Winter Solstice, under the watchful eye of Eugen Herrigal

 

24 June 2021

Winter Solstice, under the watchful eye of Eugen Herrigal

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 21 June 2021, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

I had not been out much this week. The sky last night was clear when I arrived except for a thin hazy bank of clouds hugging the horizon and the colour of a corpse. I set up quickly, mixed a palette and put a white canvas board on the easel.

 

Everyone around here practices meditation. Many years ago, I overheard a guy talking about his own meditation ritual and I had found him quite pretentious. Around that time though I had thought lots of people pretentious. But hey! No matter, I imagine that lots of people found me pretentious too. I’m sure it’s a global disease (both being pretentious, and thinking others are). Anyway, this fellow was saying that after years of meditation his mantra became so ingrained in his breath work that he could no longer tell which was doing what, or what was doing which; was he breathing his mantra or was his mantra breathing through him? Regardless of hi, this fascinated me

In any event, here is where my own meditation kicks in because though I haven’t a clue how this creative process works it's surely mystery. When I'm clicked into it, I do understand that something guides me, and perhaps like a visual mantra, it must be the motif that’s steers the tiller. But the engine behind that must certainly be Nature which creates the motif for me each afternoon. It is that which informs painters like me how to proceed, not the other way around because I'm a passive actor out there on the dunes.

 

I've read Eugen Herrigel's great book, Zen and the Art of Archery, several times over the years, and like many, was deeply impressed by his experiences and yet surprisingly, I hadn't thought too much about it in regards to my sessions here at the beach until writing all this down tonight. So yes, this 'passive action' that involves the breath and pause of which he speaks incessantly is very familiar to me here as painter. 

Contrary to the way many painters might work, and in spite of my quick way of painting, I generally proceed by watching and seeing in a calm fashion nonetheless. My preference is to not dictate to Nature or impose what I think I want to do because my choices are almost entirely contingent upon what the motif wants from me. It shows me not what I think I want to see but what needs to be seen. This is the mysterious aspect of painting that I think  all creators savour. The motif, like a mantra, doesn’t give a hoot about my own volition even if I may think I’m making the big and little decisions. 

So, this was the first of three paintings. I’m not sure I’m all that wild about it but the sky had mellowed out a bit before I started, and maybe I caught some of the electricity that I perceived just over the horizon. For some earthly reason, both Solstices of the year seem to provide really wild light for days before and after each one. I'm not really a pagan but I do have a rich imagination. 

I prefer this first study more than the other two that followed. It has a fizzle about it like gulping down a cold Perrier on a hot afternoon. That is its principle appeal for me. Sometimes I appreciate things in pictures (both my own and of others) that manifest something uniquely authentic even if I don’t find them really so great over all. 

At one point in the painting session an older gentleman joined me, remaining cautiously at a safe distance while we chatted. I found myself working more nervously in his presence. He was a retired meat inspector from Victoria and he was fascinated by the speed at which I was able to work. I explained quickly that I had had an anxious childhood but he didn’t respond. I think he was a quiet fellow. 

Of course, on this night there was a pretty crazy crowd on the beach, fairly typical for such a pagan event, and it’s often that people will come by to take a peek at what I am up to here on the dune. I know I'm a strange sight for sure with my paint-speckled smock wrapped over an old white hoodie. I not only look weird but I’m engaged in this unlikely activity on the chilly beach at twilight. Several hippies came by to see what I was up to, only to scamper off down the beach like happy children. My retired inspector has left me by the time that people began dancing around small fires, and a drumming session had also begun as I packed up to leave.