Near Bonnieux, circa 1976?

I     Near Bonnieux, circa 1976?, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm 
 

I came across this a few months ago in the studio. It survived the long trip to Australia and all my culls throughout the years. It seems that I periodically throw out pictures all the time because I realise that they're never as good as I had once thought. But anyway, they won't fit in my coffin, so better that they feed the earth under the laughing Kookaburras. 

I never really liked it but for some reason I couldn't bring myself to chuck it out. Now I'm really glad, of course, because I see something in it that I finally appreciate. I think it's because I was can see it now from outside of myself which I couldn't do so well previously. 

I see something in it that I wasn't used to seeing. It's a carnival of various coloured objects of all shapes and sizes that I was somehow lucky enough to place upon the right parts of the canvas board. I also think I was channeling my teacher Leo Marchutz who had recently died.   

I like it now because it reminds me of how much I was trying to absorb an idea about uniting relationships on the surface of a picture plane. It was always the great lesson from so many painters, but especially Cezanne, who for me at the time, was so influential. How to make a kind of spiderweb of the whole image, an architecture wherein every part, every colour, and brushstroke, all synchronise to work in unison like one long extended breath. 

For fun, It's accompanied by another painting I made even earlier, maybe around 1974? I painted it from the roof of a house in Goult, also in the Luberon, and I remember it was the Autumn and I had a strep throat that was killing me. It's much larger and I spent the whole afternoon on it. This one too, I was never really crazy about because it felt like an oversized copy of a Cezanne watercolour. But hey! I was young and had not found myself yet. Today, I see them as points on a map where I had, at one point, crossed paths with both Leo and Paul who were two buoys upon which I hung onto with all my might in those days. 

           Goult, France, circa 1974? oil on canvas, 140 X 100 cm

W.T.F. !

Americans are at war again! As our dear leader expressed the other day, it's a 'habit' he revealed, for Americans to be be at war. There you have it. 

I generally don't like writing about this side of our life because everyone has an opinion about everything these days and there is nothing I can add nor do anything about anyway. And who cares what I think? I can only write about what I know, which is art and that's not too popular anyway.

But no matter what I feel, everyone feels something differently when it comes to politics. War is so 12th century. I don't think reasonable people today find any sense in it anymore because innocent people are killed, maimed and left homeless as collateral damage. 

W.T F. Anyway!

Brokenness and the hand of Monk

14 April 2020

Brokenness and the hand of Monk

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 11 April 2020, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

As I’m sure I’ve said before, to convey an emotion from one human to another is really the whole point of all art. But today, context often takes precedence over that general understanding so naturally everything can sometimes appear upside down.

This is not my world, like they say, I just live in it. It feels like a world wherein art has been fused with an engine that's fuelled by philosophy, advertising, and the ironic sleight of hand.

Though I go on about ‘feeling and emotion’ a lot, I am really no longer an emotional man which means basically that I don’t rely upon my emotions to make many decisions in my life. But I used to.

But in saying that, I admit to being an emotionally charged painter of the Romantic tradition, though just not really a passionate person. I’m still wild about Elgar’s Enigma Variations and Brahms Intermezzo suites, but in another orbit, I'm mad about both Monk and Jerome Kern. In another life of my youth, I adored the melancholic folksinger Tim Buckley. And there are books of poetry and fiction I’ve read over and over again, like Nine Stories, by J D Salinger and The Dubliners, by James Joyce. So I am a hopeless Romantic in all things artistic. I'm just not a sentimentalist. 

Mostly, in painting, I really love the sensuality of oil paints, I love that mushy feeling when my brushes push up against the soft buttery creme of one colour against another. I’ve always loved that and I sometimes wonder why I didn't become a pastry chef. 

But in Painting, like in my life, I’ve also come to appreciate a restrained enthusiasm for all this exuberance over unbridled creativity that I often rave about, because like a bridled horse, in private, I’m a reserved and discreet person. It’s what I appreciate so much about a painter like Piero della Francesca whose muted frescoes stand up fervidly with quiet reserve.

On the other hand, I generally retreat from the famously ambitious passion of Jackson Pollack because I prefer to navigate the shadows that surround so much feigned exuberance. In essence, I’m a composed man, to a fault. It's only in my paintings that I will abandon this secret and shy place that I normally keep hidden from the outside world. 

In this study the fierce red cloud began as a stab of the brush on the right side of the canvas board and vigorously swiped leftward with the vehemence of an assassin. Immediately, I felt satisfaction like a pudgy zen monk in the corner of the garden after a successful ink drawing. “Yes!” 

I think everyone is familiar with this sense of awe and surprise at their own small heroic acts that grace us from time to time. Athletes seem to experience these moments more than the rest of us. But actors too, I think also live in a luminous state of grace while on stage. That's why the rest of us mere mortals are so crazy about both of them. And for the rest of us, in all these small moments, we too, seem to win small battles and everything falls into perfect balance, and it’s a magnanimous instant when our human imperfections meet up with our mettle. 

This painting above makes me think of Thelonious Monk who was a poet on the piano. In a crazy sort of way I think he was one of the bridges that linked the early Blues of the Deep South with Jazz and Bebop that came out of it later on. Because of that he was a transformative artist, enduring and uncompromising, and he speaks to a new generation of young people today who may be already tired of influencers and are thirsty for something authentic and unconventional. 

My brother Mark is also a big fan, thinks that all the old pianos he played in funky clubs may have contributed to his particular 'style' of playing because many of them were often out of tune. Who knows? 

Myself, I've somehow always associated Monk with Vincent Van Gogh, another artist whose style was also seen as too crude to be considered 'Fine Art'. I think they were spiritual brothers, both so singular and equally misunderstood, though Monk was luckier to find a community of musicians who understood his greatness. Van Gogh was sadly excluded from that fraternity, and although he did have a few admirers, he was basically an outcast.

Both artists, now long gone, are at the top of the tree, artistically speaking. Full of feeling  and able to express it all so authentically, these guys were the real deal. What I get from both of them is that they got right into it without a worry about style or technique, and by doing so, they found a way to express their true feelings.  

Monk had a habit of getting up from the piano during the performance while his band mates soloed in order to dance gently around stage. He said; "I get tired sitting down at the piano. That way I can dig the rhythm better.” Gotta love that guy.

But back to this study from the other day when I brushed  this red cloud across the canvas in one swift move, it immediately felt good and I knew it was just right. It was a kind of incandescent claim on all that space in the sky that pleased me at once. Yes, it’s abrupt and discordant, and perhaps on another day I might have tried to correct it with something more graceful, perhaps more sympathetic to symmetrical unity, but I’m so grateful I didn’t because I really like the brokenness of it. To me it says: “This is a painting made from a human hand”. 

And though I am a sloppy painter, someone who can quickly displease the viewer, the ‘brokenness’ here cuts through any artifice of perfectionism that can hang over a creator’s life like a sword. A long while ago I struck a deal with the Muses; "Give me some light in these pictures, and I’ll forsake all the money and success of the world".

We’re dead already

15 April 2020

We’re dead already

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 13 April 2020, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

This picture came out of a very frustrated painter who could not decide how to treat the vast mess of clouds in the sky. From the start as I set up,  I decided to grab a small idea and run with it, but as usual, I couldn’t keep up with the movement going on as the light kept changing.

Unless one is Bonington, (Richard Parkes , 1802 - 1828) or one of those magnificent Flemish painters of the 18th century, a sky full of clouds can be a hairy operation for an amateur like me. There are just too many problems with them. It’s a lot like the difficulty when drawing hands. Unless one can render them with the grace of Van Dyck or with the rustic truth of Van Gogh, one must be prepared to fail. Or maybe, one could try to think like Picasso employing his graphic audacity which spins the attention of the viewer away from his mangled hands like a magician distracting his audience.

Clouds can overrun the sky, distorting the distances and making it hard to push the horizon back into the painting. When floating above us, untethered clouds will run amuck like children at recess, oblivious to discipline. Overhead, they roam casually at random confusing the poor painter below.  When I found myself lost in this study I decided to just let go. My goal, hence, was not only to fail in this picture but to fail successfully, as Samual Beckett advised us, “Fail, and fail again even better”. Or as the smart-aleck buddhists proclaim; “No problem, we’re dead already.” This is also something I will say to myself before playing a very strong tennis player.

And so the other night, just when I let go of all expectations, something wonderful happened. Skating on thin ice I suddenly felt weightless and finished this small study with a certain joy that surprised me. It’s a very simple image, and like many of these small studies it might appear boring if one looks with a surplus of expectation. Yet everything works in it. There is distance in it and the pink cloud bank squats on the heavy dark sea like it's a wall. There is a faint hint of foreground at the base of the picture that represents the closest thing to the viewer like a doormat outside the home and which  is the first stepping stone into a new place. 

All too often, I find too many pictures uninteresting wherever I look, everyone's, but mine too. And yet sometimes if I look more carefully and see that they're unified within their own chosen mode of abstraction, there is a chance they'll get better and better with time like the cliché of an ageing bottle of Bordeaux. But when a picture doesn’t come together, no matter how dazzling or sexy it may first appear, it will turn to vinegar over time.

Though it might not dazzle, I like this painting anyway. It’s a billboard for myself only, one reminding me that it’s just a another study, another successful failure.

Of graveyards and grenades

12 March 2018

Of graveyards and grenades

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 9 March 2018, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Lots of rain for weeks now bring me grey skies at the beach with only random visits by the sun and it seems to mirror my spirits.

The other night I brought this home, it was one of just two. I had arrived at the beach to find a thick band of clouds brought up with the chilly winds from the South. It shut down what I was hoping to be at least a reasonably colourful evening if not full of bright cheer. There were however, a few periodic splashes of light that did help to bring flashes of life into an otherwise morbid-looking evening. My spirits were dropping and I felt like I was at a graveyard where instead of lovely white headstones I was surrounded by thick cement slabs. 

I’ve learned gradually that all artistic activites will eventually bring up the mud of one’s own life. Being a bit of a control freak I try to hide it but I rarely succeed because a painter’s feeling always desires to be free. It’s the way it is, for better or worse. Often it happens in sly ways unbeknowst to the painter themselves. For me, all that dark stuff that lies-in-wait deep within my own crypt needs to escape from time to time like it’s a captive wild animal. When liberated, it will take me to that place of which I had been really thinking and feeling all along. But more forbiddingly, it can open up avenues where I don’t wish to travel nor do I need to reveal to others. In short, it’s not a place to find a cheerful adventure.

In this study though, I think I was already feeling frustrated by the lack of light in the sky and thus a little angry with myself for coming out when I had suspected it might be a dud of an afternoon. But I tried to make the best of it, and despite the gloom, I did eventually make something that spoke of the moment irregardless of my mood. It’s a well constructed ‘abstract’ image that I was able to wrench from a stubborn evening sky.

Despite everything, its darkness is nonetheless bound together and held by hints of light. There are times when such small image like this can seem like a tiny fragment chipped off a beautifully luminescent marble sculpture, as if born from greatness. But this tiny shard of a study feels more like it was wacked off a chunk of concrete. However, I do appreciate it anyway because I’m always thankful to wring a little light out of darkness. 

For a long time in my life, I I used to make portraits that were quite severe, something of which I was well aware. A friend once told me that my portraits made people look as if they were ready to kill someone. When she said that I completely understood, but I didn’t know how to respond because I didn’t want to explain why this was so. I had come to understand by then that indeed I harboured lots of anger inside but I didn’t know how to dislodge it even after a few therapies. I really wanted to paint portraits that were less hard, less severe, more truthful to the model and less to mysel, but I seemed incapable of it despite my best intentions. I was in limbo, like stuck in a DMZ where truce was timid. 

All this existed beneath my consciousness, and it felt to me like a physical thing living in my basement like a grenade placed close to my vital organs, my heart, liver, kidney and spleen. How could I dislodge it? Where does one go for this kind of surgery?

Eventually, after half of my life had washed over me I was able to make peace with it as if I had gone through some weird form spiritual alchemy. My anger and all my deepest resentments and shames from an early age had gently lifted up and out of me. Surprisingly, everything burned out of me except the memories, which like smoke, just mingled with the wind, then disapeared. My portraits went from angry and severe to just sad, which I guess was good progress. A little later on, I realised the mother of all truths; that my closest connections to others had always been born from sorrow not joy. The one great truth about practicing any art form is that one has to dig deep into themselves, but they must also be ready for what they discover, whether it’s a diamond or just donkey dung.

In any event, the act of painting will always unleash many secrets for the amateur of art when one is ready to handle them, at least that’s the way it’s been for me. Painters, if they are authentic, are also a particular breed of people who are generally quite sensitive and who are often on the edge of life even when they’re screwed into it with ordinary domestic and social concerns. If they are loners without family for whatever reason, they can be difficult and prone to excess drink and what-have-you. Luckier are those with a family perhaps, one filled with household vitality and the joy of children hanging about. But with just one life to live, (as far as I know) a painter’s sense of time is both precious and private because, like everyone knows, artists are selfish by nature. 

 

Wild horses

March 26 2018

Wild horses

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

Autumn rain has arrived and it’ll be on and off again for another month or so. Meanwhile I jump into the sea most nights before working. Nice! 

It was a beautiful evening for this strange picture, the sky was full of giant, dark, elephantine clouds that seemed to rise up out of the sea like monsters from a Greek myth. There was a small moon overhead which allowed me to work later into the evening. On lovely evenings like this I always seem to think to myself, “these are wonderful moments in life, and I’m just smart enough to know it, right here, right now”.

Though this is a messy and frightful-looking thing, I find it compelling and exotic. But best of all: it’s flat, and this compression is something I really like.This is definitely not a picture for a pedestrians. Looking at it now, I see an impatient painter who cannot seem to get it all down fast enough. Yes, it’s scratched and a bit sloppy, but I love all this stilted imperfection of haste, it’s a map of battle scars, bitten by the wind out on the sand dunes like an older Great White Pointer one sees in undersea photos. I admit that it’s not for everyone who expects from Nature, elements more refined, more reassuring, and easier to digest, but what can you do?

I can’t help it, this is what comes up and out of me in front of such a sky. Like most painters I’m intuitively searching for solutions to the endless problems of painting each time I work. It can only really come to me while I paint, not while I’m comfortably thinking about it elsewhere although this can be part of the process. Once one has sorted out the problems of colour and drawing in one’s life, next, it’s how to bring order to chaos. But of course, there many others who delight in throwing order out the window just because they can, Art is a big tent, after all, and it has its own order of democracy, but Form appears to be my steady white whale.

In this picture I’m walking a knife-edge because this could appear too wildly eccentric to be a seascape, something so awkward that it’s either really good, or just a big flop. The sky appears to be pressed and pasted to the canvas board, and the sea stands up flat, almost rigid like a defiant ridge that one still needs to traverse. Personally, I love seeing oceans that stand up vertically because they remind me of old Chinese ink drawings of cliffs that tower over the sea.

So this was painted with sloppy haste like an Expressionist, but my aim like for all these things, was to grab hold of this motif like it was a wild horse, tame it, then make it my own. This is the kind of image that a painter like Philip Guston might have liked. But any self-expression or mark-making within it was merely a by-product of the process, not the means to the end like the current trend of mark-making that is so popular thses days. So on this particular path I’ve chosen, there seems to be a way forward even if I can’t take anyone else with me, life-vest or not.

Hiatus

 

8 February 2017

Hiatus

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 4 February 2017, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

I seem to be back working from Nature again and I’m so grateful because it feels like hooking up with an old friend after a long while and one remembers just how much the relationship has been missed. And being at the beach, specifically at dusk under this immense sky is wildly comforting in its own strange but familiar way. But at the same time I’m again facing my old fears around perfectionism in front of such an wild motif. But it’s also like hooking up with a new painter inside of me which makes me feel special again, like an actor returning to his favorite stage. 

One could say that this motif is a cliche of beauty, a photo for a tourist calender, the mundane postcard of a beach and sky that encircles all of Australia. It is this of course, but I’m sure I can make something new and different with it. I have a strange and perhaps unreal belief that I can. At the dusk hour when the colours of the sky are unleashed upon the sea it is so pictorially intoxicating that I’m reminded of my early school days in front of a messy blackboard when I felt mesmerized by the cryptic beauty of algebra class. But in this case, it’s in technicolour.

I am careful when using the word beauty because it is such an emotionally charged idea these days. Like God it can put many people into a tizzy of 

discord. However hesitant I am in public, with close friends I use it freely. As an adjective, beautiful is even trickier. But I think beauty is still a deeply personal idea despite how John Keats equates it with Truth as if they are brother and sister in his poem Ode to a Grecian Urn. But, like we say these days in popular films; it’s complicated. But it’s nuanced too, because Post Modernism is still like a spy hiding behind every grammatical slip.

Beauty certainly projects an idea even more personal than other highly over-hyped words like, genius or love, for instance. Obviously, being a Romantic in the historical sense, I’ll stick with John Keats on this even if am considered old-fashioned,,,, but Hey! 

Essentially, I’m a simple painter who is grateful to be part of a vocation that is one of the oldest of humankind. I desire is always to convey a visual idea to someone through the craft of painting. But this isn’t the reason why I paint. I paint because, in this crazy world, it’s one thing that grounds me and makes my life more fulfilling and consequently I can live with more hope.

It’s been about a month since I began a series of small studies done just as the sun has dropped down into the West and behind me. Being on the eastern side of Australia, I’m naturally facing the East. This is that time of day when most things in Nature prepare for sleep and the shades are drawn. Dusk and twilight, both equally sensual in meaning can still be altered with a slight twist of a sentence. For me personally, it’s always been the time of day when I’m happiest. The French call it ‘l’heure entre le chien et le loup’, but we know it as just ‘The hour of the wolf’. But for me, being like a vampire, it’s when I awaken.

Anyway, what really interests me what happens before twilight, dusk, however I refer to it. It’s really the prequel, when with delicious speed, the sky prepares the world for death like a nurse putting a patient to sleep. It can often feel like a primeval rite, one shared by millions of beachcombers each afternoon all over the world.

Facing the sea, with my back to the setting sun I can watch every colour of the sky interact chromatically with those upon the sea below. It’s more an 

exercise of the eyes than of the mind. The eyes see it all before the mind can arrange it. And because one has such a small window within which to 

operate, one must be quick and fearless at the same time. Unlike my usual state of daydreams, here at the beach at dusk, my whole attention is focussed on the small painting on the easel but at the same time as all the hell breaking loose in the sky out front. I’m the guy on the bow of the ship like 

Odysseus, who had himself tied to the mast during a storm in order to hear the song of the Sirens. Turner, too, in fact, had himself tied up to the mast of a ship during a storm so he could also feel it. I love that, something about these acts strike me as the same kind of eccentric passion that pushed Vincent Van Gogh to put lit candles on his straw hat so he could see his palette while painting at night in Arles. I love these guys.

This strange study of the other night bothers me. It feels too crude and poorly designed as a picture and yet there is something in it that when seen at a distance might work. My new resolve, a promise to myself, is not to destroy anything just because I don’t like it. I want to develop patience and this will be an exercise so thus, I will keep them at least for now because Time is also Truth in the world of Painting, like Truth is Beauty according to Keats.

In any case, at the end of a long day, painting these small things is becoming a friendly habit again in my life. Nice!