To mask, or not to mask

 13 March 2021

To mask, or not to mask

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 11 March 2021, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

In spite of the rain pouring off and on for weeks now, there have barely been a few windows of light. It sometimes pours downso hard on my steel roof that it makes me feel like I’m wearing an infantry helmet. But when softens down a little, it’s becomes a piece by Steve Reich. The grassy lawn around the house is spongy and it soaks my ankles, so there’s been little painting at the beach these days.

And COVID has hit the area hard and everyone is either anxious or angry, they either wear a mask or they wear defiance. And so the vaccine fight goes on, but one thing is sure, everyone is depressed either way, and lonely from everything I hear through the grapevine. I’m a kind of a solitary guy so I’m somewhat adrift to the rhythms of  life in this community and hardly an authentic gauge of truth or sanity around here. I got vaccinated and that’s that. In these matters, I’m quite conventional so I don’t have an opinion about others.

Surprisingly though, despite all this turbulance in the air, in just these past few days, the skies have cleared and it has allowed me to get to the beach to mix a palette ‘for work or recreation’ purposes’, so the regulations dictate for us all around here. That said, in theory, we are all in lockdown though it hasn’t really affected me coming out to paint at the beach. This is rural Australia after all, and anyway, I still need my regular dose of heavenly breezes upon me. 

This was the only one from the other night because I scrubbed out the first. This is only the second or third time in the past few years that I have abandoned a picture. I just lost it ,and like the drowned swimmer I recently witnessed here on the beach, I just couldn’t ressurect the light in it. Death, alas, is the same for everyone but still, it put me in a bad mood briefly. 

So, I then started this hoping to reset my mood. It has a feeling in it which I like. I had fun with these gentle clouds that channel my love for strawberry ice cream. At the same time there is also an uncertainty with the way in which they were painted, I think because I was unsure how to treat them. The colours were changing so rapidly and they had to be synced up with the changing sky that was shifting into gold. It was tricky, but this spontaniety forces whatever skills I can muster to follow the colour wheel into dusk. After all, Nature provides the map to all the answers if I’m clever enough to follow it without prejudice.

Addendum; We all wear masks now when we’re out and about. It’s a curious atmosphere, but of course, many don’t, which is also another curious thing. But I caught myself in a mirror the other day at a store with my mask covering most of my face and I suddenly thought to myself;  ‘Wow, I’ve never looked so handsome!”.