Winter Solstice, under a watchful eye

 

22 June 2021

Winter Solstice, under a watchful eye

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 21 June 2021, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

I had not been out much this week. The sky last night was clear when I arrived except for a thin hazy bank of clouds hugging the horizon and the colour of a corpse. I set up quickly, mixed a palette and put a white canvas board on the easel.

 

Everyone around here practices meditation. Many years ago, I overheard a guy talking about his own meditation ritual and I had found him quite pretentious. Around that time though I had thought lots of people pretentious. But hey! No matter, I imagine that lots of people found me pretentious too. I’m sure it’s a global disease (both being pretentious, and thinking others are). Anyway, this fellow was saying that after years of meditation his mantra became so ingrained in his body that he could no longer tell which was doing what, or what was doing which; was he reciting the mantra or was the mantra reciting him? This fascinated me.

In any event, here is where my own meditation  kicks in because though I haven’t a clue of idea how I proceed in a picture, I do understand that something guides me, and I like to think that, like a mantra, it must be the Motif that’s steering the tiller. But the engine behind that must certainly be Nature which is directing the motif and informs painters like me how to proceed, not the other way around. Contrary to many others, I try to watch and listen, I don’t dictate to Nature, or impose what I think I want to do, because my choices are almost entirely contingent upon what Nature wants of me. It shows me not what I think I want to see but what needs to be seen. The motif doesn’t give a hoot about my volition even if I may think I’m making the big and little choices. 

So, this was the first of three paintings. I’m not sure I’m that wild about it but the sky had mellowed out and maybe I had caught some of the electricity I perceived over the horizon. For some reason, both Solstices of the year seem to provide really wild light for days before and after each one. I preferred this first study  more than the other two that followed. It has a sparkling feeling in it like a Perrier on a hot day. But as usual, there are things in each that I appreciate. Sometimes I appreciate things in pictures, both my own, and of others, that manifest something uniquely authentic even if they're not really great over all. 

At one point in the painting session an older gentleman joined me, remaining cautiously at a safe distance while we chatted. I found myself working more nervously in his presence. He was a retired meat inspector. He was fascinated by the speed at which I was able to work. I explained that I was an anxious child but he didn’t blink an eye. 

Of course, on this night there was a pretty crazy crowd on the beach, much like usual for such a pagan-like event and it’s often that people come by to take a peek at what I am up to here on the dune. I know that I am a strange sight for sure with my paint-covered smock wrapped over an old white hoodie. I not only look weird but I’m engaged in this weird-looking activity. Several hippies came by to see what I was up to, only to scamper hurredly back down to the beach. By the end someone was doing a dance with torches that lit up the twilight sky as I packed up to leave.

So, at least my last three pictures done on the Winter Solstice were painted under the watchful eye of a kindly gentleman named Warwick, a retiree, and originally from a small town in Victoria.