14 June 2022
Doubt is our passion
The weather has changed again, after intermitant weeks of rain the skies are mostly now clear so I am again allowed to get to the beach. As we approach the Winter Solstice here, the afternoons begin to clam up like heavy iron doors each day before 17h. But hey! Soon, I tell myself, that by the end of next week the days will lengthen and again grow optimistically.
When I returned to the motif the other night for a string of good days to paint, I felt like a novice, a beginner like I knew nothing at all. This feels strange but it can equally feel invigorating. I guess it depends upon how much or how little sleep I’ve gotten the night beforehand.
So I approached the motif with a little trepidation but full of excitement too. These two studies both came quickly and just a day apart.
What they share is that pale lime turquoise sea right before the onset of dusk when the sea is flat. Many other pictures can dig deep into the violet sea which come later as twilight melts the night. But these in particular have something in them which I really like; They possess that incredible ‘lightness of being’, to borrow from the title of Milan Kundera’s brilliant book of yesteryear. I am always amazed and grateful that this motif is a gift that keeps giving ever more generously over time.
Of course it’s the same motif I first approached five years ago and its mercurial behaviour hasn’t altered an iota. What has changed has been m. I’m a better painter today only because I’ve learned to see better, and that is what a good and hardy motif can teach even a mediocre painter.
Like all work, the quality of one’s paintings goes up and down in accordance with the mood of the muses. I think it’s the same for every painter that once in a while, having just one great painting session can awaken one and silence our doubts. After all, isn’t this why all artists, writers, musicia keeps showing up day after day, trudging through all the seasons?
For Henry James once wrote, “We work in the dark, we do what we can, we give what we have, our doubt is our passion, and passion is our task -- the rest is the madness of art.” Henry James (1843 - 1916) What artist could argue with this?
What I like especially in this study here, the first from the following night, is its immediate feeling of joy, for it sings. I can say this because it’s so rare that I’ve been able to access this quality. Too much of my work has rarely exhibited love for joyous things. I’m melancholic fella even if people find me jovial. I’ve always drawn to darkness, and sadly, pathos for me, has been a stronger bridge to others than joy. But hey, maybe I’m changing?
But here, even inspite of myself, the joy is apparent and I’m so glad for it. I painted it quickly, it was one of three two nights ago. I even like the wonky horizon line that droops slightly on the right, but even this, is just a part of an organic whole, a creative mishap, not really a mistake, more like a misstep, and these misteps reveal the process of painting and give it its originality, like it or not and for better or worse.
It’s a flattened picture, compressed like a candy wrapper one might find on a city street. This flat quality is everything I’ve been secretly coveting ever since ‘seeing’ Matisse decades ago. I just didn’t know how to get there authentically on my own. Such a conception of painting one cannot fake. It has to be ironed out slowly from lots of failure. What I also really like is that this picture is not locked to the horizon line but exists beyond it, in a world of make-believe and into the realm art.
These are now winter skies and winter seas that sparkle and glow as June appears to calm the ocean down by turning it a sublime lime. But how to capture it?
In the end, I’m so grateful that I’m the author of all these things for better or worse, even for my most worst things because they’re still like offspring to me, and I accept them all. If I saw this one study somewhere for instance, on any wall, celebrated or otherwise, I would rush over to it embracing it like a young mum to her infant son after school. Is this vanity? pride? or perhaps just foolishness?
14 June 2022
Doubt is our passion (cont)
“What we need more of is slow art: art that holds time as a vase holds water: art that grows out of modes of perception and making, whose skill and doggedness make you think and feel; art that isn’t merely sensational, that doesn’t get its message across in ten seconds, that isn’t falsely iconic, that hooks onto something deep-running in our natures. In a word, art that is the very opposite of mass media.”
I believe this was lifted from an address by the art critic Robert Hughes at the Annual Dinner of the Royal Academy of Arts, in London years ago. I came across it somewhere online. In a nutshell, aside from the fact that any real craft comes from centuries of long tradition, one born of experimentation and failure, I think he means that art needs to be separated from the clever world of Advertising. I think it began back in the 1960’s with appearance of POP Art when these two worlds became entwined.
I love the idea of ‘slow art’, even though I work quickly at the speed of light. But of course, he’s not really referring to the speed of the execution of art but of the mind-set behind an artist’s entire oeuvre which is in direct contravention to the entire idea of advertising and selling. But anyway, it’s a pretty self-explanatory.
It especially fascinated me because he made reference to the ‘skill and doggedness’ that makes one ‘think and feel’. Without saying it, he is really speaking of craft, something that has come up often in these pages. And a possession of craft is the vehicle from which all creativity is born. It’s the one that shows up everywhere from lute makers to a potter’s wheel. Generically speaking, it’s the undercurrent of how we all share our skills and intelligence, is it not? Isn’t it also true that for any creative act, the quality (with few exceptions), always proceeds from one’s command of their craft?
This picture was the third one from the other night. Does it manifest craft? Many might not think so, but of course for the painter, he must absolutely believe that it does, because for him it is matter of life or death, at least in his fragile heart. From my diary the other night:
“Cold evening! Ouch, I made a fire with what little wood I had cut in the afternoon. Three studies last night, a lovely bloom in a gentle slow motion expanding warm yellows and pink into an arc. The waxing moon eventually brought it to a sudden halt. Tonight might be still be possible but the full moon arrives in a few days and may kill it.....I am nonetheless into some wilder colour harmonies; more pure colour pigments, and when I can; flatter drawings.”
So this harmony in various violets from cool to warm, came after the ‘arc of colours’ had passed in ‘slow motion’ leaving a kind of afterburn which lasted only a brief moment but was prolonged by the generosity of artist-licence.
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