Thomas Aquinas at the Pharmacy

 

6 April 2022

Thomas Aquinas at the Pharmacy 

(part one)

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 2 April 2022, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

While hanging around the pharmacy counter waiting for an order the other day I was suddenly bombarded by a burst of ideas about Art. I’m not sure why I was triggered there but it can happen to me in the most mundane of places. And besides, it’s not out of the ordinary for me to think about painting at odd moments of the day. But I think it may have been triggered by Putain’s war on Ukraine which is on everyone’s mind these days. Many, like me, are also shocked by the immoral barbarity in this young 21st century. But perhaps like others, I mused at how regrettable it is that such awful people seem to be running the world at our expense. Why can't we have great leaders in the world today? Then I began wondering about Art in our contemporary world and where its greatness might lay. 

In fact, I’m always on the prowl for any inspiration when it comes to great people, and most especially so in the Arts. Most of all, I think, because without a notion of 'greatness' in all parts of life, how would I navigate these big tents we call Humanity and Art? I would be but a voyager at sea on a cloudy night without the North Star to guide me safely to critical clarity.

Unlike the aesthetic realm of the Arts where critical clarity can lack morality, the sphere of politics and leadership leans solely upon it. Though I mostly avoid politics in here, the recent invasion of Ukraine by the dictator of Russia is immoral. Ukraine never declared war on Russia and yet it must defend itself like a small Morandi in the corner of a large collection of Contemporary Art.

But in artistic terms alone, what do we generally deem to be great? At the pharmacy this morning, this was my very thought as I waited at for my scrips to be filled. Precisely, I was thinking of what Thomas Aquinas wrote regarding art way back in the 13th century when he postulated that “art is the measuring stick for art”. My teacher Leo, so loved this, that he passed it on to me within weeks of meeting him, and it still speaks to me at very odd moments like this morning. With this bare utterence, Thomas Aquinas defined in the simplest and most compact of terms, the very essence of all art. Nothing more, nothing less, and with acute brevity and wisdom he managed to demystify the substance of what makes a work of art great. But how, and what does he mean? 

I’ll wade into it as a painter. Quite simply, he means that Painting will be the sole arbiter of what Painting is. And more broadly, by the same token, I think that any greatness defines any greatness in every aspect of our lives. It’s how we qualify things in general. It means that anything ‘great’ will define greatness in everything else, because great men or women of ages long gone, still define what it means to be a great man or woman today. At the same time it sternly reminds us that quality begets quality. But if we’re after ‘great’, then we have to understand that quality first, and let’s be honest, not everyone even cares for greatness, look at our politicians and some of our art. But we don’t vote for greatness, we vote for what we like. In the Painting world, preferences do not determine quality, they determine our taste which are two different animals, like a tiger and a pussy cat. Great pictures determine the quality of great pictures.

So, we need an education, in this case an education in Painting. And yes, I know, I know, Post-Modernists are surely cocking their shotguns and putting pens to paper in rebuttal, but I freely admit that I have little defence, at least not here and now. And, I will admit that my own taste is full of prejudice as is my own critical intuition but it's at least hewn from decades of looking at art. As a painter, it’s also been formed by lots of failures in my own work. But it’s these experiences that have been critical to forging an awkward path forward in my own life. Like everything, there are a few exception to this axiom because I think there are great pictures made from those who have never studied Painting. They have been blessed with a gift that defies any notion of ‘art education’. But that said, their exceptional work can still be measured and judged by all proceeding art. 

Of course the reverse of this hypothesis is also true, but this can be for many varied reasons. For instance, a really bad painting might also define what constitiutes a bad painting, and it will inform a student of Painting about what to avoid if one is lucky enough to understand this. It could even maybe help an ardent lover of this unique craft to appreciate painting even more. And so as Aquinas says that Art is the measuring stick of Art, it is surely true that human perfidy will also be defined by perfidious behaviour because Hitler, for most civilised folks, still remains the template of the profane.

But sticking to Painting, what happens if we lose sight of what it is and we consequently get lost, like maybe getting on the wrong train to go somewhere other than where we intended to go? If Thomas Aquinas knew what a train was, he would simply tell us to get off at the nearest stop and board the right train. But then, he might even add that we'd need to find the right model too and put all our creative faith into action so that our artistic intuition could grow from there. 

This study was the first of several from the other evening. There are three here to accompany Thomas Aquinas over the next three pages. They are presented in the order they were painted. It had been a stunning bloom, and one really magnanimous to me. This first one is self-explanatory and it depicts the very start of the bloom. I like the way the sky came out, it’s not often that it comes so naturally nor as easily. It was made in seconds. In the sea, there’s drip that I partially attempted to wipe away but quickly realised that I rather liked it. It's one of those marks that declares that it's a picture and made by an imperfect attempt at verisimilitude. 

Mellow Squish

12 February 2025

Mellow Squish

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 7 February 2025, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

We had been definitely under the spell of El Nina all last winter and thus this summer has been cooler here on the North Coast but there’s still lots of rain so I haven’t gotten out as much. Long gone are the sunny afternoons when I would show up each day like an obedient child. Now like a teenager, I’ve grown up, and I’m picky about what I like and don’t like. But I’m also in the studio more these days as I try to scale up some these small studies into 150 X 150 cm pictures. But also, tennis calls me out two nights a week rain or shine.

Two pictures came out of the other evening. It had been a quiet sky with little personality which put me off immediately upon arrival but although initially feeling stuck, I made the best of it. I can get in a jittery state when I arrive at 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 (with me) but also the problematic sky. as well. In both cases I simply invent what I need to and this usually works because inventive imagination is the only way to go.

Besides, 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 and forgive to find any peace? We cannot always be in a state of displeasure 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 often happens, I softened, as did the sky and it morphed into a lovely mosaic of muted tones and shapes as small clouds lazily rolled through. In a complete reversal of mood, I soon found myself playing freely like a kid in a sand box and this is what came out. But I think it only happened because the sky opened up enough to allow me in. It may not please many because even I find it a bit strange, and yet there’s a nice colour harmony that works for me. Maybe it’s also because I’ve come to know this sea and sky so intimately, and I've felt this gentle mood here many times before. 

I really like the soft spontaneity of forms that make up the sky. It’s a mellow sort of image, and looking at it today, I’m surprised that it appears even a little coherent in contrast to my confused state while painting it. I also sensed that it had conjured up something rich from my childhood. This ancient creativity also always amazes me for it has a sovereign life all its own, even outside of its creator. It’s as if it's formed gradually over time through all the paintings both good and bad, through all the temper tantrums and the quiet grief, it prods a painter on that seemingly pointless task.

As I look at it now, it makes me think of the work of Alexander Calder for some reason. I wonder further if he might have made an image looking something like this one, had he been a painter. 

Looking back over these last eight years from the vantage point of so many studies I see each day lining my bookshelves, I understand that I have changed in lots of small ways. Firstly, of course, the pictures have certainly evolved, hopefully for the better, and they’ve grown more sophisticated. By that I mean that they might foster more spontaneous relationships within an image that can make a picture more authentic. Consequently, this means also that I’ve grown as a painter. Would I have grown as much in the studio or in front of other motifs during the same period? I cannot know this, and it doesn’t matter. Perhaps it’s like being happily married to a person for eight years but suddenly then asking yourself if you would have grown as much with anyone else? 

This is a twilight motif, one that specialises in subtle colour because after all, there isn’t much else to do from it. Did I choose it for that reason? Or did it choose me? In any event, it was exactly what I needed for this last chapter in my life. Regardless, it has become my friend, and one which offered me deep companionship at a time when I didn’t know I even needed it.

 

Success and failure

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 12 July 2026, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

 

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 12 July 2026, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

It's been raining so much these past six months that I'm developing a green tinge, not quite Gollum but close. Not that I care too much but it's been really awful for the painter inside me who needs to get out to paint at the beach mostly for therapeutic reasons in these dark times. But hey!

These two are from the same evening last week when had I arrived to find a monstrous cloud sitting upon the horizon line. I was immediately uninspired and had to wait out the usual melodrama until it coalesced into something workable. This really puts me in a bad mood when arriving to face a cloud on fire. Yes, yes, I know, most watercolorists love this sort of easy emotion to work from, but I don't. First of all, they change colours too quickly making it impossible to work from with oil paints. Secondly, Sunset related skies can be too cheesy for me. Anyway, I got over my irritation and made a palette, and waited it out, as it will almost always mellow into something more abstract with less kitsch. But this afternoon I got tired of waiting and just jumped in hoping to make order from it. I'm not that crazy about it, but at least I got out into the windy sky and got some fresh air at the beach. Sometimes it's just that simple.

The second one was an after-thought of sorts and I liked painting it. The sky had cleared on one side of the horizon and a delicious set of colours were still teeming with light so I grabbed another canvas board quickly made the one below. I'm not that crazy about this one either but hey! That's life. Maybe I'm just crabby about all the insanity going in America at the moment. Painting not only teaches me a lot about life but about people too. It's not so much about the successes, but really about all the small failures that one needs to accept before one can move on in a sane fashion.     

Lost but found

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 29 March 2018, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

I came across this unusual little picture a few  weeks and was surprised and happy because I had put in a junk pile while trying free up some space around my house. There are so many of these paintings, many of which I fear are pretty awful so I have been culling them periodically. They come from the very start of this series when I felt half-blind. This one was going to be thrown into the bonfire when I took a double-take of it in my left hand and put it aside. 

So, what is it about this small thing that appealed to me six years after painting it? First of all, not only does a painter need distance away from a picture but the picture too, needs time away from the painter. Somewhat like a long break with a friend or lover, each party requires a sufficient time and space to see reality more clearly. Because faults abound in every separation, apologies and forgiveness naturally ensue, and in the Art world it's not too different because works of art are like some wines which either improve in time or quickly turn to vinegar. But if one is lucky enough to understand this fickle transaction, they may have an uncanny advantage over the rest of us. 

So, what does this small image say to me that it was saved from a bonfire? It speaks to me of an intimacy that I really appreciate in any painting, but only now do I see why I didn't get at the time; It's just too simple, and it says practically nothing. 

As the painter, just a years ago, I must have been ruthlessly critical of this for wanting to destroy it. Actually, I think it's also a particular sort of image that I could only 'get'  now, but not then because it means that I've grown and that my sensibilities have been enlarged in every direction. I suppose this is good thing to know about oneself because it means that I am still evolving. 

If we're creative and really lucky, I think our minds will continue to open up and reach outward as we age and spread wide like the horizon.

Conversely, other minds can gradually shrink over a lifetime and are reduced like the aperture on a camera lens to receive less light. So unlike those which open to the wide angle of nuance and uncertainties in life, others appear to become brittle and fixated. 

So yes, this is an inconclusive image, not anything of importance, but a fragment of an idea of little substance. If I didn't know what it was, I might never understand it. I actually like this reaction to a painting. It means that I can handle uncertainties and even more nuance the older I get. It resonated with me, and I think that's the whole point of Art because I see in it a question, not an answer. 

 

Seven small syllables and seven small paintings

22 September 2022

Seven small syllables and seven small paintings

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 14 September 2022, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

I was watching a film the other night wherein two characters seemed interested in one another. Speaking on the telephone, split screen, the woman, at one point, says to the man, “I have been thinking of you”. Then the screen seems to fill with an empty pause full of desire.

Just seven small syllables, like a line of Haiku marking a time and place that press this moment out of all others into someone’s startled heart. This tiny set of words for any man or woman can either set them sailing or shipwreck them both. And chaste like a pearl necklace it’s the most restrained string of words in the whole, wild, world of romance.

                                                                                                            

It is a poignant place, this space, where two people meet weightless, where’s there’s no gravity nor expectations beyond their earthly hopes and dreams. 

                                                                                                                       

I began to think about the sudden desire that lives within this small set of words as if they were precious stones inlaid upon the clasp of a fragile necklace. They are uttered at the very onset of a love affair at the front door but also perhaps much later on if a couple is both lucky and thoughtful.

But in each case it’s an invitation to engage intimately, for it’s a clean and embossed calling card that needs a quick reply.

In a world of love, everyone has either received these small words or delivered them softly themselves, maybe whispered in a chapel or on a card from Paris, or maybe just from the other side of the bed.

And though we might seem to live in a world of false expectations, there is promise in every busy signal for Cupid has all our numbers.  

And like a love story at its dark end, dusk too, at the close of each day, seems to poison the light with regretful refrain. 

These seven images, all painted within months of one another, share the barest of necessities and they speak to me of those seven syllables that place an intimate bookmark of time tracing my own appearance into this fragile part of the day when I come out to paint. And like desire, they too possess an uncertainty, but not without an idea concrete enough to live within their own brushstrokes. 

And though I did not set out with an idea of making such evocative paintings, these come the closest to any love letters I’ve ever written.

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 15 july 2022, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 14 September 2022, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 14 September 2022, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 24 August 2022, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 12 September 2022, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 16 September 2022, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Monday! a day for Piero della Francesca!

 

6 March 2021

Monday! a day for Piero della Francesca!

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 4 March 2021, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Monday! A sunny day for Piero della Francesca, whom I can never get enough of during these cloudy times. They say, (some idiot back in the day) that all roads lead to Rome. Well, in the world of Painting, I wonder if all roads don’t just lead us back to Arezzo and Piero della Francesca. I think somehow that there is enough in his oeuvre  to please just about everyone who loves Art, even the Post-Modernists.

Although I try not to speak with others about politics, art, or religion, I sometimes cannot help myself because in the news the other day was an article about all the idle rich people who travel around the globe looking fabulous. At the very same time I had been looking at some photo details I had taken of the Piero della Francesca’s at the National Gallery in London, and it occurred to me that no matter how rich one might be, one still has to face one’s ageing body and mind as well. But nothing, I mused, will decay a mind faster than spending all one’s time and money looking and being fabulously rich. But hey, that’s me. Besides, being glamorous is more than just looking glamorous or rich,,,, just sayin.  

There are those (usually in Europe and Asia) who can sometimes handle immense wealth that's been kicking around in the family for centuries and know how to handle great wealth. At the same time, too much money can also cast long dark shadows over any family's legacy. Like Balzac wrote, behind every great fortune lies a great crime. But it isn't it so easy to forget everything when one feels rich?

Anyway, many Americans know all about being rich, really rich sometimes, but I think only a tiny portion of them understand the cultivation of wealth. Even more importantly, it seems like a even a long lost art, this cultivation of its close cousin, culture. 

Myself, I think one's possession of culture is one of the greatest attributes of being a human. It's right up there with honesty and humility. Though many pretend otherwise, it is not strictly aligned with wealth. Nor is the possession of culture is the kind of wealth that can be stored in a vault or withdrawn from a cashier. It's a discreet currency and valued heroically by a person's understanding of history; artistic, economic, and socio-political. It may sound stupid to some, or obvious to others, but I think in the end, it’s better to be a poor but happy and cultured person than a rich unhappy and uncultured one. 

Further, I can personally affirm that being a poor but reasonably happy artist is far superior to being a rich but unhappy collector. Though obviously, I'd be in a tiny minority in this circle. So when I read about glamorous globetrotters looking fabulous, all my barbed bias flies out of my ears like asian hornets. 

But the solution to all this lowbrow inanity is for a painter to spend time with Piero della Francesca, whose light will banish any dark clouds away from anyone's tarnished soul. 

Being a painter, I'm assaulted by all kinds of questions in his presence. When in London, where I regretfully haven't been in ages, I’ve always visited him in a small room in the Sainsbury Wing at the National Gallery. It's a small cloistered space, so discrete that I don't think I've ever shared it with another gallery visitor. In front of these pictures, I'm immediately astounded by the bright colours which appear to have been bathed and pampered in luminosity like they're newborns. 

His colourful creations must have been a great surprise to the 15th century world of Art. It was a rich period in this early Italian Renaissance which he shared with many other painters around him at the time. There were many 

painters around him who also loved rich colour, notably Masaccio in nearby Florence, who I think was his closest artistic cousin. 

But I think we had to wait until the harsh Provençial light of Cézanne before witnessing anything as effervescent, for both he and Cezanne seemed to have evoked the sheer joy of painting pure luminosity.  

I approach him not as an academic, nor even as an historian because I'm neither, I'm just a painter. His pictures cannot be understood from a book or indeed even lectured about, but to be seen and experience with shock. I confess freely, that I come to them humbled by own shortcomings as painter of the 21st century. 

Is his delicious work just a remnant of a distant past and locked away from our modern world? Or is it relevant to painters today? Naturally, I believe the latter because I see a future for Painting in his entire oeuvre. It will no doubt be a new artistic sensibility with a fresh set of eyes that's capable of finding the key to its entrance. 

Whenever I look around at what I see in the art world today I can often feel lost, so I retreat quickly back into my own small oeuvre like it's a cosy mouse hole. 

Though surely a cultural zeitgeist must exist somewhere today, it's not something that can be accurately described because I think it's but a perception framed by its own time. I also think it's unreal, a kind of unicorn, like a rainbow in the sky that everyone wants to touch and hold, get a piece of, so as to not miss out on it. In this time of digital interconnectivity it's become even more nebulous and hard to pin down especially in cultural terms. There are lots of things going on but are they real and lasting?

This idea of the zeitgeist is a conceptual container to hold everything together perhaps like a vase, but does it hold wine or water? Is it The Dark Ages or The Enlightenment. 

How do we bookend our cultural relevancy? Don't we classify everything as chapters in our past that we retroactively ascertain to be a time of some importance only from a future vantage point? 

So today, for instance, when I look around at trends in the art world I see an explosion of possibilities. Alas, much it of is dictated by the world of the money-ed and the cashed-up. They leave it to the galleries and museums who make most of the choices. They are the salespeople, who like jugglers, keep all the balls in the air at the same time. 

The cultural zeitgeist of today is still forming but when one looks back on this chapter of humanity, will they see PornHub or Parasite?

Personally, I think the future of Painting for me is mostly found somewhere in the past. When I cite the past I also mean the bits and pieces from my own work that show up at random moments when I least expect it. 

And though we all do it from to time, it’s an unhealthy pastime for artists to be looking around in the present moment for something durably original. Somehow, I think it's like those who insecure souls who are trying be glamorous at every instance. If there is a zeitgeist today, it might not be more complicated than what our Instagram influencers get up.

So what's the answer for a painter? All we can do is keep looking, keep seeing, and keep painting while hoping for the best. 

So now, after all my pontificating, I must also speak about my own humble endeavour at the beach the other evening. The clouds which were forecast to arrive in the afternoon never did so it turned into a delicious sky. This is one of two studies from the other day. It gave me that age-old feeling that I had somehow missed my vocation of being a pastry chef. It’s not brilliant or anything original but it felt really good to be out painting again on the dunes. I really liked the swab of thick peach paint that sideswiped the lemon-yellow band already encrusted and pasted over a thin sky. 

Is is it alive? Would someone who sees it today  maybe like it in one hundred year's time? It's hardly glamorous, it's just postcard after all, but one from this time precisely, because I dated it 4 March 2021. It's a window, maybe a small one like on a 747 in economy, but a window nonetheless, through which one can see the world outside.

If there had been enough light left to see my palette, I might have continued because the sky was still quivering with energy.