“Man!, you hadda be there!”

6 June 2020

“Man!, you hadda be there!”

 Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 6 June 2020, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

There are some days when I paint feel like I’ve taken mushrooms but forget that I’ve taken them. These kitschy colourful skies, like confectionery, look edible and delicious even, as if found on a shelf at the candy shop.

At some point in my youth, I discovered the works of Maxfield Parrish who was an American painter and illustrator. He lived a long and very successful creative life, and his paintings and book illustrations were extremely popular in the 20th century. His colour harmonies are kind of over-the-top and quite surreal, fantastical even, such were my feeling as a kid. Because he was an illustrator his pictures were often loaded with dreamy-looking damsels in distress and young men dressed as brave handsome white knights. Looking at them today, I see they lean in towards the Pre-Raphaelite school, but one that had ingested psychodelics. 

So, curiously enough, this painting from the other night reminds me not of the greatest colourist of the 20th century, Vincent Van Gogh, but of the Maxfield Parrish of my youth. And like any figurative painter, I’ll try to convince you that the sea and sky from the other evening really, really, did look like this (I swear!). But of course, I’d be exaggerating because it’s really just a painting, an illusion like Maxfield Parrish’s whole oeuvre. Just like all art of every sort, it’s just an interpretation, an invention created out of curiosity by the painter.

But indeed, the other night was rather exceptional I admit. It was a clean polished sky of unusual clarity and I tried to do it justice. This was the second of two studies. Honestly, just being out there on the frigid and desolate dunes while working from these crazy twilight colours, I felt completely perfect. I could have died and all would be good on earth, as it might also be in heaven too.

While writing, I have been listening to the film work of Gabriel Yared all month this past year. Over and over again, the same scores seep their way right into my heart. Like most of his oeuvre, it’s extremely sensual. I've gone through all his work many, many times over, the ones I really like, even more. It’s perfect music to settle down and write by. 

This week I’ve been listening to the English Patient. I know many people like to hate it but frankly, being in Tuscany with Juliette Binoche is pretty well worth the ticket price. Then there is the marvelous scene in the San Francisco Basilica in Arrezzo, when Juliette is hoisted up by the nimble Kip, a Sikh, who rigged up a system of ropes and pulleys in order to raise her high up with his weight so that she look eye to eye with the figures in the Death of Adam, an enormous fresco by Piero della Francesca. 

I think lots of people who write might prefer silence when stitching ideas together. But this begs the question: What is silence? 

Proust insulated his bedroom where he wrote, like a modern day sound studio. This seems obsessive to me. But hey! 

This sort of silence, like on the moon maybe, would make me crazy. I've never been one who has been able to wear headphones even to listen to music. They make me feel cut off from reality outside me. I marvel at people who can and do. I'm one who needs to be plugged into the world around me no matter where. 

Each morning here, the rural countryside around me serves up a soft symphony of blurred harmonies. The spongy air is thick with spontaneous and incidental chatter. This is a bird's world of tiny whistles and clucking rings that makes me often stop to listen for my phone. Why would I cut off the muted fury of a braking truck in the faint distance?   

I like it all, because like with this Painting business, when one learns to look, one begins to see, and equally, when one begins to listen, one also begins to hear. 

I especially the rain for writing. But even just a cloudy day of unruly wind out the windows is good too. I can write anywhere in fact, because when I have an idea it just slips out of me like a burp. 

So, anyway, the other evening was great, and the pictures came up easily to my relief. Like the surfers say, “Man, you hadda be there!”