Gauguin, blue dreams

 

         Blue Trees, 1888, Ordrupgaard Collection, Denmark.

I have had this on my desktop for a while now and it seems to always pull my eyes over to it. I don't really have much to say about it except that I'm just in awe of his sense of colour.  

Remarkably, one might think upon seeing it, that it was from Martinique or Tahiti, but curiously its's from the small time when lived with Vincent in Arles in 1888. 

Unlike Van Gogh who needed a 'motif' in front of him to kick off his vibrant imagination, Gauguin infamously worked almost entirely from his imagination. 

These different ways of painting reveal something about their connection but also their strong differences. They were almost like two opposing sides of an AA battery, one so positive while the other so negative.

Gauguin 'invented' this landscape while painting next Van Gogh in Arles. The small figures near the foreground are Breton. Was it an homage to a place that got him into this 'Painting Racket' in the first place? Or souvenir painted out due to homesickness? Either way, like the Instagram Influencers of today, both painters were motivators for each other's work during this period together. 

Even their colours during this period seemed to accentuate each of their palettes in a similar fashion. Their Chrome Yellows and deep Ultramarines appears to clash like ancient warriors upon their canvas's. And as we know from their correspondence afterward, their particular personalities also crashed into one another almost daily. 

But, in this picture of the 'Blue Trees' above, I personally marvel at the pictorial intelligence in it, of its colour and its drawing and invention. It has mysterious and abstract hold over me as I wander about around its surface. It's an endless lesson for painters of any moment, anytime.  

Art, a wall or a window?

Anyone who reads this Blog would understand that I absolutely despise Graffiti but being human I can also make grand dictums replete with caveats. 

Generally, I will give a pass to Banksy, but a few other artists too,  who have something artistically interesting to express. For me, Art in all its forms, is a window not a wall, something transcendent not myopic.

Most graffiti is self-indulgent and juvenile, narcissist, and basically just a visual nuisance for the rest of us. And most murals are usually pretty dreadful too. Where I live in Australia, I would bet a million dollars that there are more blue jumbo dolphins splashing about on buildings than anywhere else in the world.

Et portent, and yet..., this enormous mural caught my eye and surprised me with great pleasure, even causing me consternation. I wish I could remember who is the  artist and where it is located, my apologies.

It's not that I even like its drawing or colour harmony but there is something in its 'colourful design' that I find so well unified, puzzling and audacious, so much so, that I actually really like it. It has a vaguely figurative aspect to it as if it's maybe channeling Salvador Dali? But as a critical matter, is any good? Does it succeed? 

Because giant wall murals are in a class of their own, I personally don't really have the critical wherewithal to judge them as artwork. That may sound like a lame way of fobbing off the important question, but hey! I'm only human. I can only judge it by the same criteria that I use everywhere else in my peregrinations around the world. 

It is a public work, and ultimately it must also be judged with an acutely critical eye, like for everything else in this realm of aesthetics. And yet I still myself suddenly feeling a little self-conscious in this world. This is the world of the delightful and surprising jumbo-polished steel blob by Anish Kapoor, that occupies an large open space in Chicago. But it's also part of the muscular and (sometimes almost fascist) work of Richerd Serra. Hmmmm. But too, an unlikely hero in the world of Public Art is Jeff Koons, who created several versions of the oversized 'Puppy', made of flora and flowers, a piece that brings universal joy to almost everyone.  

So regarding this ten or twelve story high mural, I have no irrational way to explain why it does bring me such puzzled joy. But hey! We all need lots of joy today, puzzled or otherwise.

But I like to imagine myself stumbling upon this gigantic wall in an open space somewhere downtown somewhere, and I believe it would be as surprising as finding a field of red poppies growing out of one's own bathtub.

For myself, it's a rare thing to be pleasantly surprised in this contemporary life, urban ironic, or otherwise.  

 

something different, a changing guard

It's rare but not uncommon that states in America re-design their flags to update their image, but Maine has done just that. They have selected a new design out of more than 400 submissions.

The winning flag design came from Adam Lemire, an architect from Gardiner, a town of roughly 6,000 residents in Kennebec County. His minimalist design shows an eastern white pine and a blue North Star against an off-white background.

I really love the way older institutions can sometimes re-invent themselves with an artistically appropriate design. Maine had the wherewithal to re-imagine itself as a new and different place. Out the window goes an old, staid, and conventional design, in comes something modern, both clear and striking. Nice!

Now, if each generation could ditch their older  ways of thinking and doing things by up-dating their ideas, it would be an even more perfect world.

                2024
 

                             old as the hills

OLYMPIX 2024, Honour and dishonour

 

         The Spanish Artistic Swimming Team 2024

Being laid up with the flu really stinks but it also had an upside advantage, one that kept me stuck at home with a foggy mind. It was an awful strain of the flu which kept coughing and pinned to the sofa for two weeks straight. But what a fabulous two weeks to be holed up at home! It was the perfect space for my ditzy brain to zoom into the Paris Olympics 2024.

As anyone who saw it will agree, it was wonderful all around, according to an article from Paris. "This changed us, and it's one big party!" said a certain Mme Castelle. "The Parisians who left town will regret it to the end of their days!" her friend Ms Benata, adding, "The key was all the people, not just the French but everyone all mixed up together like a blending", as recounted by a pair of older Parisian women catching their breath on a bench near the Seine.

Well, I don't know, but it looked great on screen as I laid up immobile like The English Patient, though without Juliette Binoche, alas.

 

       'Zee French Space Gals', of course!

Swimming, in every form was a wonderful watch in the new Aquatic Center at Le Bourget, the only new venue built for the Olympics Games. Designed by a hardy Dutchman, Tom Venhoeven, to be energy efficient and environmentally friendly. It used less concrete and more wood in its design construction to great aesthetic success. With a solar farm on its roof it renders an almost 100% energy efficiency for the building in both summer and winter. The 5000 seats were made from plastic bottle caps collected by school children all over the French Hexagon. Impressive! Zeese French set a high bar for the Games and zey actually pulled it all off with zaire French flair. Formidable!    

In the pool, Diving, Racing and Dancing, all of them were great. And a big shout out to those poor Ukrainian women who had to train in wetsuits these past two winters in Kiev because of a lack of electricity. That Pute, Putin! Un salaud, un fumier! He should be strung up with all the other tyrants who invaded countries: Genghis Khan, Hitler, George Bush, Tony Blair and Netanyahu, to name a few. 

Anyway,,,, I perved in bliss for an entire evening watching the Artistic Swimming competition.  

The Chinese seem to be great at everything, of course. "Attention le monde! Car ils sont déjà la!"

Paris, its river Seine, with all its beauty, was put to full use for this grand event. In fact, I wonder it will ever again be as lovely as it seemed in this year of our lord, 2024. The dystopian panic which most of us live with from morning till night was lifted temporarily as if  by all that French Charm. Who would have thought? Even, it was said, the waiters on the Champs Élysées smiled with an easy joy! Ça alors!!  

While watching, I imagined that for those hardy young lucky families, which came from all over Europe and abroad, to spend two weeks at the Games would have been the greatest gift a parent might offer their young children, who, like the young athletes themselves, will hold in their hearts the most cherished memories for there rest of their lives. Indeed, not a fake Disneyland, but the real deal these Games. And it feels to me like a gift spread around the world at a time of such great uncertainty on our planet.

I couch-surfed all around the games visiting everything, the Equestrians in Versailles, The divers and racers in The New Aquatic Center and the speedy, but patient Wall Climbers at le Bourget, the athletes of every size and shape at Le Stade de France as well as the amazing Fencers in the spectacular Grand Palais. With the exception of the two new structures at Le Bourget, Paris used all its existing infrastructure for the 2024 Games. Felicitaions!

For me, the lover of anything graphic, it was a daring choice of violets and pinks that they chose to use pretty much everywhere, and for all sports. It was chancy but worked so well. Mixing cool lilac next to Naples Yellow, Hot Pinks next deep, deep Lilacs! It was a colourful response to our current gender blending confusion, and I say, "Go for it Man,,, Woman,,, Him,,, her,,, They,,, Whatever works for them!"

Immobile, I watched all this gorgeous activity with divine decadence from my sofa. I was a drifter among foreigners for two weeks time, watching golfers, gymnasts and rowers and scullers, tennis and polo players, volleyballers  and shooters using both bullets and arrows. The marathons were wonderful, all these black and brown coloured athletes making their hilly way around the August heat of Paris. And the Parisians were out in full force, giddy with pride while leaving their uber-cool irony at home.

While the world wages war upon itself in various places around the globe, teams from the poorest countries on earth came to us with their fragile wares. Many ending up in last place like the marathoner from Buthan who had struggled towards the end, walking a long while past the cheering Parisians. She eventually picked herself up and continued and when she came around the last turn towards the finish line the amazing crowd which had not left their seats since the elite runners had crossed 2 hours earlier, erupted with joy. 

In the Stade de France an Afghani women came to run, I forget which length,,,,1500M? She too, came in last. It was an unforgettable finish. 

Yes, Yes,... I know the Olympics are known for being a great waste of money, resources and energy, but somehow, in this special moment, the people of France offered up something new just when the world seemed to need it the most. Mocked by Murdoch's Right Wing Sky News here in Australia, and elsewhere sans doubt, for providing recycled cardboard beds to the athletes, they derided everything about France's efforts at sustainability and inclusion. What can you do? These are horrible, small people who love Trump. Go figure.

What these kinds of people missed is that it was a ray of human hope in a world already so full of inexhaustible darkness. The French, always so unnervingly clever with their moral righteousness, might actually have hit a living mark this time by putting in right action behind where their high ideals have too often just been words engraved in stone. Even if but a temporary reprieve from our uncertain shadows, we were thus offered some light,,,, not bad.

At a cost of about 2 billion Euros to put on the Games, almost nothing came from the Public Purse, they claim. If so, great! Millions were raised from all the usual suspects; The Nikes, The MacDonalds, The Rolexes, The TAG Heuers, The Apples and Microsofts, etc, etc,,, Actually, who cares? They run the world anyway, so let them pay for the Olympics! And who cares if the entire affair looked like Louis Vuitton advertisement? At least there was a bit of class, and it did look good.

France also got a reprieve from the political uncertainty hanging over its head like the sword of Damocles. Autumn will bring stormy weather. But like a great fruit harvest, what do they say in Provence at the end of the melon season? "Toute les bonne choses ont fin!" So be it, but what a melon season! For there were good and we ate well.

And yes, Gazan's are starving and homeless, so are the Yemeni's, but so are so many other parts of Africa, and in New York too, everywhere! There is no escape from the awful injustices that go everyday around the world. It's all so disheartening it makes a sensitive soul want to crawl into bed and roll over against the wall. 

All this, a friend said to me last week about why he would not partake in this 'fake thing', "a complete waste of money, and this is why I don't watch the Olympics!" I disagreed but said little.

Personally, I don't believe that governments are the people, despite the hype to the contrary. I don't blame athletes for being of one nationality or another. Of course, they say that people are the soul of a nation which I can believe, but people don't run their nations despite what they may think. I don't believe that Putin, Trump, Lukashenko, Sinwar or Netanyahu, just a few of the many thugs who really represent their nation's interests. By hook or by crook, these despots run their countries into the ground, and its the citizens who always pay in the end.

A nations's athletes are just athletes, that is all. What they believe, or not, is their own business, just like for every citizen around the world. Keep it simple I say, but call out the horse shit when it stinks.

Many bad things happen to a nation when it strays off course, even just a few degrees at a time, until when years have passed and it suddenly becomes a nation unrecognisable to even its own citizens. 

 

But hey! What I really wanted to say was that despite all the poor and sometimes atrocious human behaviour going on in this world, the youth of the Games is at least a sign of Hope for us all. 

And lastly because colours are such a very important part of the 'equipe, here at L'Air de Rien', it behooves me to announce my pick for the Gold Medal for the very best looking uniform (the Kit) for the Olympics 2024.  

And the winner is Zee Fabulous French! That gorgeous blue against that white, with just a sliver of red! Qui me fait bander!!

À la prochaine!

P.S. Who will ever forget my Aussie compatriot, the breakdancer, Raygunn, about whom no one has yet found the right words.

English patience

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 26 July 2024, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm 

I have been listening to the film scores of Gabriel Yared for the past week. I can sometimes get into a composer for a time, then stop and move on. Nothing like Apple Music in this époque. So last night, feeling a little homesick for Europe I saw The English Patient for which Yared composed the score. 

A curious thought came to me while watching the opening titles, wherein a simple figure is being drawn as the credits roll, a small brush draws an almost primitive-looking, sepia-coloured figure which we will soon understand to be a copy of an elongated swimmer reproduced from a wall in an Egyptian cave. So we watch the figure begin to appear out of just a few sensually precise lines that at first resembled a Japanese calligraphic letter. 

I didn't remember this opening scene since watching the film the last time. I had loved the book, and though the film has wonderful bits in it, at times it also felt like a perfume ad but I warmed up to it last night.

So listening to his music for a few weeks now I suddenly felt like a nostalgic voyage back into my past experiences around Siena where often I stayed with an old friend at her place in Sovicille. 

Sadly, she died this past January at home there. We had had a falling out over a lot of silliness which is usually the case for these breaks. I had not seen her since about 1996 in New York. I only found out about her death from her son. I had written her a postcard because I had been thinking of her for months. Alas, she received my card about a month before dying and was too ill to respond according to her son whom I knew as a child. 

Like for the doomed lovers in The English Patient my timing was off, and I was sorry I let so many years go by before finally writing to her.  

But while watching how this 'swimmer' began to appear in the opening sequence last night I began wondering about what it means for a an artist to have a concrete idea in their head when they begin work on a piece. 

One can easily forget the magic of the moment when an image begins to appear on a page, somewhat like an old Polaroid coming slowly into focus over a few minutes.

We don't know what is going to eventually appear but the artist certainly does, either consciously or not. It's a marvellous moment that can take one instantly back in time to the amazement a young child feels in front of any form of verisimilitude. 

There is a slice of a story about a young boy who stumbles upon MichaelAngelo who was at work on a giant stone from which a lion seemed to be coming out of. He simply asked the sculptor who smiled. 

"How did you know that there was a lion in there?"

So then, I thought about my own work and wondered about just what goes on in my own mind at the time of those very first brushstrokes on a canvas board. Do I think?, Intuit?, or just wing it by blindly jumping into a picture?

I think at the start of any painting, my idea is always a pictorial one, one formed by what the sky looks like and the colours I see. So maybe I see a slow-moving but bright-coloured train and I just try to hop aboard for the ride, then who knows where it will go?

Then I tried to imagine the difficulties of working as an American Abstract Expressionist, and what might have gone on in their heads when working. Where did their pictorial ideas come from? Were they even necessary? Somehow it appears that it wasn't relevant to their process of making a painting. Was this to their detriment, or advantage?

Painting what one feels, without a premeditated  thought or idea, can be a wonderful way to work at times, but over the long haul, is one working from a window or a wall?

Anyway, Here are two things from a few nights ago. They didn't knock my socks off,,, but hey! I was happy to get out and throw paint around despite the result.

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 26 July 2024, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm 

Eyes Wide Open!

 

The New York Times came out with this wonderful article a few days ago that invited their readers to spend ten minutes looking at a painting without any distractions. They even had a digital timer planted within the article at 10 minutes for an easy experience.

Naturally I did it, and I marvelled at the experience. My biggest take away was that paintings, (as in, all figurative landscapes), are conceived and painted through the most obvious sensory portal, the artist's eyes. Consequently, paintings can only be accessed through the use of a viewer's eyes. This is the whole point of Painting though it would be easy to overlook this because so much Painting has turned conceptual. 

But here the NYT have given us an opportunity to let go of ourselves by taking a pause from politics and wars, TikTok and Youtube, Trump and Harris, and everyone should have a go at the NYT web site. It offers a rich window out of ourselves and into the world of Painting.

Just looking at a picture sounds so simple because indeed it really is, but it also takes time and a disciplined mindset. Most of us don't know how to do it in fact, but all we need is a set of eyes and an uncluttered mind. 

It after all, an adventure, a sensory one using just our eyes. After spending ten minutes looking at this small painting I was able to settle into the calm nature of the image as a whole. Suddenly all the of tiniest, seemingly inconsequential details began to hum together in silent choir. The whole picture came together more coherently and in my imagination, it seemed to throb in sync with my own heartbeat to became a single thing of visual unity like in a symphony orchestra. All my smallest perceptions melded into one sensuous entity.

And this fact reminded me of something my teacher Leo Marchutz used to always say. 

"The more the relationships in a work of art, the greater the work" 

My experience at looking at this Whistler entitled 'Nocturne in Blue and Silver', London, 1871, also allowed me to appreciate the surface 

plane of the picture. 

In a strange way, it reminded me of looking at an intricate old Turkish rug from the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul when I was there many years ago. It took several years for these craftsmen, women, and children, to complete a large rug, while Whistler painted this (I imagine) in a few hours at the most.

 

It's the unity of light that creates a good painting or any rug design because it's the light that fashions the form of any design. And the better one understands this, the better the artist.

I also became aware of the ghostly nuances of warmth and cool tones that permeate all that broken blue colour everywhere. Indeed, one sees in all that blue just how broken a colour it really is. 

Because I imagine it was done with oil paints gently washed over a coloured board, maybe a red sepia hue that was in vogue in the 19th century. Whistler used it to gently peek through the river water and offer a variation to break the surface plane.   

I came aware of the tiny lights, the more I looked at them the brighter they seemed to shine. 

Then one pulls back slightly to see it from a distance and One realises what a great picture it really is. Whistler was way ahead of his time, and this series done around the river Thames show us where his real interests lay.

Pinkie promise!!

 

This will be my last post about politics! I promise! Really! A Pinkie promise!!

But out of curiosity, I was just wondering if others out there have experienced the following phenomenon this week that goes like this: How many friends have you met up with in the past few days who actually regretted the fact that Trump's survived his assassination attempt?

It's a given that news organisations have wholeheartely disavowed this violent act as not being an option for America. But just how many people (journalists included) really feel this deeply in their hearts when it comes to Trump?

What does that say about us? In America, and many around the globe, believe that Trump is as bad as Hitler, and killing him is entirely justified. And I know a few bright people who have said that to me. But equally, though not as many, think he's a saviour.  

But many say this is an extreme situation, one that calls for extreme action (so they repeat) but I find it difficult as it raises a host of morally uncomfortable questions for me, and maybe you too? 

None of my friends voiced any concern for this scoundrel's life. They wished he had been killed so we wouldn't have to deal with him anymore. I confess that I shared this feeling in my passive way. Thus, the moral question is also raised for me personally.

I don't have a concrete response to these nuanced feelings about this event except that I've come to see to see that political violence is a destructive path for America. I have had to re-examine my first gut reaction to this assassination attempt.  

I see it now as a practical solution despite my hesitant mindset and moral weakness. It's about making a wise choice for myself, rather like sticking to a diet by not consuming foods that I know I really want to eat, but at the same time, knowing they're not good for me. More precisely, they're not helpful to my decision to respect the diet I've chosen to follow in the very first place. 

Trump Squeeze

 

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 10 June 2024, oil on canvas board, 30 x 25 cm

Will there be a place for poets in a new muscular Conservative America where its leaders have channeled fictional television stars?

While so many of us watch on with horror, the American Experience undergoes a new chapter wherein the wrench has been turned tighter to the hard right. Where will it end? Can the system withstand another round of a Trump Squeeze on our America?  

Will queer folk be carted off along with the undocumented people who pick our fruit and vegetables? Will creating Art in America return to an older and conservative postcard of America?

Like most of them, this study from almost a month ago, came quickly. We've had lots of rain for weeks on end so I've only been out to the beach sporadically. But according to the Méteo we seem to have a string of clear, crispy, and cold days ahead of us providing me with many opportunities at the beach.

But the Trump Squeeze pressing America at the moment gives me pause to reflect upon how fragile our system really is in this new world of Reality Television. Maybe it was inevitable that it came to this but nothing is a given. Look at what's happened to the poor people of Ukraine. Only eighty years ago it happened in Europe. Ouch.

The Right Wing in America (and elsewhere) is a dangerous Christian Nationalist movement that tolerates little outside of its marrow-minded boundaries. It's a kind Marxist state itself, and they must know it themselves because they try to hang that moniker on the rest of us in America. It's Trump's favourite grade school antic, accusing his adversaries of the behaviour he, himself, is guilty of himself. Ha Ha... I won't bore you anymore with this as most you all know it already. But hey! I get to vent once in a while.

I like the study above very much even if it's not great, it's mine. And in this difficult moment of gaslighting, I can at least tell the truth as I see it.    

Inside and out

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads 24 June 2024 oil on canvas board 

30 X 25 cm

 

Magnificent skies over these weeks! Seas are lovely too! I didn't initially like this study from two weeks ago when I had finished it at the beach but since then I've warmed up to it. As everyone knows, it's never easy to assess one's work just after it's been finished. Best to just stay in the flow, and later see where the river takes us.

It feels like I've spent my entire life trying to adapt myself to what's on the 'paper'; What's in the 'instruction manuel'. What I mean is that I've always been trying to learn certain things in life from the outside, as if looking in, like I need to plug myself into an external power source to charge my learning ability.

Of course, that's how many of us have learned, yet for some reason some of us never found our way back to into that intuitive space held deeply inside us after all our stints at schools and universities.

For example, when I studied piano many, many years ago (as an adult) I spent too much time trying to sort out keys and chords 'on paper', and ditto for the inversions that I dutifully copied out endlessly in order to understand them. Now, yes it's great to do this work up to a certain point, but not if it's at the expense of actually 'playing' the chords and keys to sort out what's going on for the most important audience: My ear! In Jazz, I eventually understood that 'real study' comes from learning hand positions on the piano keys not from figuring them out on 'paper'. In fact most kids have always learned from just playing in a group while driving their neighbours and family crazy until they left home to become rich and famous.

But for the rest us who studied Classical music, we are condemned to a great degree, to learn sheet music the old fashioned way. And yet in previous centuries, what we think of as 'Classical' music today, was usually just always taught orally through improvisation. Lutes, and early guitars, like a Capella, and in cultures like India, where everything was transmitted one to one, either through instruments or like stories and poems, as oral history. 

But anyway, learning to paint cannot be approached any other way than to just paint. One can study colour theory till they're blue in the face, but unless they get messy with colour on a palette they probably won't get very far. 

I recently told my friend, Daniela, who has started painting this year, to make a copy of a Van Gogh to see what she could learn. In today's world, copying a Van Gogh is one of the best ways to learn about colour. 

But Non-Figurative Abstract Painters will hate even just the idea of this because it means getting their hands dirty! Ha Ha. But also, because it will prove to be really difficult, and it might disclose to them just how inept they really are when confronted with the basic craft that makes up Painting; that of colour and drawing. 

So one needs an inside, and outside, to be an artist. Here, for fun, is a magnificent early portrait by Van Gogh, who is a great example of an artist who held onto his intuitive skills whilst at the same time learning the exacting craft of Painting. 

Curvy is cool

Elliptical bliss! This screenshot came from the NYT months ago and with my apologies to the photographer, whom I don't credit here. It's from an Art Book Fair in Paris if I remember correctly.

But let's be honest, doesn't it look so French!  I cannot add to it, it's just really cool, and so far outside of linear thinking.

The image of the curved table below was also clipped off from somewhere,,,, but alas, I don't remember from where. I'm a huge fan of screenshots and use them all over the place, but because I am so poorly-organised they jitterbug higgledy-piggledy at their own leisure across my laptop and are hard to find when I need them them. What can one do? I do remember though, that it was from an article about Dining Solutions, and I think it was about Mexico. 

Basically, I'm finally at a pretty satisfied place in my life. Today I live in a glorified industrial shed, outfitted like a home but a shed no less. It's funky and crowded with too many paintings but it's home, my own. One thing that makes it really warm is the old wooden floor I built into it, and so it has a graceful feeling to it too. And because I built every bit of it with help from different 'tradies' as they are affectionally called here in Australia. I know every square millimetre of the house.

But I'm here, and today I'm happy because my preference is to "want what I have" in my life instead of always "having what I want". At my age I'm no longer a collector of anything. And yet when I saw this curvy table, I kind of melted and thought to myself; "How very cool". So, despite the fact that I have few dinner parties here in Australia I know that one day I'll have a table like this, made for me.

But honestly, the secret truth is that a successful and intimate dinner has only to do with the host and the guests, not the table nor even the food. Many will no doubt disagree with me, but a great dinner can be made on a cheap metal table, a few cans of sardines, a salad, some wine and sparkling water with some good bread (and cheese). But what is absolutely essential is to be surrounded by pretty cool people who have good values, a great sense of humour, and a deep cultural curiosity about everything in life. What a table to be nestled into with such a crowd! 

And really, who doesn't love the curve? Isn't it just Nature's way of making us all smile?

And anyway, curves are everywhere, from Diego Velázquez to Zaha Hadid's magnificent London Aquatic Center designed for the 2012 Olympics.

But in truth, I was never a curvy or a cool kind of guy. I have always revered the crisp honesty of the square and rectangle, a manmade abstraction ripe for making paintings. But to be honest, I've always been a vertical square! OK, a rectangle maybe because I'm on the tall side. And I'll admit that for most of my life, I've been a really uptight guy who needed control, something to hang onto, anything to kill that insecurity that's lived deep in the depths of me like a jelly fish. But if there is one thing that cannot be controlled it's the cool curve, and like Life, it goes where it wants to. 

But I've always been suspicious of the curve for another reason; Too many ugly and sentimental things have been fashioned from it since the beginning of time.

I've hated the copy-cat mentality of trying to imitate Nature's squirrelly designs out in the architectural and commercial worlds. Tree trunk lamps, (!) for instance, make me quite nauseous. But it's also the Steiner-inspired homes that have galvanised hippies the world over to recreate these awful, awkward shaped dwellings that I find equally dreadful. Honestly, if I wanted to live like a hobbit I would just go to New Zealand. Face it, I'm just a square.

  

Proust, Aurelius, Seinfeld!

Increasingly I've come to understand that Marcel Proust was way ahead of his time in so many ways. He was one of the first successful Post-Modernist writers to have understood the importance of exploiting his own shortcomings and indulgences to a serious world through his solipsistic prose form. 

Although Marcus Aurelius had written about a practice of stoic virtues centuries before him, Proust appears to have applied it to a modern, worldly, life-style with his lengthy tome, In Search of Lost Time. He predicted before it was fashionable, a life predicated upon the virtues of curiosity and creativity, of just keeping our senses alive and useful only for the sake of owning our own lives for better or for worse.

It occurred to me recently that perhaps the genius of a sitcom like Seinfeld is that it follows in this tradition à la Proust, of solipsistic reverie and delight in the belief of redemption through pleasure and curiosity. Though their characters were not exactly epicurean nor cultured, they tried hard for success in Manhattan despite their obvious flaws mostly those fueled by their own divine ignorance. 

And despite the cynical and slightly adversarial overtures towards others, the Seinfeld crew were generally decent but crazed people who were just looking for gratification like the rest of us. The genius of this sitcom reveals how a quartet of hapless, selfish, and lazy New Yorkers who thrived despite their flaws and still have fun. The more they showed off their worst sides the more we loved them for it.

(What has this got to do with anything?)

Nothing, Ha Ha, but the winter skies have been really spectacular lately and they have afforded me loads of pleasurable fun these late afternoons. 

Yet it's true that lately, I've been aware of how much I use this word fun. I paint for fun, as I tell people, and I play piano for fun too, ditto for when I play tennis. In fact, at my age, I try to avoid anything that does not bring me a bit of fun. But when life brings me sour cherries I'm not the least bit sour towards the world at large. And that, my friends, is what I have learned from Marcus Aurelius. In fact his own tome, aptly entitled Meditations, had a great effect upon me when I read it day by day over a year. 

But, anyway, here at the beach indeed, there are lots of people looking for pleasure (and fun) and finding it everywhere. This is after all, Australia where there is no complex about being happy. These are beach walkers, surfers, and a hardy bathers who jump into the cold ocean at dusk in winter time. Dogs too, happy, of course, and there are plenty of kids laughing and playing on the sand. Small families can be seen far down the beach, and this reassures the rest of us, those slightly pessimistic amongst us who have difficulty in imagining any kind of future for humanity.

But, tonight is the Winter Solstice and the waxing Gibbous moon is at 99.2% which is essentially full, though not technically, because according to the calendar, the moon will be officially full tomorrow on the 22nd of June. Dr Google tells me that a full moon falls on the Winter solstice only once every 19 years. 

Alas, I'm also a bit of a moon watcher because it affects the colour of the twilight 'Bloom' as I like to call it. This means that it's more difficult to paint on the few days leading up to a full moon due to the excess light that can kill this marvelous 'Bloom'. So, I'm up on this 'moon thing', and my phone is quite used to me looking up the 'moon phases of Byron Bay Australia' to verify my plans for painting at the beach. I can secretly be quite organised sometimes actually.

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 19 June 2024, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

This, from the other night reveals the craziness of the visual world, at least from the point of view of a painter. On a night like this  I barely seem to have the time to think, it feels like every time I raise my head up from the palette the colours have shifted slightly (towards intensity) as the earth approaches the evening hour. Like a caterpillar the colours appear to obey the slow and patient heartbeats of the earth's rotation. 

Me, I remain firmly fixed upon the sandy dune where I work for these sessions. There is nothing to do but follow the Arcadian ritual using a few paintbrushes as magic wand. 

Today, I wonder to myself as I write this; just how many painters have tried to follow this celestial rite? Am I the only fool?