16 July 2018
listening and seeing
At the piano this morning I was playing around with the iconic tune Somewhere Over the Rainbow. I found myself spending an hour leisurely just moving through a few simple triad inversions to harmonise the song in different ways. Eventually I began to slow down just enough that I could really hear each subtle shift in the melody from the variations.
This is not unlike the process of looking out at the motif here at the beach as dusk approaches calming down the shifting colour patterns. I’ve understood that even just casually looking out at the sky can become for a painter, the first step towards actually seeing it, and this puts me into a place of reception which is my real landing zone.
Only just recently in my life has this receptive form of patience become a kind of North Star for me. It has established a trust in whatever activity I’m engaged. It’s the new point on my compass too, because for most of my life I’ve been a bit lost and unfocused. But patience, even now, is never a given, it’s not something that appears like magic whenever I snap my fingers because I’ve only just recently learned how to amicably access it. This is because I’ve been anxious all my life, and I’m an obsessive-compulsive perfectionist according to a well respected pharmo-psychologist in New York whom I saw back in 1990. It was the first time that anyone had ever addressed this part of me as an adult in such a clear-cut fashion. I was somewhat shocked, but also relieved at the same time because it was after all, a bona fide explanation that in an instant, reeled me in from deep space where I had been hiding out since I was a kid. His short term solution for me was Prozac, but that was really just a happy short term solution. I knew had to stop drinking which came six years later.
But relief from much of all this anxiety had to even come many years later when I seriously began studying the piano each morning and painting at the beach most afternoons in Australia. There is a nice symmetry to these activities that bookend my days now. Little did I know that they would both land me into a place of gentle creative submission.
My method is pretty simple I generally jump on the piano first thing each morning with a pot of strong black coffee and into the hardest piece I don’t want to play. So needless to say, learning piano has really helped me lot. Horowitz describes how he learned pieces in slow, slow motion until they were completely memorised. I took that on board immediately when I read that about him.
So playing a piece slowly, at a snail's pace, I began learning pieces. Listening to chords in slow motion, over and over again, settles me down like I’m on a couch following instructions from a hypnotist. I mean, what’s the point of trying to play anything if one is not really present? I've spent my whole life hurrying through all sorts of activities, oblivious to whether I was absent or present. It was the piano that finally brought me to heel. Then, only gradually did I settle down enough to begin looking and seeing a motif with patience.
So, like the piano, the beach skies have also brought me down to earth. I’ve progressed slowly from looking to seeing, a quantum leap for a painter. Somehow too, I’ve allowed myself the space to see just watch the sky until colour harmonies trigger a natural response in me. Looking and seeing are passive voices in this process of creating a picture though I’m sure it’s different for others. For me, the key that opens up a picture each evening is a kind of patient reception.
Most days it’s the same ritual. Once I’ve arrived and set up, I’m able see to what’s on offer. "What’s on tonight’s menu?" I think to myself, rather matter-of-fact. Then I set about making a palette which is the easiest part of the process because it’s pretty much the same these days.
At the moment I use six colours: Quanicridone Magenta, Ultramarine Blue, Prussian Blue, Cadminium Yellow Deep, Lemon Yellow and Titinium White. It’s a limited palette, compact, but one that easily expands to a full-ranged colour wheel that makes both warm and cool sides of each of these colour tones pretty interesting.
This quick study was the second of six from the other night, a wild winter sky that just kept expanding and exploding. It went on for the longest time these fireworks, and I jumped into it wholeheartedly. Like each of the others, this is a warm vibrant image, freely painted with abandon. They were all okay, but this one has a certain feeling in it I like. Though crude, it’s alive and for me, that’s the most important thing. If it were a piano piece it might be something warm (and French), both light and playful too, like part of a suite by Darius Milhaud or Francis Poulenc.
At the end of each session when I’ve packed up my things and stashed a few items in the nearby bushes when I’m sure no one is looking, I’ve taken to making three sharp claps facing the sea, followed by three brief bows with my hands in prayer position, something I picked up over the past year. It's from from Japan because like everyone else who has visited that marvellous place, there is nothing quite as disarming nor as gracious than their soft bows shyly performed for just about every occasion. But then again, it might have also come from all those Zen Buddhist books and memoirs I’ve read for so long, hoping to find answers to life's problems and maybe steal something from them to make my very own. Naturally, I feel self-conscious doing this brief ritual which I admit would be funny to watch from afar. Then again, lots of people around here in Australia have quirky spiritual ticks and no one bats an eye. For me though, it’s already part of my ritual, and besides, I like the way it closes the session and reminds me that painting here at the beach is always a gift. Even the awful pictures that come out of it are part of the plan because these are apt called Evening Prayers.
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