28 December 2025
Endgame
This picture from the other evening has a vaguely confectionary vibe to it like the sea is a creamy peach flan. As I've admitted in here not a few times already, I would have loved to be a pastry chef and this image reveals how I get my wiring crossed from time to time. It was one of those warm sticky evenings with a humid haze and perfect conditions for me. The first of two pictures, a shame that the second one went pear-shaped, but I’m happy with this. I like the luminous colours and it says what I felt.
So though I still go out to paint at the beach here at Brunswick Heads and I continue to write about these painting sessions, this book however, must come to a close somewhere alas. It is fitting that it closes with this ultra-flat, simple painting, one that speaks to the enormous evolution of these studies over the roughly eight years since I began working from the beach skies.
And so as I arrive at the end of these pages I suddenly wonder if I have asked the right questions I've always had about painting. And if I have, did I answer them in a constructive or thoughtful way that might lead both a reader and viewer through new doorways and windows? What sort of painting is this that I’ve been putting up here? Have I opened up discussions for others who may have little experience in looking at painting? Have I opened up a conversation or two with accomplished painters and/or academics who know more about art history than myself? What sort of journey have I been on over these past seven years? Have I improved as a painter, and if so, have I grown more as a painter and person from making all these pictures? Have I expressed a cogent rational for pursuing this eccentric vocation in a world filled with so many other interesting preoccupations? And am I a happier human being because of this experience? I’ll answer this last one first by saying that if happiness is but a by-product of living well and being productive, then yes, absolutely, yes.
These are questions that I think every creative person will be able to relate to. One thing is for sure, it’s that I’m a more real human being today because of where these written peregrinations have taken me. What began as a lark, quickly turned into mild obsession. What amazes me more than anything is that this twilight motif, a kind of spigot of light, never shuts down. Actually as I have always said, it’s the gift that keeps giving and giving though I admit that much of what I do might bore civilians stiff.
Recently, I was speaking to a dear friend whom I’ve known for fifty years now informed me that all the pictures she’s seen on Instagram look all the same. Ha Ha, boy,,, that sort of poked me like a sharp pencil. But I understood because even I find many of them boring too. Being a painter has taught me not to worry about what others think of the work. It’s also taught me that it's too worrisome even for for me to worry about. And yes, I was a little surprised to hear it put so casually that way, but hey, isn't it better to understand someone else than be understood oneself?
Like for any creative endeavour, the work goes through periods of draught and famine, and I've learned to move on with grace, my true friend in this vocation. Over these recent years I've also found myself pursuing a flatter sort of image from a relatively cloudless sky. This is because the pictures have gradually taken me there without much foresight or active input by me. It's really been my intuition that has guided me with little conscious thought. And tomorrow, it will also take into unknown paintings without any real concrete plan of my own. No worries, for I've come to trust in the process, one that is larger and longer than just me.
It’s been really fun to write about Art in so many of its forms. It turns out that what I've written is a rather hybrid diary/memoir about my painting adventure here at the beach, but I've also kind of fallen in love with this writing thing.
I can only ever really express what I know about that painting domain, so naturally that leaves a lot out. On the other hand, it has certainly brought out various sides of me which I had only previously suspected I possessed within me. I found out that I have lawyer lurking within me but a doctor and psychologist too, a really uptight English teacher and a pedantic life coach. But I found out that I'm also a coroner who works well with the homicide squad. All these things came up to surprise me while talking about Art, go figure.
This painting experience has also exposed for me some fundamental questions that a pedestrian might ask about Art writ large: Am I moved by the experience of Art? I think, specifically as a painter, I should always ask: Does the act of painting even move me? What does it teach me about myself, and life in general?
And, personally as a painter, ditto the same questions. Does my work also open a window to others, or is it just a means of self-expression for myself only? Are my pictures specific enough to convey a cogent feeling from me to another person? And, is my artistic expression a wall or a window?
I've come to understand that when a picture is not specific as an image it can be just a means of self-expression that might have little or no meaning to anyone outside of myself. Often ‘Abstract Art’ falls into this category as in the American Abstract Expressionist Movement that began the 1940’s. But a risk of this nonspecific genre of self-expression in artistic terms is a risk we take when any of us paint. I engage in non-figurative also in my studio so I am equally confronted with this problem.
I’ll go out on a limb and push this idea further. In Europe between the two world wars there existed pockets of an existential discontent that helped fuel a thirst in Art for something completely new like Surrealism and Cubism, and other off-shoots.
These idea quickly went around the world so that naturally after WW2, which, because the Americans helped to win, the cultural flame alighted to New York where American Expressionism was born propagated quickly around the world. Thus the boom of Abstract Painting took root in Universities and Art Schools. Ever ever, we all live in a giant democratic tent of Art. It’s a wild world of creativity and one has to find a place in it for themselves.
Presuming that most of us wish to be understood in one way or another, whether we’re artists or not, it behooves us all to find a language, visual or otherwise to help us get there. For myself, I’m continually trying to navigate that fragile space between what I think of as the wall and the window in my own work. This means basically that I ask myself whether or not my expressive work leads to a dead end or might it go further out through a window to something way beyond myself and my own feelings and ideas. Is it transferable?
This is slightly paradoxical because what I’ve also come to understand is that it’s only through a viable form that actually gets me through a window in order to find out what it is I’m actually thinking and feeling.
To finish on a light French note, there was a melon seller at the market in Aix-en-Provence who along with his mother ran their stand in front of the large cafe across from the Palais du Justice on Market days. When I first arrived there in 1973 he was a young man about my own age. So his mother died and since then, he ran it by himself. He had a wonderful refrain he sang that rang throughout that end of the market. From July through to August and September they sold their delicious melons.
When I was there eight years ago, he was still out belting it out from behind his extra-long table covered with wooden crates of ripe melons from nearby Cavaillon. He sings out with a heavy Provinçial accent at frequent intervals between serving his clients;
“...toutes les bonne choses ont une fin....les melons de Cavaillon,,, prenez-les vite,,, toutes les bonne choses ont une fin,,, allez!,,, ils sont bon,,, les melons de Cavaillon,,, prenez-les vite...toutes les bonne choses ont une fin, les melons de Cavaillon,,, allez,,,n'hésitez pas!,,, allez!”
All good things must come to an end.
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