Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 17 July 2025, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm
This study is from almost two weeks ago when I finally got out to my small perch on a cliff overlooking the sea. I made two that night and I wasn't terribly impressed with either but this was the better one. It has held up for two weeks so I am putting it for scrutiny.
We've had so much rain this winter that I've slipped into a state of somnolence vis-vis this
motif. Even on clear days when it looked decent to get out there I've stayed home where the winter chill cannot penetrate me. So, actually, I've just been lazy and cold.
But it has raised the question of whether or not I even still wish to pursue this motif. ? At the moment I am still finishing up a writing project at home, one that is going almost three years now, so I'm busy. And what with so much work to do around the place here in the country, I really need to better organise my time, something I've never been good with. The good news is that it will soon be warmer and the days are already getting longer so everything's looking up.
I would hate to let go of this beach series because even whether or not the work is any good, it provides me with a therapeutical shield against so much awfulness out in the world. Let's be honest, Gaza is a horrible tragedy, but Trump has a way of even eclipsing that bad situation. With each passing week many of us watch with horror as that Orange Turd wrecks even more of this already fragile system we call America. It's disheartening at every level and all my friends are depressed. I, too, can let it get to me if I didn't practice one form of creative Art or another.
I awaken each morning and begin doom-scrolling immediately on my phone. Whoa! A bad habit for sure, but I know I'm not the only one. Into the kitchen to make a strong black coffee, then I proceed to the piano and to begin, I jump into the most difficult piece I'm currently working on. After ten minutes I have left the doubled world behind me. I'm back in a space where I cannot be touched by anyone. After about two hours I feel alive with optimism, so I am fortunate because I have a solution, an antidote to facing the world each day.
I was listening to Brahms last week, his intermezzos and fantasies from the Opus 118, the sublime ones he composed towards the end of his life. I'm sure I've said this before, maybe even in a several pages over the last few years, but this idea that Art can change the world, as some very idealistic people believe, is just not true. It'a lie to make people feel better. OK, why not? But Art cannot change nor save the world. If it could have, then after Brahms, WW II, would never have happened. Art cannot change the world but what it can do is help each individually either as creators or as passionate lovers of Art. But even that is a slim sand bar to stand upon because look at what all those cultivated and artistic Germans did to the Jews even after J.S. Bach and Mahler. Forgive my dark take, but only as individuals can anything be changed.
For fun, here is a small painting I made when I was home from France after my first year there when I was learning to paint outdoors. It was kicked about for many years before I realised that there was something in it that I think managed to catch an approaching storm. It's a rough cut, like an unpolished diamond, but it reveals a painter who had a feeling that just needed to refine it through learning this wonderful craft. So, evidently, my heart and soul have been fascinated by the the sea for a very long time.
South Beach Fishers Island, New York, 1974, oil on canvas board, 36 X 28 cm
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