A giant hug from Earth

7 October 2021

A giant hug from Earth

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 5 October 2021, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

To my great surprise, two nights ago, several small studies rose up and out from the sea as if it were a field of daisies, violets, bluebells and bellflowers. And the sky made a magnificent ‘bloom’ also, but I almost didn’t make it out to the beach. I had been in the studio all afternoon and was full of myself in doubts about everything I was trying to do at the beach and in my whole life that I didn’t have the heart to go to work. Imagine brain surgeon saying such a thing?

Like dominoes falling dark thought about everything sprang up just like the flowers.  

“What more I can I possibly generate from the this motif anyway?”

It may have been precipitated by a remark a friend had made earlier in the day,

“You should move on from these little paintings and work on your big ones in the studio.”

I knew he liked the things I was painting in the studio much more than what I was doing at the beach but, “Hey!  My pride growled, “Who was he to be telling me anything?” Although at the time I didn’t seem to be bothered by the remark except that I had had a difficult painting session on the night prior, one, which without words, pretty much told me the very same thing. It’s one thing when some else makes a critical remark about your work (or life), but another thing altogether when your own work speaks directly to you through itself. 

But in the end, Really, all I needed was a great session, a big beautiful evening ‘Bloom’, blushing wildly and unabashedly for me alone to replenish my curiosity anew for this motif. I really needed a big hug from Mother Nature. After all, it is for me alone, and similar to this diary, the results may or may not please others but the real pleasure of ‘doing’ is all mine, mine alone. I am responsible for myself, no one else.

And this takes to something that I experienced in the studio a few days earlier. A remarkable discovery just for me alone. It was getting late so I decided not to paint at the beach. I had put on France Musique and reclined on the chaise lounge in the studio by the large window. Once in a when I’m there I like to stay and watch the setting sun hide behind the forest as dusk descends quietly. Last night I noticed a star appearing through the trees and leaves. It was quite high and I began to focus in on it. After a few minutes I noticed how it appeared and disappeared because of the wind, but also by its own slow movement as the earth moved through space. The star, a bright one, began to align itself to my focus as I squinted to see it more clearly. As I watched the star I began to perceive that it actually had the specific form of a cross. I kept looking at it contiually, as it appeared then disappeared between the gentle sway of distant leaves. But by now, it always re-appeared as ‘the same cross’ each time to my astonishment. It was a cross, but one with extra smaller rays going out at different angles of ‘the clock’, 1:30 o’clock, 4:30 o’clock, 7:30, 10:30 etc, etc. It reminded me of the gold stars painted on a deep Ultramarine background that ones sees often in Italian paintings everywhere. Giotto I think even made them in the frescoes of Padova. I was simply astonished to witness such an example of science melding with memories of the Early Renanaisance. And I realised that this cross was of pure light as if nothing could have been lighter in value, nor anything in the spiritual sense to sully it. 

 

I made a drawing of it yesterday in my diary and indeed it looks like something extrapolated from religious iconography. No matter that it disapeared momentarily, it would quickly reappear immediately by taking its unique shape. They say that all snowflakes are unique, is this somehow related to that mysterious idea? Would this cross also have its own visual DNA make-up, one unique in the universe?

After a while I noticed another star appear through the forest, slightly smaller but it too, seemed to possess its own unique shape, different from the first cross. It was shaped in the form of a trianglular cross resembling the iconic Christmas tree in a simple graphic form. Again, it was made of a splintered kind of pure light, and every time it disappeared behind the distant tree leaves it quickly came back into view, it would always only return as the triangle. I began to look up at the first star, and again after focussing and squinting my eyes, it too held true to the same shape of cross as before. I began to look back and forth at each star, each time they retained their unique shape. I was dumbfounded like an infant who discovers the switch to a lightbulb turning it on and off again with curious alacrity.

And like the infant, by the end, as I sat in the darkness of my studio, I reasoned that these two stars seen through the filter of the tree leaves far off in the distance must also posses their own original shapes much like snowflakes. But unlike the snowflake, I should be able to see them again on any clear evening through the filter of leaves to confirm my discovery. I was astonished.

This is a curious picture that appears slightly illustrative which I usually frown upon but there is something in it I like. It’s certainly got a lot going on in it. What I like is   the light that separates the large rich yellow stripe from the pale layer above it. The light is actuelly the white of the canvas board that I left. That kind of nuanced transition interests me more than pretty much anything at the moment.