14 June 2024
Don’t mess with Nature
These two studies came the other night. It had been a clear chilly sky all day long so when I arrived at the beach I wasn’t surprised to find myself in front of a magnificent June Bloom. I managed three studies but these were my preferred.
Funny, because that afternoon I had not planned to go out. I had been cold and tired all day after the previous night of tennis, so I was comfortably writing on the sofa all afternoon. But from there I could see that the sky might be interesting so the painter inside me suddenly got up and pushed me out of the house. And that was a good thing because the sea was as light as it can be in the winter months and there was a thick cloud over the horizon that caught fire upon my arrival. Under certain circumstances at this beach, I'm always amazed that two paintings done a mere 15 minutes apart, can manifestly be so different from one another. Happily, I was there the other evening to catch them both. Nice!
The picture below came from another wild evening a few days later. The same bright silky winter sea awaited me but with an altogether different set of colour harmonies. It could be my imagination but these winter months seem to clearly create a different kind of colour harmonies. It's hard to put my finger on it but it's there.
Tangentially, I recently went to Adobe online looking for a colour wheel to see if I could find a solution for a large picture in the studio that was causing me heartache. I’ve know lots of designers who use colour wheels and for good reason, but as a painter myself, I’ve never felt I needed it. But online, I discovered that it’s pretty interesting because it allows one to find every colour under the sun. And the advantage online is that unlike a Pantone booklet, it’s all backlit with light so the colours are brighter. Adobe's software allows one the means with which to play around with them using the many combinations of compliments, primaries, secondaries, tertiaries, etc, etc,,. It’s pretty cool.
I was exploring a pink tone which I was having trouble with, so with a quick click on the Adobe’s colour wheel, I found what I was looking for as the little curser opened up the split-complimentary options. Remarkably, it reveals two options of the compliment, one on the warmer side and the other on the cooler. Both hues are related like brother and sister. In this case of the pink hue, the cooler complimentary option resembled the classic Veronese Green whilst the warmer option is a warm yellow green. Both can easily mixed on the palette.
As I’ve often said, ad nauseam in these pages, the beauty of working out in Nature is that it will almost always reveal to the painter each of the options regarding any colour harmonies if the painter is patient from not colourblind. Moreover, Nature also provides a complete set of instructions when a painter opens his or her own optical senses wide enough to see a motif as a whole unit. Like in Nature, as in the Painting world, everything is connected, especially colours, even when they are on the opposite side of the colour wheel because Nature will always confirm this to the painter. This truth could be carved into granite.
But for me, this is obviously easier when working on a small canvas board at the beach and not in the studio where I could easily feel allienated from the natural alchemy of colours. Thus, my trip to the computer was beneficial, but regarding my situation at hand, this large surface needed a bit of both pink and green mixed into it for it to fully harmonise enough to resolve the entire surface. In the end it was a clunky task in the studio and with only mixed results. It turned out to be a learning curve which is always regretfully, somewhat great.
But this kind of resolution is also found in every art form from music to cooking, and architecture to basket weaving. For me, I think of this holistic resolution as our home base. Even Schoenberg’s great atonal piano works found resolution eventually although one sometimes had to meander uncomfortably with him through a sea of discordant melodies before arriving at the end of his pieces. So, too perhaps a musical work is also not unlike a long novel. But contrary to the linear activities of a book or a song, a viewer in front of a painting is confronted immediately with the entire image and is visually processed all at once. The resolution is as abiding as is its dissonance.
Although the resolutions in each creative domain are singular, they're all just the means by which each artistic form returns home to rest. For instance, the Circle of Fifths is a given in Western musical tonality just like the Colour Wheel in the world of Painting. Each is a map that helps the artist navigate a journey and both are replete with unlimited options that allow every creative traveler to choose their own itinerary.
In each of these artistic choices underlies a landscape where originality can be fully exploited and the logic of harmonic relationships expanded. Artists and musicians can both explore the very distant parameters of dissonance yet still be able to return home again fully rested and resolved.
In the painting world, I've always imagined the Colour Wheel harmony as a language, one wherein the grammar structure is its drawing. And in a similar fashion, in music, the Circle of Fifths is a map of keys that organise musical harmony. For me, drawing is to painting, as a melody is to harmony.
Because I create paintings so quickly, this pictorial organisation needs to be done at the outset of a painting. Unlike in the studio, it’s almost impossible to add different colours in order to repair a faulty colour harmony that I've already programmed at the onset. It can be done (of course), but then it becomes a very different painting altogether though not inferior, if one can pull it off. Still, it’s hard for me to do it in one session at the beach. The Dutch did this sort of thing perfectly well in the ‘perfect’ 18th century, but then, they were masters at the craft of Painting. Their idea of perfection was a different beast than our own today. And besides, like any Modernist today, I'm more interested in authenticity than perfection.
Perhaps cosmetic surgery is an apt analogy to Painting. When you do chin tuck, you may need to also lift everything else as a result. A little filler here might entail a little more down there,,,, ad infinitum, hmmmmm........ But on the other extreme, anyone who has worked a lot with Adobe will know that it can be an endless maze of too much choice and too many possibilities. It can drive a person mad, so in these pictures of mine, I try to keep it simple and finish them in one clear shot, even if I fail. Generally, what I make in one session is what I get.
The lesson? As we say in the Bronx...
“Listen Pal, don’t f**k with Nature!”
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