‘Twas beauty that killed the beast’

21 June 2022

 ‘Twas beauty that killed the beast’ part 1

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 15 June 2021, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

This is from several nights ago. It's one of two done on the same evening on a chilly beach. I arrived to find a sublime 'bloom' about to explode. I set up in haste and luckily, it allowed me in easily like an impatient lover waiting at the front door. And for some reason, I love this one particularly. It satisfies me emotionally, which I think is a funny thing to say about a seascape. I had been home all day and nothing seemed to be going right for me. It was one of those days. So lucky me, when all else fails in my life, the beach awaits me eat dusk and sometimes with ardour. 

Both images share my proclivity for large bands of colour like those oversized ribbons used to wrap automobiles on American quiz shows in the 1960’s. 

But today, it’s the 21st of June, and being the Summer Solstice, France will celebrate the Fête de la Musique today. As its title implies, throughout the country, music festivals will explode everywhere all day and into the night.   

The idea initially come from an American musician in Paris working for France Musique who had proposed the idea for a music festival on each of the Solstices, both winter and summer. Jack Lang, the then Minister of Culture, liked the idea so he created the festival back in 1982. It became an instant success because, who doesn't like a music festival? It has since blossomed into a monster day of music and has spread throughout the world though mostly in Francophone countries. In cities, towns and villages, one can hear anything from someone playing Debussy in a tiny garden on an upright piano to a band of Gypsies driving around on an open truck. It's a cacophonous zoo that runs late into the night and also another reason to really love France. And by good fortune, Roland Garros, the French Tennis Open is in full bloom at the moment and it's screwing up my sleep cycle here in Australia. 

I’ve noticed that on the prestigious Center Court is a maxim engraved into the sliver of thin wall separating the upper and lower stands. On the West side of the stadium is written in English these words; “Victory belongs to the most tenacious” while on the opposite East side, it's in French, “La victoire appartient au plus opiniâtre”. Though I’ve never seen nor heard this word opiniatre used before, the dictionary assures me that it’s stronger than the more plebian, ‘tenace’ (tenacious) because it adds a stronger nuance as in, “he doggedly kept at it till it almost killed him’.

I recount this because every year I see it on television for two weeks on end during the tournament and it makes me think of painting. It reminds specifically me of just how much this painting motif at the beach has changed me in so many different ways over these past few years. It would be impossible to qualify or quantify it but because of it, I feel like a completely different person. Hard to imagine that just by going to a beach and painting the sky one could change so much, but it has happened to me. And I know it happens to everyone who find a vocation into which they can sink their teeth.

Personally, I think the most obvious change is that I’ve developed grit because I don’t think I’ve ever stuck with anything this long in my life except sobriety. So thus, these words engraved on Center Court at Roland Garros have stuck with me over time. It also makes me ponder so many tennis heroes; Roger Federer, Serena Williams, Rafael Nadal, Steffi Graf, etc, etc.. who understand the grit of the fight. 

Like these tennis heroes, there are also so many painting heroes out there too, and though it's a different kind of fight, the grit is the same. There are so many painters out there that in fact, somewhere during the past several centuries, it surely must be true that a French painter must have proclaimed something similar to this about their own painting. But mightn't they have turned the phrase around slightly to read;

“With time and persistance, one tames a motif”.

One could easily imagine Eugene Delacroix writing such a thing 200 years ago. But couldn’t Monet have also said to his wife? Pierre Bonnard? Surely, Cezanne or Van Gogh in their letters, non? Perhaps it came from Matisse or Picasso, but I doubt it somehow. Perchance, might it have been Giorgio Morandi, whose life is inextricably linked with his endless small studies of bottles and cups? But ironically enough, maybe none of the above, maybe it was just me! Me, who even decades before I fell in love with this motif had noted something to this effect at some point in my own diary. Having digested so much correspondence between so many artists over the years, I can no longer be sure what came from whom, or when, or where? 

Nonetheless, this figures deeply into the universe of painters like Morandi and Monet in particular who faced the same motifs over and over again.

Before he became a champion on the Grand Slam circuit, Bjorn Borg was apparently a very tetchy player and had to deal with impetuous rages when a junior player. He apparently did quite successfully, because as the champion he became, he was known as the 'Ice Man' due to his cool demeanour on court. 

I, too, am but an observer

2 March 2022

I too, am but an observer  

Morocco, April 2007 Tombo pen on Muji paper

Just a brief note today.

The entire Northern Rivers here on the north coast of New South Wales has flooded. Mullumbimby was hit hard but Lismore is under 15 meters of water and people are being rescued from their roofs. A terrible tragedy, it’s awful. The photos I’ve seen reveal a decimated landscape. Between this event and the war in Putain’s invasion of Ukraine, I understand how people can lose all hope. 

I haven’t been able to get out due to the flooded roads every which way. I’m safe but trapped at home. So this is my page today, done from one of my drawing trips to Morocco back around 2007. Somehow it feels appropriate. I made several drawing trips there and would spend all day drawing in the streets. I made lots and filled small Muji books that I rarely looked through until I was leaving. I loved these trips though they were not holidays.

This drawing came one afternoon. I look back at it now and I imagine that I had somehow stumbled upon Death, who at that moment was crossing the street. He turned his head and looked at me before turning away. This is apparently what I caught of him.

Evanescence

 

2 July 2021

Evanescence

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 28 June 2021, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

This was the second of just two studies from another chilly evening at the beach. The clouds on the horizon line appeared as cold as the afternoon air and as fragile as butterflies wings. In these early months of winter the clouds can sometimes exhibit a sweet delicacy. 

Although I didn't find this picture too novel or exciting at the beach, when I looked at it the other morning as I pulled it from the boot of the car, I was surprised by its pale colour harmonies. The clouds appear to shift from the palest Prussian Blues to Ultramarine Violets though I hardly remember thinking about it while painting them. It was cold and I think I worked faster in order to get home quicker (!), but hey! 

But I think they work, as does the whole sky as an ensemble. The sea had gone the warm violet which it likes to do for just a short time before the dusk eats everything else up. It’s not great but I like the over-all feeling in it. It’s slightly out of date too, somewhat intemporal in feeling and although not really old, it's not contemporary either. I really like the sky high above and over the cloud bank where the warm yellow goes into the light substance of Prussian Blue at the very top of the picture. Visually for me, this pale blue appears to raise the ceiling slightly like one can feel inside a cathedral. These transitions of colours have become points of great interest for me in this series and maybe they’re the real reason I keep going out to the beach to work. Late on many afternoons the colours soften and they appear to meld together as if to welcome a painter like me and I suppose like other artists, I'm just looking for a way into heaven.

When I was back in France three years ago I put together the very minimal things I would need to step out and work in the landscape; a palette, easel, and some colours and brushes. I had not anticipated to paint at all on the trip. I was going over to ‘write’ and ‘think’ (ha ha). For some reason I didn’t foresee making an ambulant studio in the boot of the small Citroen C3 I had rented. Though I did write, I mostly spent a great deal of my time driving around France and visiting friends.

It was Autumn, so naturally I watched the foliage cycle through the colour wheel into early winter. My friend Hélène Fraisse left me her apartment in Grignan so I had a home base which allowed me to to paint the chilly-looking skies around this beautiful region. I even gratefully watched snow accumulate on the hills a few times before heading back to London at the end of November. I think I made around forty or so small studies while I was there. Here is an example from near Dieulefit. 

  La Milandre, La Drôme, Novembre 2018 oil on canvas board, 30 X 24 cm, 

But earlier in October I stayed at the Châteaunoir where Charlotte Tessier, kindly lent me her apartment off the courtyard. I stayed a week or so seeing friends and visiting my past which impalpably rose up to greet me at every moment as it will when one returns to old and friendly chapters in one’s life. All of it was so deliciously familiar; the smell of all those pine and oak trees especially after a rain, St. Victoire looming like a grandfather in the East, and lots of cats, though not as many, nor as friendly in my day. Even the unique scent of Mazout (diesal heating oil) not used in decades, was still inexplicably lodged into the kitchen walls and tiles that permeated one’s daily activity. 

All my senses had returned me back to Aix-en-Provence, and at the same time, my youth. All of it brought on so many memories; nostalgic yes, but not at all cloying or sad because to my surprise, I had completely moved on. All these memories were like finding old photos from times long gone in a desk drawer. They can elicit strong feelings of longing but at the same time, a particular clarity that allowed me to understand that what was then, will always remains then. 

So that small week spent there also left me feeling like I had to keep moving forward, and this was good because it means that I had changed. Unlike many people I know, I have always seemed to be that somebody with a clubfoot who was still dragging the past around with him in discomfort. 

On the upside, I was connecting with so many dear friends too. I went to the Maison Maria for coffee with Poussey K each morning just like in the old days. And yet as much as I loved being there, I was also content to leave it behind and continue my newer adventure in France in this later chapter of my life there.

But during those days I naturally walked a lot on those familiar paths which all seem to end up at the top of the plateau. And I set up to paint just for fun. I was curious to see how I might conceive a small picture in the riot of colour around the Châteaunoir where I painted for years in another life. I found it difficult but not without a certain pleasure. And as I used to feel so many years ago whilst painting all that confusion of the forest, I still found myself saying: “What am I doing?? This is way too complicated!!” What I painted there on this visit was far more abstract than anything I had ever made while living there so long ago.

 

Prosciutto!

8 August 2021

Prosciutto!

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 24 December 2025, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Although many of these small studies are done anywhere between 5 - 15 minutes on average, they can give the appearance of an instantaneous snapshot as if created in a nano-second like a paper-thin slide taken from an MRI scan. This one especially reminds me of the thinnest slice of prosciutto cut from a machine at a Venetian butcher’s shop. 

But naturally I think at a certain hour it's also something closer to home here at the beach, when during a leisurely stroll, a dreamy newlywed points her phone at the sky and shoots with abandon, and out of hundreds of shots caught on any given sunset walk, any one of them could reveal an instant like this image here.

Today’s digital photographer, unlike in Claude Monet’s time, is able to access a multitude of iterations from which to choose a suitable frame. When the shooting is done, the photographer can sit back in an easy chair and scan each burst carefully to decide which ones possesses the best attributes of a certain shot. Is it bold, balanced or blurred? Is it timeless or tacky?

The painter, on the other hand, also has equal access to these possibilities in this regard, but he or she carries them in their memory so the process isn’t quite the same.

Claude Monet, while in Venice, worked from a specific schedule and he went out to paint in blocks of time usually lasting about two hours at each different motif. Mornings, he might be set up in front of the Palazzi Dario, Cantarini, or da Mula on the Grand Canal. Afternoons would find him in a gondola with his wife out on the lagoon working from the Doges Palace or San Giorgio. He was only constrained by the weather, that when foul, would keep him inside for days in a dark mood according to his wife Alice in her daily correspondence with her daughter. Already in his 60’s when he discovered Venice, he still worked like a demon for eight hours a day when he could. He painted quickly at each of his motifs while at the mercy of the weather and the light. He moved from one site to the next hoarding beauty like squirrel. Each picture was developed slowly, and like a chef regularly basting his roast ham in the oven, he worked patiently with great care on each canvas for weeks and months on end. When he took his leave of Venice, his pictures, even after so many sessions, looked fresh and spontaneous as if seized in a nanosecond. This was just part of greatness. 

But these studies of mine, are executed at high speed because of the sun’s quick arc. Through some fortunate form of grace and alchemy, I’m always hoping to make quick decisions that will also allow me to grab that one ‘frame’ that captures the 15 minute session in front of this mercurial sky. 

Like many painters (and photographers) whose desire is to express an instant of time, whether painted over weeks, or over several minutes, the goal is the same, it’s a blasphemous wish to immortalise a godly instant of a life. Sometimes one’s effort works out, at others it doesn’t. No problem, the joy is in the attempt.

Back in Monet’s time, photography was distrusted by many, Baudelaire, notably, was someone who feared that it would would displace the craft of what he believed to be the nobility of the painted image. But Painting has a way of navigating around humankind’s foibles and it will always somehow find a place at the head of the table. Was Baudelaire a luddite, afraid of the mechanics of all new technology? Was he fearful that photography would wipe out a vocation that had been so closely aligned with those of the poets, and close to the Greek Gods? Apparently, he wanted photography to be confined to factual documentation and practiced uniquely for scientific purposes far away from artistic ones. "Good luck with that Charles" some might have had the foresight to think at the time. And yet, for a long time it had actually been distrusted exactly for that reason; its availability. If Charles Baudelaire lived today, he'd have a smart phone and I think he'd love it. 

Full Disclosure: I’m crazy about taking colour photos with my old Leica. There is nothing like it, because it’s nothing like painting in fact. Neither would it have occurred to me take a photo of the sky the other evening. 

This painting was the second of two from the other evening. It reveals how the pale blue rises up to eat away the pink on top at the end of the session. Eventually, both colours dissipate quietly into the falling night. I’m not completely sure of it but it was fun making.

Endgame

28 December 2025

Endgame

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 24 December 2025, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

This picture from the other evening has a vaguely confectionary vibe to it like the sea is a creamy peach flan. As I've admitted in here not a few times already, I would have loved to be a pastry chef and this image reveals how I get my wiring crossed from time to time. It was one of those warm sticky evenings with a humid haze and perfect conditions for me. The first of two pictures, a shame that the second one went pear-shaped, but I’m happy with this. I like the luminous colours and it says what I felt. 

So though I still go out to paint at the beach here at Brunswick Heads and I continue to write about these painting sessions, this book however, must come to a close somewhere alas. It is fitting that it closes with this ultra-flat, simple painting, one that speaks to the enormous evolution of these studies over the roughly eight years since I began working from the beach skies.

And so as I arrive at the end of these pages I suddenly wonder if I have asked the right questions I've always had about painting. And if I have, did I answer them in a constructive or thoughtful way that might lead both a reader and viewer through new doorways and windows? What sort of painting is this that I’ve been putting up here? Have I opened up discussions for others who may have little experience in looking at painting? Have I opened up a conversation or two with accomplished painters and/or academics who know more about art history than myself? What sort of journey have I been on over these past seven years? Have I improved as a painter, and if so, have I grown more as a painter and person from making all these pictures? Have I expressed a cogent rational for pursuing this eccentric vocation in a world filled with so many other interesting preoccupations? And am I a happier human being because of this experience? I’ll answer this last one first by saying that if happiness is but a by-product of living well and being productive, then yes, absolutely, yes. 

These are questions that I think every creative person will be able to relate to. One thing is for sure, it’s that I’m a more real human being today because of where these written peregrinations have taken me. What began as a lark, quickly turned into mild obsession. What amazes me more than anything is that this twilight motif, a kind of spigot of light, never shuts down. Actually as I have always said, it’s the gift that keeps giving and giving though I admit that much of what I do might bore civilians stiff. 

Recently, I was speaking to a dear friend whom I’ve known for fifty years now informed me that all the pictures she’s seen on Instagram look all the same. Ha Ha, boy,,, that sort of poked me like a sharp pencil. But I understood because even I find many of them boring too. Being a painter has taught me not to worry about what others think of the work. It’s also taught me that it's too worrisome even for for me to worry about. And yes, I was a little surprised to hear it put so casually that way, but hey, isn't it better to understand someone else than be understood oneself? 

Like for any creative endeavour, the work goes through periods of draught and famine, and I've learned to move on with grace, my true friend in this vocation. Over these recent years I've also found myself pursuing a flatter sort of image from a relatively cloudless sky. This is because the pictures have gradually taken me there without much foresight or active input by me. It's really been my intuition that has guided me with little conscious thought. And tomorrow, it will also take into unknown paintings without any real concrete plan of my own. No worries, for I've come to trust in the process, one that is larger and longer than just me.

It’s been really fun to write about Art in so many of its forms. It turns out that what I've written is a rather hybrid diary/memoir about my painting adventure here at the beach, but I've also kind of fallen in love with this writing thing.

I can only ever really express what I know about that painting domain, so naturally that leaves a lot out. On the other hand, it has certainly brought out various sides of me which I had only previously suspected I possessed within me. I found out that I have lawyer lurking within me but a doctor and psychologist too, a really uptight English teacher and a pedantic life coach. But I found out that I'm also a coroner who works well with the homicide squad. All these things came up to surprise me while talking about Art, go figure.

This painting experience has also exposed for me some fundamental questions that a pedestrian might ask about Art writ large: Am I moved by the experience of Art? I think, specifically as a painter, I should always ask: Does the act of painting even move me? What does it teach me about myself, and life in general? 

And, personally as a painter, ditto the same questions. Does my work also open a window to others, or is it just a means of self-expression for myself only? Are my pictures specific enough to convey a cogent feeling from me to another person? And, is my artistic expression a wall or a window? 

I've come to understand that when a picture is not specific as an image it can be just a means of self-expression that might have little or no meaning to anyone outside of myself. Often ‘Abstract Art’ falls into this category as in the American Abstract Expressionist Movement that began the 1940’s. But a risk of this nonspecific genre of self-expression in artistic terms is a risk we take when any of us paint. I engage in non-figurative also in my studio so I am equally confronted with this problem. 

I’ll go out on a limb and push this idea further. In Europe between the two world wars there existed pockets of an existential discontent that helped fuel a thirst in Art for something completely new like Surrealism and Cubism, and other off-shoots. 

These idea quickly went around the world so that naturally after WW2, which, because the Americans helped to win, the cultural flame alighted to New York where American Expressionism was born propagated quickly around the world. Thus the boom of Abstract Painting took root in Universities and Art Schools. Ever ever, we all live in a giant democratic tent of Art. It’s a wild world of creativity and one has to find a place in it for themselves. 

Presuming that most of us wish to be understood in one way or another, whether we’re artists or not, it behooves us all to find a language, visual or otherwise to help us get there. For myself, I’m continually trying to navigate that fragile space between what I think of as the wall and the window in my own work. This means basically that I ask myself whether or not my expressive work leads to a dead end or might it go further out through a window to something way beyond myself and my own feelings and ideas. Is it transferable?  

This is slightly paradoxical because what I’ve also come to understand is that it’s only through a viable form that actually gets me through a window in order to find out what it is I’m actually thinking and feeling.  

To finish on a light French note, there was a melon seller at the market in Aix-en-Provence who along with his mother ran their stand in front of the large cafe across from the Palais du Justice on Market days. When I first arrived there in 1973 he was a young man about my own age. So his mother died and since then, he ran it by himself. He had a wonderful refrain he sang that rang throughout that end of the market. From July through to August and September they sold their delicious melons.

When I was there eight years ago, he was still out belting it out from behind his extra-long table covered with wooden crates of ripe melons from nearby Cavaillon. He sings out with a heavy Provinçial accent at frequent intervals between serving his clients; 

“...toutes les bonne choses ont une fin....les melons de Cavaillon,,, prenez-les vite,,, toutes les bonne choses ont une fin,,, allez!,,, ils sont bon,,, les melons de Cavaillon,,, prenez-les vite...toutes les bonne choses ont une fin, les melons de Cavaillon,,, allez,,,n'hésitez pas!,,, allez!” 

All good things must come to an end.