Sisyphus stumbles while phoenix rises

 

29 September 2020

Sisyphus stumbles while phoenix rises

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 26 September 2020, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

This is an usual image but it came after such strife the other night that I have an affection for it. It’s such an unusual colour harmony, and it’s so fleshy that honestly, I cannot really warm up it. Despite the pink and orange hue of the sky overall, it has a muted cool harmony, and even that cannot seem to warm up the picture. Even the ocean is a frigid bed like a souvenir of a love affair long past its expiration date. 

 

These days it isn’t often that I want to throw a tantrem and jetison a canvs board into the sea but I came close for this picture. Years ago, I used to have tantrums all the time but now I’m seem to know better as I’m calmer in theory, more reasonable and measured. But a painting that’s gone pear shaped can turn a mature adult into a lunatic in minutes. So this is a study that was nearly murdered but it lived to tell the tale. 

Over my lifetime, I’ve jettisoned canvas boards over cliffs, thrown them into ditches, into trash bins, and even into the Grand Canal in Venice. Only rarely, did I possess a small hint of guilt for my selfish act inflicted upon poor Mother Nature. Each time I would find myself in such a state of willful rage that I felt like a bad boy tennis player on TV destroying raquets after a lost match. Either way, these would be funny things to witness I’m sure, but I take note that it’s always the guys who do this, rarely the gals..... just sayin. 

How to lose with grace? Isn’t that the conundrum for the gentleman or lady when faced with failure in public, or in private? When the Muses laugh at you from above, there’s nowhere to hide. Fortunately, my own tantrums were always exercised in private. But, I’ve changed a lot of over these past few decades, indeed, so much so that now when I’m on the cusp of losing a picture, I take a breath and step back to assess the situation like a real grown-up, like President Obama for instance. This is that wondrous moment when I decide that I have nothing to lose and I need to just let go. As the Zen wise guys would say:“We’re already dead, so what’s the problem?” Well,,, actually, the problem is my fragile ego. (or is it a large and ungrateful one? I‘m never sure) but regardless, it’s childish nonetheless. To come back from the brink of any creative disaster, as anyone knows, is a wonderful thing to witness, and isn’t that why we so love sporting events? 

These days generally, when struggling with a small study, I find myself pushing and pulling at the image without that same old fear. I seem less tied to fear, as if my brushes go to work on the image like a cat kneading a soft pillow. But at the same time, even the idea of success also seems to slip away from me. Sometimes in a flash, I can still see that young child in the corner of the classroom trying to smash a square peg into a round hole because after all, it was always me. Yet today, out of that fury, a phoenix rises and my brushes find a path back into the painting, punching sometimes, but kissing too, in a confused passion. And though a sky, like in this image had lost its warm rosy bloom, I motored on, on the fumes of memory. Just like for a writer, memory is everything for an artist, and intuition is one’s boundless grace.

I like so many of these studies precisely because they’re scarred with uncertainty, they now seem to live on like messy and deficient responses to the serious questions (and answers) of Painting. Any creative act for me, prior, had always been a final exam to be feared, one for which I was never prepared and would invariably fail. Today, it’s just a long workbook full of ideas, some that seem to pay off whilst others may not, but I think only time will tell us which is which. And whether a picture works out or not, is less relevant after a certain point, but again, the Zen wise guys in the East would say it was always irrelevant from the beginning. Funny, because for a few years I played once a week with a steady player always beat me. I got into the habit of telling myself that I was already dead before even stepping on the court for our sessions, and it helped. 

So, I’ve actually learned a lot about myself from all this friction that life has placed on my side of the court in life in order for me to change and improve. And lately, tennis, has taught me that it’s the skirmish that counts. At the end of the match, I can ask myself, did I play with assurance or with an excess of caution? Ditto for painting. 

So I freely admit it, this painting was touch and go to get to the finish line. It was a particular sky. What I mean by that is that I didn’t get a clear idea of the colour harmonies. Normally, I would fake it and get on with it, but for some reason this sky confused me still. And yet, here it is finished. Is there enough truth in it to be plausibly real enough for a viewer to be able to see it all? I’ve kind of warmed up to it, but we’ll see in a year or two how I feel.