A reprint, yes, once in a while I have to do it

 

First published November 2014

09 November 2014

Ki no Tsurayuki

'Poetry in Japan begins with the human heart as its seed and myriad words as its leaves. It arises with when (sic) people are inspired by what they see and hear to give voice to the feelings that come forth from the multitude of events in their lives. The singing of warblers in the blossoms, the voices of frogs in the ponds, these all teach us that every creature on earth sings. It is this song that effortlessly moves heaven and earth, evokes emotions from the invisible gods and spirits, harmonizes the relations of men and women, and makes serene the hearts of brave warriors.'

from the introduction to the Kokinshū, an anthology containing twenty books of poetry (A.D. 915 -920).

  Its color fading
with no outward sign
  in this world-
the flower
of the human heart.

Ono no Komachi (A.D. 834 - 880).

I wonder why so much celebrated 'avant-garde', 'cutting-edge' Western art of our time seems to mock and denigrate Beauty? Would it not be possible instead, to shock people by Beauty in this world instead of by its horrors? I do not speak of a sentimentalisation in front of Nature (of which we are also inundated to an awful degree) but of finding a way through to Beauty using metaphor which comes so naturally to many Japanese poets and artists. How can we (in the West) learn to show reverence for Nature, to find amazement in it, without usual denigration of it? Moreover, can we do this without employing a sentimentalisation of it?

Christmas !

           Christ, Via Dolorosa , lithograph (1960s)

 

This is a print from a limited edition of lithographs made by my teacher and mentor, Léo Marchutz back in the 1960's. I've always loved it and it has been lodged somewhere in the base of my brain as a model of what could be possible in the wonderful world of drawing.

It fits into a difficult category of work because it is too 'abstract', perhaps even messy, for some viewers of art, yet for others, it is decidedly too realist. That it is a 'religious' figure like Christ makes it even more problematic. But hey!

The 1960's in France was the beginning of a period of POP art after a brief chapter of Surrealism that reigned supreme after the war.

Léo worked alone and separate from any 'ism'. Self-taught, he developed a unique way of transferring drawings made on paper onto the limestone and ready to be inked up and printed. 

Once transferred 'into' the soft stone he was able to pull as many prints as he wished. He made hundreds of prints in this manner over two decades. Using specially made rollers, often very thin, he laboriously rolled out each part of the drawing with different colours so that he could make just one run through the press and avoid crushing the paper with numerous passes. To arrive at the right colours  he actually mixed oil paints to get exactly what he wanted. This seemed to work out well as industrialised colours were limited.

I wasn't around in those days because I had not yet arrived in Aix for University until 1972. He lent me one of his wooden litho presses and a few dozen stones and taught me lithography. I had a studio on the west side of Aix for about two years until I lost interest in it and fell in love with Painting. 

But it's the drawing of Christ that interests me the most for it's extraordinary. The expression  is spontaneous yet so well realised. Funny enough, I would have certainly loved to see many of his drawings he threw out in order to get to get to this one of Christ. 

He drew incessantly during the 1940's, and 1950's. I'm not sure about the 1960's because he was printing all the drawings. I only knew him the last four years of his life, and by then he was still working on his large paintings made from drawings in the studio.

Anyway, this drawing for me was a watershed moment because it opened up a whole world of possibilities for me. It switched me onto the chaotic world working quickly out in a crowd which led me to drawing trips to Vietnam and Morocco and in cafes everywhere. 

Though infinitely inferior to Léo's Christ, I took from him (and later Albert Marquet) an idea of working outdoors. This drawing doesn't even really work at all but I loved the feeling it at that time almost twenty years ago..

Time flies as we all know, so make a great Christmas for yourselves and don't forget two things: Get a great hobby in life, and give away not only whatever wisdom you've acquired but also, and most especially, all your love to others.

 

Monet at the beach!

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 26 November 2024 oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 26 November 2024 oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

The weather has been flunky these past few weeks and I haven't been out to paint at the beach as much as I would have liked. These are from last month, and they look Okay. 

This evening I went out to see what the sky looked like. It was really amazing but I didn't paint, I jumped in the sea instead. I didn't believe in it, but by the time I was out in the waves I could see that it was going to be really lovely. It was too late to change course, and yet, sometimes it is a great thing to be in the sea and just watch the sky. It's different than when I'm set up to paint because I not watching, but looking which is more intense.

I could only describe the sky as broken at several altitudes so that at sunset the various levels of clouds and colours were different. The clouds themselves were then consequently all very different shapes as well. High cirrus strands, the last thin angel hairs were golden. the pudgy line of low cumulus clouds resembled those Brillo scouring balls used to clean pots and pans were deep violet. Above them was a creme-coloured green backdrop that stretched into the cirrus cloud above. Well,,,, because I don't generally believe in photographed skies it didn't occur to me to capture it.  

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 26 November 2024 oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 6 November 2024 oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

              Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 6 November 2024 oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm
 

Three beads that save a world

People will no doubt disagree with me but I think this is one of Matisse's more grand and compelling pictures. Granted in his large oeuvre there is a lot to choose from, but this one speaks to his poetic and daring faith in a picture's thirst for a spontaneous but unified surface. I like everything about it, from the colour harmonies to the organisation, to how each part appears to interlock with another like in a lego project.

Somehow, I imagine this picture would enrage feminists everywhere. A nude woman opens up her legs to a male voyeur who doesn't even acknowledge her identity! No visage! Sacré Bleu! Because context is everything for so many viewers of Art (and politics) these days, I think poor Henri would not come out very well, especially in America.

Being a painter, I don't place context high up on my list of criteria for appreciating a painting. I'm a lover of the subtle and unified grace in a picture with almost no attention to any context concerning it.

I marvel at how each of these colours come together as objects. Each one takes its appropriate place within each object it assumes. I love the two pinks that monopolise the entire surface. The warm pink for the woman's body, and the cool, not only for the nightgown, but also for the walls of the room. Is the floor red? Or is it a rug? Or is that a golden rug? Is that a green door or green window? Is that a small blue cupboard in the distance? Do any of these 'things' in a picture even have to do, or be anything at all? What if a painting just surprises us but its mystery?

My real beef with the Non-Figurative, or Abstract genre of Painting, in this era of ours, is that I almost never see any paintings that possess a sufficient cohesion of relationships as to make an image even remotely believable.  

So much painting usually appears mushy with poor light sources, and is scattered about randomly. To call it Light isn't even possible because it's usually Lighting, like used in a photo shoot. Without a natural light source how can form exist? And without that, how can colours then exist?

I love Matisse for so many reasons, too long to list and expound upon here, but it's primarily because, over his lifetime, he was an unabashed explorer into the wild jungles of the Plastic Arts. When he hit it, for he did a lot, it was solely because he painted so prolifically and by that account the odds were in his favour. He was a constant gardner producing every sort of edible in each season.

He worked tirelessly and faced a continual uphill battle against a mercurial and mistrustful public. And, like almost every painter he made some truly awful pictures at times but I love him for all his experimentations that encompass an exceptionally wide set of styles and materials. He was up for for everything it seems. Even towards his end, when ill in bed, he made cut-outs with coloured paper shapes using a pair of scissors.

But in this painting, I think the most important element is the small necklace made of just three dark coloured beads. Are they deep blue/grey or black? For me, they are the keys around which everything else revolves. The strong accents represented by these small three 'beads', perhaps without which the entire surface of the picture might suffer, are pivotal. Somehow they seem to act like tiny batteries that keep the entire picture moving around itself in a slow docile movement.  

In Chiaroscuro terms, they present the strongest accents in the painting which they permit him to use all those surrounding pale, bleached pinks everywhere.

The great display of foliage placed behind the model in the form of an indoor house plant is a brilliant and anodyne solution for creating a passageway over to the deep green door (?) on the right, or is it a window (?) hallway (?) whatever it is, no problem because it there to set off the red (tile?) floor. 

This is a painting that delights its viewers but does so without making a big fuss about it. In it, everything reposes. 

 

As an afterthought, and because I like upsetting people, I include a de Kooning just for fun. It's from a later period in his long life, and certainly not one of his better pictures for which I apologise to his fans, but I picked it out on Dr Google because it's a model painted in a somewhat similar situational place like the Matisse, and as a oil painting I find it dreadful.

While Matisse opened himself up to a visual window of the world, de Kooning, by contrast, appeared to close himself off from it. It's as though he only seemed to pretend to look at the model, because for me, the result explains that he didn't even see her in the first place.

I will be crucified for criticising a god like de Kooning, but honestly, who cares? I think that as critical space has expanded between today and the world of yesterday, it's clear that the Expressionist movement, barely some eighty odd years old, is actually another weak link in the long history of Art. It certainly did not add much to the rich history of Painting, nor was it a lighthouse for the next generation. In many ways it was an myopic diversion away from everything that many have loved and cherished in Painting for centuries. 

Specifically, when comparing it to the Matisse, look at the random ad-hoc and irrelevant way he used colour and placed his model in the picture. The colour is all wrong, was it meant as a joke? There is no light in it all, it's a horror show, and no contextual gibberish can prop it upright with ArtSpeak.

To be fair, it looks like it may have been painted at night because of the garish overuse of yellow paint. This comes from working from artificial light. It has lighting but no luminosity. Honestly, the more I look at it the more ridiculous it really appears. Yes, he made some interesting pictures in his life but no. I don't think many of them stand up to time. 

something fun for dark times!

I don't know about you but I find the atmosphere in and around the world so awful after the American election that has put a criminal in the White House. It's progressively appalling because the entire crime family expands with all his appointments.

Sacré Bleu! Quoi faire? We civilised people ask to our friends. How can this thing have happened to the greatest democracy in the world?

Well, it's probably 'karma', 'payback', 'hubris', etc, etc,,. We've meddled in so many elections around the world that went pear-shaped

because of us that we are no better than our European cousins across the pond. But hey!

So here are several of my absolute faves that have hung around my desktop for ages. This top one is the creation of a clever person here around Byron Bay. It was an installation at the local cinema a few years back. My brother is the fellow with the long hair in the chair. I loved this set of oversized balloons in suspiciously feminine colours more suited for a lingerie shop. But it works well in an otherwise nondescript but pleasant waiting lounge at the Palace cinema.     

I love this piece below by Sean Scully. It's clever and colourful, something that escapes me when I see many of his paintings.

 

Sean Scully

I wish I knew where this red balloon was jammed into a thin street between two brick buildings. It could be in London, possibly Amsterdam or Berlin? Anyway, we need more of these things.

Below, is a piece by the 'enfant terrible' of Los Angeles. Personally, I don't care much for Paul McCarthy's work. It's usually on the vulgar side of the sunny Californian street. It's the work of someone who did too much LSD. I don't get his work maybe because I haven't done drugs in a long time. And yet, here in the Place Vendôme he erects a butt plug as a Christmas tree decoration that infuriated Parisians. It's a double entendre which I think is slightly brilliant. I think for a four week installation it's not just tolerable but kind of cool. And though I can sometimes appreciate these narcissistic artists, in the end, he's a very, very bad boy and probably needs a stiff spanking!

Paul McCarthy

On the other hand I really love this clothes pin, I think for a parc in Switzerland but I'm probably wrong. It's green and civilised like the Swiss I believe. I do know that it's part of a golf course near one of the fairways. Nice!

Mehmet Ali Uysal

So the moral of the tale is to be curious despite all the dreadful things going on in the world. Vivre la création! 

 

Help! Marcel Duchamp ! Everyone's gotta get in the act!

This news blurb has been on my desktop a while now because I confess that I found it funny. Defacing ART in museums is obviously a serious concern for people who care about both ART and History so I'm not encouraging it by any means. In this case though it wasn't about defacing but adding eyes to a face. It happened in a museum in Russia somewhat recently. I could only imagine  some poor guy, (or gal) in a shabby uniform and absolutely bored out of his or her mind while standing  whole days at a time, month after month in a grey Russia with a dismal life. With a BIC pen in their pocket, did they suddenly think of this on the spur of the moment, or was it thought out over too much vodka one evening? 

Looking at it another way, isn't it possible that this act was an ironically subversive statement on the faceless quality of life in Russia? Maybe of everywhere? 

Wasn't the guard in question, acting more like a renegade artist than a bored employee of the state? Wouldn't Marcel Duchamp approve?

In any event, the poor soul was probably sent to a gulag in the north for a lengthy sentence. 

Below, is what happened to one of Wei-Wei's sculptures (Porcelain Cube) that was pushed over during the reception of his recent show at Palazzo Fav in Bologna Italy. Apparently, the saboteur snuck into the reception and tipped it over to everyone's horror. The fellow was identified as a Czech national and a wanna-be artist who was looking for attention. 

Ironically Wei-Wei himself smashed a 2000 year old ceramic vessel (but which he had bought himself) and documented it in photographs. His conceptual piece on that destruction is called 'Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn'. It was a protest against the violence and injustice perpetrated by those in power. Hmmm.

Well,,,,, I think the jumble of ceramic pieces laid out on a plinth looks pretty good as a project in itself.

Lastly, but not leastly, for your perusal from an advert on Ebay.au, I present nine John Deere bonnets from their L series lawn mowers. Somehow it speaks to me of the absurdity of not just Art but politics too. 

 

The wisdom of George Costanza's theory of the Opposite

Darkness Begets Darkness

Though I knew it was a real possibility, the fact of his re-election now sinks in like a slow case of diarrhea. I confess that I thought he was such a joke, I couldn't take it seriously and yet on a lark, I bet my brother a pizza one month ago that Trump would win. Such a cavalier attitude on my part comes back to kick me in the  gut. Oh well.

I actually saw a message from the sober crowd  amongst us, warning us not to drink or take drugs because of all this. Well, I'm no longer a drinker, but yes, if I were, I believe I would certainly have tied one on yesterday. I'm a realist and not too rattled by events so I'm going out to paint this evening because it's so clear, and a Bloom is likely. 

As we all know, the world will go on though it will be weird for sure, possibly it'll even be terrible for lots of people from Alabama to Kiev for variously diverse reasons. But I'm not going to lose sleep over these things that I cannot control. I voted, and that's that. But "It's a sure shame", as we used to say in the Kentucky of my youth. 

America is a complicated place and its menu is full of every kind of contradiction available. So the majority of Americans picked what they want, and apparently, they have the appetite for it. I am strangely relieved that Trump won the popular vote because if hadn't, it would be even more disheartening for us all. Somehow it's easier for me to accept our defeat like when our team loses badly to another and we cannot say that we didn't say get smashed. We just need to get up and go back to training harder for the next time.

So, for the rest of us who voted for Kamala Harris, let us take what little brilliance George Costanza ever offered up to the world and be the opposite of everything that Trump and Maga represents. 

Let's go on a diet and exercise, let us be kind to the less fortunate, let's dive into ART because we need it more than ever during these times. Let's write reams of poetry, paint big colourful pictures and let's make lots of music. But let's love too, and make hay! Let's not swear at others, or about them, and let's not demean others either. Let's educate ourselves to better understand how others live and think, and let's cherish our ability to be any kind of person we choose to be despite what MAGA will say. 

Trump is a miserable old man who wears an odd sort of tanning sauce that makes him look at times like an old pervert. Deep down, I think he even hates himself for not looking like George Clooney. With all that money and power he's still an insecure old man with few friends. So Let's get even by being as happy and fulfilled as we can. 

And let's also wish Kamala well in her new life wherever it will be. She will easily bring her skills to wherever they will be needed and appreciated in service to others. 

Let's be the opposite of everything that Trump stands for!  

These are from last night, a windy evening and a mediocre sky but I managed to have some fun. 

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 6 November 2024 oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 6 November 2024 oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 6 November 2024 oil on canvas board,    30 X 25 cm

Takes one to know one

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 21 October 2024 oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

An old friend of mine, Micheal, is visiting the Gold Coast, here in Australia, about an hour from me, near Byron Bay. He came by for long lunch, and though he has been here many times, he continually marvels at these curious Australian people. For example, he recounted two wonderful anecdotes to prove his point. They both took place on a wooden walkway alongside the beach within days of his arrival. 

The first encounter involved a fit woman in an exercise outfit who was briskly walking towards him from the opposite direction. Because the walkway narrowed at just the spot where they were about to pass one another and one of them would have to give way to the other, the clever woman approached home gently clasping his arm and waltzed herself around him, twirling not once, but twice so they were each able to continue on their respective directions. 

Not bad. 

The second encounter occurred the following morning when on the same walkway he found himself approaching an older couple from behind walking the same direction. As he passed them on the left (which we do here in Australia like in Britain) he nodded with a smile, when the wife looked up at him and immediately said, "Watch out! my husband is farting". 

Whoa! Life is certainly a gas here in Australia! he recounted to me. 

But not to be out done by his stories, I had to tell him about an encounter from just the night that happened to me when I was at my small dune and setting up to paint. I began mixing colours on the palette which is placed horizontally upon the front of the easel. I was apparently using my palette knife with such vigour that when a retired couple that was passing below on the path, the husband shouted up to me; 

"You look like you are masturbating", 

"Come again", I said to him, because I didn't really believe I was hearing him properly. He repeated it then disappeared quickly up the pathway back to the car park. I wasn't shocked because in all fairness, it's usually me who shocks strangers not the other way around. But it did take me by  surprise. 

Recounting this to Michael, I confessed that it's rare that I find myself so disarmed that I cannot repost something quickly so speechless was I to hear a complete stranger say that.

Without missing a beat, he replied, "You could have said, 'Takes one to know one'".

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 21 October 2024 oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

But Australia is also know for its critters that live amongst us all. There are venomous snakes in our backyards, pythons in our roofs, and poisonous spiders that take over our shoes if we leave them out on the porch. In fact, when I first arrived about 25 years ago, I was terrified by all the things my brother and his roommate warned me about doing and not doing here. Of course, I soon realised that Australians do that to every tourist as a joke. But nevertheless, the nasty critters still abound  and one must take certain precautions. On the other hand, there are cute residents like koalas, and wallabies, kookaburras and wombats, etc, etc.. 

Painting has been good to me lately. I am moving through a new chapter because I am re-working studies that had never really pleased me. I take them out to re-paint after I've done a few new studies when the palette is slurpy and rich with paints. So now I often bring a few out with me when I show up at the beach.

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 21 October 2024 oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

  

El Greco and me

Unfortunately I don't remember who I gave this to many years ago. If i did I'd send them an insulting letter about why they would try to sell it at auction which is where I found it online. 

I guess it rubs me because I mostly gave thing away to friends and I cannot imagine why anyone would a gift. For for how much? Peanuts I'm sure from the look of the Online Auction House. 

Well, what are you going to do,,, as my aunt Molly from Glasgow used to say. I remember it as being one of the very first dry-points I ever made in France perhaps 45 years ago. I immediately fell in love with the process working on copper plates but only made a few because I wasn't set up. I think it was a couple whom I knew who had invited me to come into their engraving studio in Aix to try it out. 

It was a 'copy' of an El Greco reproduction I had in those days. A self-portrait he painted in 1584, so Google informs me. But because I was making was a dry-point, the image is reversed and thus the face is backwards so the expression turns to the left instead to the right.

Of course it looks a bit wonky because I didn't know what I was doing, I negligently didn't finish it by ignoring many of the details. The copper plate was the size of a matchbook and I remember being unable to manipulate it in my hand left hand I was also new to gauging into this soft metal. 

But those are excuses! The truth, is that I find it full of life today and I'm grateful to see it again after all these years. 

About 25 years ago I tried again to make dry-points but this time by using plastic postcards....! Go figure!... (I cannot remember why I didn't again use copper plates which make a real dry-point) 

Sometimes, I don't even understand my own thinking...!

But anyway, I fell in love with this El Greco self-portrait that I saw in my early years in France.

El Greco, (The Greek) was born on Crete in 1541, His real name was Domenikos Theotokopoulos, but only after his death did historians call him 'El Greco'. Why 'El Greco' when Crete was ruled by Venetians? It is Spanish because he spent so much of his life working there.

Enjoy!

Addendum- I was telling this story to an artist friend David the other night who wisely suggested another scenario for me. Perhaps the auction was part of deceased estate sale and whomever I had given the print had died? A mystery.

    

         El Greco, 1584 Self Portrait, oil on treated burlap  

Paintings as postcards and ready for the fridge door

Anyone familiar with my facebook or Instagram accounts would see these recent photos I've put up. I just started doing it for fun but I've also now realised that there was a reason of which I wasn't aware when I began. I see now that it was because I've always seen these studies as small souvenirs in an unpretentious  way that has been difficult articulate. By putting them in these little 'mise-en-scenes', I am declaring to the world that they are just 'part of the woodwork' of everyday life as it were. 

They are 'nothing special', an apt title of a favourite book of mine by Charlotte Jono Beck because they are really just reminders that the ocean is ever-present, no matter where one lives, even Utah. They are postcards, souvenirs of a particular instant in time reminding us of this moment. 

They repose standing up in the kitchen as well as on the bookshelves, and once in place, they are domesticated and at home, like small sleeping dogs in one's living room.

Enjoy!

 

 

Hiatus, and Uncle Boris.

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 23 September 2024, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 25 September 2024, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

After a long hiatus I got back to the dunes at the beach last week. I was nervous, and I had to push myself out of the house in order to get back into the routine. 

This top one came from the first session wherein I made four studies somewhat quickly. The skies weren't brilliant on either days but luckily I'm seem to able to pull something out of even the worst skies. 

I wasn't thrilled by any of them, but dutifully, I put them in the boot of my small Toyota. There were done on different nights. The next mornings when I pulled them out to take photos I was pleasantly surprised by these two in particular.

Towards the end of a 'bloom', I've always had a problem dealing with the thick stripe of colour that hovers over the sea as it steadily grows taller to eventually meld into nightfall. 

In the top study, the stripe arose from a somewhat dull-looking sky, its broken tint of purple appeared almost solid as it expanded upward. In the study below it, two evenings later, the sky had been a little brighter and thus the stripe appears brighter, though a little faded with more light Prussian Blue in it. 

It's strange zone, this thick stripe that widens gradually as the colourful 'Bloom' fades away and the sky returns to a more conventionally local colour before dusk. It can be any variance of violet as it rises into the evening. It's rarely the same hue of purple on any given night. It's confounding and troublesome. 

It's an androgynous sort of colour that befits our nuanced, gender-bending moment we all live in today. It can feel robustly masculine on some days and yet, (as in this first top study) it carries a feminine scent like an airy perfume on others. But I've come to appreciate this problematic space, one so delicate and nuanced, and one that survives the turmoil of a sunset that already presents me with such agony. Like a lynchpin it holds everything together, and I have so little time to see it, then find a solution for it. 

Maybe, for a civilian, it's too difficult to explain properly. But as my uncle Boris, back in the Bronx used to say when I was still a virgin: 

"Hey kid, you gotta do it to understand it,,,ya got it?" 

Anyway, Thank God for Uncle Boris, who also taught me how to stick with something until I finally understood it. And this motif always seems to open up new problems, (but solutions too) invisible to me when I started out just a few years back. 

Rain is scheduled for the next few days.