Man-Cold

14 January 2022

Man-Cold

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 10 January 2022, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

I admit that I wasn’t crazy about this when I pulled it from the boot of the car the other morning, but, as it can happen from time to time, pictures either improve or fall apart quickly in a just a few day’s time. I actually wouldn’t even say I like it necessassily, but there is something in it that functions well despite its bland and benign colour harmony. Like a young woman at a Ball who’s yet been asked to dance, its diffident nature might hide its acuity, and it even be too embarressed by its own discreet but shy self-esteem.

It had been sunny all day with a big wind from the south that had cooled the afternoon by the time I arrived. This was the last of three studies that actually all felt wrong and left me feeling awful. But today, I feel differently possibly because this last study seems to possess some truth in it despite my misgivings because everything appears to be in the right place. I hardly even noticed the batch of light blue clouds the other day. They surprise me now because they're so broken that they could appear just grey if isolated on their own. This a remarkable lesson in the way colours work. For me, they spring to life when placed against a sky of warm violets and orange. I certainly could not have been aware of this happening while I worked. This is due to the magic from working quickly outdoors. The otherwise dull muted blue is only heightened by its proximity to the warm sky around it. These small gifts are the by-product of allowing my eyes to guide the session. How else to describe it? 

On the other hand it’s on the sketchy side which doesn’t please me too much. A session like this can bring those age-old doubts about Painting to eye-level. It’s true that even after decades I can easily succumb to feelings of ineptitude even after a long life invested in Art.

But just to let the civilians in on a big secret, most creative people face terrible uncertainty much of the time. It’s a curse that infects them when they don’t feel like they know what they are doing. It can be for lots of reasons; fearful of destroying what might be a lucky start, or maybe just feeling clueless about how to proceed, or how to finish a project. How to put an end to it all for God’s sake! This is how some of us feel late at night when the house is dark and silent.

But thankfully, speaking for myself, these episodes seem to come and go like the occasional flu. They've actually come on less frequently as I’ve matured because I’m no longer like a kid getting sick. I am just a grown up after all, having a Man-Cold.

But doubts of all kinds are important, they keep me in check. The best remedy is to get into the next picture quickly because like the Wise Guys in the East say, “one cannot think one’s way into right action but can act one’s way into right thinking”. 

Feeling anxiety, whatever the cause, used to disturb me so much that it prevented me from ever taking the next right action. I was continually freezing up, indeed my whole childhood was like the ice age. But I wised up. I learned that freezing up was a result of anxiety and depression that can come up for any number of reasons. When I finally addressed it, I felt like an East German when the wall came down.

Depression is like alcoholism because it's subtle and comes on slowly, it often takes over before its victim even realises it. But like a dictatorship too, it will also install its own cronies to work against the host body through disinformation, then bingo the host believes it! Before one knows it, a new software implants itself into one’s mind. 

Myself, I’ve learned to regularly update a firewall against this operation so that whatever goes on in my life, the answer is always to move quickly on to the next creative project, whatever it be. If only I had learned all this when I was a child, I can still even muse today.