Dreamers

2 July 2024

Dreamers

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 29 June 2024, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

In paintings, my taste will habitually move towards the sensual, though admittedly, my idea of sensuality might not be yours. In music, I also love many of the European Romantic composers of the 19th and early 20th century where there is a great infusion of emotion. Much of it came out of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, when at its height, gave the world some of its finest artistic contributions ever to humankind. And yet, sadly, all that great feeling and intelligence still couldn’t prevent two world wars which also destroyed so much of everything including our faith in humankind. One should ask God: (if they were a believer) how was it possible that in spite of all of our problems in life, that world peace didn't persist after Brahms wrote back the Three Intermezzi for piano, Opus 117 back in 1892? God might, I suppose, throw his hands in the air and rightly answer that Art’s beauty and truth is no match for mankind’s cruel and greedy heart. And let’s face it, it was mostly the men who warred and whored, not the women. All this terrible violence is always hardest on the sensitive soul, those might, against all reason, somehow believe that Art could be a shield against all this human brutality in the world. 

I’ll be honest I don’t believe in God, but I do believe in angels. And Brahms was one of so many who lived by art. He described these three Intermezzi written towards the very end of his life as his "three lullabies of my grief".  

Brahms reminds me that it's OK to be a dreamer and a romantic. Although they are not vocations, they are apt descriptions for most lovers of art in all its forms. Being both a romantic and dreamer myself, I've come believe in Art. But I admit there's a downside, for it might be like an alcoholic living on a street corner who is certain that a bottle of Montepuliano will fly them away to Tuscany for the evening. Trust, but verify, I say.  

Dreamers and romantics of all kinds, seem to be guided along in life by a compass heading that points always somewhere between fiction and truth. And if you are creative, that can certainly work for you, but if you're not, you're in trouble. The beancounters would throw you out of their sleek offices in a flash because  they can smell a dreamer from down the corridor. But no matter, a life of fiction might not be so bad for any of us after all. There are dangers to both alcoholics and romantics, I know, for I was both. I was a drunken Noah who listen to Brahms late at night. 

So, I will always be aligned with those of great feeling in all things artistic. A Robert Wilson fan, never,,, but Mahler, yes,,, forever. That’s the way I am, and the proof is in these pictures, for they too, are not just exercises in pure unabashed romantic sensuality, but they're dreams come true.  

Ever since I was a kid I only ever wanted to play with anything that made slurpy marks, ,,,, the gravy and mash potatoes on my plate, deep mud puddles on the way to grammar school, and then finger-painting. Working in oil paint came much later and became the stepping stone to what I thought of as ‘real Painting'. This also connected me to the long and wide avenue back into the Renaissance books of my father.

Yet, like so many other dreamers, the obsessive question for me has always remained the same: How do I convey my deepest feelings through an act like painting to another person? Isn't that one of the main functions of art? I admit that I secretly want to express emotions in the same way that I feel when listening to music that moves me. And because I’m a Romantic at heart, I ask myself that if I am not trying to express a feeling, then just what the heck I am doing any of this for? OK, sure, painting is fun for me, but what about about the viewers? Am I not a viewer too when I look at a picture? Am I not at a recital to feel what moves an artist like Neil Young or Cecilia Bartoli?

So for me, like a writer or musician, these studies of mine act like bridges which I first need to cross in order to figure out what it was  that I was feeling at the beach. Only after completing them do I discover what they were and might then be conveyed to others. But importantly in this wide circle of emotions, I’m only interested in feelings not sentimentality. 

Of course, so many different Abstract schools are also motivated by what might be called ‘pure feeling’, Cy Twombly and Basquat come to mind, but not Keith Herring, whose work I like, but which might be better described as ‘ironic graphic-pedestrian’. I remember the first time I saw a small white dog of his drawn on the lip of a sidewalk on Bleecker Street in 1979, I think.

I was thunderstruck. But many of the American Abstract Expressionists, like Pollack among many, also sought to ‘express’ unknowably dark emotions hurled right out of can of paint. Though he isn’t a favourite of mine, he did bring speed to the Painting act and this is something I really appreciate about his work.

But that said, I’m not after a dreamy airy-fairy head-space in which to work, I’d like my own work to embody an emotional quality only as a by-product, not as the principle idea of the work. The painting has to have four strong legs to stand on its own, I think.

But all this is a difficult discourse, and the artists and the public all bring such different points of view and feelings to a work of Art these days. Social Media has changed the way people not only see themselves and everyone else, but Art too. Creative culture today, is a brave new world of A. I, and it’s a fast lane where ‘digital creators’ seem to cruise along the center lane of our current zeitgeist with solipsistic abandon. It might be a world where Art, as we know it, could disappear sooner than Science Fiction had planned.

But I persist no matter, come rain or high water, like these Romantics whom I adore, Brahms, Fauré, Mahler, even Satie, through all his layers of poison ivy, I’ll continue in this vein because it’s in me, and to do otherwise would be inauthentic. I’m an old guy, an analog guy, one who doesn’t trust Siri or A.I, though I do use spellcheck and stream music. I like friends in my life but I don’t look for followers, I’m basically someone unprepared for this new age of digital popularity. Unlike many apparently, I’m someone who has chosen a life in the shadows though my work like to shine in the sun.

This picture done a few nights ago came out of a beautiful winter bloom. It was one of two painted on a chilly clear evening when the sky held the colours tightly in its fist until dusk. It’s an unusual picture, perhaps due to the crisp warmth in the winter sky that had dropped so comfortably into the sea. I like that I wasn’t shy about using so much crimson red. I would have made one more study but I had run out of canvas boards, and also I was freezing, so I stopped and went home happy.