

But the, in a perfect world, wouldn’t it be enough for humankind to makes its mark upon this heavenly earth by manifesting a purposeful meaning through each unique life? We now call this Human Rights, and it's a shockingly recent idea. 

In Artistic terms, I think this would mean that for artists to create, it would be to both celebrate Life, but Nature too. Speaking as a painter, I need this modern and contrapuntal idea of a Picture that manifests this gift of Nature solely through the use of an abstract means with which to re-create it. Didn’t Claude Monet, after all, need to splice open the French countryside so the rest of us could also see God’s poppy fields? And didn’t Giorgio Morandi open us all up to the quiet Modernist but familial charm of a few cups and bottles intimately placed together? What I do know is that Vincent Van Gogh invented the Sunflower and unleashed it upon the world like he was the first Instagram influencer. He subsequently took over our calendars, postcards and bookshops the whole world-over.

Either way, in the end, isn’t all creation about how we give beauty back to God, however which way we understand it, her, him, they? I know it’s not fashionable to articulate any of this in Contemporary Art circles, but after all, isn’t all Indigenous Art everywhere around the world all about that? Have we Modernists in the West missed something?

But anyway, I suspect that in this Contemporary World of Art, we’ve sadly become a little too clever and vain to admit this sort of thing even to ourselves late at night when we’re all alone with our thoughts.

So, this very friendly-looking picture from a few nights ago surprises me today as I take notes. It was one of two studies from a blank sky that bloomed suddenly toward the very end of the session. The sea had been yellow, but almost in an instant, it turned blood red, then on to purple as I tried to follow it into nightfall. 

An empty canvas board is simply white noise. But fill it with paint and it becomes a room, will it be dark or full of light? Will it be sacred or profane? All these things depend upon the craft and vision of the artist.  

As can often happen in life today, I am asked once in a while if I believe in God, or am I religious, or spiritual? I usually respond that because I’m a painter, I mostly believe in Light, whether or not it’s found in a church, a temple, or on a tennis court. If there’s light somewhere, I’m all in.

Grace in all her forms

14 April 2024

Grace in all her forms

 Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 11 April 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, but not an omnivore so there’s no problem there. She’s not shy about showing up at moments when I least expect it and she'll always come when I call out. For example, when I’m about to serve at the baseline on the tennis court, I'm down 0-40 and in a pickle, I’ve often asked 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, while chiding me gently with her hoarse and coarse voice. 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. 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. 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 quick 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. Maybe I’ve 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 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.

“Man!, you hadda be there!”

6 June 2020

“Man!, you hadda be there!”

 Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 6 June 2020, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

There are some days when I paint feel like I’ve taken mushrooms but forget that I’ve taken them. These kitschy colourful skies, like confectionery, look edible and delicious even, as if found on a shelf at the candy shop.

At some point in my youth, I discovered the works of Maxfield Parrish who was an American painter and illustrator. He lived a long and very successful creative life, and his paintings and book illustrations were extremely popular in the 20th century. His colour harmonies are kind of over-the-top and quite surreal, fantastical even, such were my feeling as a kid. Because he was an illustrator his pictures were often loaded with dreamy-looking damsels in distress and young men dressed as brave handsome white knights. Looking at them today, I see they lean in towards the Pre-Raphaelite school, but one that had ingested psychodelics. 

So, curiously enough, this painting from the other night reminds me not of the greatest colourist of the 20th century, Vincent Van Gogh, but of the Maxfield Parrish of my youth. And like any figurative painter, I’ll try to convince you that the sea and sky from the other evening really, really, did look like this (I swear!). But of course, I’d be exaggerating because it’s really just a painting, an illusion like Maxfield Parrish’s whole oeuvre. Just like all art of every sort, it’s just an interpretation, an invention created out of curiosity by the painter.

But indeed, the other night was rather exceptional I admit. It was a clean polished sky of unusual clarity and I tried to do it justice. This was the second of two studies. Honestly, just being out there on the frigid and desolate dunes while working from these crazy twilight colours, I felt completely perfect. I could have died and all would be good on earth, as it might also be in heaven too.

While writing, I have been listening to the film work of Gabriel Yared all month this past year. Over and over again, the same scores seep their way right into my heart. Like most of his oeuvre, it’s extremely sensual. I've gone through all his work many, many times over, the ones I really like, even more. It’s perfect music to settle down and write by. 

This week I’ve been listening to the English Patient. I know many people like to hate it but frankly, being in Tuscany with Juliette Binoche is pretty well worth the ticket price. Then there is the marvelous scene in the San Francisco Basilica in Arrezzo, when Juliette is hoisted up by the nimble Kip, a Sikh, who rigged up a system of ropes and pulleys in order to raise her high up with his weight so that she look eye to eye with the figures in the Death of Adam, an enormous fresco by Piero della Francesca. 

I think lots of people who write might prefer silence when stitching ideas together. But this begs the question: What is silence? 

Proust insulated his bedroom where he wrote, like a modern day sound studio. This seems obsessive to me. But hey! 

This sort of silence, like on the moon maybe, would make me crazy. I've never been one who has been able to wear headphones even to listen to music. They make me feel cut off from reality outside me. I marvel at people who can and do. I'm one who needs to be plugged into the world around me no matter where. 

Each morning here, the rural countryside around me serves up a soft symphony of blurred harmonies. The spongy air is thick with spontaneous and incidental chatter. This is a bird's world of tiny whistles and clucking rings that makes me often stop to listen for my phone. Why would I cut off the muted fury of a braking truck in the faint distance?   

I like it all, because like with this Painting business, when one learns to look, one begins to see, and equally, when one begins to listen, one also begins to hear. 

I especially the rain for writing. But even just a cloudy day of unruly wind out the windows is good too. I can write anywhere in fact, because when I have an idea it just slips out of me like a burp. 

So, anyway, the other evening was great, and the pictures came up easily to my relief. Like the surfers say, “Man, you hadda be there!”