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9 September 2021

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Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 6 September 2021, oil on canvas board, 30 x 25 cm

Clear and windy today, a cold front moved in from the south and seeped into the house early this morning. But what a great Bloom the other night at the beach! I made three studies, all interesting, but this is this one I like the best. Though it’s a little sloppy with tiny flecks of white from my brush that caught the spray from the wind. I only realised it the next morning when taking the paintings from the boot of the car. Too late to do anything about it now but actually I don’t mind, it gives the study a raw and carefree feeling which I kind of like. Yes, I’m a slightly sloppy guy for sure, especially when it comes to painting. I really hate anything too precious in Art except for a few things like Piero della Francesca, who is quite perfect in a godly way. 

But I like this study because of its extreme simplicity. I try so hard to bring oxygen to these things, but even more, to bring life to images that border upon the Non-Objective painting. Like graffiti at a stop sign, it seems to casually say; “take me or leave me, I don’t care either way”. But if there is integrity hidden beneath this gentle irreverence then hopefully there might also be an allegiance to this motif, one through abstraction, that is loyal to both form and colour.  

Nature can appear so banal at times that we can too often take it for granted. One needs to alive with a vivid imagination to fully experience Nature. In fact, We need to be slapped in the face with the raw power of it from time to time. Sadly though, it's usually when  we've fallen from a rock face and feel the rushing air filter through our whole frightened body before dying upon the rocks below. 

But this 'experiencing of Nature' also comes in all forms; from silent tea ceremonies in lush bamboo forests to climbing Mount Everest. Still, many go further, by leaping from tall cliffs with winged suits. But on the other extreme, a few of us just paint on a dune at the beach which, on a safety scale, is  about .000, so actually, I'm amazed that more of us don't engage in this risk-free activity.   

There are those however who do not have the regular habit of being amazed by this vibrant world that surrounds us. Have they forgotten how to be naked in spirit? I think every child starts out in life dazzled by the world around them yet sadly many of them lose that awe too early on, even though undoubtedly, many also re-connect with it later on. I like to believe that at least the poets and painters are among the hikers, and skiers, and all the Naturalists, who cherish Nature, and show the rest of us new ways of experiencing it. 

This makes me think of a podcast, from where, I forget, but it was a casual interview between a journalist and the Irish writer John Banville at his home in Dublin. They were both into the whisky and the talk was freewheeling. At one point loud crows outside the window are heard and the journalist remarks, “Imagine a world without crows”, to which, after a long pause, Banville replies; “Imagine a world with crows!” 

A marvelous observation which only an astute and imaginative mind would come up with. But I understood from this exchange that he is also someone close to Nature. I was so taken by it that I immediately went online to order one of his novels.

This is the way that a supremely sensitive soul approaches Nature. It’s what I hope to see in the sea and sky each evening when I arrive at my little dune in the late afternoon. Can I be open enough each evening, ready for the total surprise when the sky offers herself up to me like a virgin bride? 

I do think poets, painters and musicians are actively forced to push themselves outside of conventional ways of seeing and hearing Nature. The danger is that we can become so inured to the sights and sounds of it that we barely even hear it or see it for what it is. Like auto-correct on my i-phone, I push back incessantly against its insistence in order to say what I need to really mean to say.

In this painting, the ultra simple design is a visual metaphor of the sea and sky under certain weather conditions at a very particular time of day. If its craft is sufficient, then it has a chance of working. If not, then it fails for any number of reasons. Like John Banville’s remark about the crows outside his window, a painter might ask a viewer to imagine the sea at dusk in just a few parallel stripes of colour.