5 April 2021
Castles burning, memory and mayhem
This was the first of three that much to my surprise came easily the other night. It was a big sky, full of clouds and ablaze likes castles under siege. “All these fireworks going on in the sky like JESUS arriving by chariot” I thought, Whew,,,, So melodramatic, and just the kind of sky I dread, but I set up and waited for it to calm down a little as the sun drooped into the horizon behind me.
All this went though my head as I set up and stepped gently into this first study. Usually, clouds become malleable as twilight approaches and the sharp edges of everything soften to leave puddles of colour. Hoping that to be the case on this evening, I managed to find a way in and my worries soon left me. This was the first one and it took the longest. The two that followed came easier and by consequence, were maybe less compelling because they required less angst of me, and angst, as any creator knows, can be a great inventer. This reminds me of something Degas once said; “If drawing weren’t difficult, it wouldn’t be fun”. I’m not sure if I ever agreed with this, but never mind, Degas had enough talent to say such a thing. Nonetheless, by the time I had picked up a third canvas board, the sky had become a gentle giant and it allowed me free reign to do as I pleased with it. For a small busy image like this it’s even more vital that everything works fluidly together. All the tiniest threads in a picture like this one must act like lilliputian bridges connecting every bit together. Hopefully, when it’s seen from a distance it looks seamless.
This study was the tighter one, the other two are wilder and more free-spirited than this. If I have a reproach, it’s that this may seem to harken back to something that’s already been done somewhere in the past. From where, I don’t know, possibly from Impressionism? But anyway, don’t get me wrong, I like it actually. I can’t even believe that I painted it because I didn’t know I possessed that much patience for this kind of picture. It’s awfully finicky and it’s such a complicated drawing, one that must be done at the speed of light when the colours are mutating at the speed of snails. It’s perhaps more suited to a watercolour than an oil painting, one which most painters would painstakingly prepare in a studio rather than at a windy beach.
Ideally, I would always wish to make pictures with a new angle, as fresh as parsley, just picked from the garden. I’m always looking to surprise myself first, to create a thing not planned for or imagined beforehand. Maybe, it’s akin to an apparition or something I had not yet foreseen in my dreams long before arriving at the beach. I’m always looking for that picture just over the horizon line of my own imagination, a thing not done before by me or anyone else. A tall order, but hey!,.. You gotta have dreams. And being an excellant daydreamer, I’ve learned a ton of how they work. There are whole levels and grades of dreams. Like on a bookshelf, some are readily available within an arm’s reach but on the next shelf a little higher up are placed the bigger dreams that I need to reach up for. But still higher up on the next shelf are dreams possibly attainable with a handy step ladder. Higher still, up on the top shelf and out of reach, are where the unattainable ones reside and stare down at me with sympathy.
But I know this is all part of how we live our lives. I myself, don’t generally worry about it very often, my focus is always on just the shelf in front of me and in painterly terms, it's to find some truth in the next image even if I have to steal it from the motif like I’m Prometheus.
I work way too quickly to worry about being original at the beach and yet there are times when I am more conscious of what I’ve doing on a particular evening, and only then am I able to see it in an chronological context. Where did this come from? Is it new, or interesting? Is it new, but ugly? Is it the same old, same old, maybe, boring, but well constructed? and painted well? I’m always looking for an adventure in these pictures, either exterior (like when I was young) or interior (now that I’m older).
At the end of the proverbial day, it is what it is, and because I cannot control what goes on while working out there, I merely set up and try to find a way into an image, any image. The trick is opening up to an adventure, any kind of adventure.
My first real adventure one was buying a Triumph Bonneville in London when I was 18, and riding it through Europe to visit museums. This was certainly the biggest adventure I‘ve made, perhaps ever. But then going off to study in France for my junior year abroad was also a big adventure for me, and it’s where I made some wonderful outings in those first years. Everything, I understood later, was like in a film by Eric Rohmer. They were always so understated yet so rich even when little happened. But I was young and thirsty for anything to happen in this new foreign life. Indeed, anything was bound to happen in my imagination because I was in France, a place where are all dreamers come to congregate at some point in their lives.
I remember in my first year in Aix I would often get on a bus going anyway just for the fun of it. Usually it was a Saturday and I was free of class but sometimes on a Sunday too, although those days were quieter and when families were at home and shops were closed. I used to feel a certain spiritual dread on Sundays bicyling aimlessly around town with nowhere to go. Everyone else appeared to have a purpose, a family, a life even. For me, it felt like my own life hadn’t yet started.
I would arrive at the bus depot at the Rotunde in Aix and simply get on the next bus going anywhere under a two hour trip one way. By bus, with a student’s card I went to Marseille, Avignon, Arles, Cassis, several small towns in the Vaucluse, all places I would easily drive to much later in my life. But by bus I was slotting myself into another system outside my control and I suppose that this was what I was subconciously was searching to do, to be out of control.
Occasionally I met people but my French was too halting to share anything interesting. In those days few spoke English. Older people were always the most accessible, but other students too. My only rule was to avoid other Americans because I wanted to learn French. Also, I didn’t want any point of familiarity, I wanted to be on an adventure, everything new, everything strange, whatever came, I was up for it. Youth.
One trip to Avigon was memorable because a trio of high school girls picked me up all wearing the same blue striped Breton sailor’s shirts. We bought a few Pain Bagnats and some fruit, grapes I remember for sure. In the Autumn one always ate grapes in France. We spent a lovely afternoon in a garden somewhere near the Palais des Papes on a cool sunny afternoon with a moderate Mistral blowing. When it became too chilly I said goodbye, and they escorted me to the bus that took me back to Aix. Nice, nothing more but nothing less either. Pure Eric Rohmer.
Some days in some towns, I would hardly speak to anyone, I would wonder around vicariously looking at the buildings. But I always went into churches. They were the most familiar things on the day’s itinerary. Mostly, they were dark and dreary places with the same pungent damp odeur of so many churches I had been in. The paintings too, were dreary and dark. I never stayed long in them.
Eventually, this sense of spontaneous exploration slowly eroded for me after I began to settle down into painting life there. Lucky are those who still make treks and go hiking to keep it real for them. But after a life of movement, here and now at least for the moment, I prefer the adventure of Painting, the solitary non-ambulatory activity of looking, seeing, mixing colours, and painting with brushes. It’s an inside job, this work.
Because I never carried a camera in those day I have no visual souvenirs to jog my memory and nor did I write in a diary at the time so I am left with just vivid but sparse memories today, fluid and biased from all these years. Now at least, memories are securely stored in these small studies..
Painting is, or should be an adventure into the unknown. It cannot be a painted copy of a photograph (which has its own historical life) nor can it really be anything interesting unless the artist has gotten lost in the process before finding himself to finish it. Gettting lost and finding a way home is a prerequest to an adventure. It has to be an adventure and one cannot, or should not know what the end will be until the end reveals itself. Any musican or writer will confirm this, but thankfully, any dentist or heart surgeon would be aghast at the very thought of this notion regarding their own work. It’s the difference between all these vocations and professions For artists should never really be too certain where they are going. But if you think the surgeon cannot explain what he’s going to do to you, then jump out of that operating room as fast as you can.
Vision followed by the idea
ReplyDelete