God’s skin, hope and desire

30 July 2021

God’s skin, hope and desire

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 24 July 2021, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

I was looking at this picture from the other night and suddenly realised that I had finally come close to something that fulfilled my deepest wish in this painting racket. At the same time, I also came to understand that it may only please a small portion of the world at large, but hey! Every artist secretly hopes their work will resonate with even just a few people. Is this not also a painter’s right? 

Chilly, chilly south winds arrived a few days ago. I had a few really delicious sessions this past week and increasingly I feel like I’m getting somewhere new. Many of these skies are so delicate that I often treat them with lightly scrubbed washes to ensure their luminosity. It’s something of a throwback to my early days when I was under the influence of Cezanne. But recently, I see that I am ‘lathering them up’ like a barber might do for his clients. I’m using more paint at the moment and it’s changing the way I deal with this essential understanding of light. 

Now, I admit, as a habit, I will sometimes leave just a fragment, a scintilla of virgin white on the canvas board to indicate the brightest part of the ‘picture light’ as a whole. This is a nod again to Cezanne. It completes one half of that notion that came out of the Renaiassance in Italy known as Chiaroscuro. Despite it’s rather ancient connotation, it still aptly defines what drawing is, but not necessarily how it works.

Isn’t it curious how Cezanne can be found in the same breath as this idea from the Renaissance? When one thinks of him one thinks of such brilliant light, one so unlike the light that came up as if out of the crypt of a black ground in the 15th century studio. My habit of leaving the palest of spaces to highlight the brightest spot in a picture isn’t just an empty nod to Cezanne but an ingrained habit that I would be hard pressed to give up, it’s an intuitive habit for me now after so many years. So lately, when I say that I’m using more paint it implies a subtly different way of designing the light in a painting because I’m actually now starting with the light of the picture ‘chiaro’, in great contrast to many years ago while in the landscape when I always began with the dark accents, the ‘scuro’. It’s the light of the sea, so radically different than a landscape in the interior, that has changed my approach to a picture. Today, I’m able to come in with thick creamy brushstrokes of pale light at the very start of the picture. 

I remember a story about, (who else today, but Cezanne). Apparently, when he was painting still lives, (apples, and pears?) but also portraits too, he would place a black top hat on one side of the sitter and a white glove on the other. He worked excruciatingly slow, so slowly, he claimed his eyes would ‘bleed between brushstrokes’. Whoa! But the purpose of the top hat and the white glove was to remind him of the extreme limits of black to white, night to light, hence, Chiaroscuro.  

This picture here, was the last of three studies from several days ago, and as I said previously, I feel it embodies an ephemeral quality that I’ve been after here in this series. That evening was much like many others except that at the end of the session these planes of colour had flattened out serenely in an orderly fashion just the way I like, though it’s rare that any sky conforms to my wishes. This peachy pink sky reminds me of a French market on Saturday mornings when apricots and peaches, pears, and plums, all exhibit a textural colour so close to what I was loading up on my paintbrush for this picture. 

Again, looking at this pale sky from a few nights ago, makes me think of a small anecdote from a book entitled,The Memory of Fire Trilogy, by the wonderful historian, poet, and writer, Eduardo Galeano, who died in 2015. He wrote that when the Conquistadors arrived in Central and South America, they had of course, brought the bible with them and tried to convert the local people living there. When they showed it some of the local Indigenous tribes there was general astonishment. When they caressed the thin pale paper while holding it up to the sun, they declared to their conquerors that it was the ‘skin of god’. 

Though it came to me many years before my obsession began with this sky here in Oceania, I’ve never forgotten this description. It must have been in the back of my mind all these years. But it’s even rarer for me to approach this ephemeral metaphor until a picture like this comes up in a session and depicts such fragile, delicate light as if I’m painting a butterfly’s wing.

Finding the Renaissance term of Chiaroscuro in this small modernist painting is likely to be a bit of work, but I assure you, don’t be fooled by the pale apricot hues, for the light in this sky is tethered firmly in place by the deep dark sea.

Anyone got a light

2 September 2021

Anyone got a light?

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 31 August 2021, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Although they’re all immortalised in museums, galleries, and apartments, plus a few lucky homes around the world, Turner, Monet and Bonnard, are all long gone under the garden grass. And yet they rise up for me like ghosts in a Shakespeare play indicating viable paths for me and my imagination. I know the road ahead is narrow but I am always hoping for a light at the end of the it, and unfortunately for me, unlike actors in a theatre collective, the painter must make the trip solo.

But why do I mention these artists and not others? I think it’s because they whisper in my ear after all these years since I began as an art student. Their work, still so alive, shows me all of what they achieved in their time so long ago. But more importantly, they show their maps to me too, where they went and what they did, maybe even an itinerary to where I might still travel in what time is left for me here on earth. In the sphere of Painting History, no matter how recent or how far back in time, there are some artists who seem to have more to give me than others. Unlike so many painters whose works hang on walls from the Louvre in Paris to the National Gallery in London, their work, like large windows, are clear enough to convey the secrets of Painting to anyone who is patient enough to investigate their respective oeuvres without prejudice. Cumulatively, they are the search engine of any window when it comes to Painting.

There are other painters, on the other hand, whose windows are smaller and smudged, such that even if one wanted to see through them it would be difficult. For me, I’ve found few other artists who have fused a luminosity of colour with the simplicity of form through drawing. This is just my thing, others will naturally look for other painters, others things they want to learn.  So, like a moth drawn to light, my own path was formed by these masters of the craft And anyway, aren’t all painters looking for their own light? 

Though it can seem impossible to find relevance in today’s vast Painting world I do believe it’s possible to forge our own map through this chaotic state. Personally, instead of looking around at what others are doing in this gigantic Art Tent, for better of worse, I seem to be looking invariably backwards to these fellows for guidance. They are still the tallest lighthouses on the horizon as far as I can see. I could have added many others but I wanted to keep it simple. None of us should have too many teachers when it comes to the craft of Painting. Too many cooks make messy pictures but just a few great cooks will feed us for a lifetime.

This study came quickly, it was the second of three. The other two didn’t seem to have that ‘punch’ I like, that nudges the image into motion, something that can keep a viewer’s eyes continually interested. My critique of it is that it still feels a little too 19th century for me. But hey! On any given day I cannot dictate how a session is going to begin or finish. It’s really up to the sky and the sea, but also the Muses too. 

Does my painting stand up today on its own or does it throw me back to earlier era? Overall, am I going forward or backward? I think what is important for me is whether or not a picture works irregardless of an era, but naturally, I wish to be moving ahead over the long haul. Like the stock market, despite its dips and dews, it invariably increases in value. Maybe it’s like going out with a lover today but who still makes you think of another from your past. With or without regret, both loves are still worthy, and your memory of them both will only increase. 

Yesterday, on my phone, I saw a small kinetic toy advertised on Instagram, the kind that’s knocked off in a tiny factory somewhere in Asia. Made of wood and thin steel rods that are bent to fashion a tiny ramp that repeatadly hurles a small metal ball back up into the wooden basin on top. The ball drops back down the through the small hole and into the curved steel ramp below it with enough force that gravity throws the ball back up onto the wooden bowl above, only to repeat the process over and over again. Nice! Isn’t that what happens in front of a good painting, or perfect love affaire?

So I was thinking of that cheap little gizmo while looking at this study, and I only hope for it also possess's enough kinetic visual tension to keep a viewer’s eyes in motion. In museums around the globe, I know so many really great paintings that do that with ease. Whether it works today or not, there is always still tomorrow for me to try again.

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. Is it the young model the designer who created this dress in a small studio somewhere?

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 afterwards, 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 fragile 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.