The happy couple

19 November 2021

The happy couple

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 16 November 2021 oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

This was the first of two from the other afternoon. It had been humid all day and the salty air created a slight haze that diffused the colours and set off a rich and colourful bloom. Nice! It was calm with hardly a breath of wind and the sea was flat like a mirror. 

Although I usually develop a few vague visual ideas immediately upon arriving at the beach, I'll generally only commit myself to them after preparing a palette and after perusing the sky a bit, but by then I'm ready to commit to a visual image. All this happens quite fast. So because I’ve learned to place faith in my eyes and my craft, I'm always ready for an adventure and I can easily turn my will over to both these things. It makes it easier, sort of like getting into a Waymo taxi for an afternoon spin. 

And yet, there are moments when my wild child rises up in me to complain, demanding that I take back the wheel and drive myself. But in this series, it never really works out well. When I paint in front of this sky, it feels to me like I'm guided by sonar which is very different than how I approach painting in the solitude of the studio. Though both ways of working are equally compelling (and fun), they demand a different side of my imagination.

In the studio stillness, I can easily lose my bearings when confronted with just my own ideas and cut off from the windy dunes and the big sky overhead.

It's like I'm switching languages when in the studio where I invite my wild-child into the room, and when arguments usually follow.  

"But all this is good!"

Philip Guston, one of my favourite non-figurative painters might casually declare. Further, he might also add; 

"...that is the whole point of painting in this era of existentialist choice..."

And I would agree. But because I work both figuratively and non-objectively, I need to see them as two separate compartmentalised spaces, and the DMZ between the two areas is also my own DNA of light and colour. I'm like a UN observer who moves uneasily between the two zones.  

I know that many of these pictures from the beach may look alike to others. A few friends have already intimated this to me, but no matter. I've come to realise that I don’t care so much what others think of them in the end, I only seem to care about how I think of these things. And anyway, one cannot judge a series by just a few pictures that pop out anymore than one could judge an athlete's daily performance. Artists and athletes are in it over the long haul, though perhaps athletes may have shorter long hauls. Unlike artists who can work till they drop dead, athletes are comets who shine brightly, before passing on.

I really enjoyed painting this picture from the other evening. First of all I’m a sucker for a pale turquoise sea that is as delicate and feminine as a gardenia petal, one that I would hesitate to touch, much less paint. 

And just like a happy couple, the sky and sea on evenings like this, complement one another like in a great marriage. The sky on this night, deferred to the sea as would any thoughtful, loving husband, who wished nothing more than for his wife to scintillate by yielding to her glow when entering a dinner party. 

I want to tell the world that it looked just like this but of course I'd be lying. But I could say that the sky on this particular evening brought out the very best in me like would any great partner in a marriage.