Dogfight, part two

4 May 2024

Dogfight, part two

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

This is the second picture from the other evening and it appears far more formal than the previous one. It's amazing how just a mellowing out of the clouds can change everything. It also feels relatively calm compared with the first one, and it actually makes more sense which I hate to admit, means more to me in the end. I wish I didn’t feel this way, but I do. If I were a poet or composer, wouldn’t I also wish to be understood? Being understood, is just about communication, and isn't it about how well a painting communicates to the viewer? 

In all these paintings I simply hope to convey a visual idea through an image, one which might trigger a feeling in a viewer. There isn't much more to it than just that. I'm always interested in reaching out to others, so therefore I work on my language skills which in this case is the craft of painting. Are my skills nuanced enough to engage others without me sounding like a simpleton or a two year old? Naturally, the more subtle the language in an image, the better but I'm not a snob, nor am I presumptuous. But at the same time, I try not to be mysterious or unnecessarily abstruse. In fact, I don't really try to be anything other authentic when I go out to paint the sky at dusk. In my studio work too, I also feel that I'm like that too. 

I mean, art doesn’t have to be arcane, does it? Sometimes it is, but that’s because it’s usually from another age or it has cultural references outside of my own, and that use a different contextual language like that of Aboriginal Art here in Australia.  

And this doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate what is incomprehensible to me personally in painting. Naturally, I apply my western education, so generally as a painter, I just look for visually coherent images whatever its form or style. When looking at riches from other cultures I approach them with cautious discernment. 

But that said, I always still secretly long for pictures which are born with light. What I mean by that is a light that can be illustrated by the term 'chiaroscuro', a kind of description codified by Italian painters somewhere in the 15th century. 

People might often understand this concept as a drawing that's constructed out of 'bright light' from 'dark shadows'. This is crude but somewhat accurate. It makes me think of Caravaggio or Georges de la Tour where the 'lighting' is extreme. But for me, chiaroscuro encompasses an entire spectrum between any measure of light to any measure of shade. 

The Italians also use the term 'Sfumato' to describe an even more subtle gradation of light to shade. It's cool isn't it? It sounds to me like it could be a swear word hurled at someone on a street in Napoli.

But importantly, when I use this term chiaroscuro, I'm referring to also a most compressed version of it like in a late Matisse pencil drawing. For me, chiaroscuro simply illustrates an instance of making any kind of mark on a light surface. No doubt, many art academics might take issue with this degree of extreme simplicity, but hey! 

An interesting comparison that might give a better example of what I mean would be to look at a Matisse pencil drawing next to one of a Cezanne's. For me, and speaking only as a painter, not an academic, I think all of Cezanne's pencil drawings refer back to the Renaissance, and they are a great example of chiaroscuro, when his delicate drawings appear to rise up out of the surface of the paper like moonlight. 

On the other hand, I think of the pencil line drawings by Matisse done in the 1950's, as both very modern in their abbreviation but also archaic like the simple line drawings found in the caves of Lascaux, France. 

Boy! Just any mention of 'light' will take me down too many rabbit holes... Whew..., But this is because, being a painter, I'm not too different than that of a geeky nerd obsessing about computers and the internet when I talk about art. 

 

But getting back to this second picture, the placid nature of it is in direct contrast to the first image so chaotically descriptive from the earlier page. Done not fifteen minutes apart, yet that sky gives up two divergent aspects of Nature and provoked in me such different visual responses. 

Though twilight imposes this perpetual change, these uniquely disparate images are the result of both my own spontaneous spirit, but also the natural flattening of the motif as it approaches  nightfall.

Flat, yes, this second painting does also answer my great affection for all that is flat, but it also speaks of that precious moment on certain evenings when the sea and sky come together with the ease of two young lovers. None of the three pictorial elements of it feel compromised in the slightest way. They repose together like the hands of a young couple in a moment of interlaced affection. If God is an abstract form of intelligence, then painting must surely mimic it everywhere on earth. I think the only thing needed to either make a painting or view one, is an imagination, because this is the realm of Art where magic and mystery are twins.

In the end, all these pictures desire to be reduced to a state when the sea and sky are coupled together in a flat cozy manner. But that’s on a good day, of course. Speaking of this picture, I think if an oil painting could channel a sponge cake it might actually look like this. 

Sartorial something

Because I love colour, both when it clashes and comes together, I have a secret fascination for street fashion, and I'm certainly not alone. So here are some wonderful ideas for everyone who loves both colour and people. 

Disclaimer: I dress badly. i feel uncomfortable in nice clothes, like I don't deserve them. I don't have to admit this because to see me on any street you would make the same assessment in a flash. I don't know exactly when it happened that I gave up trying to look 'great' in clothes but it happened nonetheless. I shouldn't be surprised that I ended up in rural Australia where cargo pants, tee shirts and flip-flops rule. But mind you, some clever sartorial spirits (usually from France, Italy or Japan) look glamorous even here near the sea.

I think that great clothes make me uncomfortable because no matter what I wear, it makes no improvement upon my appearance. So, I guess I gave up. Maybe the truth is that I've never wanted to be visibly present. I'd be happier invisible I think. 

But there's another thing and that's because when I was young I was around a lot of very well-dressed people and I discovered that too many of them were really awful on the inside, underneath the expensive surface. It formed my opinion about human beings at a young age. Of course, this observation was only partly true, partly false, and somewhat erroneous. 

But being a voyeur, I really admire people who get out and hit the street looking great without a great expense. So thank you Simbarashe Cha, the photographer who took these portraits.  

And my fave!

 

Dogfight, part one

4 May 2024

Dogfight, part one

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

This was the first one of two that came out of an evening last week. I had to drag myself out of the house where I was nursing a cold but I could see from the comfort of my sofa that the sky outside was showing great promise so I knew I had to go. 

This one reveals something a little new, a deviation away from all the tight control I consistently exercise in all of these pictures. It’s tiresome, and I’m trying to lean into a more free-for-all mind-set. I enjoyed finding the willingness to loosen up in this small image. 

The weather, sadly, has been so unstable these past six months that it’s been really difficult to navigate the uncertainty, so when it does look decent, a 48 hour man-cold or not, I am out the door. 

My desire for these sessions has been to push myself into newer visual ideas, to open up and work more freely with less conceptual oversight. And so I’m trying to paint wildly and without caution as Paul Gauguin advised his students up in Brittany 150 years ago: “Paint wildly!” he proclaimed. One should remember that this was just after Impressionism and before Fauvism shook up the brushwork. 

But back in the future, it was a beautiful evening the other night, and these skies are a steady joy despite my ritual here, over and over again. The only thing that changes; c’est moi.

It was an easy placid sky and rich with colour despite a messy mush of a drawing overhead, a wave of low hanging clouds were rolling in onshore and moving fast, so consequently, this image is a little wobbly and discombobulated because I jumped into the sky without a drawing in my head when starting out. 

I quickly found myself lost and all I could do was try and lock on to the clouds like a fighter pilot in a dogfight. I thought, “I’m on them, locked and loaded”, and in the end indeed, it looks like a sky full of flack. 

I was determined to be as fresh and spontaneous as possible this night even as I suspected I could fail miserably. If I had started with an idea in my head, it was ironically not to have an idea in my head. Go figure, but sometimes it’s just like that and I accepted it.

Honestly, I’m not so crazy about it, but I was happy to see myself pushing to do something new and unbridled so I kept it. I’m such a control freak, it kills me. It was done quickly in any event as was the second one that night.

“An experiment”, I thought to myself after finishing them both, but aren’t they all? Ruts and routines are easy to fall into in any creative life, and finding a way to climb out can be tricky. Hopefully, the more one paints, the more one’s intuition is strengthened which I guess is a lot like radar helping to guide us when we get lost.

Artists are alone in this task, we’re not like those tennis pros who bitch at their coaches in the stands nearby when they play poorly in a match. Artists take responsibility for their solo vocations, it’s not like they have a nagging spouse to kick our butts all day.

That said, I do ask myself at times, “could it be that I’m tired of what I’ve been doing here at the beach? Have I finally hit the wall here?” 

But this is just what I wail to myself when I’m feeling really lost without a coach in the stands to encourage me onward. Maybe I just yearn to break free but cannot admit it to myself? But free from what? From the motif? From myself? 

And yet despite all this wavering in and out of these cloudy thoughts in my head, I do actually manage to always find newer, more nuanced solutions to the motif, and inevitably, I come back for more. That I do this, still always amazes me. 

At my age, I should know from experience that all these doubts only sprouts up when I’m about to find new solutions. At least, this is how I reassure myself. All the same, I wonder if perhaps I’m afraid of being cut loose from a project that has moored me, and kept me somewhat sane these past few years. I also know deep down in the center of me that these past few years have been the richest of my whole life. Quoi faire?

On Chesil Beach

16 February 2023

On Chesil Beach

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 11 February 2023, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

This is from an evening last week. It was a brilliant 'bloom' that lingered on well into dusk. It didn't take long but looking at it today I think it's the lushest of the three I made that evening. Frankly, it's a frank picture, the sort of no-nonsense image that says what it means and it means what it says, all without going into overdrive. But don't be fooled by it's aura of verisimilitude, for I hope it leaves just enough incense in the air for the viewer to dream a little.  

This reminds me that in the world of art, both invention and imagination are what create reality. Wasn't it Albert Camus who said that climbing the steps to the bedroom is the best part of sex?

Anyway, there are lots of people who find more reality in works of fiction than in non-fiction, and I’m one of them. I’ve just finished the novel, On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan, a wonderful book that I really liked. It had been a gift from a friend and languished on my bookshelf for a few years before I plucked it out last month. 

I discovered him so late but finally got around to reading it, and as they say, better late than never. I had read Atonement earlier and really loved it. But generally, I’ve been so late to so many things in my life that I’m not surprised. I’ve been late to lots of other authors as well and late to so many musicians and composers too. There is so much out there that I find that I'm even still late to other painters too. But then, I’ve really also been late to other key parts of my life; late to discipline and hard work, but also just late to work, period. And I’ve been late to love, but now I believe I’m way past my expiration date on that one too. But significantly, I arrived much later than I would have liked at sobriety’s front door. In any event, I’m not alone, for there are lots of other latecomers like me who showed up to life like we would at the cinema and miss the start of the film. But we latecomers always stay till the end, even through all the credits.

But there's worst than that, there are way too many no-shows in this life because all that terrain stretching out between birth and death is just too rugged and people give up. There are also too many cracks that can swallow one up whole. 

Even under the very best of circumstances when life starts out well for some, all bundled up in a cute pram off Regents Park, storms arrive to sweep away many of the unlucky ones into the gutters of King’s Cross later on in life.

There are also late-bloomers and sleepers too, who spend their lives teetering on the edges of bar stools or tipsy in large rooms on comfy divans off Park Avenue. 

But for way too many poor souls around the globe, life begins and ends on a dusty barren bit of land in the middle of nowhere. Who can say where any choices have been made, freely or otherwise? In this roulette wheel of life, who is to gain and who is to blame? There are some who say that life is a great mystery and it is only through mystery that we find truth. I like that because I believe in art.

Many of us, for one reason or another, never awaken to any sort of mystery at all, we seem to sleep through life, consciously or not, so that  truth remains evasive. For me, that's a great shame, for life appears to not only be a great parade on main street but on all the back alleys as well. For a long time I used to watch them from the sidelines while secretly wanting to be part of it, but never daring.

My escape was always through books. But in spite of my own somnambular habits, like many people, I've always loved really good authors, the ones who take us on existential adventure and show us where they fell down and how they got up again. This is for me where invention transforms life into fiction and then into art. 

So, from the very first page of this intimate book by Ian McEwan, I was transported back in time to a Britain I could not have known. He has the gift of narration, and not unlike a great painter, a love for detail and mood, for it’s a postcard of postwar Britain and he delivers it to us. 

Like Atonement, he paints a picture of a complicated and rigid order that's on the verge of a social collapse. I had seen lots of great British films, the edgier ones from the 1950’s and 60’s that foretold all this, but I had not read too many books about it.  

Painting, as an art form, also changed dramatically like everything else going on at the time because the trend went POP! Of Post-war Britain, I certainly prefer many of the painters who were scattered about the country busily working away in solitude and more aligned with a figurative approach to art. In contrast to the well-heeled circles of money behind the POP movement in London, these were painters who, like an earlier generation of Americans in the 1930's, were more concerned with the social imbalances of life the US. Consequently, their work revealed the darker themes that mirrored the gritty economic realities of Britain at the time. Personally, I was never a fan of the 1960's POP thing. I think it was an insignificant contribution to art, but hey!

I think this hard-hitting crew, the likes of Leon Kossoff, Frank Auberbach, Francis Bacon, Josef Herman, Shiela Fell and Eva Frankfurther, amongst many, come away with more authenticity, and I think they shine even brighter today over the long haul of time. But two painters, partly POP, became real celebrities, Howard Hodgkins and David Hockney. Hodgkins took POP into an interesting and erudite corner of Abstract Painting while the immensely popular David Hockney left London to go live in sunny California. And why not? It’s no fun being bleak in Britain. 

In the world of painting, like a work of fiction, a narrative is equally important because it’s about how content is transformed into a picture despite its form of abstraction. Is this achieved through style or technique? Or does it lay-in-waiting deeply inside a painter’s soul for the right pictorial idea to surface at some point in his or her life? Should one ask, or not, to what degree does our upbringing and surroundings form us as either writers or painters? Or anything else for that matter?

I suddenly think of Guernica, Picasso’s grand oeuvre and plea to the world about suffering and the terror of war. Its subject is specific and its Cubist style is employed adroitly to convey the incomprehensible subject matter with authenticity. It’s why it's still around and people flock to see it despite all the subsequent movement in art. This picture has been like the sun around which everything else has revolved ever since he painted it.

For me today, a painter’s problem is about how to recreate a visual world that conveys an idea through either 'figurative' or 'non-objective' means, and either of these are both valid and compelling in the right hands. Basically like a novelist, do we have anything interesting to say? And how do we say it? Are we chained to Figurative Art or can we convey what we need to say through Non-Figurative means? Is what we need to share even interesting and worth sharing to others? Of course, an authentic and original voice is always preferred. 

Unlike the lawyer who knows the answers to their questions before asking them, I'll play dead. 

How does a painter render the specificity of narrative detail without bogging us all down with tedium? How did Picasso create this theme of war that lives so generously in a grand operatic space like Guernica when he was actually living in Paris at the time? The answers are numerous, but two things stand out for me; the first is his grasp of form and the second is his fertile imagination. Picasso seemed to love both forming pictures, and deforming them, and he created an entire oeuvre out of these two contradictions with complete nonchalance. 

Ian McEwan, on the other hand, paints a British social landscape with the eyes of Chardin, full of details that dazzle the reader and place us firmly on the soil of a repressed 1960's Britain. His brushstrokes pull me into his drama page after page until it slowly comes into focus.   

Picasso creates his world by first pulling everything apart, then piecing it back together again through abstract means that are personal to his unconvential style. When re-assembled, all the unnecessary details will have been removed as if like husk from a corn. Both the writer and painter hope it will all be whole and fresh at the end of the process, as if by magic. The result is not a copy, but an entirely new and believable world for the rest of us to imagine for ourselves. 

And what is it about truth and fiction in this space of memory and invention in which we all live together, yet so separately? How does a work of art, a book, or a painting, in these two art works possess the power to transport us to a particular place deep inside ourselves that we can recognise even if we’ve not yet been there? Amateurs, all of us, are seduced by art when it’s successful, but when it fails, we sigh, and quickly move on forgetting it because it's brutal for all creators out there.

Like a tiny bowl of sorbet between gourmet dishes to change our palate, this small picture is offered up as a souvenir of Chesil Beach in Dorset, UK. Though I've never been there I'm sure somehow, that on certain evenings the sky would bloom just like this. It’s a nothing of a picture, a mere afterthought, and yet it lives with just enough oxygen to survive its spartan life here on the Pacific coast.