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 fervour of private dicks we scour every squirrelly squiggle on a canvas as we parse each sentence on a paragraph.
Writers also read books differently than other people in the same way that painters look at pictures differently. It’s not a big deal, it’s just the way it is. It’s not unlike a certain mechanic who will stop to admire an old Porsche type “C” that's parked on a street somewhere. Just like a painter, he sees it all at once, and he understands why all its round forms organically fuse together through each of its perfect and separate details. It's because he sees beauty and he responds to it. But there are gardeners too, who, where most of us see an empty field, will behold a lush garden.
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 about love of craft. Proust wrote somewhere in Swann’s Way; “We no longer love anyone else when we’re in love”, and that sentiment can also be true about art. Like in the civilian worlds of the human heart, creativity makes us forget about everything else going on in the world while we're 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 delineated into three wide stripes of colour that I had no trouble grabbing them quickly within minutes. 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 a minute or two. 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 even 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. Was it Oscar Wilde who said: “Brevity is the soul of wit” ditto sometimes, in all forms of art.
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