30 November 2020
The chariot of the goddess Selene
This week I was looking at photos and videos from visits to London and I came across many from the British Museum where I used to draw from the marble reliefs, especially the famous horse’s head at the Parthenon Sculptures.
When in London I usually make a beeline to the National Gallery where I visit with Piero della Francesca and Paulo Uccello. The next day it’s to the British Museum where like many tourists I’m haunted by the head of the horse on the far right display of the Parthenan. It’s one of the exhausted horses that draws the chariot of the moon goddess Selene throughout the night until dawn. If not sculpled by the master Phidias himself, it was at least drawn by him and executed by ones of his assistants in the 5th century. There are two which bookend the immense display (two other horses and Selene’s torso are in the Acropolis Museum in Athens.) But on each corner of this pediment, the time of day was set by the chariot of Helios, the Sun God, rising at dawn to carry it until dusk when the chariot of Selene would take over. At the end of the night her chariot sinks beneath the horizon, its stoic horses exhausted from fatigue.
Though it’s hyperbolic to admit, these works are at the height of technical perfection, and at the same time, synchronised with an intuitive feeling of pathos unique to rare artists and artisans in history. Like so much that came from the Mediterranean basin these works seem to be infused with a feeling of profound tragedy, so naturally, a guy like me is quickly drawn to them. Like Netflix, which has a category entitled, “Movies to see in your lifetime”, these antique reliefs and sculptures that make up the Parthenon in the British Museum, are things to also be seen at least once in a lifetime by everyone.
Both dawn and dusk have been celebrated for thousands of years on earth. So I, too, celebrate dusk in my own way here at a beach on the North Coast of New South Wales where, among other places in my painting life, I’ve been drawn to the twilight hour like a wolf. Unlike most beach lovers, I shrink from the arrival of the dawn light like a vampire when the intense blazing light rips me away from all I cherish in the shaded nuances of the night. But full disclosure; I was born at 8 AM in the morning and pulled from the comforts of a womb entombed in dark ignorant bliss. Was it was the bright light of the delivery room at New York Hospital that marked me forever with this distress? Could be, all I know is that though the dawn heralds great promise for most, it’s a great let down for me and I fills me with a general unease that’s impossible to explain. I’m a nocturnal creature who rouses from the dark shadows when dusk arrives driving its black hearse, sometimes he sees me and waves glumly and I wave back with good cheer.
So naturally, I also perform better as the sun loses its grip over the bright landscape, when twilight sinks into the earh like a shower of fine fairy dust. These three pictures were all made under such an uncertain light. They were painted over the past few weeks and each seem coloured with tragic loss that made me think of the horse at the Parthenan. Many pictures done here at the end of the day appear bright and colourful and exude optimism at the start of a session. These four, on the other hand, like cabooses, arrived at the end of the session when their cryptic light transmitted my feelings for Selene’s tired horses.
They speak to the night that arrives by its on own volition no matter what the day has wrought. Weddings or funerals, love discovered, or discarded, a child is born or dies but the terrible events of any bright day consistently comes to an end, first by dusk, then by dark. Compared with so many other paintings in this series that so often appear to exude a kind of beaming and quiet hope, these possess a gentle gloom. I like their casual finish too. They look a bit scratchy and beat up, insouciant even. My diary tells me that I was reasonsbly happy with them but not much more.
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As we approach the summer months the days seem to yearn for humid heat which brings a haze to the late afternoons that I already can see in these pictures. They speak to the transistions that go on under the surface of life. The obvious one for me are the nuances of colour that reveal the earth churning away from the bright light of our days into the comfort of night. These are simple studies and could be like frames taken from a film of each evening’s descent into the darkness. They appear transitory, fleeting even; more there, than here.
So yes, it’s true that I’ve always had this melancholia deep within, but better to finally accept it than pretend otherwise with a faint false smile. In truth, all the paintings from this series reveal the many different parts of me. Isn’t that the point of becoming any kind of artist in the first place? If it isn’t about self-discovery why do it? How could it be otherwise than for my own melancholic soul to really shine in such divine darkness?
Like the tired horse, me, the rueful unrequited lover, still entangles myself with this twilight motif most evenings to foolishly behold all her beauty from afar. Sometimes, after a painting session I’ll even languish a while and await the first few stars to come out. It’s a resplendent moment and without any artifice or human input, just the night silently falling and it still surprises me.
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