Of graveyards and grenades

12 March 2018

Of graveyards and grenades

Lots of rain for weeks now bring me grey skies at the beach with only random visits by the sun and it seems to mirror my spirits.

The other night I brought this home, it was one of just two. I had arrived at the beach to find a thick band of clouds brought up with the chilly winds from the South. It shut down what I was hoping to be at least a reasonably colourful evening if not full of bright cheer. There were however, a few periodic splashes of light that did help to bring flashes of life into an otherwise morbid-looking evening. My spirits were dropping and I felt like I was at a graveyard, where instead of lovely white headstones I was surrounded by thick cement slabs. 

I’ve learned gradually that all artistic activites will eventually bring up the mud of one’s own life. Being a bit of a control freak I try to hide it but I rarely succeed because a painter’s feeling always desires to be free. It’s the way it is, for better or worse. Often it happens in sly ways unbeknowst to the painter themselves. For me, all that dark stuff that lies-in-wait deep within my own crypt needs to escape from time to time like it’s a captive wild animal. When liberated, it will take me to that place of which I had been really thinking and feeling all along. But more forbiddingly, it can open up avenues where I don’t wish to travel nor do I need to reveal to others. In short, it’s not a place to find a cheerful adventure.

In this study though, I think I was already feeling frustrated by the lack of light in the sky and thus a little angry with myself for coming out when I had suspected it might be a dud of an afternoon. But I tried to make the best of it, and despite the gloom, I did eventually make something that spoke of the moment irregardless of my mood. It’s a well constructed ‘abstract’ image that I was able to wrench from a stubborn evening sky.

Despite everything, its darkness is nonetheless bound together and held by hints of light. There are times when such small image like this can seem like a tiny fragment chipped off a beautifully luminescent marble sculpture, as if born from greatness. But this tiny shard of a study feels more like it was wacked off a chunk of concrete. However, I do appreciate it anyway because I’m always thankful to wring a little light out of darkness. 

For a long time in my life, I I used to make portraits that were quite severe, something of which I was well aware. A friend once told me that my portraits made people look as if they were ready to kill someone. When she said that I completely understood, but I didn’t know how to respond because I didn’t want to explain why this was so. I had come to understand by then that indeed I harboured lots of anger inside but I didn’t know how to dislodge it even after a few therapies. I really wanted to paint portraits that were less hard, less severe, more truthful to the model and less to mysel, but I seemed incapable of it despite my best intentions. I was in limbo, like stuck in a DMZ where truce was timid. 

All this existed beneath my consciousness, and it felt to me like a physical thing living in my basement like a grenade placed close to my vital organs, my heart, liver, kidney and spleen. How could I dislodge it? Where does one go for this kind of surgery?

Eventually, after half of my life had washed over me I was able to make peace with it as if I had gone through some weird form of spiritual alchemy. My anger and all my deepest resentments and shames from an early age just burned up like they were placed in a pizza oven in one go. Only my memories were left like smoke that mingled with the wind. My portraits went from angry and severe to just sad, which I guess was good progress. A little later on, I realised the mother of all truths; that my closest connections to others had always been born through sorrow not joy. The one great truth about practicing any art form is that one has to dig deep into themselves, but they must also be ready for what they discover, whether it’s a diamond or just donkey dung.

In any event, the act of painting will always unleash many secrets for the amateur of art when one is ready to handle them, at least that’s the way it’s been for me. Painters, if they are authentic, are also a particular breed of people who are generally quite sensitive, and who are often on the edge of life even when they’re screwed into it with ordinary domestic and social concerns. If they are loners without family for whatever reason, they can be difficult and prone to excess drink and what-have-you. Luckier are those with a family perhaps, one filled with household vitality and the joy of children hanging about. But with just one life to live, (as far as I know) a painter’s sense of time is both precious and private because like as everyone knows, artists are selfish by nature.