Be gracious everywhere is my prayer

4 June, 2020

Be gracious everywhere is my prayer

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 29 May 2020, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

While America seems to swim in turmoil at the moment, I find myself in Australia living a quiet life near the sea and centred around Painting and far from the chaos. Many years ago, all of this would have certainly raised my anxiety levels enough to paralyse me but I've changed. 

Resistance to mask mandates for protection against COVID-19 appears to have replaced racism as the great social divider. I’m old enough to realise that there is little to nothing I can do to make our society any better than to simply be respectful of others, kinder, and without consideration of race, gender, or religious denomination. Be gracious everywhere, is my prayer. And yes, I’m a polite, old school American liberal. 

This painting, was the last of three from the other evening. The session had seemed to be coming to a close and I was about to pack up when I looked up and saw a pink field within grasp high in the sky. It could have been my last handhold before reaching the summit so I decided to grab another board and tempt fate. A winter chill set in and I regretted not wearing a second tee-shirt under my hoodie. The warm ‘glow’ was evaporating from the sky and twilight appeared like a stealthy thief yet something skeletal of it remained in my memory. It was a bit like when you have stared at a bright colour for the longest moment but then quickly turn away and see its complimentary replacing it in your mind. 

This hint of colour was just enough to allow me in to improvise this small study. The ‘bloom’ had mostly faded away by now but what remained in my perceptive field was enough to allow me to invent this. It’s pretty straight forward, perhaps even a little too much so, maybe too conventional even, boring even. But looking at it this morning, though it looks pretty straight-forward, and nothing to write home about, it works well, and ticks all the boxes. 

I think paintings like this just pop up once in a while by there own volution as if to say to the painter: “You may not have wished to paint an image like this today, but we, the Muses did,,, so there!” 

It’s funny how, like in a Communist country, you never get what you want, you get what the Muses gives you. I’m pretty used to this. It’s one of the more quirky facts about Art that most people don't know. So like every creative person, I’ve become adaptable. In my van once, I was driving through Bulgaria back in 1986 and stopped in Sofia one evening. Tired and just looking for something to eat with no fuss I found a pizza joint. To my amazement there was only one kind of pizza on offer; cheese with meat. Being a non meat-eater I ordered two to go and had to scrape off the meat and get outta town as fast as I could.  

But there is a ring of truth in this small study regardless because it’s simple, unpretentious and everything is in its right place. There is a foreground, clearly delineated, and the grey clouds sit comfortably on a firm horizon. By this I mean that the process was authentic. I often need to re-assure myself like this whenever I’ve just done something a little boring. Yet the more I look at it, the more interesting it becomes as a picture precisely because all these mundane elements appear to work together so fluidly. The truth is that when you paint a lot, there often seem to be less fireworks. Like a regular sex life over the years, the act can often be just a cheese sandwich and not always caviar. But this has gotten me into a lot trouble when I’ve tried to explain this to various partners. 

And yet, like a partner one has loved through thick and thin, it may also be why a painter returns again and again to the same motif at the beach. Not only has this twilight sky proven its fidelity, but it’s shown revealed own innocence and vulnerability in front of such beauty. The pink glow at dusk, a young woman’s blush, have both devastated this painter.