5 June, 2020
Be gracious everywhere is my prayer
While America seems to swim in turmoil at the moment, I find myself in Australia living a quiet life near the sea and centred around my painting and far from the chaos. Many years ago, all of this would have certainly raised my anxiety levels enough to paralyse me but I've changed, maybe aged, is a better description. Resistance to mask mandates for protection against COVID-19 seems to be right up there with racism as the social divider at the moment. I've noticed that as some people grow older they become brittle, while the lucky ones become more flexible. I’m also old enough to realise that there is little I can do to make our society any better than to simply be respectful of others, kinder even, and without consideration of race, gender, or religious denomination. Be gracious everywhere, is my prayer these days. And yes, although I’m a polite old-school American liberal from the East Coast I can still be a jerk.
This painting, was the last of three from the other evening. The session had seemed to be coming to a close and I was about to pack up when I suddenly looked up and saw a pink field within grasp high overhead. It could have been my last handhold before reaching the summit I imagined, so I decided to grab another board and tempt fate.
A winter chill set in and I regretted not wearing a second tee-shirt under my hoodie. Twilight was stealing the last warm ‘glow’ from the sky, and yet something skeletal of it still remained, both above me, and in my memory. It was a bit like when you have stared at a bright colour for the longest moment only to then quickly turn away and see its complementary replacing it in your mind, fleeting and intense.
This hint of colour was just enough to invite me to improvise this small study. The ‘bloom’ had mostly faded away by now, but what remained in my perceptive field was enough to allow me in to invent this. It’s pretty conventional, perhaps even a little boring. Looking at it this morning, it appears straightforward, and though it's nothing to write home about, it feels correct and ticks all the right boxes. And if that’s the case, then it might just live on for a while longer if it pleased someone enough.
I think paintings like this just pop up once in a while on there own volition, as if to say to the painter: “You may not have wished to paint an image like this today, but we, the Muses did,,, so there!”
It’s funny how, like in a communist country, you never get what you want, you get what they give you. I think of the Muses in this way regarding my own work. I've even gotten somewhat used to their capricious antics.
It’s just one of those quirky facts about being a painter, and like every creative person, I’ve become adaptable to things unseen and unexpected. Back in 1986, I was once driving in my VW through Bulgaria when I stopped in Sofia one evening. Tired, and just looking for something to eat with no fuss, I found a pizza joint. To my amazement there was only one kind of pizza on offer; cheese with meat. Not a meat eater, I ordered two of those to go and had to scrape off the meat and get outta town as fast as I could to find a place to park and sleep.
But, there is a ring of truth in this small study regardless, because it’s so simple and everything is in its rightful place. There is a foreground, clearly delineated, and the warm grey clouds sit comfortably on a firm horizon line. By this, I mean that the process was authentic, but hopefully not mechanical. I often need to re-assure myself with descriptions like this whenever I’ve just done something that appears a little boring. But the more I look at it, the more interesting it becomes as a picture precisely because all these mundane elements appear to work together somehow so easily.
The truth is that when you paint a lot, there seem to be less fireworks to each session. Like a regular sex life over the years, the act can often be just a cheese sandwich, not always caviar. But this has gotten me into a lot trouble when I’ve tried explain that to various partners.
And yet, like a partner one has loved through thick and thin, it may also be why a painter returns again and again to the same motif at the beach. Not only has this twilight sky proven its fidelity, but it’s shown me my own innocence and vulnerability in front of such beauty. The pink glow at dusk and a young woman’s blush have killed this painter many an evening.
Addendum: I really like the sky, those small spontaneous blobs of blue violet that break the swarth of the pink field high above. Their delicate footprints were the reason I wanted to attempt this image in the first place. To have seen them, and actually painted that whole zone is enough to make a painter happy for a week at least.
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