Introduction, cont
These are simple pictures, they’re not big enough to be considered ‘great’ and they don’t pretend to be so. The idea was just to catch all these wild colours swimming in the twilight sky. There is a time limit to these sessions unlike ones made in a painting studio that can stretch on leisurely for weeks at a time. At the beach some sessions are short, but on my luckier days they can go on and on into the night.
Just as each picture can be so different from one day to the next, I too, am quite different. Somedays I’m joyful, sometimes not, maybe I’m tired and a little grumpy with a mind full of problems, real or imagined. But because I go out there as a habit to work, nature has a way of opening me up to it regardless of my state of mind and as a result, I am always changed by the painting process. Over the years I’ve now been transformed by it and it’s why I still go out there. As a painter friend has always reminded me, “when one paints, one lives better.”
These studies have also opened me up again to exploring a limitless expanse of the grey half tones that link together all the colours as they cycle around the colour wheel. What surprises me when I take a few steps back to view the whole ensemble is that most of the paintings, even though they obviously share my fingerprints and DNA, they are usually so manifestly different due to the weather.
Many of what I call my Evening Prayers have been moving gradually towards a flat and graphic disposition. I like that. When I compress the motif down to just a few horizontal stripes of subtle colour is when a small bell rings inside me and I feel good. This is where my compass naturally wants to point on its own.
I bring all this back to my own desire to see the motif as fresh as if for the very first time, each session, day after day. This means approaching the it quickly, seizing it, and subduing it with whatever experience and craft I possess. By working this way I’m able to avoid a sentimental view of nature, something I deplore in Painting. This isn’t a recipe for everyone, it’s just a way I discovered for myself because I am an anxious person, and in this series, I need a colourful frenzy at the end of the day to find peace.
In summary, I thought this project was about colour, but to my surprise, I discovered it was really about light, without which, there can be no real colour. And because the drawing is fairly easy and without real complications, I can really focus on colour. This is something I began to appreciate over time. By consequence, when I get out there to paint it feels a little like I’m getting into a Waymo self-driving car because I have so few concerns about anything else except to take in the view and enjoy the ride. After all, I’m just looking and seeing.
Addendum, editing this book has taken almost three years. Two and one half years longer than I had originally imagined it 2ould take. It’s been a great experience, the riches one of my life actually, but because I wasn’t a writer I needed to find an authentic voice. So of course I also felt like Dr Jekel and Mr Hyde due to all the editing I faced every day. Passages I had thought polished and complete, would over the next day or two look like someone else had written it. Basically I needed to learn to write.
