SWM
Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 20 August, 2021, oil on canvas board, 25 X 20 cm
PIA
Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 20 August, 2021, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm
These studies are from this past week. I like them both but especially the one below. Even immediately after I painted it, I liked it, but this can be a dangerous sign that it mightn't be all that I had imagined, self-satisfaction can bode badly for art. But today, I still like it, though it didn't photograph very well.
It was an idea which gave me lots of optimism, but problems too, and I struggled. But only at the end would the drawing, much to my surprise, melt into the red surface of Mars.
This is what I am looking for, and just as the pianist, with a mind full of melodies, must search for the appropriate harmonic resolution, the painter, also seeks a solution for his visual idea. There is nothing fancy about it, there is no intellectual wizardry nor any concept to save him.
Curiously, these two studies appear somewhat 'insouciant' like certain characters one sees about every 2 minutes in a Parisian cafe. Their self-assurance is expansive and relaxed, their flaws are unrestrained, flamboyant even. And if these small pictures had lips they would curl up slightly (Je m'en fous), and like the truly cool French, they would wear their imperfections with pride, arrogance even. And since I am going overboard on all this, I would add that what these pictures lack in a certain technical prowess, they gain in authenticity through sartorial surprise. (like zee French! Ha Ha!)
In the end, I am always after an authentic experience when I work, and so the result will rarely be technically virtuous, something that people often fail to grasp.
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