Morandi’s light and brief shadow

10 October 2019

Morandi’s light and brief shadow

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 7 October, 2019, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

This is a very relaxed painting, almost like a pair of stone-washed jeans. Actually, it also reminds me of the way I dress evach day;  a clean but rumpled white tee shirt and old jeans. 

It was the first study of three when the sky appeared as a pale Prussian Blue with a hint of lime to it. The cloudbank had peaked in pink, its state just before veering into warm red and the sea below was almost black. I was happy because I always look for an occasion to put black and pink together, but the sea and sky aren’t always so cooperative, nonetheless I’m crazy about the Art Deco feel to these colours. The sky today looked soft like when one wears a grey cashmere jumper on a cool afternoon. 

I like it better than the other studies I made that evening. Sometimes, I just like something for the feeling I get from it and not because I think it’s particularly good, successful or not. I am grateful for that because it separates me from an academic mindset of perfection. My primary reaction to any art is always how I connect with it through a feeling first and formost. From there I go off to figure it out, its assets and faults. But I don’t just accept anything that pleases my feelings, it’s but the front door to get me into the home of the art work whatever it be. I may just like something for a few moments, days or weeks, years even, but conversly, I might dislike something for days or even years, then change my mind because thankfully, I’m human, not a binary machine.

But to be fair, I think a lot about painting, most of the time actually. Like any vocation or sport, one exercises with devotion, it’s hard to get it out of one’s mind because it’s always there behind everything. It’s like the sun overhead despite the weather. Come to think of it, it may even be like being a teenager in love. Sometimes it’s intense and one withdraws when they’ve have had too much of it, or just less success at it, but they’ll always go back.

And although I can frequently think about other painters and their work depending on the moment, I generally go out to paint at the dunes with an empty mind and ready for anything. Seeing how the sky looks on one afternoon might suddenly re-kindle other images that still simmer in my imagination. Just like old flames, I don’t think we ever completely forget anything or anyone we’ve loved deeply. But do I think of other painters when working? No, never. Not even Turner, and I am glad for that. 

So curiously, looking at this dishevelled-looking sketch of a study today in my home, I see that it reminds me of my early love for Giorgio Morandi. That may be a stretch for others but it’s a personal thing, there’s something in it that reminds me of the simple sensuality in some of my favorite things of his. I think of just how much Morandi’s whole oeuvre has infected my artistic sensibilities over these 60 years or so. He was one of the first painters I immediately responded to as a child. My father had lots of Art books and at least one was about Morandi. I looked with great wonder at how his intimate oil paintings seemed so alive to me. 

Even so young, I was somehow keenly aware of his sensuous use of paint that made them real for me. In some of his intimate assemblies, the squiglly and unctuous layers of light that cast brief shadows have also managed to long stick with me like an early childhood crush. These are memories, layered with mysterious feelings that possess their own flexible logic, yet at the same time they’re fixed too, because they’re firmly attached to my painting life today.  

My father was also a painter, but in a halfhearted sort of way. He had lots of talent but he also had a life of work apart from it and this kept him from the discipline of being an artist which demands a lot of time. Maybe one can have a separate life from art but I think its hard, it’s sort of like trying to keep a mistress separate from one’s wife and family. It quickly gets sticky, and it never works well except in French films, naturally.

But my father did paint wonderful portraits which adorned all the walls of his large bathroom with oil paint. Piero della Francesca, Mantegna, and Masaccio were among his favorites. From the bathroom walls all these Italian noblemen of the Quatrocento observed the intimate goings-on in the 20th century bathroom. It was wild, and I was amazed that he was allowed to paint so freely over all the walls. But then, my parents each had separate bathrooms, and unbeknowst to me at the time, they would also soon have separate addresses.

So, in a picture like this and done so far away from Bologna, I can still see the serenity of Georgio Morandi. I admit it might not be appreciated due to its unfinished look, but personally, it’s a picture I like for my own reasons even though they may change in time. But unlike his pictures of bottles and jars and cups that all live in a macro-world as if seen through a telescope, my own are done out by the open sea and under an endlessly expansive sky. The connection for me today, is through the soft light and sensual lens of Morandi.