l'air de rien
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10 February 2025
Que sera, sera
26 January 2025
Saps in the White House
Finally the rains have abated a bit and I got out for a lovely bloom the other day. Here are two of four, all of which gave me enormous pleasure. No doubt, Painting is a therapy, as are other activities one loves and for which one has a certain aptitude. For me it could also easily be a night of tennis though my tennis skills are not as accomplished as Painting. But it's really about about exerting a love for something that is deeply personal, a unique relationship that cannot be for anyone else even though millions of other people exercise both these activities. Joy seems to always come first from one's own heart, even if it then spreads (hopefully) outward like ripples on pond.
Like many, many people around the globe, I've been shell-shocked by the new administration, because like a bull in a china shop, the new American president feels to many of us like a delusional emperor from the 12th century.
I will confess one thing about him that I love, and that is that he loves Golf so much, he is willing to lose money on his clubs and courses around the world. I admire this because being an artist and living in a world that seems to have little interest in Art (except as a parking spot for speculators to park money) I love every kind of passionate hobby and vocation in the world but especially those of Art and Sport. Although I don't play golf, I have played enough to appreciate the useless beauty of it. The world needs more beauty (useless or not) through of its faces.
But as we move into a new world order we (we, who are privileged enough to own cars) must buckle up our seatbelts for the bumpy rides ahead. I do believe that that we will survive this awful despot, along with all his Right Wing Pinocchios, yet America may also never be the same again. This is natural because it feels like our lives are spinning faster than ever before, but you know what? We'll survive somehow and soon we'll laugh and smile again when we have put on our army boots to resist. We'll see what we need to do, then fight back for all that is good and noble in America. The bean-counting simpletons and the White Nationalist fascists have tried to steal this country many times before without long-lasting damage. We actually do come back stronger when we see these ignoble bigots try to curtail our freedoms. As Harari explains in the book whose title I show below, a nation is but an idea, it's just an empty shell of a thing until it's filled out by the ideals of its citizenry.
This is why Art and Joy, which are strapped together like siamese twins, are so important during this turbulent chapter we're undergoing.
I am currently listening to a fascinating book by Yuval Noah Harari. I recommend it to others, who like me, might have failed both Geography and History classes back in grammar school but who still loved Geography and History all the same.
15 January 2025
Luigi Mangione for President!
12 January 2025
Taxi

One could experiment:
Suppose for example (par example), an American finds himself on a street in Paris exclaiming to a frenchman:
"Ah,,, its so wonderful here in France!" (Ah, c'est merveilleux ici!)
This would certainly trigger off the 'allergy' as it were, and to which the frenchmen would invariably retort:
"Ah... you think so?,... well, let me tell you: its too expensive, the government is rotten (pourri), the taxes (les impots) are too high, and no one wants to work!" (travailler!)
If, on the other hand, you had initially said to him:
"Listen (ecoutez) ... France stinks, its too expensive (cher), the air is dirty (sale) and the Parisians are rude!"
In this case, he would inevitably lurch his head high and begin to tell you "what an idiot (imbecile) that you are, Paris is the most beautiful city in the world, if not the Universe, not only that (en plus), he would tell you that you dress like shit (comme la merde) and eat like shit (ditto)!!!"
Ah!! zee french!
But back to Frank, who lives on an island by the way, he is ranting and raving, going on and on about how screwy thing have gotten in our life time. Youth has gone crazy etc, etc... I was sympathizing from across the ocean when finally he stopped, and after a pause, he said:
"Hey, you remember when we were young (jeune) and we'd get into a taxi in New York, and we'd hear some older guy going on and on about how life 'just wasn't the same anymore',.... everything is just a 'damn mess!' (la pagaille), and how we'd look at each other, and how we'd jump out at the next corner laughing because we were young, and because we could! Do you remember that?"
I nodded into the telephone.
"Well,.... NOW, I'M that cab driver, that old guy bitching and moaning!"
09 January 2025
El Nina, weathering emotions
02 January 2025
Happy New Year from l'air de rien!
Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 23 December 2024, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm
26 December 2024
A reprint, yes, once in a while I have to do it
First published November 2014
09 November 2014
Ki no Tsurayuki
Its color fading
with no outward sign
in this world-
the flower
of the human heart.
Ono no Komachi (A.D. 834 - 880).
25 December 2024
Christmas !
This is a print from a limited edition of lithographs made by my teacher and mentor, Léo Marchutz back in the 1960's. I've always loved it and it has been lodged somewhere in the base of my brain as a model of what could be possible in the wonderful world of drawing.
It fits into a difficult category of work because it is too 'abstract', perhaps even messy, for some viewers of art, yet for others, it is decidedly too realist. That it is a 'religious' figure like Christ makes it even more problematic. But hey!
The 1960's in France was the beginning of a period of POP art after a brief chapter of Surrealism that reigned supreme after the war.
Léo worked alone and separate from any 'ism'. Self-taught, he developed a unique way of transferring drawings made on paper onto the limestone and ready to be inked up and printed.
Once transferred 'into' the soft stone he was able to pull as many prints as he wished. He made hundreds of prints in this manner over two decades. Using specially made rollers, often very thin, he laboriously rolled out each part of the drawing with different colours so that he could make just one run through the press and avoid crushing the paper with numerous passes. To arrive at the right colours he actually mixed oil paints to get exactly what he wanted. This seemed to work out well as industrialised colours were limited.
I wasn't around in those days because I had not yet arrived in Aix for University until 1972. He lent me one of his wooden litho presses and a few dozen stones and taught me lithography. I had a studio on the west side of Aix for about two years until I lost interest in it and fell in love with Painting.
But it's the drawing of Christ that interests me the most for it's extraordinary. The expression is spontaneous yet so well realised. Funny enough, I would have certainly loved to see many of his drawings he threw out in order to get to get to this one of Christ.
He drew incessantly during the 1940's, and 1950's. I'm not sure about the 1960's because he was printing all the drawings. I only knew him the last four years of his life, and by then he was still working on his large paintings made from drawings in the studio.
Anyway, this drawing for me was a watershed moment because it opened up a whole world of possibilities for me. It switched me onto the chaotic world working quickly out in a crowd which led me to drawing trips to Vietnam and Morocco and in cafes everywhere.
Though infinitely inferior to Léo's Christ, I took from him (and later Albert Marquet) an idea of working outdoors. This drawing doesn't even really work at all but I loved the feeling it at that time almost twenty years ago..
Time flies as we all know, so make a great Christmas for yourselves and don't forget two things: Get a great hobby in life, and give away not only whatever wisdom you've acquired but also, and most especially, all your love to others.
16 December 2024
Monet at the beach!
Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 6 November 2024 oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm