Kill the Buddha!

6 February 2021

Kill the Buddha!

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 3 February 2021 oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm 

When I think about how much joy I have in my life today, I’m really grateful because it wasn’t always so. In my previous life I believe I was a pretty gloomy fellow and I was always looking for some way out of myself. What is happiness if it doesn’t come in small doses of joy each day as if microdosed like an Irish mist of bliss?

To be honest, most of these painting sessions give me great joy. I can admit it now at this stage of my life. This joy is composed of satisfaction, but surprise too, and I think it’s as close as I’ll ever get to a pink cloud.

I really enjoyed painting this study from a few nights back. One of four, it was like gulping down a cold Perrier on a hot day with a lemon twist in it. The rich yellow is set off by the pale strip of lime sky resting overhead. It also reminds me of the ripe wheat fields of the Luberon before they’re cut in July. Yes, it’s a seascape done in Australia, but today it’s also a postcard from France which sends me nostalgia. Is that why I feel this particular joy upon seeing it? Certain wise folks in the East say that happiness is but the by-product of living well and making right choices in life. So although my life hasn’t been a great example of this wise adage, I wonder if this small image isn’t but a joyful by-product of simply painting a picture by the beach? Some might even think of it as the icing on the cake. 

Although my heart and soul still float over Europe like I’m a blimp, I’m still reminded that it’s in in my newly adopted country here on the Pacific where a vital part of me, previously unknown, came alive to thrive. Like a seed blown across the oceans I found fertile soil to blossom here in this marvellous country. 

What I do know is that I needed to find something different, a new place where I could discover something unexamined in a creative way. I only vaguely felt this before changing continents because I was under the shadow of so many ghosts in France and Italy, but also in America too. 

Having painted in France for such a long time I also understood that I no longer wanted to paint as a student of anyone else anymore. Nor did I wish to have any master hanging overhead like an old crucifix; not Cézanne, nor anyone, not even my beloved teacher Léo Marchutz, for whom I owe so much. 

In Japan, they say in some Buddhist circles that when you see the Buddha, you should kill it. I’ve always loved that expression. I think even the Buddha himself used to say it. It's not easy to grasp perhaps because it goes against all of what we were brought up to believe in the West. And yet, what I understand in it, is that to be reborn, even creatively,  we must kill even our most beloved parents and teachers whose love has nurtured us and to whom we owe our intellectual curiosity. And we need sharp machetes to clear out a pathway for ourselves. Though my own attempts at slashing away my conditioned responses in life haven’t been entirely successful, maybe because I’m still fairly neurotic, but I keep at it regardless. I also know that my education in painting will always be a kind of pale ghost hanging around me like a siamese twin no matter where I paint, and I’ll always carry around my French palette full of light.