Evanescence

 

2 July 2021

Evanescence

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 28 June 2021, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

This was the second of just two studies from another chilly evening at the beach. The clouds on the horizon line appeared as cold as the afternoon air and as fragile as butterflies wings. In these early months of winter the clouds can sometimes exhibit a sweet delicacy. 

Although I didn't find this picture too novel or exciting at the beach, when I looked at it the other morning as I pulled it from the boot of the car, I was surprised by its pale colour harmonies. The clouds appear to shift from the palest Prussian Blues to Ultramarine Violets though I hardly remember thinking about it while painting them. It was cold and I think I worked faster in order to get home quicker (!), but hey! 

But I think they work, as does the whole sky as an ensemble. The sea had gone the warm violet which it likes to do for just a short time before the dusk eats everything else up. It’s not great but I like the over-all feeling in it. It’s slightly out of date too, somewhat intemporal in feeling and although not really old, it's not contemporary either. I really like the sky high above and over the cloud bank where the warm yellow goes into the light substance of Prussian Blue at the very top of the picture. Visually for me, this pale blue appears to raise the ceiling slightly like one can feel inside a cathedral. These transitions of colours have become points of great interest for me in this series and maybe they’re the real reason I keep going out to the beach to work. Late on many afternoons the colours soften and they appear to meld together as if to welcome a painter like me and I suppose like other artists, I'm just looking for a way into heaven.

When I was back in France three years ago I put together the very minimal things I would need to step out and work in the landscape; a palette, easel, and some colours and brushes. I had not anticipated to paint at all on the trip. I was going over to ‘write’ and ‘think’ (ha ha). For some reason I didn’t foresee making an ambulant studio in the boot of the small Citroen C3 I had rented. Though I did write, I mostly spent a great deal of my time driving around France and visiting friends.

It was Autumn, so naturally I watched the foliage cycle through the colour wheel into early winter. My friend Hélène Fraisse left me her apartment in Grignan so I had a home base which allowed me to to paint the chilly-looking skies around this beautiful region. I even gratefully watched snow accumulate on the hills a few times before heading back to London at the end of November. I think I made around forty or so small studies while I was there. Here is an example from near Dieulefit. 

  La Milandre, La Drôme, Novembre 2018 oil on canvas board, 30 X 24 cm, 

But earlier in October I stayed at the Châteaunoir where Charlotte Tessier, kindly lent me her apartment off the courtyard. I stayed a week or so seeing friends and visiting my past which impalpably rose up to greet me at every moment, as it will when one returns to long and friendly chapters in one’s life. All of it was so deliciously familiar; the smell of all those pine and oak trees especially after a rain, St. Victoire looming like a grandfather in the East, and lots of cats, though not as many nor as friendly in my day. Even the unique scent of Mazout (diesal heating oil) not used in decades, was still inexplicably lodged into the kitchen walls and tiles that permeated one’s daily activity. 

All my senses had returned me back to Aix-en-Provence and at the same time, my youth. All of it brought on so many memories; nostalgic yes, but not at all cloying or sad because to my surprise, I had completely moved on. All these memories were like finding old photos from times long gone in a desk drawer. They can elicit strong feelings of longing but at the same time, a particular clarity that allowed me to understand that what was then, will always remains then. 

So that small week spent there also left me feeling like I had to keep moving forward and this was good because it means that I had changed. Unlike many people I've known, I have always seemed to be someone with a clubfoot who was still dragging the past around with him in discomfort. 

On the upside, I was connecting with so many dear friends too. I went to the Maison Maria for coffee with Poussey K each morning just like in the old days, except that it was he who came to my home. And yet as much as I loved being there, I was also happy to leave to continue my adventure in France in this later chapter of my life there.

But during those days I naturally walked a lot on those familiar paths which all seem to end up at the top of the plateau. And I set up to paint just for fun. I was curious to see how I might conceive a small picture in the riot of colour around the Châteaunoir where I painted for years in another life. I found it difficult, but not without a certain pleasure. And as I regularly exclaimed so many years ago whilst painting the confusion of that forest: “What am I doing?? This is way too complicated!!” That was still my refrain years later on this trip. What I painted there on this visit were far more abstract than anything I had ever made while living there so long ago.