The anguish and delight of the lighthouse keeper

 

27 March 2020

The anguish and delight of the lighthouse keeper

              Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 25 March 2018, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 

I’ve been reading of the chaotic life going on in Europe as the raging pandemic roars through Italy where people are locked down in confinement. Here by the empty sea, life is tranquil at least for the time being. I sometimes feel a pang of guilt for the easiness of life around here when I see the awful news abroad.

This was the second of two from the other night where a thin veil of haze stretched across the sky like cheese cloth. The horizon line at one point was so sharp that it appeared to cut the whole world in two like a knife. I remember my teacher Leo say to me one day that visually speaking, the horizon line is always the strongest contrast out in nature. I’m not sure if he came up with this from his own studies or perhaps from either Delacroix or Cezanne. But in any event it’s something that always jumps out at me when I can’t figure out a landscape with certainty. It’s reassuring to note that the Earth itself commands such a visual truth. 

In this one I like the delicate swarth of dainty apricot clouds that formed like fuzz after the sun had set behind me. Though it doesn’t look like it, this picture was actually finished in the dark. I had wanted to continue, but unfortunately my palette was no longer readable, and dusk had already descended to swallow up its afterglow. The sea at that point was turning a deep blue that would in time bleed into the sky like on watercolour paper. Honestly, I’m often dazzled by Nature’s nonchalant narcissism, the kind that can bring a painter both deep anguish, but a dark delight.

And because I’m often the last living soul out there at this uncertain hour, it’s easy to imagine that it’s up to me to turn out the lights when I leave, for in this small glorious moment I’m the lighthouse keeper of this immense beach.