Mellow Squish

 

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 9 February 2025, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Two pictures came out of the other night. It had been a quiet sky with little personality, and this put me off immediately. Although I initially felt stuck, I made the best of it as I've learned to do.

It can put me in an unpleasant state when I get to the beach and don't like what I see. This happens more than I'd like to admit. But hey! I always find a solution, not only for the problematic sky, but also to my intense dissatisfaction. In both cases I simply invent what I need to, and this usually works. 

It's hard to be angry at Nature, let's face it. It's like being angry at a loved one, I mean, how long can one hold out? Don't we always need to relent to find any peace? We cannot always be in a state of dissatisfaction can we?  "That would be a lot of heavy energy", as my cousin Jeannie would say. So it is with me for just about everything in my life; Let it be,,, like the Beatles sang. 

But then, (as it usually happens) things change. And so the sky eventually softened, (like me) and it quietly morphed into more muted tones and shapes. I began this first study as small clouds lazily rolled through and in a complete reversal of mood, I found myself wanting to freely play like a kid in a sand box.  

This is what came out, to my surprise. But to be honest, this only happened it because the sky opened itself up to me and allowed me in. Indeed, it appeared to even welcome me unto itself like giant doors of a church in medieval France. If it hadn't gone through this set of doors, I would've certainly made another kind of image, possibly one much less friendly-looking than this.  

I really love its gentle spontaneity of forms which make up the sky. Looking at it today, I'm surprised that it appears as coherent as it looks when I think of my confused state while painting it. How quickly things can turn around I thought to myself. But I did sense that there was something in it that seemed to have been conjured up from the playful child within me. That is what is always so remarkable about creativity in any way, or form. I wonder if Alexander Calder had been a serious painter, might he have made an image that looked something like this?

By the time I selected another canvas board the sky had indeed mellowed considerably and I had also gained confidence from the first study. 

It's quite simple (unlike me) and the sweet colours of confection seem to scold me for my prior displeasure at the sky. It also apparently answers my age-old secret-longing to be a pastry chef. But I really like it, flat as a pancake and full of colour. And like after a fight with a lover, any hard feelings were transformed into a soft opening, one that in painterly terms, could be called a resolution. 

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 9 February 2025, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Que sera, sera

From Venice, an old photo I took of my very favourite creature in the whole wide world. It is one of two lions that stand guard at the entrance to the Arsenal. Many years later, I found out that they are Italian copies of the original Greek lions from Delos, I believe, but no matter, because I love this guy to death. This kind-looking fellow has followed me everywhere and has decorated fridges and sat inside kitchen drawers, but also propped up on a few desks, and even taped to a piano back in France years ago. I think he was also a kind of inspiration for all the sketchy animals I would later use to decorate ceramic cups, bowls and plates.

circa 1988

                    circa 1988

When I would visit Venice years ago while living in France, I paid homage to him by making hundreds of drawings. I've come to understand that he expresses something of my own personality. It's a look of quiet resignation, and it's for that reason I share it today. 

The insanity of the first three weeks of dumb Trump has made us numb. To be fair, most of my friends and neighbours are down-right angry, but me less so. I refuse to lose my sanity, or any serenity I do possess in my life for this nutty and dangerous period. 

Like my lion-hearted friend I'm resigned to four years of this swing to the Right, as scary as it seems. I do understand that many people around the globe are getting hurt because of these abrupt changes but to worry about it doesn't do me any good, nor the world. It's true that like everyone I was depressed, then angry, but now, like I said, I'm just resigned to the awful reality of this fact. I will find humour in it, and thankfully, push-back seems to be coming. Que sera, sera.

All these crazy and absurd caricatures is right out of MAD magazine, for any of you of a certain age who can remember it. This morning I awakened to the news that Dennis the Menace has fired half the Board of Trustees for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and he intends to install himself as the Chairman! Our dear leader of this orange culture and humanity mused on his media:

“At my direction, we are going to make the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., GREAT AGAIN,”

"....immediately terminate multiple individuals from the Board of Trustees, including the Chairman, who do not share our Vision for an Orange Age in Arts and Culture.”

“We will soon announce a new Board, with an amazing Chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP.”

So there we are folks. 

In the meantime, here are two more studies from last week. The days are sometimes clear, but storms often appear most evenings so the painting sessions are a bit dicky, like they say in Britain.... 

But honestly, a painting session for me has developed into a kind of a therapy session over the past few years under both Democrat and Republican rule. This is how it should always be, just a habit and a hobby. Maybe it's like fishing or tennis.

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 21 January 2025, oil on canvas board 30 X 25 cm

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 21 January 2025, oil on canvas board 30 X 25 cm

 

Saps in the White House

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 21 January 2025, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 21 January 2025, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Finally the rains have abated a bit and I got out for a lovely bloom the other day. Here are two of four, all of which gave me enormous pleasure. No doubt, Painting is a therapy, as are other activities one loves and for which one has a certain aptitude. For me it could also easily be a night of tennis though my tennis skills are not as accomplished as Painting. But it's really about about exerting a love for something that is deeply personal, a unique relationship that cannot be for anyone else even though millions of other people exercise both these activities. Joy seems to always come first from one's own heart, even if it then spreads (hopefully) outward like ripples on pond.

Like many, many people around the globe, I've been shell-shocked by the new administration, because like a bull in a china shop, the new American president feels to many of us like a delusional emperor from the 12th century. 

I will confess one thing about him that I love, and that is that he loves Golf so much, he is willing to lose money on his clubs and courses around the world. I admire this because being an artist and living in a world that seems to have little interest in Art (except as a parking spot for speculators to park money) I love every kind of passionate hobby and vocation in the world but especially those of Art and Sport. Although I don't play golf, I have played enough to appreciate the useless beauty of it. The world needs more beauty (useless or not) through of its faces. 

But as we move into a new world order we (we, who are privileged enough to own cars) must buckle up our seatbelts for the bumpy rides ahead. I do believe that that we will survive this awful despot, along with all his Right Wing Pinocchios, yet America may also never be the same again. This is natural because it feels like our lives are spinning faster than ever before, but you know what? We'll survive somehow and soon we'll laugh and smile again when we have put on our army boots to resist.  We'll see what we need to do, then fight back for all that is good and noble in America. The bean-counting simpletons and the White Nationalist fascists have tried to steal this country many times before without long-lasting damage. We actually do come back stronger when we see these ignoble bigots try to curtail our freedoms. As Harari explains in the book whose title I show below, a nation is but an idea, it's just an empty shell of a thing until it's filled out by the ideals of its citizenry.   

This is why Art and Joy, which are strapped together like siamese twins, are so important during this turbulent chapter we're undergoing.  

I am currently listening to a fascinating book by Yuval Noah Harari. I recommend it to others, who like me, might have failed both Geography and History classes back in grammar school but who still loved Geography and History all the same. 

 

Luigi Mangione for President!

This an artwork made by a local here in the Northern Rivers which was posted on Facebook last week. If you don't recognise him, (which I didn't at first) it's the guy who murdered the United HealthCare executive by shooting him in the back last month in New York.

I know this local person through Facebook and Instagram only. She is not a 'real friend' but a digital one yet she did write me a DM once, a very kind note complimenting me on the work that I post on both sites. I was familiar with her site which exhibited a clever but humanist vibe, though with a slightly harsh take on men. But I can handle that because men, well, can be truly awful at times. 

She wrote me that my work 'cheered her up' so naturally I imagined she was a thoughtful and caring human being. But when I saw this portrait she had made of this murderer I was not only surprised but also disappointed that a woman whom I had always understood to preach the practice of empathy and kindness on her site, would somehow stoop to the glorification of this murder of a man walking to work in the early morning. 

Yes, I know, I know, the internet has lit up with support for this (alleged) killer, he is popular with women, along with a Go-Fund-Me page and expressions of lust and love for him. But like what we saw on January 6th, it was all recorded on video for the world to see. There is no disputing this act of a cold-blooded murder. (On a side note, if he had been  a fat, small and balding guy, would anyone have been made 'Hay' over all this?)

I live in The Northern Rivers near Byron Bay. It's a chronically hip New Age kind of place where everyone does yoga and regularly attends chanting and meditation retreats, etc,,, etc,,, It's a 'special place' like so many other hot yoga spots around the world where people actively advertise their higher state of consciousness. 

So, I ask; what has happened to us that 'kind' and otherwise 'thoughtful' people exalt the murder of an insurance executive half-way around the world because we deem him unworthy to live?

Where is the empathy, compassion, and concern for this guy's family? Sure, he may have been the bean-counting CEO of a deceitful company that routinely screws Americans through the denial of benefits and services that effectively send their sick clients to the morgue via a slow death. It's company whose reputation routinely makes life miserable for millions of ordinary Americans.

But, if any executive of any company can be executed in broad daylight to the delight of millions, where does it end? Why stop there? Why not kill everyone everywhere who we suspect are linked up with malffeasance? If we did, lots and lots of people around the world would die meaningless and shameful deaths. And for what? Who gives some of us the right to kill others who some believe deserve to die? Are we moving back to the 9th century by choice or ignorance?

What I find really upsetting is that all of the supporting comments on the subsequent post threads that fully support the murder like it's an extension of the film series 'The Purge' on Netflix. This tells me that many in the community find murder, as a solution, to be completely acceptable in selective cases. Whew... Apparently, lots of people in America also do too because now we've all been freed from any measured or moral restraint. Good people are being displaced by internet trolls, it's the wave of the future.

Not wanting to get into a food fight online, I didn't comment on the thread. I thought hard about it but I realised I'm not interested in provoking trolls, or attempting to change their opinions on a Facebook or Instagram thread. Silence is my choice of operation both in life or online. So, I simply unfollowed her because I'm not here on earth to change anyone's mind. Sadly, The Northern Rivers community is apparently just like everywhere else now. Trolls and conspiracists push the boundaries of what 'polite society' could hitherto bear. Apparently, people now don't practice what they pretend to live out in their own daily lives. That is a great shame.

Taxi

 

          The Bernie Madoff dollar, (only for suckers)  by T Coffey for Digital Mischief

(another reprint from October 2009)

I got a call from my old friend Frank who I have known for a million years. We went to elementary school together. We speak often (souvent) and its usually to  bitch about the state of the world. It seems pretty easy to do these days. 

The French, believe it or not, also have this wonderful (merveilleux) reputation for bitching and moaning, as well as for being argumentative and self-righteous. I understand this now having here lived (ici) so much of my life. And France, of course, as anyone who has ever been here, knows, just how little it has going for itself.


One could experiment: 


Suppose for example (par example), an American finds himself on a street in Paris exclaiming to a frenchman:


"Ah,,, its so wonderful here in France!" (Ah, c'est merveilleux ici!)


This would certainly trigger off the 'allergy' as it were, and to which the frenchmen would invariably retort: 


"Ah... you think so?,... well, let me tell you: its too expensive, the government is rotten (pourri), the taxes (les impots) are too high, and no one wants to work!" (travailler!) 


If, on the other hand, you had initially said to him:


"Listen (ecoutez) ... France stinks, its too expensive (cher), the air is dirty (sale) and the Parisians are rude!"


In this case, he would inevitably lurch his head high and begin to tell you "what an idiot (imbecile) that you are, Paris is the most beautiful city in the world, if not the Universe, not only that (en plus), he would tell you that you dress like shit (comme la merde) and eat like shit (ditto)!!!"


Ah!! zee french!


But back to Frank, who lives on an island by the way, he is ranting and raving,  going on and on about how screwy thing have gotten in our life time. Youth has gone crazy etc, etc... I was sympathizing from across the ocean when finally he stopped, and after a pause, he said:


"Hey, you remember when we were young (jeune) and we'd get into a taxi in New York, and we'd hear some older guy going on and on about how life 'just wasn't the same anymore',.... everything is just a 'damn mess!' (la pagaille), and how we'd look at each other, and how we'd jump out at the next corner laughing because we were young, and because we could! Do you remember that?"


I nodded into the telephone.


"Well,.... NOW, I'M that cab driver, that old guy bitching and moaning!"

El Nina, weathering emotions

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

These are two pictures from the very last week of the year 2024. This was the first, on top, and I like it the best. It's funny because it only took a few quick minutes, and lucky for me that I was able to say STOP! So, thus I have been able to save an interesting study, one which reveals something that I really wanted to express.

I've always heard writers say that it can take several pages in a writing session each day before they come upon what they really need to say. In Painting too, though the time frame may not be the same, this rings true because an idea  only comes forth realistically when a painter begins working. OKAY, this might not work for everyone whose working process is more calibrated and planned out, but it does work for me in the kind of images I'm after.

I like this top one especially because I see a future in it. How else can I put it? I see something elusive, something that's deep inside me yet at the same time, I recognise it completely like a long lost twin from whom I have been separated at a young age. But maybe too, it's like those lucky people who fall in love easily and seem to always be finding their 'other halves' at the next lunch counter. 

In any case, for an artist (like me), it's not an object of desire, it's more like another piece of the jig-saw puzzle hitherto hidden deeply within me only to surface suddenly and find a home on my own personal visual map of life. But it' not a cerebral thing, it's profoundly emotional. 

I wrote this yesterday but this morning I found myself thinking further about this idea of how deep feelings inside of us can rise to the surface and steer our work in unusual directions. I’m sure this happens to everyone in all walks of life but I only address this for myself. I think artists must be like the miners of yesteryear, the ones who put on their steel hats with small lights and dug with a pick and shovel into the earth for months and years before hitting anything of value. Lots of dirt but few rubies or sapphires.   

All this came to me while practicing piano last night as I was thinking about how my own feelings seem to only be changed through taking right actions as the Wise Buddha guys from the East have always told us. This is to say, practically speaking, that I can act my way into right thinking but I can never think my way into right action. 

This has taken me long years to understand and to also implement into my own behaviour. And still, I don't always get it right.

It thus came to me that only through a long experience of working at a craft or vocation can I be really sure that these ‘feelings’ coming up are of any real value in the long run. This subconscious process is arduous and comes through lots of work for these are not just random emotions flailing about me like butterflies on a walk through a field. They come up like volcanic eruptions, and they can be powerful and even dangerous in the wrongs hands. Just witness all the murders, and ignoble acts that go on in the world each and everyday. But unlike those, these are creative emotions for my own work that can be trusted as personally legitimate for me alone to use freely and with no harm to anyone else. 

So, I read that EL NINA is making another return to the Asia Pacific region. That makes four out of the past five years that it has reappeared. This means, of course, lots of rain and storms along the Eastern Seaboard of Australia. It's cooler, which is great because 28 degrees is a far cry from 33 degrees celsius. So though it makes painting excursions to the beach slightly more complicated, I don't mind, as anything is better than that awful hot, dry summer that's been on the menu for eternity here DownUnder.

      

This one below, a subtle variant of the first, came immediately afterward, it's OKAY, but I cannot fall in love with it like the one on top. It's another idea, but one with less 'space' in it. It does have space, yes, but just not an 'infinite' space like exists in the first image.  Maybe this is a personal take that cannot be communicated. But for a painter like me, space is the place, like they say. Once in a blue moon, even such a small picture can elicit the vast dome of sky overhead. 

But Hey! As my Uncle Morty used to say up in Yonkers; "Another day, another dollar!"

Evening Prayer Brunswick heads, 26 December 2024. oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

 

Happy New Year from l'air de rien!

Happy New Year to everyone all far and wide, clever and not so, lovers of Art and less so. Be healthy too, but also be a little crazy this next year for L'air de rien loves you all, somewhat equally!

What a world it was this past year. Whew.... If ever there were a God who took the time to look after this earth, I imagine she would shrug her slender shoulders and sigh softly. 

"What can we do about humankind?" 

She thinks to herself. 

"When they come up to see me at the end of their lives, I always ask each of them the following question:

"So, how was heaven?"

"Most them (usually the adults) look at me dumbfounded, but the children always smile and say "It was great!!" 

But here on earth, I just keep working at the beach most afternoons. Perhaps these pictures don't change much, as a friend once noted to me, but I don't worry, I just show up there like an old miner, hoping that tomorrow will bring me an emerald or a ruby. Either one would make my day but in the meantime, there's always a lot of paint to mix and apply. I never know what'll happen out there but it's a lot better than being in Kiev, or Gaza, or so many other God-forsaken places around the globe. What’s the matter with us that we put clowns and villains into office like Trump and Putin? This is on us.

But here anyway, the show goes on, as they say. We've had a lot mercurial skies over the past months which I appreciate, though it has sometimes kept me from getting to the beach. So far the weather hasn't been super hot or humid but I expect it'll arrive soonish. 

The top and bottom pictures were both re-painted as I had brought a few older canvas boards that displeased me from last year's crop. Of course, the point of these sessions is to 'nail them' in one session but I don't always so I like it when I can do. But as ever painter knows, pictures, like toddlers, don't always come forth when called. But hey!

So, I may now begin re-working many older paintings which 'Father Time' has told me aren’t as good as I had thought. So when the sky looks promising I'll continue taking older boards out with me to see what can be done to them.

At any rate, this top one initially repelled my effort and it began sinking just like my heart and I was just about to lather it up with some gooey-looking colours from the palette to surrender, when rather miraculously, I managed to make some pull something from it so I left it and packed up my things in the dark. I looked at it the next day, and despite its mess, I kind of liked it. 

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 23 December 2024, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 23 December 2024, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

             Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 23 December 2024, oil on  canvas board, 30 X 25 cm
 

A reprint, yes, once in a while I have to do it

 

First published November 2014

09 November 2014

Ki no Tsurayuki

'Poetry in Japan begins with the human heart as its seed and myriad words as its leaves. It arises with when (sic) people are inspired by what they see and hear to give voice to the feelings that come forth from the multitude of events in their lives. The singing of warblers in the blossoms, the voices of frogs in the ponds, these all teach us that every creature on earth sings. It is this song that effortlessly moves heaven and earth, evokes emotions from the invisible gods and spirits, harmonizes the relations of men and women, and makes serene the hearts of brave warriors.'

from the introduction to the Kokinshū, an anthology containing twenty books of poetry (A.D. 915 -920).

  Its color fading
with no outward sign
  in this world-
the flower
of the human heart.

Ono no Komachi (A.D. 834 - 880).

I wonder why so much celebrated 'avant-garde', 'cutting-edge' Western art of our time seems to mock and denigrate Beauty? Would it not be possible instead, to shock people by Beauty in this world instead of by its horrors? I do not speak of a sentimentalisation in front of Nature (of which we are also inundated to an awful degree) but of finding a way through to Beauty using metaphor which comes so naturally to many Japanese poets and artists. How can we (in the West) learn to show reverence for Nature, to find amazement in it, without usual denigration of it? Moreover, can we do this without employing a sentimentalisation of it?

Christmas !

           Christ, Via Dolorosa , lithograph (1960s)

 

This is a print from a limited edition of lithographs made by my teacher and mentor, Léo Marchutz back in the 1960's. I've always loved it and it has been lodged somewhere in the base of my brain as a model of what could be possible in the wonderful world of drawing.

It fits into a difficult category of work because it is too 'abstract', perhaps even messy, for some viewers of art, yet for others, it is decidedly too realist. That it is a 'religious' figure like Christ makes it even more problematic. But hey!

The 1960's in France was the beginning of a period of POP art after a brief chapter of Surrealism that reigned supreme after the war.

Léo worked alone and separate from any 'ism'. Self-taught, he developed a unique way of transferring drawings made on paper onto the limestone and ready to be inked up and printed. 

Once transferred 'into' the soft stone he was able to pull as many prints as he wished. He made hundreds of prints in this manner over two decades. Using specially made rollers, often very thin, he laboriously rolled out each part of the drawing with different colours so that he could make just one run through the press and avoid crushing the paper with numerous passes. To arrive at the right colours  he actually mixed oil paints to get exactly what he wanted. This seemed to work out well as industrialised colours were limited.

I wasn't around in those days because I had not yet arrived in Aix for University until 1972. He lent me one of his wooden litho presses and a few dozen stones and taught me lithography. I had a studio on the west side of Aix for about two years until I lost interest in it and fell in love with Painting. 

But it's the drawing of Christ that interests me the most for it's extraordinary. The expression  is spontaneous yet so well realised. Funny enough, I would have certainly loved to see many of his drawings he threw out in order to get to get to this one of Christ. 

He drew incessantly during the 1940's, and 1950's. I'm not sure about the 1960's because he was printing all the drawings. I only knew him the last four years of his life, and by then he was still working on his large paintings made from drawings in the studio.

Anyway, this drawing for me was a watershed moment because it opened up a whole world of possibilities for me. It switched me onto the chaotic world working quickly out in a crowd which led me to drawing trips to Vietnam and Morocco and in cafes everywhere. 

Though infinitely inferior to Léo's Christ, I took from him (and later Albert Marquet) an idea of working outdoors. This drawing doesn't even really work at all but I loved the feeling it at that time almost twenty years ago..

Time flies as we all know, so make a great Christmas for yourselves and don't forget two things: Get a great hobby in life, and give away not only whatever wisdom you've acquired but also, and most especially, all your love to others.

 

Monet at the beach!

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

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

The weather has been flunky these past few weeks and I haven't been out to paint at the beach as much as I would have liked. These are from last month, and they look Okay. 

This evening I went out to see what the sky looked like. It was really amazing but I didn't paint, I jumped in the sea instead. I didn't believe in it, but by the time I was out in the waves I could see that it was going to be really lovely. It was too late to change course, and yet, sometimes it is a great thing to be in the sea and just watch the sky. It's different than when I'm set up to paint because I not watching, but looking which is more intense.

I could only describe the sky as broken at several altitudes so that at sunset the various levels of clouds and colours were different. The clouds themselves were then consequently all very different shapes as well. High cirrus strands, the last thin angel hairs were golden. the pudgy line of low cumulus clouds resembled those Brillo scouring balls used to clean pots and pans were deep violet. Above them was a creme-coloured green backdrop that stretched into the cirrus cloud above. Well,,,, because I don't generally believe in photographed skies it didn't occur to me to capture it.  

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

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 6 November 2024 oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

              Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 6 November 2024 oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm
 

Three beads that save a world

People will no doubt disagree with me but I think this is one of Matisse's more grand and compelling pictures. Granted in his large oeuvre there is a lot to choose from, but this one speaks to his poetic and daring faith in a picture's thirst for a spontaneous but unified surface. I like everything about it, from the colour harmonies to the organisation, to how each part appears to interlock with another like in a lego project.

Somehow, I imagine this picture would enrage feminists everywhere. A nude woman opens up her legs to a male voyeur who doesn't even acknowledge her identity! No visage! Sacré Bleu! Because context is everything for so many viewers of Art (and politics) these days, I think poor Henri would not come out very well, especially in America.

Being a painter, I don't place context high up on my list of criteria for appreciating a painting. I'm a lover of the subtle and unified grace in a picture with almost no attention to any context concerning it.

I marvel at how each of these colours come together as objects. Each one takes its appropriate place within each object it assumes. I love the two pinks that monopolise the entire surface. The warm pink for the woman's body, and the cool, not only for the nightgown, but also for the walls of the room. Is the floor red? Or is it a rug? Or is that a golden rug? Is that a green door or green window? Is that a small blue cupboard in the distance? Do any of these 'things' in a picture even have to do, or be anything at all? What if a painting just surprises us but its mystery?

My real beef with the Non-Figurative, or Abstract genre of Painting, in this era of ours, is that I almost never see any paintings that possess a sufficient cohesion of relationships as to make an image even remotely believable.  

So much painting usually appears mushy with poor light sources, and is scattered about randomly. To call it Light isn't even possible because it's usually Lighting, like used in a photo shoot. Without a natural light source how can form exist? And without that, how can colours then exist?

I love Matisse for so many reasons, too long to list and expound upon here, but it's primarily because, over his lifetime, he was an unabashed explorer into the wild jungles of the Plastic Arts. When he hit it, for he did a lot, it was solely because he painted so prolifically and by that account the odds were in his favour. He was a constant gardner producing every sort of edible in each season.

He worked tirelessly and faced a continual uphill battle against a mercurial and mistrustful public. And, like almost every painter he made some truly awful pictures at times but I love him for all his experimentations that encompass an exceptionally wide set of styles and materials. He was up for for everything it seems. Even towards his end, when ill in bed, he made cut-outs with coloured paper shapes using a pair of scissors.

But in this painting, I think the most important element is the small necklace made of just three dark coloured beads. Are they deep blue/grey or black? For me, they are the keys around which everything else revolves. The strong accents represented by these small three 'beads', perhaps without which the entire surface of the picture might suffer, are pivotal. Somehow they seem to act like tiny batteries that keep the entire picture moving around itself in a slow docile movement.  

In Chiaroscuro terms, they present the strongest accents in the painting which they permit him to use all those surrounding pale, bleached pinks everywhere.

The great display of foliage placed behind the model in the form of an indoor house plant is a brilliant and anodyne solution for creating a passageway over to the deep green door (?) on the right, or is it a window (?) hallway (?) whatever it is, no problem because it there to set off the red (tile?) floor. 

This is a painting that delights its viewers but does so without making a big fuss about it. In it, everything reposes. 

 

As an afterthought, and because I like upsetting people, I include a de Kooning just for fun. It's from a later period in his long life, and certainly not one of his better pictures for which I apologise to his fans, but I picked it out on Dr Google because it's a model painted in a somewhat similar situational place like the Matisse, and as a oil painting I find it dreadful.

While Matisse opened himself up to a visual window of the world, de Kooning, by contrast, appeared to close himself off from it. It's as though he only seemed to pretend to look at the model, because for me, the result explains that he didn't even see her in the first place.

I will be crucified for criticising a god like de Kooning, but honestly, who cares? I think that as critical space has expanded between today and the world of yesterday, it's clear that the Expressionist movement, barely some eighty odd years old, is actually another weak link in the long history of Art. It certainly did not add much to the rich history of Painting, nor was it a lighthouse for the next generation. In many ways it was an myopic diversion away from everything that many have loved and cherished in Painting for centuries. 

Specifically, when comparing it to the Matisse, look at the random ad-hoc and irrelevant way he used colour and placed his model in the picture. The colour is all wrong, was it meant as a joke? There is no light in it all, it's a horror show, and no contextual gibberish can prop it upright with ArtSpeak.

To be fair, it looks like it may have been painted at night because of the garish overuse of yellow paint. This comes from working from artificial light. It has lighting but no luminosity. Honestly, the more I look at it the more ridiculous it really appears. Yes, he made some interesting pictures in his life but no. I don't think many of them stand up to time. 

something fun for dark times!

I don't know about you but I find the atmosphere in and around the world so awful after the American election that has put a criminal in the White House. It's progressively appalling because the entire crime family expands with all his appointments.

Sacré Bleu! Quoi faire? We civilised people ask to our friends. How can this thing have happened to the greatest democracy in the world?

Well, it's probably 'karma', 'payback', 'hubris', etc, etc,,. We've meddled in so many elections around the world that went pear-shaped

because of us that we are no better than our European cousins across the pond. But hey!

So here are several of my absolute faves that have hung around my desktop for ages. This top one is the creation of a clever person here around Byron Bay. It was an installation at the local cinema a few years back. My brother is the fellow with the long hair in the chair. I loved this set of oversized balloons in suspiciously feminine colours more suited for a lingerie shop. But it works well in an otherwise nondescript but pleasant waiting lounge at the Palace cinema.     

I love this piece below by Sean Scully. It's clever and colourful, something that escapes me when I see many of his paintings.

 

Sean Scully

I wish I knew where this red balloon was jammed into a thin street between two brick buildings. It could be in London, possibly Amsterdam or Berlin? Anyway, we need more of these things.

Below, is a piece by the 'enfant terrible' of Los Angeles. Personally, I don't care much for Paul McCarthy's work. It's usually on the vulgar side of the sunny Californian street. It's the work of someone who did too much LSD. I don't get his work maybe because I haven't done drugs in a long time. And yet, here in the Place Vendôme he erects a butt plug as a Christmas tree decoration that infuriated Parisians. It's a double entendre which I think is slightly brilliant. I think for a four week installation it's not just tolerable but kind of cool. And though I can sometimes appreciate these narcissistic artists, in the end, he's a very, very bad boy and probably needs a stiff spanking!

Paul McCarthy

On the other hand I really love this clothes pin, I think for a parc in Switzerland but I'm probably wrong. It's green and civilised like the Swiss I believe. I do know that it's part of a golf course near one of the fairways. Nice!

Mehmet Ali Uysal

So the moral of the tale is to be curious despite all the dreadful things going on in the world. Vivre la création!