Turner, the fisherman

At the Tate Clore Gallery a few years back I found my way to the watercolors, many of which are sacred to me, certainly to so many others.

His sketchbooks reveal his often messy, but immediate approach to working in front of the landscape (the motif).

I read a biography of Turner long ago but didn't retain much, but one story impressed me a lot. Apparently, Turner loved fishing, and he could often be found by the small river next Petworth, I believe, or if not, another of his patron's palatial homes. A grandson of the owner would often join Turner at the river and watch him fish with his small rod. He recounted this to the biographer as a grown man. He only saw Turner 'work' once because apparently he fished a lot. But one day, as storm clouds approached on the distant horizon he watched Turner take out his small watercolor book, and satchel of material. He then soaked his paper, dried it crudely with the cuff of his sleeve, then he scrubbed the paper with a brush full of color in a sloppy fashion. He proceeded to work like this for about 30 minutes, back and forth with his fingers, brush, and sleeve until suddenly appeared a set of hills in the distance with wild-looking dark clouds running across the small page of his watercolor book. As a child he was entranced at this event.

I often associate the image of the fisherman and the painter. Afterward all, it is an activity done mostly in solitude at the mercy of all sorts of weather. And both painter and fisherman (and fisherwomen) go out bravely to see what the gods will offer up to them. It is always a surprise for both fisherman and painter. 

Sometimes walking back from the small dune carrying my painting pack and easel, where I have worked under the wild weather, I too, feel like the Old Man and the Sea.

reprint of a simple tale

18 December 2009

skating on thin ice

Snow this morning, everywhere a white rug! Apropos, I was just speaking with my Dutch friend Joyce about the snow, ice and other winter things when she  asked me out of the blue if I had ever ice-skated? I replied that I used to play ice-hockey when in school. "Oh really" she said "why am I not surprised, you seem to do everything". I laughed, and suddenly remembered a story of me going to visit an old girlfriend in Amsterdam which I then recounted to her over the telephone. 

"It was winter, (I began) and we had planned to go ice-skating. She wanted to present me to one of her dearest friends at an outside rink. She had asked me well in advance did I know how to ice-skate? I assured her this was no problemo. Ha Ha. On the day in question, I cannot remember why, but we had been quarreling when we arrived at the rink and watched the Dutch skate swimmingly around the large oval. A devious inspiration manifested in my childish brain. I nudged my girlfriend over to me to indicate that there was a small problem. She looked at me as if expecting a complaint of a blister on my foot, or something equally as inane but I lowered my head appropriately to discretely inform her that I had lied, that in fact,... I did not know how to skate after all! Naturally (naturellement), she became annoyed with me, I could tell she was angry at the deception. "How could you lie to me?" she cried out loud.... it was the lie which upset her more than the fact that I would now embarrass her in front her old friend acting like a spastic.Shaking her head, she took off to begin circling the oval while I lumbered around the sides making myself ridiculous, Charlie Chaplin being in my mind. She looked over from time to time with exasperation as I fumbled around making a fool (imbecile) of myself. This went on for about ten minutes until I decided that I had gotten my revenge as silly as it was..... Poor girl, I wasn't an easy boyfriend. When I think about it now, I realize that to be in a couple, is to be in a state of war always. Usually though, its operating at the most subtle of layers  


Hell, Its no wonder I'm a bachelor.

Rothko writing in TheTiger's Eye, a cultural journal published 1947

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads  (circa 2017)

From "The ides of Art: The attitudes of Ten Artists on their Art and Contemporanousness"

A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening  in the eyes of the sensitive observer. It dies by the same token. It is therefore a risky and unfeeling act to send it out into the world. How often it must be permanently impaired by the eyes of the vulgar and the cruelty of the impotent who would extend their affliction universally!

Dieulefit pottery painted at the Châteaunoir

This small painting seems to have disappeared in the rubble of all my things strewn everywhere and nowhere. A shame because someone wanted to buy it. It represents a small chapter recently in which I was painting random things on random tablecloths but at specific moments each day. These were small things which brought me big pleasures. I feel too far away from this ritual to attempt it again, but who knows. I am looking around for some new visual projects to slide into. In the meantime I keep at this twilight sea and clouds. From yesterday evening; Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 17 August, 2019

Erik Satie and Igor Stravinsky (reprint)

23 September 2016

Igor Stravinsky on Eric Satie 

He was certainly the oddest person I have ever known, but the most rare and consistently witty person, too. I had a great liking for him and he appreciated my friendliness, I think, and liked me in return. With his piece-nez, umbrella, and galoshes he looked a perfect schoolmaster, but he looked just as much like one without theses accoutrements. He spoke very softly, hardly opening his mouth, but he delivered each word in an inimitable, precise way. His handwriting recalls his speech to me: it is exact, drawn. His manuscripts were like him also, which is to say as the French say 'fin'. No one ever saw him wash, he had a horror of soap. Instead he was forever rubbing his fingers with pumice. He was always very poor, poor by conviction, I think. He lived in a poor section and his neighborhood seemed to appreciate his coming among them: He was greatly respected by them. His apartment was also very poor. It did not have a bed but only a hammock. In winter Satie would fill bottles of hot water and put them flat in a row underneath his hammock. It looked like some strange kind of Marimba I 

remember once when someone had promised him somme money he replied:

"Monsieur, what you have said did not fall a deaf". His sarcasm depended on French classic  usages. The first time I heard Socrate, at a séance where he played it for a few of us, he turned around at the end and said in perfect bourgeosie: "Voila, messieurs, dames."

Because I have been learning the Gymnodpédies and Gnossiennes I could not resit putting this old post up again.

reprint!

11 June 2012

view

For a better view
The cat jumps
Onto the table.

Velázquez, and the souvenir of youth

I know it's not fashionable in this Contemporary world of Art to go on about feelings and such, but I do anyway, because I can.

Instead of looking at a painting, then feeling it, a Post-Modernist education has us locked into heady thought about its sociological and ethnographical meaning, one far removed from its aesthetic qualities. The context of a work has become more important than the picture itself. 

Art works have braved several thousand years of both the Church and the Academy, yet have remarkably survived these cultural restraints, but just barely. The hand of the artistic act, the original vision somehow survives despite everything.

At this moment in time we are at the mercy of a Post-Modernist educational system more powerful than that of the French Salon in the late 19th century. It teaches young minds to think instead of feel. And the result seems to be that students can analyse art but not conceive it anymore. Worse, conformity reigns as much today as it did in the 19th century. 

I am reminded of all this when I came across the portrait of a young girl by Velásquez. It is a magnificent picture, as alive today as it was when painted back in the 17th Century. Did she perhaps grow up? Maybe not, possibly she died in a riding accident, or maybe she was just married off to an older Marquis in the Spanish countryside somewhere. Perhaps she lived to the old age of 60? I am sure that Wikipedia could answer these questions. But the fact is, though long gone, her image is still here today reminding us that this moment here now, is all we have. Like all art, though not exciting, it is but a souvenir of a moment, but in this case at least, an extraordinary one of great beauty and feeling.

Because I am a painter, I think also of my own Evening Prayers as just souvenirs. Certainly not as extraordinary but full of feeling nonetheless because when they work, (which is not always) they too, become a reminder of the what the sea and sky looked like this night at dusk. 

And like the young girl, this evening has also come and gone, a mere memory, a blip of time. But like waves and young girls, these evenings will keep on coming no matter who is still left there to marvel at them.

Maybe, we have to hit a certain age to appreciate this fact. Maybe too, this is the reason why so many older people walk the beach at dusk.

                        TAC

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 28 April, 2019, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

cemetery reprint from February 2103 , just because...

cemetery

                       White cemetery

                      My bathroom sink

                    Where ants come to die.

picasso, and others

Picasso, in my opinion, made a lot of truly awful paintings. (Yikes! Will be lynched?) But, I also feel that he made some real gems in the most inventive way perhaps not seen since the Cycladic art of the Greek islands 3000 years ago. And this was his greatness. 

In this picture there is unity of both colour harmony, and drawing in very the 19th century French Romantic tradition. It has a weirdly plastic yet flat feeling about it. This paradox gives it a mystery, and a timeless quality. There is nothing conventional in it, no conformity, thank god. I believe that it is a portrait of Dora Maar.

And, above all I feel great humanity in it.

One day (if I were a curator, for instance)

I would make a whole show of full-sized portraits, imagine a room with this picture (above) next to Dr Gachet, next Mme Cézanne, next to a Titian, next to a Goya, next to a Modigliani, next to a Sargent, next to a Matisse, etc, etc...The most important question for a painter is this:

What do they all share, if they share anything at all?

stolen work by the Nazis, Van Gogh!

I stumbled upon this organisation (The monumentsmenfoundation.org) last week through an obituary in the NY Times about Harry Ettlinger, a remarkable man who led an interesting life before, during, and after  World War Two. I had no idea that there were  so many really great things still unaccounted
for. I was astounded to see a Cézanne in this list below which I had never seen before. But also, so many other truly great things, most notably a Van Gogh portrait of himself on the road to Tarascon! And I wonder if he had perhaps made a copy or two; different versions? It seems strange for such an iconic image to be packed away somewhere on a dirty secret of a wall for a select audience of thieves. (this would make a great story or film) And how did they get such a vivid and colourful photo of it in 1945? What's the story around this strange anecdotal detail? Would they all be discretely hung in Palazzos or in bank vaults in Switzerland? Maybe covered in grime and stored in an attic somewhere, or (really, really covered in lots of grime) and hanging in a run-down and dingy antique shop somewhere in La Creuse region of France?