A palazzo in Sorrento

 

6 May 2022

A palazzo in Sorrento

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 2 May 2022, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

The other day I was looking at a very small landscape I had made while in Tuscany back around 1986. I’m not sure where it is now but I am fortunate to have photo of it somewhere. Immediately upon seeing it’s sloppy technique I was quickly reminded of the fact that I’m still a sloppy painter even after all these years, but it’s a fact that I’ve finally accepted. I’ve also come to see that it’s part of the way I am in my ‘civilian’ life out in the big world. Though I learned a few healthy habits at summer camps and boarding schools, I still don’t make my bed each morning or fold my laundry, do I nor organise it it all nto drawers. I’m clean, but I do lead a messy domestic life such that it’s no surprise that I’m a bachelor today.

Like my messy life, my ‘style’ (the way I paint, simply put) has always been as loose as a goose too. This, I cannot change either. Like the study from Tuscany that expresses the dry and terrible heat of August in Siena, this 

picture, though made here in Australia a few night’s ago, also conveys a specific moment here at the beach through my own loose lens. Looking out at the placid sea of this small sensuous image, I wouldn’t say that it’s a sloppy study per se, but its structure is rather freely articulated by my own handiwork and isn’t that one of the elements that gives a painting its mark of originality? In my own case, it’s surely the most visible of attributes. But there are others too; subject matter, a drawing idea, colours (and their harmonies). There is always so much that affixes a painter’s persona into place on a canvas. What’s a picture after all if it isn’t a window into reality? Could it be that the gauge into a picture’s quality is how inventive is its novelty?

So, curiously, this small study reminds me of Italy, not exactlyTuscany, but further south on the coast near Napoli. There is a gentle feeling in it that pulls me back in time to those sensual Italian pictures made in the late 18th century. I could even imagine it being a small fragment somehow extracted from a large fresco in some abandoned palazzo near Sorrento. Might it even be a hazy antique patina stolen from a summer evening that had somehow smoked the dusk light into the picture surface like in an old mirror? Would it not give one a feeling of standing on a crumbling terrace in Sorrento or Amalfi whilst looking out at sea under an 18th century summer sky? Yet despite its minuscule size against such age old elegance, I would hope that it still evokes an aroma of time and place. All this I easily muse this morning from antipodal life here on the Pacific rim.

I imagine that even to like or understand this study, one would have to accept that it’s inherently abstract at its very core. To miss this, one might misread the road map I’ve created and perhaps become lost. Even if I work figuratively from a motif in Nature, I’m always only interested in the freedom of paint because I’m basically a messy guy. 

Lucian Freud and Caroline Blackwood, but God too

 

26 October 2021

Lucian Freud and Caroline Blackwood, but God too 

Kathleen ‘Kitty’ Garman, painted London 1947, 

Caroline Blackwood, painted in Paris, 1952

I love these two portraits by Lucian Freud. The one (top) is his first wife Kathleen ‘Kitty’ Garman, painted in 1947 in London. The one (Above) is of his second wife Caroline Blackwood, painted in 1952. They have everything I love in a portrait, sensuality, detail and humanity. They feel so differently,  perhaps because they were created in different mediums but also because they’re separated by several years, and of course, they are two different wives. In any event, his rigorous discipline to detail commands my attention. It’s a great gift when this skill doesn’t get too busy and damage the overall pictorial, or graphic unity. 

Lucian Freud had a very colourful love-life to say the least, even for a man who was married just twice. Unlike his paint-laden portraits which came later, these early pictures appear sober, stylised and minimalist. The left one of his first wife Kitty almost feels like an illustration, a poignant yet slightly antiseptic expression, and for the life of me I cannot decipher her thoughts. Is it ambivilance, or just impatience for the ordeal to be over already? It’s a mystery. Because of the oddly complacent cat, held firmly in her right hand, it feels like a whimsical cartoon, the poor cat! There is obviously a hidden joke in here somewhere, maybe, even an erotic one. The British are wonderful with this kind of wry, eccentric humour in Art. 

This portrait on the right, of his very young and new wife Caroline Blackwood in bed, is my real favourite. Its sensuous rendering in oil is delicious. It’s a mastepiece of technique but of great humanity too. It’s as good a portraiture as has ever been painted I believe, and it rivals the best from any century. Like a hummingbird, this modern spirit of Holbein seems to hover over and around every one of its delicate details. It fascinated me so much that though I haven’t yet read a biography of Lucian Freud, after seeing this portrait of Caroline Backwood, I immediately ordered the biography about her called A Dangerous Muse: the life of Caroline Blackwood by Nancy Schoenberger. A great read. 

Though I’m sure many Americans would disagree with me, this is the kind of thing that Andrew Wyeth, for all his technical virtuoisty and talent, just couldn’t attain despite his devotion to both realism and  humanity. Personally, I think it it has to do with the luminosity that pervades every tiny millimeter of Freud’s surface. It’s ‘plasticity’, so apparent yet subdued, defies the era of Modern Art being made at that time in both Post-War England and France. Of course, at that time in America, being so obsessed with ‘self expression’, this old idea of Renaissance ‘plasticity’ had already been jettisoned by The Expressionist Movement.

There is so much to say about Caroline in Bed 1952 that it almost makes me dizzy so I won’t, not today anyway, another time perhaps. It’s a thing of such rare and singular beauty that it wipes away all those ineffectual adjectives normally employed when looking at Art. But, I will cite what Freud himself once said about Painting that I like enormously:

“An artist should appear in his work no more than God in nature. The man is nothing; the work is everything.” 

James Salter’s time stamp (part one)

19 September 2021

James Salter’s time stamp (part one)

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 16 September 2021, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Clear and chilly for this picture from the other night. The beach was practically deserted but for a few hardy runners and dreamy beach walkers. And me too, there, like the nut on the dunes because for sure I’m known as that.

It had been clear all day and I was hopeful for a colourful sky. This one above, was done first, and is my preferred because maybe it feels less structured or less rehearsed than the second one below. Looking at these two images, I'm suddenly taken back in time to visits I used to make to the rear galleries of the Mesopotamian Wing in the Louvre. In long dusty glass cabinets in the Louvre reside lots of small clay figurines that disclosed both male and female forms, and these small things fascinated me by their primal simplicity.

So for some odd reason, I think of them today while looking at my own two paintings from the other night which also feel to me like male and female forms. Brother and sister perhaps? Possibly conceived in the back room of my mind, or in the back rooms of the Louvre years ago on a beach in Australia, but born the other night? 

It may be a fanciful observation, but all sorts of allusions can be evoked easily from images in my own fertile imagination. I admit that my two austere paintings might seem uniquely spartan for the common seascape, perhaps even childish, yet for me, they both intimate a ripe and fertile nature at the height of their fecund possibilities. 

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 16 September 2021, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

The one (top), feels to be the masculine figurine, virile, more bones than flesh, maybe even more tormented than its sister below. I sense him more ill at ease, anxious, more worried with stress. She, on the other hand, is decidedly feminine, fuller, motherly even, more organised, and more at ease with herself both on this earth and the canvas board. In every way her spirit feels open to me, expansive, and somehow more forgiving in a curious way. One might find this fertile take on these things excessive, but a painter can indulge in such whimsy because after all, everything comes from his imagination. 

When I packed up to leave I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about them, but as always, I was glad to get out to the beach and work as I had been feeling cold and lazy at home. I’m forever impressed by the sovereignty of action which for me seems maybe like an older and wiser brother who kindly takes me by the hand and leads me on an adventure that I may have been unable to make on my own. In my dreamy mind, I still live with this invisible hero by my side.

Though I like them both for different reasons, I identify a little more with this one above for its anxious feeling and its repressed energy within. It also reminds me, of me, in fact. 

As a picture, it appears to teeter on a place only just fractions away from an impending creative shipwreck. As a seascape it’s hardly credible either, as I admitted, but it feels like I managed to channel something mythical from out my childhood (yet again), and I really like that. There is a naivety in it that is less defined, and with less ‘structure’ holding it all together, in contrast to the second one which in painterly terms, feels more orderly, and a much ‘safer’ avenue as if I didn’t risk as much to attain it. 

As Philip Guston once wrote,  “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....”

Like Guston says, I can shuffle through all I’ve lived through in these images after years of working from this motif. And as with all these pictures, every moment begins and ends with what I can glean from the sky when its colours cycle through the chromatic changes brought on by dusk. Most evenings, I use what’s on offer so it’s all improvised by choices made on the spot at every stage of the session. And in this way, painting can get close to the art of writing, for in the end, it’s all about what one chooses to use, and what one decides to leave out. But in this case there is no editing allowed at the beach. 

Perhaps these painting sessions of mine are more similar to a comedian's set because when they’ve got their shtick and technique down, they'll step out on the stage under the bright lights and wing it by going with the flow of the audience. They either flop, or they bomb.

I’ve just finished reading a small book by James Salter, it’s a compact volume made from three talks he gave later in his life. I’ve been a big fan, and I’ve read all of his books, some of them many times over the years. The talks are filled with stories, for like many writers, he loved anecdotes and like most writers too, he was a story teller. But unlike shy writers, he really loved talking and telling stories so I’ve been told. Although I had already read in his other books many of these same sumptuous tales, they were a pleasure to hear again. He has been described as a ‘bon-vivant’, ‘a Francophone’, and ‘a gourmand’ who loved friends around the dinner table with oodles of talk and wine on hand. But again, all writers are not like this, some are listeners, as discreet as church mice and mostly somewhat invisible too. But then, I imagine he also might have been both those things on any given day depending upon his mood.

As a painter, what really stuck with me is that there are many points in this book where he reminds us, somewhat existentially, that every thought, idea, conversation, or musing, would disappear forever if not recorded, even just dashed off on a napkin in haste. He describes his own rigorous habit of noting everything down no doubt to be used at some later date, maybe even tomorrow after breakfast. I think he aptly describes the habit of all creative people. 

“....Everything not written down,” he explains, “disappears except for certain lasting moments, certain people, days. The animals die, the house is sold, the children are grown, even the couple themselves have vanished, and yet there is this poem.”

This ‘poem’ he refers to, is actually his lengthy novel ‘Light Years’, published years earlier. As I remember it, it's theme speaks to the great arc of all things in one's lifetime that shine brightly for some of us before returning back into the soil at dusk.

So, as a painter who 'records' this twilight sky at a beach in Australia, it's a confirmation that his advice is sound, practical even, and polyvalent across all the arts. And as obvious, or idiotic, as it may sound, any creative work completed in one's lifetime is already a great accomplishment. Hopefully that's secretly felt with pride by anyone who takes a chance. 

 

Je m’en fou, French cool on Mars

24 August 2021

Je m’en fou, French cool on Mars

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 20 August 2021, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

This study from a few evenings ago is one of two done that night and it’s rather Martian-looking, but and like all painters will try to tell you, “it really looked like this!”

I liked them and I also thought them both pretty good, but this can be a dangerous sign and might signal that they’re not good at all. This kind of self-satisfaction can bode badly for painter. But today, a few days later, I still like them even though neither photographed very well. This was the second one painted when the sky was really cooking.

This fervid warm red and violet colour harmony was an idea that gave me lots of optimism at first, but problems too as I struggled into to it. But only at the end of the session would the drawing magically melt nicely into the red surface like it was a grilled cheese. On the colour issue, I might worry that there aren’t enough sufficient cool tones to support so much red and pink. Only in the very foreground does the band of Emerald Green leave a small trace of cool green, like moss, but barely enough to offset all this wild warmth. 

This melding sky is what I seem to be looking for these days. Just as the pianist, with a head full of melodies, searches out a harmonic resolution, the painter too, seeks out a solution in colour for his drawing. There is nothing fancy about it, in it there’s no intellectual wizardry or any colourful concept that can save a painter. The drawing, like the melody, is always the King of the Court, and it reigns supreme in a picture. No excuses! 

And yet lots of us try do to cheat when we think we can get away with it, hoping no one will notice. But both melody and drawing are the twin grim reapers of Painting and Music, and no matter how hard we try to cut corners we’ll lose because Form reveals the fate of both a picture and a song over the long term. Like small children, from time to time, we’ll still try to get away with a poor melody or bad drawing while hoping that harmony or colour will cover up for their structural weaknesses, but the music suffers as does the painting. As we all know, the devil is in the details of an oeuvre. Will this small picture survive my own harsh criticism? I’ll find with time. 

For an image, this study appears somewhat ‘insouciant’, like certain people we might see at Cafe Flore in Paris whose self-assurance is expansive and relaxed, and their flaws are unrestrained and flamboyant. If this small picture had pink lips they might even curl up slightly with appropriate disdain (je m’en fous) like the truly cool French who wear their imperfections with pride and arrogance. Since I am going overboard on all this, I would add that what this picture lacks, in a certain technical prowess, it gains in authenticity, like the French through their ever sartorial surprises on the sidewalks. 

Running with Fauves

28 April 2020

Running with Fauves

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 17 February, 2025, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

This was the third out of four studies that came near the end of a session a few nights ago. It looks wild and impulsive because the sky was indeed crazy and out of control. Normally, I’m a 

restrained painter so it felt really good to get out to exploit my untamed animal at least for a short seance at the beach. The truth is that I’ve rarely been able to let go of my repressed nature and it’s an embarrassing secret, one of many. Neither have I been a rule breaker nor a bar-room brawler, or a guy with a fast car who scuffled with cops. Alas, quite the opposite, I’m the obedient, helpful, polite, and obsequious guy who was never the badass even when I knew it would get me more dates. I‘ve always followed rules and norms unlike many who seem compelled to break them. Among school mates, I wasn’t the thief but the guy from whom who they stole, but none of this doesn’t mean that I haven’t been a jerk either.

I’ve only come to discover all this rather late in life curiously enough. I figured it out gradually after digging away inside myself with miner’s hat on. Most of what I’ve pulled out is just dirt, but occasionally I’ve found a few diamonds. So basically, I’ve come to see that all this ego-restraint came to me early in life, and my fear of authority didn't just happen because I was a choir boy. This conditionned response to life and people is not unrelated to a strict Victorian upbringing right in the middle of suburban America. But hey! Everyone’s dealt a hand of cards, and those happen to be mine. 

And this is why I always identified with Alfred Hitchcock who himself, was also terrified of authority. I remember hearing him once in an interview talking about it. He recounted that anytime a police car got behind he and his wife while driving in sunny California he would find himself in a panic. He drove his poor wife crazy with his dread, but of course, subconsciously or not, he exploited it brilliantly in many of his films. Clever guy! I’m not sure I’ve yet found a creative way of putting my bogeyman to use. 

But Hitchcock was somewhat of an anomaly because most dramatic screenplays and books draw us in slowly like someone recounting a long ghost story until the surprise ending. Hitchcock's villains, on the other hand, almost always showed up early on letting us know who the killer was so that we would sit on the edges of our seats waiting for them to get caught.

And so, in the world of Painting it's not dissimilar because the artist lets us know instantaneously what's up, unlike in either music, films, or books, all of which, reel us in slowly like a calculating confidence man. 

A really, really great painting is like the perfect spouse who knocks you off your feet from the the very first instant of inspection, and from there, it’s usually a long happy marriage. Alas, poorly painted pictures are usually discarded in our mind’s eye in a flash of editorial hubris because the bad picture, like a bad date, will be soon forgotten and deleted forthwith from one’s memory and phone. Yes, it’s brutal, because it’s as rough out there in the art market as it is in the dating world.

Another sad thing about all this, is that a painter who wants nothing more than to please his public at every turn is like a co-dependant lover, full of low self-esteem and desperate for approval. This overwhelming desire to please the public, though understandable, is a deadly trait for any artist, but it's possibly even worse for the ingratiating lover.

Although this wasn't always the case, today I don’t generally worry too much about what others think of my work. What proved catastrophic for me was when I didn’t like what I had painted, and this was a consistent feature of my life. I was too easily crushed and driven to drink by my own self-diagnosed sense of failure regarding my painting. It was a creative form of OCD but with a dash of perfectionism thrown in. But like I said, that was a long time ago, and today, because of these paintings at the beach I feel cured. 

I saw the 1991 film Tous Les Matins du Monde from when it came out many years ago and it made a big impact upon me. It's the story of a master cellist who at the end of the 17th century had retreated from public life with his family to the countryside and refused to play ever again in the Court of the King. He became a recluse and practiced in a garden shed behind his home. One day, a young cellist with promise arrived at his door searching him out for lessons. Hearing the young man play he agreed. Of course, being a French film, there’s a love angle concerning both betrayal and regret, but what the master cellist confides to the young man at one point is something I’ve never forgotten all these years on. He said (as I remember it), that "he only played for the dead and for those not yet born". It’s as if his selfishness was book-marked between two generations that excluded the present moment. 

Curiously, today, I see it all so differently than I did thirty years ago when I embraced his message. At that time, I heard only what I wanted to hear, that a painter should only wish to please the great heroes of the past. I really liked this at the time, I suppose because I must have been living in a time warp where I only held respect my own heroes and none for my contemporaries. 

I've certainly changed, and I hope that this has changed too, but in my own secret dreamworld, I think I still harbour a sort of yearning for approval from certain artists of the distant past. For instance; What would Delacroix or Uccello, Giacometti or Morandi have to say about my small studies for instance? I don't think Cezanne would matter because he’d be too cranky, but Lautrec, Yes! And, yes, I know it's a silly proposition but I think all artists of every sort will at times glance over their shoulder after too much wine or whisky, to wonder.

Today, though it would seem obvious for any sane person to grasp how selfish it might be for a great, but stingy musician, to hoard his music away from the world at large, this notion didn't occur to me at that point in my life. 

After much digging into myself, I think it was because I wanted to see the artist as a kind of recluse, a creature alone, misunderstood and pure. This is a cliché, but it was also how I must have seen myself at the time.

Today, I still see the artist as potentially pure, if indeed their work is authentic. Being an artist, I think, means being strong enough to withstand not just the solitude, but the disinterest of others, because ideally he, or she, has fully accepted mortality. Time, for a painter, is a prison with lots of empty walls to fill.

So, it’s a good thing to re-examine one’s life from all its various stages, to check in and see what is real or not, from all vantage points. How emotionally sane have I actually been all this time? I wouldn't wish to divulge that to anyone. But happily for everyone around me, at least I've updated my expired data so I can better read the room today.

This small unremarkable painting, unruly as it appears, isn’t even one of my favourites, but it’s different enough to include here. I like it because I feel like I’m running with Les Fauves even if I trail behind them by a long shot. I can at least let go when I need to these days, and that’s good enough today. 

I’m not a surfer like so many around here in Australia but I feel akin to them now when I’m riding a long, smooth wave in this series of work. In my previous life of discontent, just like in a Hitchcock film, whenever I began working, I already knew at the start of the session who the murderer was, it was always me. 

Throughout life I was rarely satisfied with my paintings and this would make anyone's life almost impossible, let's face it. But because of a few seemingly magical events, the course of my life was radically altered, and I found that I was able to align myself more closely with the life of a serious painter. This was perhaps only possible because, already inside  me, lots of templates had been formed years earlier out of my many heroes in this Painting racket. So you see, in the end, a dialogue with one's heroes can be useful.