15 September 2021
Occam’s Razor
It was cloudy the other morning but a chilly wind from the South polished the sky so that by the other evening I was able to get out to make three pictures.
These days, everyone seems to be in an immense state of anxiety about the world. At the same time, are too many versions of reality running around like chickens with their heads cut off because everybody knows better than everyone else. Like a COVID game show, whose got the biggest mouth? Daily, after watching the American news, I cannot shake the feeling that the inmates have taken over the asylum. Quoi faire?
But when it comes to the subject of Painting, and art writ large, all diverse realities are most welcome! “Bring it on!” we artists cry out to this tiresome world where the bean-counters in sharp suits rule over us all. I’ve come to realise that the only revenge is to be creative, because you know what? We’re all going to die someday, sooner or later. (And shouldn’t we all be clear about that fact?)
So, I really love this image from the 12th of September. It may be most successful thing I feel I’ve done so far over the past three years here at the beach. Graphically, speaking, it pleases me totally, it’s as if I drilled down deep inside me and hit a silver vein. Like everyone, there have been times in my life when I felt newly in love, only to find out after some time that I wasn’t and it turned out to be a dry well. But that feeling is so very unlike the affection I’ve ever had for an art work which only seems to grow with time. This is not something I easily admit either. But there it is, once in a blue moon, something which I’ve either made myself, or seen by someone else, that speaks so directly to me that it goes to my stubborn heart. Even if, in the unlikely event that a nazi murderer like Adolph Hitler had painted something so beautiful and enticing to me, I would embrace it. This is just the way it is for me, though it would certainly not be like that for many others. This is why art in all of its guises, is so vital for humankind. It keeps lucky people sane in this often insane world and forces us to separate context from the possibility of aesthetic truth. Horrible people make beauty, it seems.
Whether it’s a book, a painting, a song, or a sonata. When we are touched by art, it’s a precious event because it doesn’t happen a lot. And yet, just like when we love someone else, it’s something we cannot envision living without. And I think I think it’s more stable than the love of another, unless it possesses the rugged durability of the love of a child or parent. And so it is with this painting from the other evening, one of three.
My quixotic pursuit from this motif appears to always draw me back to a simple design, like a template tattooed on my heart. It is almost as if I’m subconsciously trimming everything extraneously away from a picture except for the barest bone as if I’m channelling Occam’s Razor. Like a homesteader with a machete, I seem to be cutting away old painting habits in search of a newer, more svelte look. I’m also burning opinions and beliefs too, as I further slash everything that will not fit into this new rectangular space I’d like to re-invent just for myself.
In olden days, it was known as the Principle of Parsimony, and in terms of of my own obsessions, it makes perfect sense. Today, I know from my travels that this austere and aesthetic truth still lives on wholeheartedly in places like Japan, a sanctified space where brevity and simplicity are almost always the preferred solution for most anything in life. I was raised in America and the message that ‘more is better’, was a kind of prayer at dinner tables all over the country.
I think Americans of a certain race and social status were brought up to expect more of everything, so naturally more of everything was often provided. I began to also see this phenomenon in the world of Art in America. Putting a man on the moon was not only inspirational, it pragmatically re-wired our imagination into believing that we could do anything. Who can argue with that? As the Art world expanded, so too did the artist’s appetite to go bigger and bolder. It also fueled ambitious ideas with more complications and material. As many of us know, American Manifest Destiny has not only been part of America’s greatest legacy to itself and the world, but equally its curse in so many other ways.
Fifty year later, as many of us re-think our resources and the sustainabilty of our imprint upon the earth, it has significantly altered our thinking and behaviors. But in this painting world where the notion of adding more to a picture can somehow make it better, more substansive, more complicated, maybe even more fabulous, I can tell you from experience, it rarely does. Painting oversized pictures, a classic formula in this scheme, is also to use excessive amounts of paint to give a picture more importance than it might otherwise intrinsically possess. But again, this is just me, and like a teenager, I’m just sayin... And anyway, I now live in Australia where oil paints are so very, very expensive that naturally my own work is constrained by this fact, so parsimony, is my always rule here.
But while I’m at it, as a painter, I’ve equally come to distrust excessive complications on the pictorial plane. I’ll do anything to avoid them, even subjecting a poor image to a vigorous assault with a paint rag. Consequentially, in a picture like this, I appear to be trying to pare everything down by stripping away any extraneous details. The drawing and the colour harmony have been compressed down to the simplicity of a plain national flag. In this case it’s as if I’ve designed it for some happy verdant island found near the equator. I didn’t really set out to do this, but it’s true, that with an acquiescent sky, and when I’m feeling uncertain, I’ll sometimes just carve out both the sea and sky into slices the colour of mango and watermelon, Occam’s razor indeed.
When I look at this image I imagine seeing an entire show presented in this simple format yet coloured inevariably with many different combinations of harmonies drawn from the placid evening skies and equally tranquil seas. Because I’m a dreamer, that would be my pipedream.
After walking beaches everywhere since I was a kid, I privately marveled at the way the sky settled into dusk. Like many people drawn to the sea I’ve looked up towards the heavens at this twilight hour with enchantment. Since coming to Australia when I began walking the beach at Brunswick Heads, I confess that I never imagined I would attempt to paint here. I was so intimidated by the extraterrestrial beauty of it that I wouldn’t be able to handle the failure. So I didn’t try, not for the longest time. I think my life was still ruled by fear in front of nature. Besides, I was locked in my studio full of frustration. But I did draw from the sky, making several series in black and white but never in a million years did I believe I’d find the courage, nor the tenacity to make something artistically worthy of this simple twilight motif. After these few years I’m still sometimes astounded that I managed to stumble upon a pathway that aligned up so mysteriously with something so unbeknownst lived in my own heart.
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