Letting the batter walk

24 November 2021

Letting the batter walk

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 11 April 2020, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

This morning while looking again at this study that’s been sitting in my kitchen for a few days I began reflecting upon something which is hard to express while looking at this placid-looking picture. It is that it’s almost impossible to describe the chaotic unpredictablitity while painting out in Nature.  Although hard to believe from looking at this simple image which conveys tranquility, painting is unruly and precarious. I wonder if it’s not this spectacular precarity why so many of us collectively love sports so much? Watching Iga Swiatek on center court battling Coco Goff for a place in history makes us all feel the the intensity of competion. All is up for grabs, and only the Tennis Gods know the outcome as the rest of us are left on on the edge of our seats. Emotionally, we may all be out of control watching two tennis greats but they are probably not, for no matter which one wins, they have both trained to perform in a storm.  

We often hear about writers lament when their own characters go AWOL, or off-script, so it can be for painters when they too lose control over their pictures under an unruly opponant like the sky. And this is the curious nature of all creative endeavours. Any task that requires both rigorous discipline and equally spontaneous action is vulnerable. How does a creator know when he or she is at the helm of their own work, or just in its way impeding it? Or is this just in the realm of the Muses and not to be questioned? Do Coco Goff and Iga Swiatek ever feel complete confidence when walking out on Center Court at the start of a match? Despite the butterflies I bet they do.

From this simple sky last week I wanted an easy session and I was fairly certain to get one, no drama Obama, as they used to say in the good old normal days. This first painting from the other night, a bit of a surprise too because despite my aforementioned complaints, it actually went exactly where I wanted it to go. I saw the calm sky in my mind upon arriving at the dune and I quickly set up to paint it, because in a precient way I somehow knew it would be a smooth and simple session. I admit it’s an unusual picture even for me but there is a light in the sky that was hurriedly painted at the start and from then on everything I did afterwards was to preserve it. Strangely, what gives it distance is the thin grey strip at the very bottom of the picture, without it the whole image would fall down.

Anyway, I like this study because it’s straightforward, and despite its small size it holds the illusion of a vast open space. It’s about nothing, you may think upon seeing it but sometimes when looking out at the sea, it too, is about nothing. It lacks for any drama, and this happens all the time in fact. I know this, because I watch the sea with all the attention of a whale watcher. Sometimes, when the clouds are asleep like friendly dogs on a soft rug or when the wind is dead and nothing going on it can feel like a clean living room that’s been vacuumed and aired out, ready for some action to happen. The sea and sky is all that too on many days, and it can actually look just like this painting. A study like this one, absent of so much, is also like the Seinfeld show which is also about nothing. Yet in all that television nothingness is a world full of craft and dedication, and that too is also in this picture, completely unoticed. Just like in tennis, when a match is lost, fingers point, but when won, no one questions a thing.

A few others came out of that night in quick succession. They were what I would call ‘careful pictures’, no-problem paintings, like what they say about reliable cars “boring, not great, but they run well”. And like I said, I wanted some easy wins, no drama, just a few easy pictures for the night. 

In baseball terms, I was the pitcher up against a very strong batter who was scared of giving up a double, triple or home run even, so I walked him, letting the batter get to first base At the same time, I was also the batter who just wanted to get on 1st base without striking out so I was looking for a walk. No drama.

After this first study the rest came pretty easily. Because of the rains recently I hadn’t been out much, so like I said, I really just wanted some easy 

success to build my spirits. Feeling like a novice, I wasn’t looking for trouble and fortunately for me, it was an ‘easy’ sky, not at all complicated. one without too much confusion, logistically speaking, so I was able to make four studies. In the end, I wasn’t actually too happy with the other three but indeed, I was happy to be out there on the raised dune just like pitcher on his mound hoping for success. Sometimes it’s just about getting out to work. 

Near Bonnieux, circa 1976?

I     Near Bonnieux, circa 1976?, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm 
 

I came across this a few months ago in the studio. It survived the long trip to Australia and all my culls throughout the years. It seems that I periodically throw out pictures all the time because I realise that they're never as good as I had once thought. But anyway, they won't fit in my coffin, so better that they feed the earth under the laughing Kookaburras. 

I never really liked it but for some reason I couldn't bring myself to chuck it out. Now I'm really glad, of course, because I see something in it that I finally appreciate. I think it's because I was can see it now from outside of myself which I couldn't do so well previously. 

I see something in it that I wasn't used to seeing. It's a carnival of various coloured objects of all shapes and sizes that I was somehow lucky enough to place upon the right parts of the canvas board. I also think I was channeling my teacher Leo Marchutz who had recently died.   

I like it now because it reminds me of how much I was trying to absorb an idea about uniting relationships on the surface of a picture plane. It was always the great lesson from so many painters, but especially Cezanne, who for me at the time, was so influential. How to make a kind of spiderweb of the whole image, an architecture wherein every part, every colour, and brushstroke, all synchronise to work in unison like one long extended breath. 

For fun, It's accompanied by another painting I made even earlier, maybe around 1974? I painted it from the roof of a house in Goult, also in the Luberon, and I remember it was the Autumn and I had a strep throat that was killing me. It's much larger and I spent the whole afternoon on it. This one too, I was never really crazy about because it felt like an oversized copy of a Cezanne watercolour. But hey! I was young and had not found myself yet. Today, I see them as points on a map where I had, at one point, crossed paths with both Leo and Paul who were two buoys upon which I hung onto with all my might in those days. 

           Goult, France, circa 1974? oil on canvas, 140 X 100 cm

W.T.F. !

Americans are at war again! As our dear leader expressed the other day, it's a 'habit' he revealed, for Americans to be be at war. There you have it. 

I generally don't like writing about this side of our life because everyone has an opinion about everything these days and there is nothing I can add nor do anything about anyway. And who cares what I think? I can only write about what I know, which is art and that's not too popular anyway.

But no matter what I feel, everyone feels something differently when it comes to politics. War is so 12th century. I don't think reasonable people today find any sense in it anymore because innocent people are killed, maimed and left homeless as collateral damage. 

W.T F. Anyway!

Brokenness and the hand of Monk

14 April 2020

Brokenness and the hand of Monk

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 11 April 2020, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

As I’m sure I’ve said before, to convey an emotion from one human to another is really the whole point of all art. But today, context often takes precedence over that general understanding so naturally everything can sometimes appear upside down.

This is not my world, like they say, I just live in it. It feels like a world wherein art has been fused with an engine that's fuelled by philosophy, advertising, and the ironic sleight of hand.

Though I go on about ‘feeling and emotion’ a lot, I am really no longer an emotional man which means basically that I don’t rely upon my emotions to make many decisions in my life. But I used to.

But in saying that, I admit to being an emotionally charged painter of the Romantic tradition, though just not really a passionate person. I’m still wild about Elgar’s Enigma Variations and Brahms Intermezzo suites, but in another orbit, I'm mad about both Monk and Jerome Kern. In another life of my youth, I adored the melancholic folksinger Tim Buckley. And there are books of poetry and fiction I’ve read over and over again, like Nine Stories, by J D Salinger and The Dubliners, by James Joyce. So I am a hopeless Romantic in all things artistic. I'm just not a sentimentalist. 

Mostly, in painting, I really love the sensuality of oil paints, I love that mushy feeling when my brushes push up against the soft buttery creme of one colour against another. I’ve always loved that and I sometimes wonder why I didn't become a pastry chef. 

But in Painting, like in my life, I’ve also come to appreciate a restrained enthusiasm for all this exuberance over unbridled creativity that I often rave about, because like a bridled horse, in private, I’m a reserved and discreet person. It’s what I appreciate so much about a painter like Piero della Francesca whose muted frescoes stand up fervidly with quiet reserve.

On the other hand, I generally retreat from the famously ambitious passion of Jackson Pollack because I prefer to navigate the shadows that surround so much feigned exuberance. In essence, I’m a composed man, to a fault. It's only in my paintings that I will abandon this secret and shy place that I normally keep hidden from the outside world. 

In this study the fierce red cloud began as a stab of the brush on the right side of the canvas board and vigorously swiped leftward with the vehemence of an assassin. Immediately, I felt satisfaction like a pudgy zen monk in the corner of the garden after a successful ink drawing. “Yes!” 

I think everyone is familiar with this sense of awe and surprise at their own small heroic acts that grace us from time to time. Athletes seem to experience these moments more than the rest of us. But actors too, I think also live in a luminous state of grace while on stage. That's why the rest of us mere mortals are so crazy about both of them. And for the rest of us, in all these small moments, we too, seem to win small battles and everything falls into perfect balance, and it’s a magnanimous instant when our human imperfections meet up with our mettle. 

This painting above makes me think of Thelonious Monk who was a poet on the piano. In a crazy sort of way I think he was one of the bridges that linked the early Blues of the Deep South with Jazz and Bebop that came out of it later on. Because of that he was a transformative artist, enduring and uncompromising, and he speaks to a new generation of young people today who may be already tired of influencers and are thirsty for something authentic and unconventional. 

My brother Mark is also a big fan, thinks that all the old pianos he played in funky clubs may have contributed to his particular 'style' of playing because many of them were often out of tune. Who knows? 

Myself, I've somehow always associated Monk with Vincent Van Gogh, another artist whose style was also seen as too crude to be considered 'Fine Art'. I think they were spiritual brothers, both so singular and equally misunderstood, though Monk was luckier to find a community of musicians who understood his greatness. Van Gogh was sadly excluded from that fraternity, and although he did have a few admirers, he was basically an outcast.

Both artists, now long gone, are at the top of the tree, artistically speaking. Full of feeling  and able to express it all so authentically, these guys were the real deal. What I get from both of them is that they got right into it without a worry about style or technique, and by doing so, they found a way to express their true feelings.  

Monk had a habit of getting up from the piano during the performance while his band mates soloed in order to dance gently around stage. He said; "I get tired sitting down at the piano. That way I can dig the rhythm better.” Gotta love that guy.

But back to this study from the other day when I brushed  this red cloud across the canvas in one swift move, it immediately felt good and I knew it was just right. It was a kind of incandescent claim on all that space in the sky that pleased me at once. Yes, it’s abrupt and discordant, and perhaps on another day I might have tried to correct it with something more graceful, perhaps more sympathetic to symmetrical unity, but I’m so grateful I didn’t because I really like the brokenness of it. To me it says: “This is a painting made from a human hand”. 

And though I am a sloppy painter, someone who can quickly displease the viewer, the ‘brokenness’ here cuts through any artifice of perfectionism that can hang over a creator’s life like a sword. A long while ago I struck a deal with the Muses; "Give me some light in these pictures, and I’ll forsake all the money and success of the world".

We’re dead already

15 April 2020

We’re dead already

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 13 April 2020, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

This picture came out of a very frustrated painter who could not decide how to treat the vast mess of clouds in the sky. From the start as I set up,  I decided to grab a small idea and run with it, but as usual, I couldn’t keep up with the movement going on as the light kept changing.

Unless one is Bonington, (Richard Parkes , 1802 - 1828) or one of those magnificent Flemish painters of the 18th century, a sky full of clouds can be a hairy operation for an amateur like me. There are just too many problems with them. It’s a lot like the difficulty when drawing hands. Unless one can render them with the grace of Van Dyck or with the rustic truth of Van Gogh, one must be prepared to fail. Or maybe, one could try to think like Picasso employing his graphic audacity which spins the attention of the viewer away from his mangled hands like a magician distracting his audience.

Clouds can overrun the sky, distorting the distances and making it hard to push the horizon back into the painting. When floating above us, untethered clouds will run amuck like children at recess, oblivious to discipline. Overhead, they roam casually at random confusing the poor painter below.  When I found myself lost in this study I decided to just let go. My goal, hence, was not only to fail in this picture but to fail successfully, as Samual Beckett advised us, “Fail, and fail again even better”. Or as the smart-aleck buddhists proclaim; “No problem, we’re dead already.” This is also something I will say to myself before playing a very strong tennis player.

And so the other night, just when I let go of all expectations, something wonderful happened. Skating on thin ice I suddenly felt weightless and finished this small study with a certain joy that surprised me. It’s a very simple image, and like many of these small studies it might appear boring if one looks with a surplus of expectation. Yet everything works in it. There is distance in it and the pink cloud bank squats on the heavy dark sea like it's a wall. There is a faint hint of foreground at the base of the picture that represents the closest thing to the viewer like a doormat outside the home and which  is the first stepping stone into a new place. 

All too often, I find too many pictures uninteresting wherever I look, everyone's, but mine too. And yet sometimes if I look more carefully and see that they're unified within their own chosen mode of abstraction, there is a chance they'll get better and better with time like the cliché of an ageing bottle of Bordeaux. But when a picture doesn’t come together, no matter how dazzling or sexy it may first appear, it will turn to vinegar over time.

Though it might not dazzle, I like this painting anyway. It’s a billboard for myself only, one reminding me that it’s just a another study, another successful failure.

Of graveyards and grenades

12 March 2018

Of graveyards and grenades

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 9 March 2018, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Lots of rain for weeks now bring me grey skies at the beach with only random visits by the sun and it seems to mirror my spirits.

The other night I brought this home, it was one of just two. I had arrived at the beach to find a thick band of clouds brought up with the chilly winds from the South. It shut down what I was hoping to be at least a reasonably colourful evening if not full of bright cheer. There were however, a few periodic splashes of light that did help to bring flashes of life into an otherwise morbid-looking evening. My spirits were dropping and I felt like I was at a graveyard where instead of lovely white headstones I was surrounded by thick cement slabs. 

I’ve learned gradually that all artistic activites will eventually bring up the mud of one’s own life. Being a bit of a control freak I try to hide it but I rarely succeed because a painter’s feeling always desires to be free. It’s the way it is, for better or worse. Often it happens in sly ways unbeknowst to the painter themselves. For me, all that dark stuff that lies-in-wait deep within my own crypt needs to escape from time to time like it’s a captive wild animal. When liberated, it will take me to that place of which I had been really thinking and feeling all along. But more forbiddingly, it can open up avenues where I don’t wish to travel nor do I need to reveal to others. In short, it’s not a place to find a cheerful adventure.

In this study though, I think I was already feeling frustrated by the lack of light in the sky and thus a little angry with myself for coming out when I had suspected it might be a dud of an afternoon. But I tried to make the best of it, and despite the gloom, I did eventually make something that spoke of the moment irregardless of my mood. It’s a well constructed ‘abstract’ image that I was able to wrench from a stubborn evening sky.

Despite everything, its darkness is nonetheless bound together and held by hints of light. There are times when such small image like this can seem like a tiny fragment chipped off a beautifully luminescent marble sculpture, as if born from greatness. But this tiny shard of a study feels more like it was wacked off a chunk of concrete. However, I do appreciate it anyway because I’m always thankful to wring a little light out of darkness. 

For a long time in my life, I I used to make portraits that were quite severe, something of which I was well aware. A friend once told me that my portraits made people look as if they were ready to kill someone. When she said that I completely understood, but I didn’t know how to respond because I didn’t want to explain why this was so. I had come to understand by then that indeed I harboured lots of anger inside but I didn’t know how to dislodge it even after a few therapies. I really wanted to paint portraits that were less hard, less severe, more truthful to the model and less to mysel, but I seemed incapable of it despite my best intentions. I was in limbo, like stuck in a DMZ where truce was timid. 

All this existed beneath my consciousness, and it felt to me like a physical thing living in my basement like a grenade placed close to my vital organs, my heart, liver, kidney and spleen. How could I dislodge it? Where does one go for this kind of surgery?

Eventually, after half of my life had washed over me I was able to make peace with it as if I had gone through some weird form spiritual alchemy. My anger and all my deepest resentments and shames from an early age had gently lifted up and out of me. Surprisingly, everything burned out of me except the memories, which like smoke, just mingled with the wind, then disapeared. My portraits went from angry and severe to just sad, which I guess was good progress. A little later on, I realised the mother of all truths; that my closest connections to others had always been born from sorrow not joy. The one great truth about practicing any art form is that one has to dig deep into themselves, but they must also be ready for what they discover, whether it’s a diamond or just donkey dung.

In any event, the act of painting will always unleash many secrets for the amateur of art when one is ready to handle them, at least that’s the way it’s been for me. Painters, if they are authentic, are also a particular breed of people who are generally quite sensitive and who are often on the edge of life even when they’re screwed into it with ordinary domestic and social concerns. If they are loners without family for whatever reason, they can be difficult and prone to excess drink and what-have-you. Luckier are those with a family perhaps, one filled with household vitality and the joy of children hanging about. But with just one life to live, (as far as I know) a painter’s sense of time is both precious and private because, like everyone knows, artists are selfish by nature. 

 

Wild horses

March 26 2018

Wild horses

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, March 2018, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Autumn rain has arrived and it’ll be on and off again for another month or so. Meanwhile I jump into the sea most nights before working. Nice! 

It was a beautiful evening for this strange picture, the sky was full of giant, dark, elephantine clouds that seemed to rise up out of the sea like monsters from a Greek myth. There was a small moon overhead which allowed me to work later into the evening. On lovely evenings like this I always seem to think to myself, “these are wonderful moments in life, and I’m just smart enough to know it, right here, right now”.

Though this is a messy and frightful-looking thing, I find it compelling and exotic. But best of all: it’s flat, and this compression is something I really like.This is definitely not a picture for a pedestrians. Looking at it now, I see an impatient painter who cannot seem to get it all down fast enough. Yes, it’s scratched and a bit sloppy, but I love all this stilted imperfection of haste, it’s a map of battle scars, bitten by the wind out on the sand dunes like an older Great White Pointer one sees in undersea photos. I admit that it’s not for everyone who expects from Nature, elements more refined, more reassuring, and easier to digest, but what can you do?

I can’t help it, this is what comes up and out of me in front of such a sky. Like most painters I’m intuitively searching for solutions to the endless problems of painting each time I work. It can only really come to me while I paint, not while I’m comfortably thinking about it elsewhere although this can be part of the process. Once one has sorted out the problems of colour and drawing in one’s life, next, it’s how to bring order to chaos. But of course, there many others who delight in throwing order out the window just because they can, Art is a big tent, after all, and it has its own order of democracy, but Form appears to be my steady white whale.

In this picture I’m walking a knife-edge because this could appear too wildly eccentric to be a seascape, something so awkward that it’s either really good, or just a big flop. The sky appears to be pressed and pasted to the canvas board, and the sea stands up flat, almost rigid like a defiant ridge that one still needs to traverse. Personally, I love seeing oceans that stand up vertically because they remind me of old Chinese ink drawings of cliffs that tower over the sea.

So this was painted with sloppy haste like an Expressionist, but my aim like for all these things, was to grab hold of this motif like it was a wild horse, tame it, then make it my own. This is the kind of image that a painter like Philip Guston might have liked. But any self-expression or mark-making within it was merely a by-product of the process, not the means to the end like the current trend of mark-making that is so popular thses days. So on this particular path I’ve chosen, there seems to be a way forward even if I can’t take anyone else with me, life-vest or not.