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