Doubt and discipline

 

12 December 2020

 Doubt and discipline

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 8 December 2020, oil on canvas board, 40 X 30 cm

This was one of three from the other night. They were a little different, brighter and lighter in every way but I liked this one best. It was an unusual sea, super flat, very light, and silver blue. A difficult kind of sea to paint, so smooth it made me think of a glass slipper. But I appreciate the vast varieties of weather conditions that oblige me to adapt by finding solutions for such different colours and forms  each day. 

Last night a fellow painter friend of mine complained to me that she felt that although she has been at working as an artist for some 40 years now, she still feels that she doesn’t know what she is doing. Curious, because in my mind, she has always been a tireless worker, always at it, day and night, and yet like for so many artists, a rich and successful career has eluded her. Nonetheless, I was surprised to hear all this. I had always also marvelled at her discipline because next to her, I’m a bit of a slouch and a sloth. 

But I laughed gently, because I had heard this from her many, many times before over the years. I replied that most artists, writers, musicians, etc, etc, who cannot make this confession, may have more gumption than integrity. I went on to add that having a great career is not the same thing as having possession a great craft or vision.

But maybe I was being a little generous. What I had meant to say was that an artist (unless they are Picasso), who never question themselves, and who appear to know nothing of the gnawing doubt deep inside one’s creative skin, must surely make insipid Art. So thus I pontificated to allay her fears. I'm harsh, but there must be truth in it because nearly every great artist, writer, musician, in history have themselves confessed to all that.

I added that I think just to face all this emotional insecurity is the first step to seeing it more clearly. Then, it's just a matter falling in love with one's work again because actually, all this confusion is really just a lapse of love. The way out of it is to jump back into the work, the craft; the nuts and bolts of art, not the airy fairy feelings around it. 

This doubt can be the key to a happy daily routine in most cases, irregardless of the work produced. I also reminded her of Sisiphus too.

Somehow, I think, even after the usual route of going to Art schools, many of us still manage to hide our deepest insecurities as we venture out into the world of studios and galleries (and no need to dwell upon the cocktail parties, receptions, and exhibition openings that await the luckier ones amongst us). What little I have come to understand as an ‘unsuccessful’ painter (and college drop out) is that Art doesn’t generally come out of the class rooms, but out of the recess periods, like as kids and when we were always at play. And besides, (full disclaimer: I’m not really a believer in Art Schools anyway) but that said, I don’t discount the fact that Art schools are still great for networking and getting laid a lot. 

But in truth, I used to feel that by slogging it out on my own it would make me a better painter and that eventually I would get somewhere, but in the end, it just made me lonelier. Then I gradually accepted that I was kind of a loner anyway despite being someone who is generally pretty sociable and likes people. And of course, I had chosen to stay in France to study with Leo Marchutz who became my teacher in the end. 

But back to my friend; what I didn’t tell her was that I used to actually feel that there was some wisdom in this idea that the greater the doubt, the greater the artist. But now I'm less sure of it because sometimes creative people are just so overwhelmed with lack of confidence that they are terminally irresolute. They may never seem to find a way out of their own foxholes. But anyway, I shouldn't be making such broad pronouncements either way. Life is a hard slog for us all no matter what our professions, either chosen or imposed upon us. Maybe one just has to work hard, but also look equally hard at great Art. Like Henry James once said:

"We work in the dark, we do what we can, we give what we have, our doubt is our passion, and passion is our task -- the rest is the madness of art."

I also told her that I have read of a few great painters who’ve claimed that only in their twilight years did they finally began to understand what Painting was all about; when their teeth and their hair were falling out, as both Delacroix and Goya had attested. 

All fine authentic artists have certainly said similar things I’m sure. But to contradict myself ever so slightly, I might note that one could say that humility isn’t always the litmus test of an artist’s quality. If one looks at Picasso, whose ego was as great as his very best things, but yet, overall, his greatness was still but a fraction of his giant ego. With more humility he might have continues making really innovative works, as great as Guernica, for example.

Titian, on the other hand, had both hubris and genius. It is said that he dropped a paintbrush while at work on one of his portraits of Pope Paul III in Venice, he stopped and he waited impatiently for the Pope to get off his chair to pick it up for him before resuming his work.

Doubt can be a healthy thing for everyone no matter what their vocations. The thing for me is that while I am working here at the beach, doubt is rarely present. This is always the proof that the routine is everything. For me, anyway, the routine has created the craft, and the craft has created confidence.

An architect says: Dominique Perrault

10 March 2021

An architect says

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 12 February 2021, oil on canvas board, 40 X 30 cm

“What motivates me is work on disappearance, on the limits between a presence and an absence of the architecture. Dominique Perrault (1953- )

This morning I was able to get into town for some errands. Everything still a mess and most shops are closed while people still clean mud from everywhere. Mullumbimby, was already a quiet town, but today it had an unnaturally eerie and sad air about it. Piles of soggy furniture and rugs lined the streets everywhere, whole families were still out cleaning up. It’s awfull. I spent yesterday helping a friend mop up his house. The weather has been unstable since the floods, but got out the other day. Yesterday looked been blocked up in the West but clear to the East so I took a chance. 

I like this quote from the French architect Dominiquue Perrault, in a concise little book entitled The Architect Says, which according to the editor, is full of “quotes, quips, and wisdom”, as advertised on its front cover. It’s one of those diary-styled books of easy consumption and comprised of one quote per page. It’s the kind of book one keeps on the bedside. I keep mine on a low oversized, coffee table from Bali, a gift from my sister-law. They are the go-to lounge tables here in Byron Bay where traffic is heavy between the two places. 

I like this quote especially in regards to this picture from the other day, although I’m not certain to be sure to get his cryptic meaning. I only understand it metaphysically. I wasn't familiar with him so I went on online to forage. His most famous work (among so much) is The Bibliothèque National de France, and from that I deduced that he was speaking of empty space and its rapport to the material substance of a solid building structure. So then, I wonder, is he talking about relationships of spaces like we do in paintings? Not sure, but somehow, I can equate it to this picture from the other evening. 

Architects appear to me like one very large family wherein its members possess all sorts of secret histories and intimately nuanced understandings that are communicated silently through some private channel configured only among themselves. They even appear to use an arcane and singular language all their own; a vocabulary of proportion and mass, one that’s privy to themselves, and guarded by an aesthetic status to the exclusion of everyone else. Actually, I will confess that I‘ve always felt excluded from this cryptic circle, and I'm full of envy when in their presence.  

Their grammar speaks of space, light, and volume, I think maybe in the same way that some painters still do. But their concerns are bigger and bolder, more important, than just flat surfaces with colour imposed upon them. They appear more concerned with grand schemes and seem to worry about how we humans, writ large, cohabitate amongst ourselves, in rural settings or in cities. If judged by Art Fairs today, my mild regret, or rebuke, would be that painters on the whole, seem somehow less serious than architects, certainly more insignificant. They even seem more frivolously, narcissitic and irreverent (except Pierre Soulages) than the serious and consequential gang that both house and home us all. 

So being a painter I must now wade into this discussion and either put up or shut up. I was thinking of this picture from the other evening to illustrate my thoughts about Monsieur Perrault's quote. For me, it reveals a delicate range of light, one that permeates a surface of the image with the barest hint of matter.

This notion of ‘presence and disappearance' is what really appealed to me in his quote. In painterly terms, it’s an attempt to capture something as fine as light itself, so fragile it could shatter just looking at it.

In contrast to that, the sea is solid like a building, a deep dark violet mass that contrasts sharply with the light airy sky overhead. There is an Emerald green strip at the very forefront that acts like a doorstep in the first plane of the picture and it allows the viewer to peek into the image like it’s a room. It helps to create a chilly distance all the way up to the horizon line. 

It’s a cool picture with little warmth, save from a hint of the pale pink of the clouds which are in fact, just bits of the white canvas board showing. And this is a great example of how our eyes always will compensate for a missing colour hue. They appear pink to us due to the cool complimentary colours around them. 

Though the sky appears almost empty like a vacant lot between buildings, it’s still space, but it’s made of air and water vapour. It’s an atmosphere composed of diaphanous clouds that stream across it like loose ribbons, they're so pale and translucent, one could easily misread just what is cloud, or what is sky. That effect is what made me think of this architect’s description of presence and absence even if I’m not completely sure of his own meaning. 

Donor class

 

16 February 2021

 Donor class

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 12 February 2021, oil on canvas board, 40 X 30 cm

“My god! what are you doing with all these paintings?” A friend on Facetime exclaimed upon seeing hundreds of paintings lined up like old vinyls in the bookshelves of my living room. 

“Well,... I do sell them when I can,...though lately it’s been slow.” I replied quietly. 

I tried to explain that for me, the most important thing is to keep painting no matter what else is going on in life, sales or no sales, in or outside of this tragic world (but to be honest, little has been actually going on in my life inside).

“It keeps me focused and alive, but it also anchors me.” I added.

What I didn’t go into was that it was really keeping my hopes alive that despite everything, from my low bank account to my empty love life, there still existed open possibilities for the tomorrows to come, for as any painter knows, hope, is the Holy Graal in this stoic art racket. But all this was way complicated to get into so I shut up and pushed the subject back to her.

The reality though, is that in this digital world of quick solutions, Painting is still a vocation, and it’s crafted over many many centuries, it’s an alloy of patience and dedication that, let's be frank, is seen by most civilians as a slow, indulgent and pretty foolhardy activity. So, sadly, like other artists, I may end up with thousands of small unwanted pictures. 

Regardless, this picture from a few days ago, was the first of two done from a hazy sky. I had not appreciated it until I looked at it the other morning. It’s a deceptively simple and discreet picture at first glance, and it might appear terribly plain, but in it, I see a rich and simple truth about the sea and sky. But I’m also a real sucker for those wide and gentle stripes as if loosely decorated by a tipsy pastry chef. In fact, it’s a picture made up of just five simple colours; a deep Ultramarine Blue, a warm Cadmium Yellow, a silky soft pink, and a muted lime green. High overhead, a band of bleached Prussian Blue snugly holds everything in place. An image like this makes me wonder if such plain celestial grace could ever be as stellar as a dazzling woman wearing such a sensuously pink scarf?

Sometimes I really think I should have been a wedding cake designer. I have this thing about pastel colours that gently collide into one another and where paint slithers over itself in esculent carefree pleasure. In this study there is a delectable something about bleached peach when colluding with lemon yellow and lightly pasted over a thin sky. Above these bands is the palest of blue which arches high up and over my head, ask anyone who spends time at the beach, they'll all tell you, it really does feel like this, I promise.

The flat sea below has crackles in the paint which whisper of old patinas, but this is actually caused by small occasional incidents during transport which I don’t seem to be able to discourage. This effect may evoke the past but it’s really over the horizon line, where infinity blurs into the hazy future. This is a very small picture with large ambitions, it’s a mouse that roars, and I like it.

So funny enough, all this talk of so many pictures lined up in my bookshelves with no place to go, reminded me of an article in the NYT I recently read. It was about a Canadian fellow who had been such a prolific sperm donor that he had surreptitiously ‘fathered’ hundreds of now grown up children. A few years back, when laws opened up which had previously restricted access to old adoption files, many of his grown children tracked him down. Within a year, this guy found himself with a huge ‘family’ of sorts, and he eventually developed relationships with almost everyone who had reached out to him. They have even organised family reunions to further develop their sibling relations. 

When I read it I thought to myself; “Holy cow! what a lucky fellow!..." and what a weird thing is this modern life indeed, so much life with so little responsibility, an instant family tree!” It’s like the 12 century, but without all the violence involved. I suddenly found myself envious.

Then, today, out of the blue, a curious notion came to me, clearly a nutty one, but germain all the same. I suddenly imagined that by turning out so many small studies over the past few years, sometimes as many as three or four a day, I could perhaps see myself as a kind of ‘cultural sperm donor’, like one spreading my wares equally to large and small walls in vacant homes all the world over. 

Perhaps like this happy fellow who cranked out so many infants to grateful mothers everywhere, I, too, I'd be just churning out thousands of small images, spreading them with success out into the world and onto barren walls everyone. Furthermore, I reasoned, as would Walter Mitty; was I not doing the world a great service for all those empty walls around the globe? 

Realistically, I mentally noted, that out of so many small studies, how many would actually survive the perilous journey to a happily furnished home? 

Some, I hoped at least, would be fortunate enough to live long healthy lives. But others, I presumed might be deemed unworthy and die young. Might they be smothered by debris in the back room of some third rate Antique Shop in Paddington?

Would not the luckiest of my small pictures shine in large and happy homes, and mightn't they be full of light and framed with good taste? Others though, may end up in unhappy homes and hidden away on sad, dingy walls in somber hallways, and spaced poorly between cornices. Worse yet, others might still be held captive to hung on dreary wallpaper in ugly homes with a loathsome family.

Still others, I supposed, might thrive in small homes, much loved and looked after, in spite of deaths and divorces, while others will spend the rest of their lives entangled in cobwebs in stuffy attics and dark cellars. But, sadly still, others will go up in flames. Even worse for the painter, the last few may well be forgotten but found one day hanging tragically from the end of a rope somewhere in East Anglia.

But I’m sure, as I reasoned further, that there will certainly be a few weaker ones that will be loved for sentiment only.They would be accepted and adored despite all their flaws and perhaps even for all the wrong reasons. But Hey! 

A few others, for whatever reason, might also still find themselves caught in the middle of legal haggling in Estate disputes and argued over within shabby walls of Probate Courts both here and abroad. 

But lastly, and with hope and grace for the poor painter, there may still be others out there who are adored and admired with distant appreciation for all the right reasons by a critical and reverent set of eyes. 

 

Chopin, Presto and Allegretto

28 November 2020

Chopin, Presto and Allegretto

 Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 27 November 2020, oil on canvas board, 40 X 30 cm

This morning as I moved around my house I was listening to Chopin’s Études (Opus 10) all the while glancing at a few pictures on the walls which I had recently framed and hung. 

“Hmmm, that’s it” I thought to myself. “...these small studies from the beach have something in common with his Études.” I suddenly both saw and heard a fragile bridge between them. It was a poignant realisation because from the very beginning of this series at the beach about three years ago, I had also imagined these pictures as 'études’.  I think this was because I didn’t take them too seriously, but also perhaps because I needed to somehow protect myself against failure. At the same time, I don’t wish to reduce Chopin’s iconic Études to the simplicity of these modest pictures of mine, nor to compare them artistically. The rapport between them is a personal observation, one which I will try to explain. 

Like so many other lovers of Chopin, I’ve listened to his Études a million times, and compared to his other works, I’ve always felt an abbreviated, but spontaneous, eruption of emotion in them. He moves through all the keys like an obsessed explorer travelling the world in search of hidden continents. From within each key, whole regions are opened up and musically examined.

There are also quirky and sometimes frenetic variations to many of them with which I identify in my own work. Like his Études, each of my own small studies in this series have their own emotional logic embedded in their brushstrokes. There is also a repetitive motif that cycles through the colour wheel in much the same way that Chopin cycles through all the keys, one Étude at a time.

Each picture of mine has its own particular idea, one that arises intuitively out of how I proceed to treat the sea and sky on a particular afternoon. What’s the weather doing? How is the light? Bright or diffused? Is it dry or humid? And the clouds, cumulus or cirrus? Because my small studies are without a whole host of complex relationships which might have been housed in larger and more complicated pictures, there is only room for one idea at a time. This is a constraint of time each afternoon but one which suits me.

Unlike my pictures, his Études are quite complex, yet they are still faithful to a few simple melodic motifs created from each specific key and embellished with a certain restraint. This does not seem too dissimilar to that of a painter’s austere oil sketch. But that said, these Études of his, did give birth to his Concertos where he fully develops a greater spiderweb of grand melodic harmonies that fill out like trees in summer bloom.

(BTW, he first wrote one set of them, Opus #10, when he was just a teenager, but then another set, Opus #25, when he was only 23 years old) Sacré Bleu! What a talent!

Another similarity I felt, was that each of my pictures are as distinct to one another as are his Études. And yet, they are all still parts of a family wherein each picture is as original as it is different to one another, just as one sibling might be to the next. But seen together, there is always a family resemblance somewhere, however obscure. 

They are connected by a feeling in the confluence of the brushstrokes, and like in most families, this resemblance isn’t just physical; it’s not just the eyes, the ears, the smile, the hands or the feet. These subtle particularities are more even nuanced, and they can relate to the voice, the laughter, sense of humour and the weird singular twitches shared so easily between all siblings and cousins, even if not so readily discernible for an outsider to pick up. 

Like in the entire oeuvre of Chopin, these are for me, in painting, the indescribable little quirks of a picture, the inexplicable brushstrokes and erasures, even the marks of a mistake that render a picture so distinctly human. It’s a fingerprint, and it’s so singular and divine, like hearing someone play the piano. 

This reminds me that Art runs parallel to Nature, in that Nature’s logic is as original as it is repetitive in our visual world. And one only has to hear the first few bars of his music before one easily recognises the hands of Frederic Chopin. And so too, is it also the same with a painter, whose originality is visible for all to see at the very first glance. It’s in the signature of the brushstrokes and the light that unifies them. Even for a serious amateur, it cannot be faked. 

This picture from two nights ago came from a lovely bloom that lingered on for the longest while. This doesn’t always happen so I’m super grateful when it does. It was the first of three. I had liked the second one and was tempted to use it but in the end this one behaves more like a successful painting despite my emotional attachment to the other one. 

There is a simplicity to its design and everything sits rightfully in its place. There is distance in it too. A cold dark green stripe at its base acts as a doormat to welcome the eyes. Then, the textured chilly blue sea leads out and up to the horizon line. The sky clearly illustrates a stage of dusk when a red ribbon hugs the sea beneath it. Overhead, a rich buttery layer of Cadmium Yellow melts into a pale lemon sky that reaches further up overhead to the palest of cool Prussian Blues higher up. 

It's a humble image, but painted with firm conviction, unlike other more delicate études from even the same afternoon. It is not airy, nor fairy-like, it was quickly worked, and decisively: à la Presto! 

  

The whole darn sky, for sale!

11 January 2021

The whole darn sky, for sale!

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 9 April 2019, oil on canvas board, 40 X 30 cm

          

This is the beginning of a study from last week that I wisely stopped in mid-sentence. I had arrived early to jump in the sea before painting. It was one of those giant blue days and the sand was so hot I had to sprint to the water. 

This was to be the first painting. It was unusual for me to start so early in the afternoon but the day was hot so I went to the beach earlier than usual. Everything there appeared so crisp and blue, both the sea and sky housed that cool Prussian Blue. Hardly had I begun when for some reason I just stopped and snapped a photo of it while still on the easel. It’s rare that I show this restraint because normally, though I may like like the start on a painting, I’ll just grab a quick shot of it and continue painting. Rarely, I will put it aside for a rainy day. Because I don’t always have an idea in advance of where I want to go, it will usually morph into something quite unexpected. But this one today spoke to me and told me to set it aside which I did. I quickly jumped into a new one.

But, this raises questions, one, notably about the whole idea that bedevils lots of artists: that of finish. When does a painter decide when a picture is finished? A painting isn’t a jig-saw puzzle after all and I cannot answer that today but I can only note what this image elicited for me.

When I set aside a study that I may feel ‘unfinished’, I’m aware that what I want to preserve is in the fresh idea, maybe even just a fragment of some fleeting sketch of a feeling that is to me alone, novel. This means of course, that by keeping this fragment, will necessarily means preventing the completion of something else, A Sophie’s Choice of sorts. Personally, because I don’t do this very often, I don’t worry about it too much. For me, a sketch is but an abreviated pictorial idea, no big deal. 

But still, I’m aware of cutting something short, and the danger of this becoming a habit. One cannot always hold onto all great beginnings after all, if we did, we might never get beyond the first kiss or the first few delicious dates. How would we then ever move on to marriage and children? We’d remain a teenager forever.

No, like a painting, we must jump in further, making mistakes along the way with a secret hope that they’re repairable until they aren’t. And then comes divorce, and tears, and recriminations from all sides. Look, I’m really just trying to discuss a painting but you can see how all things are related? What can start so beautifully, can turn ugly, full of messiness and regrets. Then comes the end alongside the truth, but even that depends upon whose point of view is narrating. This is a story of Loving, but Painting, all bound up together with drama.

The start of this little painting, though not great, had a germ of pictorial promise in it which I had wanted to keep. There was something of it which also reminded me of Japan, and my Nippon fascination, once bitten, then smitten, becomes a life-long infection. If I could, I’d visit Japan two or three times a year. Who can argue with emptiness and space, even when they're crowded all together? 

This precociously small sketch of painting evokes both the sand and the deep blue sea, as unsteady stripes that run across the picture plane. Above them, like some displaced polar bear, a monster white cloud seems to barely fit under the eaves of a blue ceiling.  

But in it too, I also see something truly American, like in the heyday of large Minimalist Painting back in the 1960’s when life seemed, oh, so much simpler, more expansive, more happy and optimistic too (but mostly if you were white though).

And come to think of it, this image suddenly reveals to me that voraciously oversized American appetite, the one which can never be satiated, the one that screams This is Marlboro Country.

When Americans see emptiness, they tend to think; “This needs to be filled!” So, come to think of it, this image might unveil that voraciously oversized American appetite, the one of my youth which seems never satisfied, the one that screams for more Park Sausages Mom!

But actually, this small start of a study really speaks to me of an giant oversized billboard somewhere out on a desolate stretch off the iconic Route 66, that brightly advertises the sale of the whole darn big blue sky, clouds included!