Death in Venice

30 November 2017

Death in Venice

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 27 March 2026, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

From the other evening came this small study that appeals to me tonight than more than just a few days earlier when I packed it up at the beach. It came late, after a larger picture had gone awry. It was turning dark, I could barely make out the palette. The sticky dusk descended too fast even for me who works at the speed of light. The sea went inky black, and its uneven texture helped create a distance up to the horizon line. I like this black because it's not from a tube, it's been made from Prussian Blue, Alizarin Crimson and a few pinches of lemon yellow. These three colours help to harmonise the picture because they're already in the sky above. 

Dusk was falling quickly but the sky's light was still colourful just not as bright, as if God had turned down the dimmer attached to it. It's not perfect, but I can see my future in it because obviously I’m learning with each new painting, and the variety of ideas mean that nothing is stagnant. This is a good thing, it keeps me on my toes.

As I work more and more I begin to feel less afraid of failure in front of these intimidating skies, but at the same time I’m also more comfortable with their familiarity. Actually, I wonder if haven’t started to get that feeling one gets when they fall in love with an old friend. I think it would be a gradual feeling at first that builds up slowly over time until one’s defences break down and suddenly one looks at the familiar with a great new sense of wonder, but desire too. 

To be honest, I’ve never fallen in love with an old friend but I feel it’s possible. Perhaps even, it's a sane way of falling beginning a love affair. With a tiny painting full of delicate nuances like this, I might imagine what love could be like with an old friend. Not a hasty affair, full of lust that burns before the night is out and the date of expiration already printed on the heart, but a sticky thing that glues the limbs together and oozes slowly like Mahler’s poco adagio from his 4th symphony. 

A close friend of mine once confided to me that he had such a hard crush on a woman at work that he was beside himself for nearly a year. She was married, he had understood, so there was little to do about it except feel himself turn cold implode whenever near her. After hearing his sorrowful laments for months I came up with an idea for him. I suggested that he should find, or fashion himself, a small wooden chest inlaid with red silk. With great care he should then carefully place his ‘crush’ inside the small shrine and close the chest, then finally, he should place it into his heart for safe-keeping. A tall task, a physically impossible one, but as I explained to him, this wasn’t a carnal deal, just a mental obsession. And though I felt like a witch doctor with all these instructions I was certain it would work. So, he obediently followed my advice to the tee, and to my complete surprise, he was healed almost instantly of his torment. Of course, he still had a crush on her but it was completely absorbed by some new mysterious compassion inside him and he felt mysteriously freed of its tyranny over him. About a year later he told me he was getting married to someone new.

So this business of loving and longing looms large over us all whether it’s consumated or not. Who can say when we shall be plucked out of a large crowd and find our lives ruined or redeemed by love? But speaking of love, I recently saw Death in Venice again last week which invited Gustave Mahler inside me and he stayed for a whole week. Nice!

All this leads me to wonder if this emotional turmoil that irredeemably swamps so many of us with longing can also be captured in a picture? Of course it can, because a few painters have pulled it off from Goya to Picasso. In Music? That's, for sure. Poetry and literature? Yes, of course, that’s what it’s all about! But could an oil painting or sculpture convey such fireworks of suffering seems to me less obvious. Not easily I think, but in theory, yes. Painting is such an abstract and plastic animal, singular as a form, and so apart from the other arts that few have have succeeded.  

Marquet and Matisse forever

22 October 2023

Marquet and Matisse forever

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 18 October 2023, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Weather has finally cleared after a week of rain and I was able to get out two nights ago to make this painting. It so reminds me of Albert Marquet, a painter I’ve always loved. Once in a while I come up with images that strangely feel directly inspired by him even if he wasn’t remotely on my mind. What was it, I wondered, that felt so familiar in this picture? How do I define it? Looking at it this morning I perceived that it was really just a feeling, and I like that. If I paint a picture wherein craft and spontaneous inspiration can take charge of my usually undisciplined self to make something interesting then I'm happy. I really love the feeling in this, and I'm surprised that I was the one who was actually lucky enough to have created it. How, I have no idea. Is it grace?

Sometimes, pictures whatever their size or importance, elicit artistic familiarity through any number of ways. Technically, I could note that he used a lot of white paint which he mixed into all his colours giving his pictures a feeling of a soft overall harmony. Here in this painting of mine, it’s through a gentle sense of light that permeates this simple image. For me personally, it also shares with Marquet a sensual fabric embedded throughout the surface that reveals an overwhelming emotional complicity with his entire oeuvre.

So to say that I am a huge fan of Albert Marquet would be redundant at this point. He was an unabashed sensualist, with whom no doubt, I identified so ardently as a child. I was drawn in quickly as a humming bird to honeysuckle.

Indeed, in my opinion, he was far more of a sensualist than his close and dear friend, Henri Matisse, who achieved superstar status late in his career principally because he was far more of an adventurer than Marquet. Matisse, like an inveterate scientist ventured into newer and heretofore unexplored regions of Painting. 

To be sure, Marquet was more comfortable within the confines of traditional painting motifs, and because of this, he took less chances. He was a ‘steadier’ painter than Matisse but one who perhaps reached less heights because of that. What I mean is that his brilliance is even-handed. Perhaps I could explain this in tennis terms, if there are any old timers out there; Marquet was to Matisse as was Björn Borg to Jon McEnroe back in the comfortable world of base line tennis. Like McEnroe, who expanded the game of serve and volley, Matisse ventured far out of his comfort zone (and our own) but could sometimes miss the mark. When he is on, he is the best, so don’t get me wrong, I love Matisse, but because he was so willing to experiment, he naturally failed more, often producing stilted and somewhat academic work. Marquet, despite his traditional craft, was never an academic. unlike his good friend Matisse, he was tethered to older, more traditional means of expression. He was a true Romantic unlike Matisse, I think.

I became aware of Marquet’s painting in my father’s books when I was still a child with no understanding of painting. I was just naturally drawn to a feeling in his work. Why is that? Why is someone drawn to certain pictures or even certain painters? Whatever it is, isn’t it grand? Isn’t it what keeps art alive and going full steam ahead in this weird cultural world of ours? 

Much later in life, I fell in love with his drawings which really got me out into the streets where (and when) I finally realised just how much I had always despised drawing from both the model and the still life indoors. Marquet’s spontaneous drawings, along with those of Léo Marchutz, were to become my biggest influences later in life when I found my own assurance with crayon and paper. The most coveted book in my library is a thick catalogue full of Marquet's ink drawings from an exhibition I once saw. In these drawings I sense that he is a far superior draftsman than Matisse when using brush and ink, although I would decidedly be in the minority on this judgement. Where Marquet is fluid and spontaneous, and in a certain ‘Japanese Zen’ sort of spirit, Matisse feels to me stilted and dry, as if were still trying to please his staid professors at The Beaux Arts in Paris. Though later on in his life, I think when Matisse began painting more fluidly, he did open up to a more spontaneous way of drawing. His simple pencil line drawings are really wonderful an accomplished.

Anyway, as always, there is so much to say about all of this,,,,,,  It’s true that at times, I can be harsh with regard to Matisse, but hey! I'll admit that my ideas have disturbed not just a few friends over observations like this. After all, Henri Matisse is a kind God even to the Post-Modernists out there who grudgingly give him a pass despite his need to express all the figurative beauty of the world through the craft of painting. Isn't it for this very reason that so many painters and a giant public, really adore and appreciate his devotion to art? Is it not for this love of colourful joy that makes him so popular? 

As a painter, my affection for a particular picture isn't always because it looks good or even because it answers something deep inside me. Although these are valid reasons, important ones for sure, mais non! It's really because the artist in me admires the wild solutions that always need to be solved within the complex parameters of each picture by the painter. And is it not like that for any vocation which is practiced with diligent care?

Addendum:

Matisse and Marquet were very close friends throughout their lives. They wrote each other continously for decades. I’ve read their correspondence in two small books published in France, and they are the kind of small books that gives one hope for, not just Art History, but also humanity and the fraternal necessity of community.

Perfume

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 27 March 2026, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

As we move into the Fall here in Australia, the typical rains at this time of year have stopped and started for a few days at a time allowing me to get to the beach. I miss the steady progress of sessions. 

Over the past few weeks I've found myself slightly lost in some rather uninteresting studies  because I couldn't get enough traction going before the rains arrived. At the moment I cannot get out there as the colourful 'bloom' is ruined by the light of a waxing moon in its last phases before before becoming full. Woe is me, but just for a few more days.

But I did have some fun this past week on a few things that I enjoyed making. I may actually be at the end of this motif unless I can come up with something new. I might just explore the skies bypassing the sea entirely.... Below is a cropped detail of one from a few evenings ago. I like its painterly aspect yet somehow I also feel there's still something missing. But I'm not sure, so like a cancer specialist might advise me: "Let's monitor it, and see where we're at in a month or so".

Because I'm really more interested in the delicate colour nuances that float loosely in the sky, I might need to try a new tact. There are moments just before dusk shuts off the light when remnants of pale colours seem to hang in the air like perfume, and it's this that excites me.

Yes, the sea mimics the warmth of all those yellows and pinks overhead, but for me at this point it's almost an unnecessary appendage to the painting. I feel that I include it out of Noblesse oblige, so, I'll monitor the situation till I figure it out. 

I loved painting this picture (top) but it photograph well because sadly the i-phone doesn't seem to like the colour yellow very much. As a consequence paintings with lots of yellow come out uneven and washed out. This happens with my Canon and Leica too. Cameras just don't like yellow. Go figure. 

In actual fact it looks far better in real life than in the photo above. But it came quickly and while I was painting it I really enjoyed myself. 

This one just below came afterwards when the lights fades and there is but a hint of colour left in the sky.  

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 27 March 2026, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 26 March 2026, (detail) oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

 

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.