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 each 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 usual state just before veering into a warm red. The sea below appeared almost black. I was happy because I always look for any occasion to place black and pink together when possible, 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 foremost. From there I go off to figure it out, its assets and faults. But I don’t accept everything thing that pleases my feelings, it’s just the front door to get me into the home of the art work itself. I may just like something for a few moments, days or weeks, years even. But conversely, I might dislike something for days or months only to change my mind, because thankfully, I’m human and not an AI machine.

But to be fair, I think a lot about painting, most of the time actually. Like any vocation or sport, one exercises with great care, 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 so intense that one needs a break and withdraws from it because they’ve have had too much success or failure, 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, seeing 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, but in so many things artistic, it's always a personal thing. There’s something in it that reminds me of the simple sensuality in some of my favorite things of his, and it reminds me 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 fascination at his intimate bowls and bottles and related immediately to their life-like feeling.  

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 squiggly and unctuous layers of light that cast brief shadows have also managed to 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 out well, except naturally in French films.

But my father did paint wonderful portraits which adorned all the walls of his large bathroom with oil paint. He was crazy about the Italians. Piero della Francesca, Mantegna, and Masaccio were among his favourites. From the bathroom walls all these Italian noblemen of the Quatrocento silently observed the intimate goings-on of the 20th century American 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 unbeknownst to me at the time, they would also soon have separate addresses too.

So, in a picture like this, and done so far away from Bologna, I can still feel the gentle 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 which all live huddled together in a macro-world as if seen through a telescope, my own are made 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.