20 June 2017
Intimacy
From the other night came this strange image that I really hated when I packed up to leave the beach as it had seemed such a failure that I hardly took it seriously. But the next day I got it out of the boot of the car and brought it inside to take a photo of it. I suddenly had a change of heart and began to see it differently, and this can happen a lot fortunately. Sometimes, even after just seeing it in new way, like on my phone, it can remove a filter of habitual self-criticism. So today, at least, it appears isolated in the safe zone of the digital world.
Surprisingly, the sea stands up! It rises vertically like a stiff piece of cardboard. But as the sea, it works well in a primal sort of careless and casual way. A child might understand it quicker than an adult, but without any context, it could also be seen equally as a non-figurative picture too.
And what a weird colour harmony! The violet sky, constructed from the tattered ends of a witch’s broom overlaps a pink layer lying beneath it. I like it, maybe even because it’s so very unusual. It’s a singula rendition taken directly from the motif out on the dunes with but a few meters of elevation and it overlooks a wide brown sea. Who would guess? It was the last of three of the evening and I barely remember making it.
I would love to see it scaled up in size, maybe to 200 X 250 cm. Would it make more sense perhaps if it were bigger? Might it be more commercially appetizing for an audience that today seem to prefer larger non-figurative paintings? Regardless, I like it in this small state because for me, there is a special quality in small oil paintings that beg its viewers to draw closer to it, inviting intimacy.
