Narcissus revisited

 

(Because of Trump's new war on Black America, (who would have thought this could happen yet again?) I've decided to re-post this from the 1st December 2021, because like so many Americans of all colours and faiths, I'm horrified by the hateful ideas coming out from this administration.) 

I cannot find another reason to post this lovely portrait than one out of love for beauty. It came from the NYT a few months ago and I snagged it off the screen to put on my desktop like I would pick up a small round pebble from the beach sometimes. If I remember correctly, I think it's the young woman who designed and created in her small studio.

I look at it with curiosity because I begin to see all the relationships that this designer had  going on in this dress. First of all, it is just so visually striking in every regard that it appears, like all greatness, to possess a unity of proportion, texture, colour, design, and purpose. It is at the very height of its craft and a metaphor for so much more with its delicate ruffled sleeves, and those rich yellow polka dots spread out over the chest like wild daisies. Everything speaks of the flower, fragile, tactile, handle with care! The drop from the waist whispers of something chaste, innocent and young.  

But without a doubt, it also evokes the colonial aesthetic of America's antebellum past, light and darkness, enterprising but fraudulent, inventive and inhuman. This dress reminds me of the black slaves themselves, who served their white masters with far more dignity than their masters deserved. And because slaves had nothing but hand-me-downs from their owners, they resorted to invention by creating much out of so little. American slaves, in the face of such indignities, rose up to make the best of their tragic situation and this dress possesses so much of that spirit. As they say about life when in difficulty "When you get lemons, make lemonade". 

These days white Americans don't realise the simple truth that Black Americans gave so much more than they ever took from America. It reminds me, as a white man, that some of its richest cultural legacies come from the Afro-American experience. And I could certainly go on and on about this but I promised a faithful reader to try to keep these ideas brief.

But I haven't said anything about the simple, unadorned beauty of this model, especially because she compliments the dress. Her shy pose is also a hint to the past, slightly subservient, gently awaiting instructions, fragile like a flower blooming too early in Spring.

I have no idea who designed and created this as I didn't save the article sadly. Was it a man or woman, or someone in between? (as one must acknowledge these days) Was it a person of colour or white, Asian perhaps, or some beautiful mix of the two, or three even? Of course this only matters for context in the worlds of fashion, economics and socio-political spheres. But for me, as a painter, it is just sensuous and, dare I say simply "beautiful". Yes, when I see the craft of beauty like this, it gives me a feeling of some optimism for a future in this world, one all too often ruled by the ignoble and crass.

All this, and more, has the designer revealed to me in this dress. So, to celebrate this first day of December, here is something to remind of us of Springtime which is but a few months aways in reality.

Corot, Corot, I know, I know,,,, gentle gloom

5 November 2021

Corot, Corot, I know, I know,,,, gentle gloom

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 4 November 2021, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Dark rainy Springtime clouds have been visiting us for weeks now. Only a smattering of sunny days has allowed me to get to the beach to make anything. Happily though, it’s forced me into the studio to face my scary demons in the form of large paintings.

But the weather brightened two days ago and I zipped out there to see what I could do. This is one of two studies which are not great but I was relieved to just get out to work a bit. This was the third and it looks and feels to me vaguely “too 19th century”, as we say, but it is what it is, and I accept it gratefully. 

Generally, the evenings arrive with their own particular light which then maps out possible routes for me to follow. How I proceed, though I hate to admit it, simply depends upon my mood in doing what I am open or closed to do. Every sky may look the same but it’s never completely so. While setting up I glean what I can from them and armed with these initial perceptions, already, I’m able to plunge into an unknown destination. How could I not be grateful for this easy set-up?

The other night was mostly clear with the usual bit of fuzz hanging about over the horizon line. I spent too much time on the first study but after when the sun had set and the sky in front of me had softened, when the strength of the day had seeped out, I was left with these sensuous gray forms still clasping onto a fragile breath. Out of the blue I thought to myself; “This a Corot moment!” 

Sometimes clouds can appear so delicate it’s like I’m picking up an errant flower blossom that has glued itself to the wooden deck after a light rain. The funny thing is that I’ve never been a fan of Corot. Yes, he’s great, too great perhaps. But like Degas, he’s also almost too perfect and I’m left cool to his craft, but then it all comes down to a question of taste not talent, right? So on this night, like in a Corot, the lingering light diffused these gentle forms evenly as the dusk infected the evening air with its own gentle gloom. Suddenly, the painter in me awakened to the task of finding a solution for these dying traces in the twilight sky. 

The problem on evenings like this was purely a technical one; How do I see my palette in this fading light? Without a sliver of a new moon overhead to guide me I’m quickly lost. And twilight, as anyone knows, doesn’t wait for stragglers on the beach. That is a great shame because in this tenebrous gulf that left me colorblind, the sky high overhead, still radiated with a delicate luster beckonning me for another go at it.

So I dashed off this last study like an after taste. Looking at it now, a day later I find myself doing a post-op on it. What I really like in it is the way the sea was carved up not only with colour but form too, because it’s divided quite primitively into three zones. The whole ‘block’ of the sea was painted with a dry brush giving the surface an unfinished feeling that mimics the luminosity of the fragmented cloud overhead.

In the very foreground, a cold discreet band of broken Prussian Blue was laid over it with another dry brush. The last thin stripe, as it were, separating the horizon from the sky is a very broken, slightly warm Ultramarine Blue that softens the transition into all the warmth of sky overhead. All of this happened within minutes, and that speed prevented me from even being conscious of any of it. I haven’t a clue how it was done, and this is why I work quickly and without much hesitation. When I’m present, I’m not there.

I like it, yet the more time I spend with it, it already seems to fade away, becoming a distant memory. Tomorrow is another day, another study. Nice, this painter’s life, I think to myself.

At the park, people show up

22 July 2021

At the park, people show up

The was the second of two studies from the other night that came quickly. Lucky, because I hadn’t worked in a while and it shows. It’s a scruffy-looking thing, like my brother’s Jack Russell, Chili, when she comes in all ruffled after a romp in the field. 

The horizon was postively glowing when I first arrived and an iridescent turquoise sea was lit up. But it didn’t last long, and within twenty minutes its lustre had faded, but I did manage to paint two, of which this was the first. This was fine with me because the afternoon air was chilly. The winter’s breath can be seen in this study.

Despite all the beauty in front of me, I got a little lost at the beginning of this painting and found myself hesitating and fidgety, so I tried to imagine myself with Beginner Mind, something which can usually takes the stress out of my go-to perfectionism. Then I remembered Samual Beckett, another kind a wise guy, though not from the East, who proclaimed; “Fail again, fail even better”. Obviously, this isn’t the usual positive affirmation one recites while working but I vigilantly monitor my mind when it starts to turn South because if I’m thinking, I’m already in trouble.

But it despite the chill in the air, it was a lovely afternoon, full of the usual suspects on the beach. Here in Australia, people just show up because it’s the beach much like they would at a park in any city anywhere I think. People will just show up to watch anything that’s going on. This afternoon a crowd of curious teenagers had arrived at the end of path and upon seeing me, immediately made a bee-line towards my easel. They were really sweet, and they peppered me with lots of questions while I was desparately trying to work on my unhappy-looking picture. They wanted to take photos and though I hate that, I said yes because they were so cool. I’ve learned to say yes to any amateurs of art at the beach especially the youth. I am, after all, at the mercy of all the elements out there. With my left hand clutching my brushes I feigned a smile in that moment of embarressed compromise like I’ve been caught out naked or something, for I am open and vulnerable all at once painting at the beach. Moreover, my painting on the easel, in its unfinished state, added further embaressment.What’s a fellow to do?  Grin, and bare it.

Thankfully though, by the time people generally see me, they’ve usually already passed me by up on the small dune on the right so they usually just smile and continue down towards the sea. But there are exceptions, people so curious to see a guy painting a picture that they come to see what I’m doing. Sometimes they don’t wish to make their way up but want a photo of me from the path and kindly ask me. 

But the other day, they were pretty cool kids, as they generally are around here, actually. In fact Australians are pretty cool people. But it is the kids who I love the best for they are both curious and shy. Friendly and fearless like Golden Retrievers they will bound up and circle around my easel and check everything out. Some are full of questions but others just look up at me with wide eyes. They are always surprised to see an old guy like me up on a sand dune painting a picture. Right off, I ask them if they paint themselves and suddenly the ice is broken. There are always one or two in a group who respond with a resounding yes!  

A few meters way from me are waist-high bushes, some of them half-dead so they make great drying racks for the wet paintings. They are often several of them placed carefully between the thin fragile branches and they ellicit ‘Ooo’s and ahhh’s’ from my visitors.

Fayum and Tony Tuckson,

                              Tony Tuckson 1950's?
 

I love this small portrait and I wish I had done it myself. This is something that many artists might loath to admit, but I will. 

This possesses everything I love and admire in a picture. In the most discreet way possible, it adheres to the very idea of Chiaroscuro and delivers an unusual and Modernist side of humanity. The simplistic nature of this small drawing belies a skill that could easily be overlooked by many. What does this head express? 

Compare it with the Cezanne drawing of his son below. What does this expression in a more rendered and classical response? What does any portrait express?

Below, an oil portrait by Tuckson of his wife, also from the early 1950's. I know I've written about it a few years back, maybe even several times in fact because I like it so much. But that said, here is a more developed idea in oils. One might see a lot of Matisse in it, but I just see Tony Tuckson. It's wonky but inexplicably, it expresses a real humanity. 

I wonder suddenly, if my strong feeling for it doesn't go back to my earliest love of all; the Fayum portraits from Egypt (below) that I saw as a child. My father had a book full of these heads and they mesmerised. 

 

Wife, oil on canvas, 1950's

British Museum AD 160 - 170

Just for fun, here are a few more.... 

  

                           About 250 AD

Dinner party with Marguerite Matisse

20 November 2021

Dinner party with Marguerite Matisse

"Let's face it, The French hate painting!" There! I've said it. 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. Now, I've really put my foot into the apple tarte.   

But, I plunged my sword further into the startled dinner party, I exclaimed, “But the British! Now, they are people who truly love Painting, because despite their squeamish attention to manners and social protocol (in reverse to the French) they are truly eccentric, and they possess a non-conformist streak (also in reverse to the French who are stridently conformist, if you permit my penchant for lobbing labels around). I pontificated even further and said that the Brits are sufficiently odd enough to appreciate the softened sensuality of the messy nature of Painting. The British love Painting as do the Dutch and the Danes, like the Belgians do, and the Italians too. But at the same time all of them are equally mad about Conceptual Art because they can all chew gum and drink beer at the same time.  

But the French, on the other hand, are mad for Literature and Poetry, and they adore contemporary Architecture and cool Opera. But more than anything, they worship wordplay. Conversation skills are a must in France, especially so in Paris. Their passion is really for ideas and razor sharp brilliance. So naturally, they are more comfortable with Conceptual Art than with mere paintings that can rip through ideas like a table saw. They love Robert Wilson, not Robert Johnson. But I won’t try to convince anyone here of all this, not now, anyway.

These bombs were always fun to throw into these intimate dinner parties. My success rate was often contingent upon how much, or 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 at certain times gave me a wide birth in most situations.  

Despite the light-hearted deliveries at these dinners, the core of these bombs were quite real for me, personally. 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 French cinema, theatre, and books of course) 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, then when leaving them, we leave the lights on. The French have passion for ideas, and ideals, and for that, we love and cherish them all the more so.

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 in it. For me, when he 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 how uncomplicated Painting can be when everything works in a simple way. 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, inchoate, and waiting for an occasion to appear. 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 like an old Zen Master cherishes his favourite tea cup.

Sui generis

 

18 May 2018

Sui generis

       Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 12 May 2018, oil on canvas board 30 X 25 cm

These mornings are clear and dry, full of bird calls and chatter, the light buzz of the crickets mark the last warm mornings before winter will arrive definitively.

This is the last of three small studies from a crazy and chaotic sky last week. The first two had bordered on the kitsch due to the sea that raged orange beneath a mass of pink clouds overhead, but I think I lost them in the shuffle. This one came along like the caboose at the end of the line.

It’s a sensuous image which I really like, the kind that wants me to blow it up to a much larger size using big brushes and gobs of thick paint, maybe say, 150 X 150 cm. It’s at least nice for me to dream about these kinds of things because sometimes they may actually get done. It’s a picture for painters, that’s for sure. Without context that links it to the sea and sky, the public might just imagine it to be another abstract painting from a dark studio somewhere. But that’s OK too. We painters take whatever scraps are left out out on the table.

But at least, as the painter, I do get to witness this last gasp of light that defies the slow incursion of nightfall which like death, submits to no one else. At this very instant, the painter in me struggles for a chance at glory in this mythic moment, when in almost biblical terms, I try to capture this transfiguration from light into darkness. Maybe it’s like a spiritual conversion but in reverse, where radiance turns tenebrous, for this is the holy space between heaven and hell, and I like it there.  

At the end, when the fireworks that painted the sky have shut down, I often feel deflated like the kid at the end of a roller-coaster ride. All the colours that so enchanted me just prior, have been siphoned off and twilight has eaten up the remaining light. Only then can this painter again feel mortal. 

As with so many others, this study was made quickly and without much thought. My only critique is that it’s a small idea, indeed, too small to really develop. It’s made up of just two planes of colour, and unfortunately it just looks like a detail cut out from a larger picture that a painter might have really loved.

In the trade, they're called cut-outs. But, cut-outs almost never, ever succeed unless they were already crumby paintings to begin with. They will only appear interesting to people who know nothing about Painting. And yet, painters of every stripe do it from time to time, always out of desperation. Sadly though, unless you’re Dr Frankenstein, the amputation of an arm will always just leave a dead arm. Full disclamier; I’ve been guilty of this too before I wised up.

After spending a few days with it I started liking it, so maybe I’ll keep it for the future.

Irrational Romantic

20 May 2018

Irrational Romantic

                       18 May 2018 30 X 25 cm

It was decidedly chillier this night but the sun warmed quickly up the morning and the birds were suddenly everywhere. They help my spirit resist these shorter days.  

A large cloud bank had rolled in from the south and sat on the horizon for this study from the other night, one of two. At the beach too, it’s chilly and the frigid sand reminds that I’ve forgotten to wear socks again.

Verisimilitude is on my mind these days. When I sneak away from it and leave its familiar shores, I’m always happier with the results. To achieve a level of verisimilitude is hard enough in its own right and one needs to be a pretty good painter with an able technique. I’m not that kind of painter because I never learned that sort of technique, but nor was I very interested because I’ve always known that I’m way too messy to be a member of that club. It’s also a difficult path to follow if one has already made a commitment to the ‘Romantic’ tradition like me. And anyway, it raises all sorts of complicated questions about the real nature of Art. An academic painter, I’ve never been, I’m too wild and wooly.

‘Life-like’ is how they describe the meaning of Verisimilitude. And this begs the question of what that means. For me, it follows the academic tradition like that of Ingres, and the Hyperrealism schools as they are still practiced today all the world over. But it gets complicated because Diego Velázquez could be seen as a representative of this ideal version of verisimilitude. Personally, I would still put all his godly talents into the ‘Romantic’ tradition, not into a ‘Realist’ camp because his pictures are always unified through abstract means and despite the number of relationships in his pictures, they each come together and are subservient to the image as a whole. To put it more succiently, unlike the Academic tradition of Neoclassiciscm whereby one of adds separate well-polished parts together to create a whole, a Romantic desires that the sum of a work be greater than its individual parts. 

I am without a doubt a Romantic in the hallowed tradition of Delacroix, who was a hero for me for years after reading his journal and seeing his watercolours and paintings. But he is by no means the only Romantic painter who taught me. Van Gogh was certainly his godson, and one whose attention was strictly focused on how the emotional expression of a painting is measured in a work. As a child of the 20th century but an older guy of the 21st, I can get a little confused about how Romanticism manifests in this contextual art world of today. But for me in painterly terms, it means an invitation to freely interpret Nature through a subservience to an organic whole, irregardless of style. It’s loyalty is to the picture plane as whole unit, not to stylistic parts of a picture, no matter how well painted. It’s not rocket science but one might need lots of lift to get there and get it right.

I suspect that somewhere along the line, perhaps due to Industrialisation, Nature became something, if not inferior, then perhaps something suspect, untrustworthy or just unworthy, through the superior 19th century lens of progress. But don’t get me wrong, I’m not a dreamer, I like scientific and rational behavior, and I also ask for logic and truth too,  especially in both politics and human relations. But everything else in my life, within all its artistic applications, I desire spontaneity, intuition and emotional clarity. In civilian life, I see life through a rational lens, as exemplified by the equation, 2 + 2 = 4. But in all things artistic, 2 + 2 will, for me, always = 5 because I’m an irrational Romantic.

So in this unrurly study one might imagine a Zen monk out at the beach after too much sake; naked, and screaming at the oncoming storm, flinging his long unkempt hair onto the palette and rubbing his head across the small and startled virgin canvas board. All this in quiet contrast to me, a teetotaler, calmly preparing a palette while searching for a way through the clouds like a lost pilot. After initially setting up, it immediately began drizzling, and the clouds were moving in quickly so I simply improvised as best as I could. In the end I managed to wrap it all up and call it a souvenir of my session out there. Looking at it now it feels like the half-sister to the painting of the 16th of April last month. 

Gentle and giant Pierre

26 May 2018

Gentle and giant, Pierre Bonnard

      Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 22 May 2018, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

This study is from the other night, one of two that put me out of my element. It both unnerved and energised me at the same time. Looking at it now, it makes me think of the problem of abstraction and verisimilitude in Art and in Nature. Though I liked this one best, to be fair, it looks brighter on the laptop. This can happen because the i-phone 7 bumps up the light slightly due to its fast lens and affects the entire yellow side of the spectrum. 

I like it though because I can see that I was trying to channel one of my favourite painters, Pierre Bonnard. Though unconscious, his magical luminosity still dazzles me in secretly inside even while I’m out working quickly from nature without a thought in my head. Go figure. 

Luminosity, isn’t a bad obsession as they go, I’ve had worse. But I not only like Bonnard’s work but also his quiet nature and gentle soul which shine through everything. He was a giant of a painter housed in such a quiet discrete personality, quite the opposite of an artist like Picasso, who led an oversized lifestyle and projected himself upon the world like he owned it, which in fact, he kind of has done for one hundred years now. On the other hand, Bonnard shyly moved between his devoted wife Marthe and his long time mistress with little fanfare. He offered the world a sample of the secular divinity that lived within his cloistered but luminous world of Modern Painting. Most importantly, as a teacher, he also continously reminds me of what is still possible out in front of Nature when one lets go of one’s rational thinking to use their eyes. 

The downside for me is that even if one were to see an abstract or vibrant aspect to Nature in my pictures, they would  still appear sloppy, which to be fair, many of them are, and I freely admit it. These are small quick studies that I don’t often double dip back into. They are one-offs, studies that generally either work or don’t in one session and I accept them for that fact. This has been the experiment for me here at the beach. On the other hand, it’s in the studio where I wish to push them further (and larger). At the beach though, I find it too difficult to go back into such small, spontaneous images to improve and develop them. But maybe that could happen one day soon. It’s been a perenial problem for me, yet when I do it, to my surprise it often works. A picture like this, is as finished as I would ever wish it to be. There is nothing more I could do to enhance the relationships in it. I often feel this way with many these pictures though many I’ll admit are also inferior. 

I work small and quickly, and that is already a great challenge. The goal in these studies is to grab the motif in one careful swipe without hurting it like I'm a lepidopterist. But Perhaps in only this one respect am I like an Expressionist; for whatever comes up in a painting session, is the whole point of the session. One day if I'm really lucky I'll catch a Blue Morpho butterfly