14 April 2024
Grace in all her forms
Despite my secular demeanor, I confess (sotto voce) that I have an angel in my life whom I call Grace. She circles around me somewhat invisibly I think at all hours. She’s 24/7, like an Emergency Room, and she is available for a chat, zoom, or interrogation at any moment of the day. She’s omniscient, but not an omnivore so there’s no problem there. She’s not shy about showing up at moments when I least expect it and she'll always come when I call out. For example, when I’m about to serve at the baseline on the tennis court, I'm down 0-40 and in a pickle, I’ve often asked her (politely) “Grace, give me an ace. To my surprise, she frequently obliges me. I don’t believe in God but I have come to believe in angels.
The other evening at the beach she showed up as a magpie, but the day before, as a young bush turkey who hung around me for almost the entire session, snooping around my backpack, but believe me, I’m not the superstitious type, not paranoid, nor narcissist or conspiracist. I’m just a painter who has faith in what the Greek poets used to call the ‘Muses’. We mortals have the paws and claws to navigate the hills and dales of earth but they hold the wisdom in the wind.
That said, Grace, for all her generous wisdom and strange beauty, has a voice like Wilma Flintstone. "Coffee Cake!" She calls me out, while chiding me gently with her hoarse and coarse voice. But bowing my head, I take it like a novice monk. She’s calm but stern, and she shows exasperation in any number of ways when I don’t pay attention. Though I‘m a grown man, she appraises me with irony like I'm a six year old after spilling jam all over my Sunday best. But that’s just the way it is for us mortals, it’s a contractal thing, I think. We just have to take it. But for my part I'm all in.
But that’s only one of the many sides of her, for she is joyful too, like when I’ve done something well, especially on the dunes after a productive session. And she’s full of mirth too, at times with the mouth of a union guy from the Bronx. Her humour is wicked, because I couldn’t abide by an angel all stony and cold like in the churches of my youth. But, to be frank, I haven’t quite figured all this out yet. It’s still kind of new for me, and I’m just going with each moment because I see that my life runs smoother with an angel hovering overhead.
This study is the second one of two pictures from a few nights ago. Though I don’t generally spend a lot of time on these things, each of the two, took about twenty minutes each, which is a lot for me. And this one like the first, is a little more developed than usual because I’m piling on more pigment in layers. I’m throwing paint over wet paint which is somewhat tricky. Some are quite skilled at this way of painting but I’ve never been, not in a quick session anyway.
It was a magnificent ‘Bloom’ but it didn’t last long. When I began, it looked like it might it stretch into the night but it petered-out quickly, probably due to the half moon which was watching benevolently overhead. Still, I’m happy with it. It's more developed than much of what I've done in the series. Maybe I’ve developed more trust in myself, , that I won’t lose my way in the picture? There is alway so little time to catch something and make it work. Perhaps, all I need is more confidence and faith in myself.
But to be out again and painting at the beach is both a great pleasure and privilege. After so much rain these weeks (and months), Grace continually reminds me not only to be grateful, but graceful too. And this I find funny because it’s an adverb that few of my friends would attribute to me. I’ve always been a bit maladroit due to my uncertainties of living in this lanky body of mine. Her reminders are heeded. I know they're not admonishments but more like gentle mantras whispered into my ear when she is the wind.
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