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!