Spinach Omelette

31 December 2023

Spinach Omelette

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 28 December 2023, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

So Christmas is over now, and we welcome the New Year, and like most people I call into my dear, and close extended family of friends to say hello. 

One of them is Bernard Tessier (AKA Poussey K.) who  owns the Châteaunoir just outside of Aix. I check in with him every few weeks and because he’s an analogue kind of guy he doesn't have a mobile phone. I have to call his old telephone at home and catch him around lunch time when I know he’ll be there. When we chat I ask about everyone which invariably leads to general gossip and secrets which he freely passes on to us all because the one thing you can say about gossip is that it cannot be hoarded. In Provence they say that a secret is something you can only tell one person at a time. Naturally, this gives us a broad lattitude for our dicussions. He not only knows everyone in and around Le Tholonet, but also in Aix too. Who’s suing who, who’s sleeping with whom? That sort of thing. “Are the nightingales there yet?”  I ask timidly ,,, “and how are those wild boars? and the deer?” "and how are your small mésanges?" which he feeds and are chickadees in English. What we both love about them is that apparently mate for life.   

The other night when we spoke I pushed him further back in time towards his family connections which often I like to do. He’s coming up on eighty now and like everyone his age, he loves to talk about the past. I asked if he remembered a second cousin from his father’s side whom I had met 50 years ago when I had first moved into the Château. “Oh, she died a long time ago”, he told me quickly. I figured this because it was indeed a very long time ago, even the both of us. Already, by then, she must have been a woman in her 70’s by then. I asked if he remembered when she had last come to see the Château on a spring afternoon. I had been sitting with a friend Alan, in my kitchen when Poussy K was leading a trio of elderly people around the courtyard in which the famous bust of Cezanne that his grandmother had cast in bronze was mounted upon a stone plinth. As they walked around my place, one of them poked their head into the kitchen where we were sitting, and Poussey K introduced us to his aunt. They apparently lived in the North of France. I invited them all in for tea. His aunt was wide-eyed and very curious about seeing everything on her visit. She was a very handsome woman of a certain age and one could see she would have certainly been a great beauty in her day. I made them tea and she began regaling us with stories. I slowly understood that she wanted to visit the Château for perhaps the last time in her life. She remembered my kitchen that had once been a set of rooms where Cezanne left his materials between painting excursions around the property. Poussey K’s grandmother who was a very skilled sculptor, was one of the very few people around Aix who actually believed in Cezanne and saw his greatness. She befriended him, and he apparently had free rein of the place to come and go as he pleased. He certainly made good use of it by painting everywhere on the property, even up to Bibemus quarry where he made a monumental series of pictures at the end of his life. There also are numerous pictures of the Château from several vantages points in the forest. All these pictures are now spread around the globe in museums and private collections.

This aunt told us that she had often come to visit the property as a child and recounted to us that on one afternoon when she was maybe six years old, Poussey’s grandmother took her by the hand and told her, “Today, I’m going to introduce you to a very great and famous artist”, whereby they set off on one of the paths leading into the forest. Just a short way in, they came across an opening where an old balding man sat on a stone bench looking at a few canvases that were propped up on some bushes surrounding him. In her telling, “he scared me, and he looked like a wild bird of prey.” she exclaimed. Both Alan and me were on the edge of our seats by this point. But, as she continued, her fear quickly subsided when they were introduced and he put her on his lap so that she too could also look at the pictures surrounding him. Then she told us the most astonishing thing of all. She said that the paintings she was looking at resembled a spinach omelette (“une omelette aux épinards). I was dumbfounded by this extraordinary memory that seemed to fly off a page of John Rewald’s book on Post-Impressionism that I was reading at the time. Afterwards the trio departed and Poussy accompanied them back to their car. 

This memory would stay with me forever, and to this day whenever I see any of Cezanne’s pictures from Bibémus Quarry, I think of this lovely woman who filled my imagination with history that eventful day. I knew it was true because who else, but an imaginative child could come up with such a fitting visual association with those paintings? 

So, here on the Pacific Ocean and so far from my youth in France, comes not only this wonderful memory but also this painting from the other evening that displays the colours of Bibémus Quarry. 

We've had some really splendid blooms lately, skies that have knocked me over with the weight of their ferocity. But this evening bloom from the other night was gentle and friendly-looking.

Because of certain skies, people hall look alike. I take in stride because I know them all  

like an extended family so I see them differently despite their strong resemblances to each other.  I understand all their quirks that exist underneath their colour harmonies and drawing structure. Although I'm the author, I'm also the kindly grandfather who loves them all in spite of their character flaws and unlikely rapports. .    

And like they say about snowflakes, that seeing a sky full of them, they'll appear all the same but actually, no two snowflakes are ever the same according to God (and the scientists).

Observing the sky on most days, I marvel at its behaviour as it takes me into dusk. When it's tactile enough to allow me in to find a solution for a picture I'm always grateful. 

 

Winter hope and Winter blooms

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 3 June 2026, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Weather has been friendly enough to get me to the beach on and off for the past two weeks. The blooms have also been accomodating though sometimes short-lived. Here are a few of my favourites.

We are decidedly into winter skies now. The nights are cold but the days are often pleasant with a warm sun. Not bad, and this winter light provides lots of smooth glassy seas which mirror the exotic skies that are fun to work from. 

I came across a text about the Italian inventor Nikola Tesla on Facebook today which I like very much. I've never pushed anything into this personal and discreet blog space but I'll make an exception now, because it's something so very close to what I wrote a dear friend just yesterday who is going through a very difficult time. I wrote:

"I know I sound like a loop but one way to change the dark groove in our thinking is to dive deeper into where our gifts lie inside us.

You are a writer, so again, I encourage you to explore your family history through writing and let it take you where it will. I believe in an intelligence within each of us that is also tailor-fit to each of us. Sadly most of us never venture into this domain for a million of reasons. As fully formed men I think we need to act like salmon and find our way home again like we did as tiny sperm cells. Most of us don’t make it but when we’re in a mind-induced dark space we also need to remember those artists, writers, thinkers and simple farmers and scientists, who all found their own pathways in this sometimes unbearably difficult life. They are the heroes of humankind. 

Happily I'm a painter, and being that, is something of a distraction from so much of this dark thinking that can underlie my own life. But unknown to so many people out in the world, there are artists of all kinds who, despite all this tragedy lurking everywhere, still attempt to capture an essence of humanity, coaxing it gently from the earth, as if soothing a distressed infant. 

Also

Give yourself some joy by getting back to your  tennis! Hang in there, this ride has more in store for us."

So then this morning, I came across this text which someone had posted about Nikola Tesla who curiously expanded on what I had written to my friend.

"Since my youth, before bedtime, kneeling on my bare knees, I prayed to God. I prayed that way until I reached the age of 50. From that time onwards, I pray a bit different, but it doesn't matter, the essence is the same." 

N Tesla

Nikola Tesla’s quiet confession opens a window into the inner life of a man whose mind lived far beyond the limits of his century. With an intelligence often estimated near the extraordinary, Tesla carried a sensitivity that made him both visionary and vulnerable. People with deeper perception often see the world without its comforting illusions. They notice the hidden patterns, the contradictions, the cruelty, and the beauty that others overlook. This clarity can create a kind of loneliness; a distance between the thinker and the society that cannot yet understand him.

Tesla began as a mystic who spoke of angels, light, and the invisible forces shaping the universe. But as he grew older, his spirituality changed. He no longer prayed through ritual; he prayed through creation. His devotion shifted from religion to humanity, from dogma to discovery. He believed in a God of beauty; a presence felt in harmony, mathematics, and the silent intelligence of nature.

This journey from mysticism to universal compassion shaped Tesla into a man who lived not for himself but for the future. His inventions, dreams, and sacrifices were offerings to a world he hoped would one day awaken. And though he walked much of his path alone, he carried within him a faith that did not belong to any religion, yet belonged to eternity.

I'll not add anything more. I’ll let the paintings speak quietly as they often do.

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 3 June 2026, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 2 June 2026, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

 

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 1 June 2026, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

   
Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 6 June 2026, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Guston

24 March 2023

Guston

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 17 June, 2023, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

“Everyone destroys marvelous paintings. Five years ago you wiped out what you are about to start tomorrow. Where do you put form? It will move around, bellow out and shrink, and sometimes it winds up where it was in the first place. But at the end it feels different, and it had to make the voyage. I am a moralist and cannot accept what has not be paid for, or a form that has not been lived through. Frustration is one of the great things in art; satisfaction is nothing.” Philip Guston

Disclaimer; I really like everything about Philip Guston. I always have, since I was a child when I saw his work long before I knew what to make of it. Naturally, it doesn’t mean that I love everything he created but I’ve loved his cultivated spirit, one which held the highest esteem for both Piero della Francesca and Paolo Uccello, just like me. I also love that he was a fellow American, who, like me, was fiercely connected to European Painting. It seems slightly ironic to me that most of the ‘American Expressionist’ painters were from Europe yet Philip was perhaps the least American but with more aesthetic roots in Europe. I love his willingness to abandon all his work that gave him a successful career in the early 1960’s by moving on from decorative Abstractions to re-embrace a figuration of his earlier self. His risked losing friendships and patrons because of it. He was the kind of American hero who for me cut his own path and he was never comfortable with a career built upon a status quo.

Though I am not as severe as him when he disparages satsifaction, I understand what he meant for himself and his own work. His extra large pictures from the 1970’s onward required of him a total commitment. I’ve read his letters and journals and my impression of him in his studio is of a gladiator in the ring surrounded by all his earthly demons. Hence, he scraped and clawed his way to the finish line in each of his pictures like his life depended upon it. But viewers would be mistaken to see his large abstract pictures as just battlefields of emotion for they were structured, and he was obsessed with pictorial unity and obediant to chiaroscuro. For me, he was the most accomplished painter aligned with the Abstract Expressionist School of New York, yet ironically he played an almost an invisble role in it.

But that said, let’s be honest, one cannot love everything that another artist, poet, writer, musician, creates during their career. It’s not even that he or she, has had a great booming career because when an artist loves another artist, it’s more like how one might love a partner, not only for their attributes but their blemishes too. It’s a holistic attraction, spiritual even, because when we love another, we invest our whole selves into that relationship. So, of course we accept faults that we may find in them like we would with our own children. All this is to express y why someone like me would never make a reliable art critic. Like a ruthles lawyer, I only seem to be hard on those whom I have no real attachment.

To be honest, I cannot think of any of my favorite artists whose work pleases me completely. Though really close, not even Van Gogh can do that. And who doesn’t love his work or find deep empathy in his person? Regarding him, there are a few paintings which I cannot bear to look at, but it has nothing to do with his work, just me. For instance, In elementary school, on a long wall near the entrance was hung a print of his famous boats offshore at St Marie de la Mer, but because of unfortunate memories only to do with that school,  I cannot find any affection, critically or emotionally for this image even today. But there are a few others too of which I’ve seen way too many reproduced in posters and on table linen in shops around France. This is unfortunate because all this hype around him has tarnished for me some of his most iconic paintings. But like they say, once seen, they cannot be unseen. Even, that wonderful Starry Night in MOMA in New York leaves me ambivilant much to my own secret shame.

Guston, like Van Gogh, also suffered for his Painting, and I really love that about him. Recent art history is littered with too many success stories that elevates too much bad Painting I think. I’ll be discreet, just one; Pablo Picasso. Why? Because he made so much junk at the foot of such greatness. He was like a king who lived in the royal palace strewn with own garbage. Picasso was sadly an artist of such creative capicity that it somehow must have corrupted his thinking. Possessed with such large gifts he compromised his giant vision for just mere talent and commercial success. It’s hard for me to reconcile the author of a colossal work like Guernica with so many really comically awful portraits that were sprinkled throughout his career along side so many genuine pearls. Might Picasso have been someone plagued with this nonchalent satisfaction for unworthy work of which Philip Guston wrote? 

So what about this small picture from four nights ago? It’s a strange image. I cannot figure out what to think of it. Worse still, I cannot tell if its worth anything or just nothing. What does please me is that it is so very strange, something so unusual for me, that I am really more curious about it than anything else. It had been an overcast afternoon when I arrived. Unhappy with that situation, I set up anyway to see what might happen when the sun went down behind me. I made a palette and watched and waited. Gradually, the clouds lifted off the horizon line and the last rays of the sun lit up the entire sky made of pink clouds. It was very uncommon and reminded me of cotton candy. I tried to make visual sense of it. Am I happy with it? No, but am I satisfied that I came out to make a go of it at least? Yes, indeed. It’s so rare that I regret coming out to the beach even if I fail.  

I think like any creative person, conscious or sub-consciously, I glean everything that crosses my path like some underwater crab that forages the bottom of the ocean and filtering out everything unusable. And like the clever crab, in my personal life too, I’ve learned by trial and error about what is useful or what needs to be thrown out. What I’ve thought was great has too often been lousy and vice-versa. This has been true in every corner of my life from women to jobs, to people, places and all things. They say that the worst things that happen to you usually turn out to be the best, but it took me a long time to understand that or even to believe it due to me cautiou crab-like nature, As Philip Guston said in a quote from 1970’s: “A artist has to be flexible enough to get outside of their own obsessive convictions when it mirrors that of a mule.”

So in this strange picture, I had the insight to put it aside for a time and let it bake inside holding judgement before I` see what it’ll says to me in the future.

Wagging the tail

21 June 2023

Wagging the tail 

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 17 June, 2023, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

It’s the Summer Solstice, and though I didn’t get out tonight due to a cloudy sky, I felt a pang of happiness that the afternoons will begin to gently expand each day. Nice! But we’re still in for the winter chill here on the North Coast. But all is well I think to myself tonight. 

This study was from a few evening’s ago. It was a brilliant afternoon, a little on the cool side with a soft breeze. The sea was calm like a mirror reflecting back a soft yellow band of light from the sky that eventually went bright red. This was the first of three, and my favourite. It's was an example of a classic winter light here that forces the sea open with an evanescent glow. Is this due to the sun at its lowest ebb? Regardless, though this isn't a great example, it's the highlight of the year when Cadmium Yellow reveals itself to be the real star of the season. 

Being a Saturday there were more people than usual at the beach. A group of kids were tossing a rugby ball around with that free-wheeling and spontaneous kind of carelessness of youth, and me, up on my small dune having a ball myself. 

It was wonderful to be out painting again underneath such a colourful sky. There were also the usual beach walkers and a few surfers, plus the late afternoon bathers who’ve finished work to come jump in for a quick splash. Afterwards, being the winter chill, they’ll soon be home again for family dinners or take-outs, and Netflix for most. This beach life is a postcard of laid-back Australia where people in this neck of the woods, are generally warm and affable. What can be better than to live in a community of kind and colourful people? In fact, people around here are a lot like this painting from the other night, friendly, and with a sunny spirit. Being at my perch on the small dune most days, I see the entire beach so I can watch everything and everybody like I’m the cashier at Seinfeld’s coffee shop.

Australians, like so many people everywhere, can be quirky too at times but me, being a New Yorker, they don’t always ‘get me’ so I tend to err on the cautious side when first meeting them. I think it's because I learned to approach people like I do stray dogs on the street, slowly at first, and somewhat carefully, as I gently extend my right hand, letting them approach me. If that goes well, I offer the back of my hand to them. If they don’t wag their tail I back off, but if they do, I continue letting them give me a sniff. All people, I’ve figured out, are just like dogs in many regards, and I generally have pretty good luck with them if I wag my own tail first. After lots of training, I’ve also discovered I get along easily with both specimens now because I'm a bit of a Golden Labrador myself. We're a friendly clan. 

After painting here for six years now, I’ve come to know many of ‘the regulars’, I see them all, the fast walkers, the slow ones, the couples, the tourists, and the surfers. Many have disapeared. Hopefully they’ve just gone away to another town or interstate, a foreign country even, how exotic! Maybe one or two have died tragically, or perhaps a few at home in bed surrounded by their families. In life, people come, and people go, but it’s mostly the elderly who seem to take track. 

I miss some of my favorites whom I don’t see anymore. There was a woman who came to make long walks each afternoon whom I haven't seen in over a year. She walked quickly with a horsey sort of gait, and only after the first year did she smile briefly at me. The only time we spoke she told me she was a doctor, and then I didn’t see anymore. But there are couples with dogs who always wave at me as they come out of the path to the open beach. They sometimes say: “We haven’t seen you in a while”..... “It’s the rain” I always reply. And I marvel at the electric bikes that zip without any effort on the hard sand with over-sized treads. I think to myself,,,, I’d like to do that too, after finishing a painting or two. 

Whether I like it or not, I’m kind of a lighthouse perched here on my small dune, visible and vulnerable, for all on the beach to see. I see everyone, and everyone sees me. From my small, humble painting spot each afternoon I also see that life is pretty spectacular, actually. 

Ebb and Flow

2 July 2023

Ebb and Flow

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 29 June, 2023, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

This image from the other night came from a difficult sky made up of varying layers of assorted clouds. A cold front had rumbled through from the South bringing a winter chill to the afternoon and I was initially disheartened at having to face such a sky. But in the end though I worked through my fear and like what came out of it.

The sky was like a dog’s breakfast, as they say here in Australia. When I had arrived in the late afternoon, I found a thick stripe of lemon yellow squeezed in between two layers of purple clouds like a sandwich that quickly went to hell in a hand basket. But for a time, it was a wild ride and by the end I left the chilly beach in a good mood.

Like most sun-kissed afternoons on a tropical beach, both the sea and the sky can have a cool and friendly look of Prussian Blue, but at sunset it begins to make the switch towards the warmth of sunset and leans towards a Violet palette.

This can play around with a painter’s head because when I use too much Prussian Blue in the sea, I'll look up and suddenly realise that the sea is begging for more Ultramarine. Depending upon the sky it can dither like this for a while, back and forth, until the sky finally takes charge leaving the sea to meekly follow suit. OK, I think to myself, now the sea is Ultramarine Blue, until it’s not, because everything keeps changing all the time.

Unless one is a painter or an observant beachcomber, all this can be really confusing to follow, but honestly, it’s the most delicious part of Painting in front of nature. This banter in my head is a visual one, but it’s engaging like in a feisty courtship between young lovers; it’s “GO AWAY!” but then “COME BACK!” and this continual back and forth can make Painting so tormenting. 

But, as always in this Painting game, a capricious picture like this puts even more technical demands upon me if I have to quickly throw one wet colour over another because I must first ‘marry’ them on the palette like I’m some sort of high priest or something. It's this marrying of colours on the palette that will later ensure a harmonious marriage later on in the painting. 

Only at the end of a session does a picture need to have a climax when it must be wrapped up in a hurry. At least that’s how I felt with this picture the other evening. Of course, I'm often asked (by civilians): “Why don’t you just paint from a photograph, or from memory?” “Why put yourself through all this emotional turmoil? Why all the melodrama?" 

In life, I'm generally not a drama queen, but at the beach in the middle of a troublesome sky, I can get a little excited and it's a good thing too because my civilian life is pretty ho-hum these days. But the choice painting from nature or a photograph is for me a no-brainer. It’s the difference between seeing a photo of the person whom you really desire, and dancing with them. 

Anyway, I couldn't paint a picture like this from memory, either in a studio, or anywhere else. I’ve never worked from photographs though I know lots of people who do. It’s a vastly different approach to painting. With its fluid rules and spontaneous touch, painting from nature is for me the most fun. But, hey! Art is a large tent and a true democracy where everyone is free to find their own way.

When I told a friend that I was writing this book, they asked me if I would ever consider using AI. I was baffled at the question and it seemed like an equally astounding thing to ask a painter who is writing about their own work. I’m an amateur writer, but one with a lot to recount, and all of it so personal that it seems unfathomable to imagine a computer, or even a ghost writer to stand in for me in this adventure. I mean, don’t writers write to find out what they are feeling and thinking? Ditto, for a painter? But to be fair, some do exercise these crafts expressly just to make money but isn't what I’m trying to do. I'm only after self-discovery because I don't answer to anyone else. Any anyway, if there is no ‘human voice’ how can there be authenticity? It's the one necessary ingredient because if one fakes the human voice there is no art.

Understandably, if one were calculating a scientific or medical experiment, then sure, why not use AI. I have seen examples of AI writing superb school papers that fool everyone, but what is the motive if it’s to cheat your way through your education? 

A long time ago back in New York, I was telling a friend about a woman I was seeing and about some issues we were having when he stopped me and suddenly asked: “What’s your motive in this relationship? What is it you're after? Is it friendship? Companionship? Sex? Are you looking for a wife?" he said. I was dumbfounded by the question because no one had ever asked me such a thing in my whole life. Of course, I realised a little later that it might have been any one of these things, or even all of them at once because I always bite off more than I can chew. This happened at a time when great changes were roiling my life so I took it to heart, and now, years later, I figure out my motive in any situation I'm facing. 

So, I've learned a lot since then and now my motives are clearer, especially in both this painting project and in the book I'm writing. In both, I'm only interested in how I learn more about what I’m seeing and what I’m thinking, so therefore, AI would never be an option for me. But none of all this did I tell my friend weeks ago when he broached the question. I couldn’t articulate this because in fact, I hadn’t yet written it all down to understand it, and what I haven't yet written down, I rarely trust. 

So, anyway, something as personal as painting or writing poetry doesn’t have a ‘hit counter’ that scores points like in the music business. And though it may seem something completely outside our current zeitgeist, I'd rather be authentic than rich and famous, but that's my choice, and although I need money, I think I'm far too shy for fame. 

Anyway, whether or not AI will evolve well enough to supplant poetic spontaneity in the future will still not concern me because except for spell check and google searches, I don’t use it, nor will I in the future. Although down the road, when my heart goes wonky, I'd be grateful for a Dr Robot. 

Finally, because it always begins and ends with Turner for me, one only has to look at what he did in his small watercolour sketches to imagine the endless possibilities that are still available for any kind of painter today. I cannot imagine this could ever be reproduced by a computer because this interaction can only arise from a spontaneous combustion between a painter and a motif out in Nature. It’s the ebb and flow between two living organisms, humankind and mother nature.