“Man!, you hadda be there!”

6 June 2020

“Man!, you hadda be there!”

 Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 1 August 2024, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

There are some days I paint and feel like I’ve taken mushrooms, but forget that I’ve taken them. These colourful kitschy skies, like confectionery, look edible, as if found on the 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 a 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 these past months. Over and over again, the same scores seep their way right into my heart.Like most of his oeuvre, it’s extremely sensual. I gone through everything many times over, the ones I really like even more. It’s perfect music to 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 Juliettte Binoche is 

pretty well worth the ticket price. Then there is the delicious scene in the San Franscisco basilica in Arrezzo when Juliette is hoisted up by the nimble Sikh to look to see Piero della Francesca frescoes up close with flashlight. Lots of writers prefer 

silence to write by. I like everything, especially rain, but even the noise of bustling train station is OK. When I have an idea nothing impedes it. 

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