30 September 2023
Tiepolo
From this past week came several similar variations on a theme close to this picture of which I’m not quite yet sure what to think. It had been a crazy week of psychodelic-looking skies reminicent of the age of hippies. But these rich warm skies creep into the Springtime evenings like appetisers on an ‘Al Fresco’ menu. Because of this, I awakened this morning with the feeling that I have a lot to look forward to. The Spring afternoons beckon those giant, red apple skies that linger over the purple seas, Mmmmmm.
This week I found myself thinking about how, when and why, I became a painter. It came up for me as a result of a discussion with an old friend on Facetime. We were complaining to one another about the art world when somehow it turned into how each of us got pulled into this life of creativity.
How did I became a painter, he asked. I replied that I really just “slipped into it” because as a kid I drew well and with ease. Then I told him about watching an old Italian guy painting scenic views of Italy on large walls of a friend’s parents living room. It was a huge place and he was decorating them these idyllic landscapes of forests and villas that were filled with dancing and prancing figures in 17th century costumes. For me it was amazing. I must have been about 11 or 12 at the time. This old guy obviously knew what he was doing but he was on the sullen side and pretended to not understand me when I posed questions. But because I was at my friend’s home a lot, I used to watch him mixing colours and wiping turps around to create skies while my friends played football outside. It made a strange impression upon me. Much later if I had to think about what it looked like, it sort ressembled the Venetian Tiepolos, father or son, but anyhow, the whole vibe was definitely Venice of the Otto Cento as I came to understand it later on.
I soon realised that having an ability to draw heads and faces with a striking likeness gave me a certain cachet with friends, and it kept the bullies away. It gave me an admirable and almost mysterious identity. It became my invisible cloak, something I never had in my own family. So naturely, I drew a lot, but mostly for others, something I understand now. For myself alone, I was less interested because I seemed to have had an empty heart, one that could never be filled. Why bother? I must have thought at the time.
But it can be a problem having even just a little talent for something because in my own case, I never had to work at drawing. It came easily as a child. In fact, I’ll confess that as much work as I’ve done during my life, I still feel I haven’t worked hard enough, nor have I devoted my entire life entirely to it. The truth is that I could have done many other things with my life with equal pleasure. But, I always had a feel for painting, like a seedling that eventiually came to bear fruit when I met my teacher Leo in Aix that first year in France.
Because I didn't appreciate my own gifts I grew up with a distorted idea of myself and the world at large. In my head I was living in a jail cell trying to cajole the prison guard for attention. I cannot speak for anyone else but it was only when I got clean and sober did all this confusion begin to clear up. Suddenly, I questioned everything. “What had motivated me all my life? Love? Sex? Success?” It certainly wasn’t Art, though that had always been my identity and talent. Strangely enough, It was only when I fell into this series at the beach that I began to completely work all this out for myself alone and 100 percent. It's been my therapy.
I’m not a Conceptual Artist so I don’t work for an audience, in fact, I really don’t need one. I work selfishly for the challenge of this artistic task in front of me and the unique pleasure it gives me alone. I see now that I’m part of a community of creative souls who go back thousands of years. Only when I understood that completely did I realise that I could be free, and it was these Evening Prayers that guided me into freedom. They say it takes a long time for some of us to wake up, and I’m a slow-poke. So all this I got into with my friend last week on Facetime, and I found myself surprised at all that came out of it.
This picture has grown on me as I’ve been writing these words. I accept it for what it is but also for what it isn’t. Naturally I like that it’s been reduced to a flat picture plane but also that it gives a hint of a light-filled sky. But it might need an imagination to fall in love with it. When I think back to my early memories of watching a crabby old Italian artist decorate the walls of an immense room, I see now that it was surely an invitation that took me sixty years to answer with these small studies from Australia.
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