Trees wearing red rubies

11 June 2020

Trees wearing red rubies

     Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 15 June 2025, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

The nights are chilly and a big Southerly polishes the black sky full of stars. These sessions are chilly too, as I never seem to be dressed appropriately because winter is definitely here now.

This painting was kind of a surprise for me because I knew while I was working on it that it was eliciting a strong feeling from deep inside me. I really love this super pale hint of Prussian Blue broken with lemon yellow at the very top of the picture. It rises up out of the warm highlights of light over the deeper yellow beneath. “Yes!” The painter in me exclaimed to no one: “That is it !”  Something about the warm sensual colours and the gentle overall feeling spoke to me but like in a foreign language; French!

This gentle transition from one hue to another is the whole reason I still come out to paint the sea at this dusk hour. “All that for just this?” the sceptic, who knows little of aesthetic joy might think to themselves, “Mais oui!" I respond emphatically! I’ll further confess that I stole these soft passages in his 5th Symphony, the Adagietto, because you see, Art, unlike the leopard, not only changes its spots, but its species as well.

It’s weird to watch yourself painting an image that comes from a motif way out there, yet while at the same time it evokes up from within me a visual memory that’s really old and friendly, a feeling not unlike that of Proust’s Madelaine cookie. But in this case it was prompted not by taste but through a visual sense.

What I see is that this study from the other afternoon brought up memories from long ago, ones that I had described in my diary from when I lived at the Châteaunoir in Aix. For the past year I’ve been transcribing these diaries into my laptop, a laboriously slow process, and one that has filled me with many delicious memories that spring back up like one of those tall inflatable stick figures at a car wash.

Two memories came to me in this instance. I remember when living there I would walk most evenings into the forest usually with several cats in tow. And often, around sunset in autumn and winter particularly, when the sun was setting, the last red rays would scatter everywhere and randomly throw small red marks upon the forest trees. Suddenly, the oak and pine trees were wearing red rubies likes medals pinned to their bark for as far as I could see. 

And this triggered another memory, like it piggy-backed upon the first one from southern India, where the women would paste cow dung onto the trees for drying which they would then use for cooking. In that dry landscape, all the trees that lined the road were painted with pale pink polka dots like Yayoi Kusama had been there the day before. Remarkably, looking at this picture brought all these memories to the forefront of my imagination.

Transcribing a diary from the 1980’s made clear a few things to me. Firstly, is that I saw that I was so much more grateful and full of joy than I ever remembered being during all those years. I had erroneously imagined that I was eternally depressed, but despite that sadness and sense of solitude which I had felt in those years, the diary tells me otherwise.

Secondly, I realised just how golden it is to have youth on one’s side and also to have one’s good health too. This human body is a precarious life-force for most of us and to have good health is to have a greater advantage for living well. So, I was young and healthy even if I drank too much wine.

So tonight, I come away from this easy amble down through memory lane with an appreciation that if indeed there was a golden era back then, then surely today it is also just as golden, n’est-ce pas? And In twenty years time hence, when I shall indeed be a really older man, will I look back and not marvel at how grateful and happy I also feel today? Will my future self not smile at the providence with which I am abundantly graced today?

And so thus, this small inconspicuous study from the other night brought up so many things for me and I find that quite remarkable for just an average, normal painting session.