Putting the earth to sleep

3 June 2020

Putting the earth to sleep

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 28 May 2020 oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

These Autumn skies give birth to colourful and kitschy postcards at the moment. For a painter to work from such skies can be extremely dangerous but I proceed without caution regardless. I’ve made a bargain, not with the devil but with the carnival barker who lives high up in the sky and suckers me in each afternoon. “No backing out now buddy”, the barker yells at me whenever I get skitterish, “you’re in now over-your-head, whether you like it or not!”

So, like a wild animal, I just follow the scent in the sky as it goes blood red. Once I’ve got it I don’t let go even if I don’t know where I go. That’s the hook actually. Just like writing a story, a painter just needs to start painting, and they’ll quickly find out who they are and who they’re not. I have no clue how these things will turn out nor what they’ll look like anymore than a parent might imagine how their infants will turn out later on. And like for most everything else in life, the real surprise, is always surprising.

This is a super simple picture, a postcard really, of a sublime evening sky that someone could just have easily missed. You may have been indoors at a cocktail party or at the cinema. You may have actually even been out strolling underneath this colourful sky but also talking on your phone, so you missed it. Not to worry, for painters like me are out there in the sky like internet providers working hard to make sure you never miss a thing. 

This study (one of two) possesses an untroubled calm that I really appreciate. The solid inky sea has an assurance about it that announces that it can easily handle the weight of the whole thick sky overhead: “Bring it on!” it crows to the hefty sky. 

I actually think this painting aptly expresses the very moment when the earth is truly tired and ready for sleep. 

And indeed, in this time of the Corona Virus, I curiously feel in both the earth and sky, a strangely ambivilant calm. People talk these days about the earth slipping into a divine sleep, fewer cars on the highway and no more aeroplanes or tiny lights overhead. In the empty skies here at the beach, the scratchy din of jet engines are no longer and I almost miss the regularity of flights from Sydney into Queensland each night. The highways snaking around the globe are deserted too, so I’ve read in the NYT. But I think I’d have to see it to believe it. Surely, if anyone needs a rest, it’s our poor earth.

They say that pollution has virtually disappeared in the skies over Paris, Beijing, and L.A, even New Delhi it seems. And from Katmandu one can now see the Himalayas for the first time in ages. This earth is our precious friend, seemingly full of abundant love for all creatures and flora alike, but will it forgive us too for all our abuse? 

As I close up shop here on this desolate beach at dusk I often have the feeling that I’m like the manager of a regional playhouse who closes up the theatre and makes sure that all the lights are out, the stage is clean, and the doors are locked. I’m here to make sure the beach is ready for nightfall and the morrow. I know they’re may not be many of us, but the painter in me, at least, has always been a friend of the earth, because after all, I’m here to put it to bed most nights on the North Coast of New South Wales, Australia.