Satie went out without his umbrella

24 June 2020

Satie went out without his umbrella

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 19 June 2020, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

I never really struggled with the act of painting, not colour harmony, nor with drawing once I began studying with Leo. Of course I had to learn a lot and work at it but it was never foreign to me even from an early age as I had always had an intuitive grasp of art, Being able to draw had been the ticket that allowed me to avoid being bullied in schools because I could do something that others couldn’.t. It gave me a pass, sort of. On the other hand, I also took it for granted too because curiously, I also assumed that everyone else had those skills. My real problem in Painting arose from me alone and I had to overcome all of my own personnel issues around creativity to make any progress. I was my own problem, but Art never was.

But I found a way into sorting out my issues with Painting through learning music in my later years. I had always wanted to play piano but always thought I was too old.That mind-set went on for years until finally at the age of 30, I bought an old piano and like other beginners began learning to read music and play simple things by Bach, Bartok..

It was an unhill climb because music never came easy to me like it seems to for so many others. I had to work at it in a way I never had to work at Painting. This was a great opening but at the same time it revealed to me that I hadn’t ever really worked hard enough on my plastic skills in Painting or drawing. I coasted, which wasn’t a great way to achieve anything. Most of the time at the piano I felt like a mountaineer at the bottom of a cliff and looking up to see what the task was for the day. 

So over the years I’ve learned music harmony through the Tin Pan Alley charts that became the great Jazz Standards much later on. Like everyone else, I also learned some Bach and Chopin, but it’s Erik Satie who led me to the trough of hard work. 

At the begining of the Pandemic I began memorising the first three Gemnopedies, then the first three Gnossiennes which took me two years, but now they live cautiously in my hands and my heart. I suddenly realised that if I could do this then I could certainly accomplish as much in Painting. Somehow the work on Satie helped me dislodge all of my worst creative insecurities. It felt to me that after so many years, I could finally stuff my perfectionism into a pizza oven and it would burn out of me like smokey ghost. Henceforth, instead of seeing Painting as the final exam I began to see it as a workbook. Why couldn’t I could learn to paint for the pure joy of it as I’ve learned to do on the piano I thought? 

This moody picture is from a few nights ago. It also reminds me of Eric Satie and his wistful music, but in particular, his set of piano works entitled Pieces-froides. Erik Satie, today’s much celebrated French composer lived in a tiny unheated room in Montmarte at the end of his life where he died in poverty. After he died, the story goes that a few friends assembled there and while they jammed into the small room and drank brandy to remember him, someone opened the closet and dozens of umbrellas spilled out. His friends were surprised to find their own amongst them. They say that he went out with an umbrella even on sunny days and he apparently had a habit of ‘borrowing’ them from everywhere he went, easy to do in France where cafes and shops still have umbrella holders at their 

entrances. 

But I like this picture also because it captures an instant almost like a polaroid and yet it’s a painting done live at the beach under a windy chill. At first, I wasn’t sure about it but it looks better to me after a few days. It summoned up the feeling of this cold dark and forlorn afternoon as I left the beach the other day. It’s winter after all.