12 February 2025
Mellow Squish
We had been definitely under the spell of El Nina all last winter and thus this summer has been cooler here on the North Coast but there’s still lots of rain so I haven’t gotten out as much. Long gone are the sunny afternoons when I would show up each day like an obedient child. Now like a teenager, I’ve grown up, and I’m picky about what I like and don’t like. But I’m also in the studio more these days as I try to scale up some these small studies into 150 X 150 cm pictures. But also, tennis calls me out two nights a week rain or shine.
Two pictures came out of the other evening. It had been a quiet sky with little personality which put me off immediately upon arrival but although initially feeling stuck, I made the best of it. I can get in a jittery state when I arrive at the beach and don’t like what I see. This happens more than I’d like to admit. But hey! I always find a solution (with me) but also the problematic sky. as well. In both cases I simply invent what I need to and this usually works because inventive imagination is the only way to go.
Besides, it’s hard to be angry at Nature, let’s face it. It’s like being angry at a loved one, I mean, how long can one hold out? Don’t we always need to relent and forgive to find any peace? We cannot always be in a state of displeasure can we? “That would be a lot of heavy energy”, as my cousin Jeannie would say. So it is with me for just about everything in my life; Let it be,,, like the Beatles sang.
But then as it often happens, I softened, as did the sky and it morphed into a lovely mosaic of muted tones and shapes as small clouds lazily rolled through. In a complete reversal of mood, I soon found myself playing freely like a kid in a sand box and this is what came out. But I think it only happened because the sky opened up enough to allow me in. It may not please many because even I find it a bit strange, and yet there’s a nice colour harmony that works for me. Maybe it’s also because I’ve come to know this sea and sky so intimately, and I've felt this gentle mood here many times before.
I really like the soft spontaneity of forms that make up the sky. It’s a mellow sort of image, and looking at it today, I’m surprised that it appears even a little coherent in contrast to my confused state while painting it. I also sensed that it had conjured up something rich from my childhood. This ancient creativity also always amazes me for it has a sovereign life all its own, even outside of its creator. It’s as if it's formed gradually over time through all the paintings both good and bad, through all the temper tantrums and the quiet grief, it prods a painter on that seemingly pointless task.
As I look at it now, it makes me think of the work of Alexander Calder for some reason. I wonder further if he might have made an image looking something like this one, had he been a painter.
Looking back over these last eight years from the vantage point of so many studies I see each day lining my bookshelves, I understand that I have changed in lots of small ways. Firstly, of course, the pictures have certainly evolved, hopefully for the better, and they’ve grown more sophisticated. By that I mean that they might foster more spontaneous relationships within an image that can make a picture more authentic. Consequently, this means also that I’ve grown as a painter. Would I have grown as much in the studio or in front of other motifs during the same period? I cannot know this, and it doesn’t matter. Perhaps it’s like being happily married to a person for eight years but suddenly then asking yourself if you would have grown as much with anyone else?
This is a twilight motif, one that specialises in subtle colour because after all, there isn’t much else to do from it. Did I choose it for that reason? Or did it choose me? In any event, it was exactly what I needed for this last chapter in my life. Regardless, it has become my friend, and one which offered me deep companionship at a time when I didn’t know I even needed it.
No comments:
Post a Comment