Man-Cold

14 January 2022

Man-Cold

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 10 January 2022, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

I admit that I wasn’t crazy about this when I pulled it from the boot of the car the other morning, but, as it can happen from time to time, pictures either improve or fall apart quickly in a just a few day’s time. I actually wouldn’t even say I like it necessassily, but there is something in it that functions well despite its bland and benign colour harmony. Like a young woman at a Ball who’s yet been asked to dance, its diffident nature might hide its acuity, and it even be too embarressed by its own discreet but shy self-esteem.

It had been sunny all day with a big wind from the south that had cooled the afternoon by the time I arrived. This was the last of three studies that frankly speaking, all felt awful and left me feeling sad. But today, I feel differently, possibly because this last study seems to possess some truth in it despite me. Everything appears to be in the right place. I hardly noticed the batch of delicate pale blue clouds the other day. They surprise me now because they are so broken such they might appear just grey if isolated on their own. This a remarkable lesson in the way colours work. For me, they spring to life when situated in a sky of warm violets and orange. I certainly could not have been aware of this happening while I worked. This is a magical result of working quickly outdoors. The otherwise dull muted blue is only heightened by its proximity to the warm sky around it. These small gifts are the by-product of me allowing my eyes to guide the session. How else to describe it? 

On the other hand it’s on the sketchy side which doesn’t really please me too much. A session like this can bring those age-old doubts about Painting to eye-level. It’s true that even after decades I can easily succomb to those dark feelings of ineptitude even after a long life invested in Art.

But just to let the civilians in on a big secret, most creative people face terrible uncertainty much of the time. It’s a curse that infects them when they don’t feel like they know what they are doing. It can be for lots of reasons; fearful of destroying what they might be a lucky start or maybe just feeling clueless about how to proceed or how to finish a project. How to put an end to it all for God’s sake, is how some of us feel late at night when the house is dark and silent.

But thankfully, speaking for myself, these episodes seem to come and go like the occasional flu. They actually come on less frequently as I’ve matured because I’m no longer like a kid getting sick. I am just a grown up after all, having a Man-Cold.

But doubts of all kinds are important, they keep me in check. The best remedy is to get into the next picture quickly because like the Wise Guys in the East always say, “one cannot think one’s way into right action, but can act one’s way into right thinking!” 

Feeling anxiety, whatever the cause, used to disturb me so much that it prevented me from ever taking the next right action. I was continually freezing up, indeed my whole childhood was like the ice age. But I wised up. I learned that freezing up was a result of anxiety and depression that can come up for any number of reasons. I addressed it and I felt like an East German when the wall came down.

Depression I think is like alcoholism because like a python with its victim, it takes a slow hold over one before they even realise it. Like a dictatership it will also install its own cronies to work against the host body through disinformation, then bingo the host believes it.! Before one knows it, a logic board implants itself into one’s software. Myself, I’ve learned to regularly update a firewall against this mind-set so that whatever goes on in my life, the answer will always be to move on to the next project, whatever that be. “If only I had learned all this when I was still a child.....” I muse often today.

Past and future

9 February 2022

Past and future

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 5 February 2022, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

This will sound banal but, as a painter, I’ve come to understand that each instant has its own a picture in it. My experience has been that painting the sea in the late afternoon has made it easy to witness the natural changes that go on imperceptively during the daylight. I imagine that working in the desert would be quite different and it would certainly change my visual response to how an empty dry landscape would hold and difuse the light during the day. But here at the beach, the light is very much conditioned by the sea.

This study was one of two the other evening. It had been a hot humid summer day and puffy low cumulus clouds were drifting in with a lazy onshore breeze. It can sometimes happen when the conditions are just right that these small balls of cloud catch the last rays of the setting sun and turn bright orange. Above them, at the same time, a hazy dim cloudbase of broken violets remains in retreat like a theatre decor on stage. Luckily, this happened the other night, and I was there to catch it. 

I love this effect and I also understand that it might even reveal to me something from my future. It can happen in a session, or on a particular picture, that I’ll suddenly find myself in the right elevator that goes straight up to a future version of myself. Somedays, it only goes to the second floor, but on others, it may take me all the way up to the top penthouse with a great open view of myself.

How does a painter’s path work in life anyway? Nobody can know but the Muses themselves. Usually, one’s very earliest work will already manifest in the soul of a painter in tandem with their mastery of the craft. But at times, it’s the opposite, like when the young painter appears early on in a messy tangle of inchoate form. Everyone comes to their calling differently.

There is a slab of marble not forty centimeters high that Michelangelo carved an Annunciation into when he was just 17 years old at the Casa Buanaroti in Florence, The Mary mother is in profile, and over her shoulder is a figure of her son carrying the cross in bas relief. Not only does it reveal the greatness of the sculptor Michelangelo to come, but the future of his vision as well. I saw it many years ago at the Casa Buanaroti and it made a huge impression upon me. The bas relif is no more than a centimeter in depth.

Curiously, on a program on France Musique the other day, there was a sublime piece by Shubert being played, and just afterward, the conducter, who was being interviewed, simply said about it, “it was religious without god”. When an artwork hits the mark, don’t we all seem to know what it is, whatever it is?

So, though I don’t think I spent more than twenty minutes on this small picture here, I like the feeling in it. Without it being too obvious, I think I caught it as it was in just an instant, not too early nor too late. I can also already see in it, a picture from my future, one that’s reshaping my intuition. I guess this why we improve with time if we stick with it. 

Dinner party with Marguerite Matisse

 

9 December 2021

Dinner party with Marguerite Matisse

Marguerite Matisse painted by Henri Matisse, circa 1906-7

A few years ago I read the wonderful biography of Henri Matisse in two volumes by Hillary Spurling, Matisse the Unknown, and Matisse the Master. In these generous books she opens up the stately doors of a conservative 19th century France allowing us to freely meander throughout its transition into a modern age where Art played a pivotal role back at the turn of the 20th century.

People forget how mocked and disparaged Matisse was for much of his early career. But two other great painters who suffered the same fate were Paul Cézanne and Vincent Van Gogh. Cezanne, who had heard about the Dutch painter working in nearby Arles via their mutual friend Emile Bernard. He thought Vincent was ‘crazy’, “Il est fou!”... declared Cezanne, but honestly, I’ve never been sure how Cezanne could have seen Vincent’s work in the first place. Did Emile Bernard bring a few paintings all rolled up to show him in Aix or did he just show him photos from his i-phone? 

Regardless, painters were, and still are, often misunderstood due to an unfortunate reputation, and so whenever I wanted to throw a bomb into a quiet dinner party in France I would announce:

“Let’s face it, you French, you hate painting!” I exclaimed it usually with delicate force as if I had said “J’accuse!” My point, though not always immediately understood, nor possibly even true, was always about how cerebral the French are as a cultural whole and that Painting was way too emotional for them to appreciate. At that point, the table would go silent and I knew I had put my foot into the apple tarte. I would then invariably develop my argument by proving it with examples. Essentially, I’d propose that “you French, love ideas way too much to appreciate an art form like Painting.” I’d plunge my sword further into the startled dinner party and exclaim, “but the British, now, these are people who truly love Painting because despite their squeamish attention to manners and social protocol, they are truly eccentric enough to possess a non-conformist streak unlike you, the French!" I would usually go further pontificating that "....the Brits are sufficiently odd enough to appreciate the softened sensuality of the messy nature of Painting. They love Painting as do the Dutch and the Danes, but the Belgians and Italians too, yet remarkably at the same time they're all just as equally mad about Conceptual Art as you people are because they can all chew gum and drink beer at the same time."

I would soften slightly by admitting that ..."you are wonderful people you French, you're so are mad about Literature and Poetry and you adore contemporary Architecture and cool Opera, but more than anything, you worship the brilliance of a conversation. Your passion is really for ideas and razor sharp intelligence, so naturally, you are more comfortable with Conceptual Art than with mere visual imagery that might rip through your clever discourses like a table saw. The fact is, that you're more comfortable with Robert Wilson more than Robert Johnson." 

I would finish across the slippery slope with an apologetic tone, then the debate around the table would heat up. This, along with desert, was the best part of the evening.  Of course, I loved almost everything about France, and the French on the whole. My earliest teacher was Cyrano de Bergerac whom I read in school at the impressionable age of fourteen. And I loved him for all the very same qualities with which I chose to insult my dinner companions.  

Like all nations the French are full of pride. If you were to say to a French person; “France is a wonderful country, I love it, I adore everything about it!” They might first look hard at you then respond by complaining about all that's wrong with it, “voyons, les impots, les greves...etc, etc...” But on another day or week, if you were to tell that same person that France was a mess because of the taxes and all the strikes, etc, etc... they would almost certainly raise themselves up a little and tell you about the best wines, cheeses, and education, etc, etc.... 

But these bombs were always fun to throw onto the dinner table in intimate gatherings. My success rate was often contingent upon how much, or how little wine I had consumed during the meal. And to be fair, these were my friends for the most part, so they were quite used to my antics. Being an American gave me certain advantages and a wide birth in most situations. I was looked at with amazement and great amusement.

Despite the light-hearted deliveries at these dinners, the core of these bombs were nonetheless somewhat real in a comic book kind of way. I still believe, even today, so many years later, that the Painting medium can rarely tolerate with much conviction, or success, an overload of too many concepts and ideas. 

Unlike Americans, the French, even though they are eloquent speakers, are just never comfortable expressing feelings about themselves (except in Art in all its forms of course, French cinema, theatre, books and poetry). Their passion hides behind their reserve. ‘La pudeur’ is a fine and sophisticated quality which the French possess in boatloads (ditto for the Japanese) unlike us Americans who barge into rooms uninvited and always say the wrong things at the wrong moments, and then, when leaving, we'll leave the lights on and the door ajar with no apologies.

The French, whom we know and sometimes resent, have a profound passion for both ideals and ideas, and for that, we love them, and fear them, but we also cherish them, all the more for it. 

Americans as the old cliche goes, were people of action, doers not thinkers. But this is fallacy, for the French are great doers. It’s just that they are also poetic dreamers too, and this fact drives Americans crazy with envy.

One of my favourite Matisse portraits is this one he painted of his daughter Marguerite. This one is in Paris at the Musée Picasso, although I could swear that I’ve seen it at the Musée de Grenoble too. It is dated between 1906-7, and it is so simply done that it takes my breath away. Like the drawing, its colour harmony is simple, austere even, but for me, it houses just enough feeling to keep me transfixed. It’s created with an almost primitive form of expression as if it were painted on a farm somewhere in rural France by an amateur. This is perhaps why I like it so much; there is a complete lack of any pretension, technical, or otherwise within it. For me, when Matisse was at his best, it was always without pretence.  

This loving father always painted his daughter with a ribbon or scarf around her neck to hide the scar from a tracheotomy she had endured early in childhood. Later on, Marguerite was in the Resistance during the war and was captured and tortured by the Gestapo. She was very lucky to have lived through it. And testament to her father’s adoration, we have many, many portraits of her today. As a painter, it speaks to me of how uncomplicated Painting can be when a painter keeps it simple. I think that a primal image like this is born at an early stage in a painter’s life. It grows patiently within, almost unbeknownst to the painter himself. It has always been there, gestating and waiting for an occasion to surface. One cannot set out to make a picture like this. An image such as this seems to blossom naturally like an awkward young girl of 13, who, on the cusp of womanhood, becomes  suddenly aware of her new form.

Of all his portraits of Marguerite, this is my preferred, and I love it the way an old Zen Master cherishes his favourite tea cup.

That being said

4 October 2021

That being said

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 28 September 2021, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Most of my life, I think I have only ever been drawn to the misty, shrouded fog. I think it goes back to childhood when I somehow I felt more protected under the rainy shadows of clouds than under the happy, naked and expansive empty sky. I’ve always loved the uncertainty of transitional atmospheres, the nuances of everything in life from the weather into Art and language. It’s strange that it took me so long to see this preference when today it appears so clearly evident. 

I found this old entry in a diary from a painting trip in Italy. It’s from one I was transcribing last year. I have been trying to get a page or two into the laptop daily but it’s Herculean task. Suddenly, I was surprised at how this image correlated with an entry from tonight.

Venice, 18 September, 1986

“My spirits are lifting day by day but I have no idea why. These studies don’t come out the way I want and yet I still feel hope, like a climber making his way slowly up the backside of the mountain while the summit remains still hidden from view. 

However, I am finding my way very slowly each day, the images come up for me more easily despite my hiccups. This morning, I found my way into a rather curious vision of San Giorgio at sunrise. Half-hidden in a shroud of purple/orange fog, San Giorgio looms out over a green orange sea. Needless to say, I enjoyed the haziness because, maybe it’s what I really want in the end. And immediatley as I write this, it makes me think of Monet, Turner and Whistler, who all also adored these obscure, visual 

sentiments while making so much from Venice. I shall not be afraid of these influences. But increasingly, over the past five days I have been wondering to myself what it is that I really want to do here? I am certainly not at all interested in replicating the physical charm which Venice presents to the world… these wonderful and unique details of windows, balconies, bridges etc, etc, etc,,, It has all be done a million times before by far more competent painters than myself. One really has to know what they want to do in a place like Venice or they’re wasting their time. What I begin to see are images that lurk between the off-hours of twilight and daybreak; images born from the misty boundaries between sea and stone. These are fog-filled days when nothing is what it seems, and in these small moments, when there is a of a sliver of sunlight, it is bliss for me.”

So thirty odd years later it should makes perfect sense that I found my way into a series of twilight studies here at Brunswick Heads, N.S.W. Australia. It’s like someone at the Sunday tennis crew who kindly said to me; “What took you so long?” when I showed up to play one day. I smiled and jumped on one of the courts. What I didn’t tell him was that I had felt for several years inferior to their level. But I had improved  a lot so I stepped up. The one thing you don’t want to be in a casual afternoon of doubles is the worst player. I made sure to bring new balls each time as if to pay-to-play, but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do, as Uncle Boris in the Bronx used to say. It’s an easy crew of nice guys who take over several courts on Sunday, whoever shows plays. Basically I wouldn’t have joined  it unless I could carry a good rally for a while, it’s all about just getting the ball back over the net no matter what.  That’s at the very minimum and I can handle that. Like any sport one loves practicing, the better the opponent, the better one becomes oneself. So, I finally got on the tennis court with some strong players, much better than myself and they haven’t thrown out yet so I keep going back each week. But I still also bring new balls as well. So every step up in life is always a challenge and like this twilight sky which for years kept me away out of fear, one day I just stepped up to do it. 

This from other night, came out of a dreary evening full of clouds and truthfully, I was depressed at the thought having to make anything from it. I think I even resented it like running into someone on the street whom I really don’’t like it. But that said, I threw myself into it and did find a few glimmers of light in the passing clouds which I used as handrails to allow me to build something from it. Some evenings are like that, you gotta do what you gotta do. 

Occam’s Razor

15 September 2021

Occam’s Razor

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 12 September 2021, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

It was cloudy in the morning but a chilly wind from the South polished the sky so by the other evening I was able to get out to make three pictures.

These days, everyone seems to be in an immense state of anxiety about the world. At the same time are too many versions of reality running around like chickens with their heads cut off because everybody knows better than everyone else. Like a COVID contest; Whose mouth is the loudest? Daily, after watching the American News, I cannot shake the feeling that the inmates have taken over the asylum. Quoi faire? 

But when it comes to the subject of Painting (and happily so), all diverse realities are most welcome! “Bring it on!” we artists cry out to this tiresome world where the bean-counters in sharp suits rule over us all. The only revenge is to be creative because you know what? We’re all eventually going to die someday.

So, I really love this image from the 12th of September. It’s the most successful thing I feel I’ve done so far in these past three years from the beach. Graphically, speaking, it pleases me totally, it’s as I drilled deep inside me and hit liquid gold. Like everyone, there have been times in my life when I felt newly in love only to find out after a time that I wasn’t, it turned out to be a dry well. But that feeling is so very unlike the affection I’ve had for an art work which only seems to grow with time. This is  not something I easily admit either. But there it is, once in a blue moon, something which I’ve either made myself or seen by someone else, speaks so directly to me that it goes to my heart. Hitler could have made it but I would still love it. This is why Art in any of its guises is so vital for humankind. It keeps lucky people sane in this often insane world. Whether it’s a book, a painting, a song, or a sonata. When we are touched by Art, it’s a precious event because it doesn’t happen everyday. And yet, just like when we love someone else, it’s something we cannot envision living without. And so it is with this painting from the other evening, one of three. 

My quixotic pursuit from this motif appears to always draw me back to a simple design like a template tattooed on my heart. It is almost as if I’m subconsciously trimming everything extraneously away from a picture except for the barest bone like I’m channelling Occam’s Razor. Like a homesteader with a machete, I’m cutting away old painting habits in search of a newer, more svelte look. I’m also burning opinions and beliefs too as I further slash everything that will not fit into this new rectangular space I’d like to re-invent for myself. 

In olden days, it was known as the Principle of Parsimony, and in terms of of my own obsessions it makes perfect sense. Today, I know from my travels that this austere and aesthetic truth still lives on wholeheartedly in places like Japan, a sanctified space where brevity and simplicity are almost always the preferred solution for most anything in life. I was raised in America and the message that ‘more is better’, was a kind of prayer at dinner tables all over the country. 

I think Americans of a certain race and social status were brought up to expect more of everything, so naturally more of everything was provided. I began to also see this phenomenon in the world of Art in America. Putting a man on the moon was not only inspirational, it pragmatically re-wired our imagination into believing that we could do anything. Who can argue with that? As the Art world expanded, so too did the artist’s appetite to go bigger and bolder. It also fueled ambitious ideas with more complications and material. As many of us know, American Manifest Destiny has not only been part of America’s greatest legacy to itself and the world, but equally its curse in so many ways.

Fifty year later, as many of us re-think our resources and the sustainabilty of our imprint upon earth it has significantly altered our behaviors. But in this painting world where the notion of adding more to a picture can somehow make it better, more substansive, more complicated, maybe even more fabulous, I can tell you from experience, it rarely does. Like painting hugely, oversized pictures, a classic formula in this scheme, is to use excessive amounts of paint to give a picture more importance than it might otherwise intrinsically possess. But again, this is just me, and like a teenager, I’m just sayin... And anyway, I now live in Australia where paints are so very expensive that naturally my own work is constrained by this fact so parsimony, is my rule.

But while I’m at it, as a painter, I’ve equally come to distrust excessive complications on the pictorial plane. I will do anything to avoid them, even subjecting the poor image to a vigorous assault with an old paint rag. So consequentially, in these small simplified studies, I seem to be trying to pare down both the drawing and the colour harmony, compressing them both down to the design of a national flag it sometimes seems. It’s as if I’ve designed them for some happy verdant island found near the equator. I don’t really set out to do this, but it’s true, that when I’m feeling uncertain, I’ll sometimes just carve out both the sea and sky into slices the colour of mango and watermelon. Occam’s razor indeed.

When I look at this image I imagine seeing an entire show presented in this simple format yet coloured inevariably with many different combinations of harmonies drawn from the placid evening skies and equally tranquil seas.

After walking beaches everywhere, ever since I was a kid, I secretly marveled at the way the sky settled into dusk. Like many people drawn to the sea I’ve always looked up 

towards the heavens at this twilight hour full of dreams. Since coming to Australia, and walking the beach at Brunswick Heads,  I confess that I never imagined that I would attempt to paint here. I was so intimidated by the extraterrestrial beauty of it that I wouldn’t be able to handle the failure. So I didn’t try even try for the longest time. I did draw from it, making several series in black and white but never in a million years did I believe I’d find the courage nor the tenacity to make something artistically worthy of this simple motif. After these few years I’m still sometimes astounded that I managed to stumble upon a pathway that aligned up so mysteriously with something so unbeknownst to my heart. 

The anguish and delight of the lighthouse keeper

27 March 2020 

The anguish and delight of the lighthouse keeper

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

I’ve been reading of the chaotic life going on in Europe as the raging pandemic roars through Italy where people are locked down in confinement. Here by the empty sea, life is tranquil at least for the time being. I sometimes feel a pang of guilt for the easiness of life around here when I see the awful news abroad.

This was the second of two from the other night where a thin veil of haze stretched across the sky like cheese cloth. The horizon line at one point was so sharp that it appeared to cut the whole world in two like a knife. I remember my teacher Leo say to me one day that visually speaking, the horizon line is always the strongest contrast out in nature and a landscape should reflect that fact. I’m not sure if he came up with this from his own studies or perhaps from either Delacroix or Cezanne. But in any event it’s something that always jumps out at me when I can’t figure out a landscape with certainty. It’s reassuring to note that the Earth itself commands such a visual truth. 

In this one I like the delicate swarth of dainty apricot clouds that formed like fuzz after the sun had set behind me. Though it doesn’t look like it, this picture was actually finished in the dark. I had wanted to continue, but unfortunately my palette was no longer readable, and dusk had already descended to swallow up its afterglow. The sea at that point was turning a deep blue that would in time bleed into the sky like on watercolour paper. Honestly, I’m often dazzled by Nature’s nonchalant narcissism, the kind that can bring a painter both deep anguish, but a dark delight.

And because I’m often the last living soul out there at this uncertain hour, it’s easy to imagine that it’s up to me to turn out the lights when I leave, for in this small glorious moment I’m the lighthouse keeper of this immense beach.