24 August 2021
Je m’en fou, French cool on Mars
This study from a few evenings ago is one of two done that night and it’s rather Martian-looking, but and like all painters will try to tell you, “it really looked like this!”
I liked them and I also thought them both pretty good, but this can be a dangerous sign and might signal that they’re not good at all. This kind of self-satisfaction can bode badly for painter. But today, a few days later, I still like them even though neither photographed very well. This was the second one painted when the sky was really cooking.
This fervid warm red and violet colour harmony was an idea that gave me lots of optimism at first, but problems too as I struggled into to it. But only at the end of the session would the drawing magically melt nicely into the red surface like it was a grilled cheese. On the colour issue, I might worry that there aren’t enough sufficient cool tones to support so much red and pink. Only in the very foreground does the band of Emerald Green leave a small trace of cool green, like moss, but barely enough to offset all this wild warmth.
This melding sky is what I seem to be looking for these days. Just as the pianist, with a head full of melodies, searches out a harmonic resolution, the painter too, seeks out a solution in colour for his drawing. There is nothing fancy about it, in it there’s no intellectual wizardry or any colourful concept that can save a painter. The drawing, like the melody, is always the King of the Court, and it reigns supreme in a picture. No excuses!
And yet lots of us try do to cheat when we think we can get away with it, hoping no one will notice. But both melody and drawing are the twin grim reapers of Painting and Music, and no matter how hard we try to cut corners we’ll lose because Form reveals the fate of both a picture and a song over the long term. Like small children, from time to time, we’ll still try to get away with a poor melody or bad drawing while hoping that harmony or colour will cover up for their structural weaknesses, but the music suffers as does the painting. As we all know, the devil is in the details of an oeuvre. Will this small picture survive my own harsh criticism? I’ll find with time.
For an image, this study appears somewhat ‘insouciant’, like certain people we might see at Cafe Flore in Paris whose self-assurance is expansive and relaxed, and their flaws are unrestrained and flamboyant. If this small picture had pink lips they might even curl up slightly with appropriate disdain (je m’en fous) like the truly cool French who wear their imperfections with pride and arrogance. Since I am going overboard on all this, I would add that what this picture lacks, in a certain technical prowess, it gains in authenticity, like the French through their ever sartorial surprises on the sidewalks.
