14 July 2023
Painters and paramours
Painters and writers, are not tourists. When we look at pictures or when we read books, we’re investigators. With the obsessive fervor of private dicks we scour every squirrelly squiggle on a canvas like we parse each sentence on a paragraph.
Writers read books differently than other people in the same way that painters ‘read’ pictures differently. It’s not a big deal, it’s just the way it is. It’s not unlike a certain sort of mechanic who will stop to admire a Porsche type “C”, one built in the 1950’s, and maybe parked on a random street somewhere. Just like a painter, he sees all of it at once, and he understands why all its round forms organically fuse together through each of its perfect and separate details because he sees beauty and he responds to it. But there are gardeners too, who, where many of us see empty fields, will behold lush gardens.
It’s the same for lovers of books and paintings, watches and golf clubs. Objects of desire attract everyone of us who have a vested emotional interest in them. These are true love stories, unusual ones, but love affairs all the same. These love affairs are so powerful they can break up otherwise perfectly happy couples.
And so, art is a formidable love affair, as it should be. It is not just a question of liking, preferring, or coveting an art work. It’s about a whole world of mystery, craft and obsession, but behind everything it’s because it’s about a love. Proust wrote somewhere in Swann’s Way; “We no longer love anyone else when we’re in love” and that can also be true about art. Like in the civilian worlds of the human heart, creativity makes us forget everything else in the world while working.
Even reminiscing all his beloved images can plague him at a moment’s notice, and for any reason all. While in the wee hours of the night and next to his beautiful wife, an imaginitive painter might still be dreaming of Goya’s Marquise de la Solana. In fact, everything he’s ever seen and loved, is at his fingertips, and like on his smart phone, everything can be called up instantaneously. His imagination relentlessly tempts him, taunting him with memories of all his favorite things.
This bright yellow painting was the first of three from the other night. It was a wonderful sky, so simply deliniated into three wide stripes of colour that I had no trouble grabbing them quickly. The clear winter light felt like an invitation allowing me an easy access into both sea and sky. This one turned out to be a super fast study, only because I wanted to preservere it in my memory bank for future work. I stopped after one minute, sometimes it’s like that. Once a palette has been prepared I have all I need for a picture lasting up to an hour, or a minute. Though it may look rough and unfinished, for me, there was no need to go further. Of course it might have become another picture but lots could have been done to also ruin it. What do they say: “Brevity is the soul of wit” ditto sometimes, in all forms of art.
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