Saps in the White House

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 21 January 2025, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 21 January 2025, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

Finally the rains have abated a bit and I got out for a lovely bloom the other day. Here are two of four, all of which gave me enormous pleasure. No doubt, Painting is a therapy, as are other activities one loves and for which one has a certain aptitude. For me it could also easily be a night of tennis though my tennis skills are not as accomplished as Painting. But it's really about about exerting a love for something that is deeply personal, a unique relationship that cannot be for anyone else even though millions of other people exercise both these activities. Joy seems to always come first from one's own heart, even if it then spreads (hopefully) outward like ripples on pond.

Like many, many people around the globe, I've been shell-shocked by the new administration, because like a bull in a china shop, the new American president feels to many of us like a delusional emperor from the 12th century. 

I will confess one thing about him that I love, and that is that he loves Golf so much, he is willing to lose money on his clubs and courses around the world. I admire this because being an artist and living in a world that seems to have little interest in Art (except as a parking spot for speculators to park money) I love every kind of passionate hobby and vocation in the world but especially those of Art and Sport. Although I don't play golf, I have played enough to appreciate the useless beauty of it. The world needs more beauty (useless or not) through of its faces. 

But as we move into a new world order we (we, who are privileged enough to own cars) must buckle up our seatbelts for the bumpy rides ahead. I do believe that that we will survive this awful despot, along with all his Right Wing Pinocchios, yet America may also never be the same again. This is natural because it feels like our lives are spinning faster than ever before, but you know what? We'll survive somehow and soon we'll laugh and smile again when we have put on our army boots to resist.  We'll see what we need to do, then fight back for all that is good and noble in America. The bean-counting simpletons and the White Nationalist fascists have tried to steal this country many times before without long-lasting damage. We actually do come back stronger when we see these ignoble bigots try to curtail our freedoms. As Harari explains in the book whose title I show below, a nation is but an idea, it's just an empty shell of a thing until it's filled out by the ideals of its citizenry.   

This is why Art and Joy, which are strapped together like siamese twins, are so important during this turbulent chapter we're undergoing.  

I am currently listening to a fascinating book by Yuval Noah Harari. I recommend it to others, who like me, might have failed both Geography and History classes back in grammar school but who still loved Geography and History all the same. 

 

Luigi Mangione for President!

This an artwork made by a local here in the Northern Rivers which was posted on Facebook last week. If you don't recognise him, (which I didn't at first) it's the guy who murdered the United HealthCare executive by shooting him in the back last month in New York.

I know this local person through Facebook and Instagram only. She is not a 'real friend' but a digital one yet she did write me a DM once, a very kind note complimenting me on the work that I post on both sites. I was familiar with her site which exhibited a clever but humanist vibe, though with a slightly harsh take on men. But I can handle that because men, well, can be truly awful at times. 

She wrote me that my work 'cheered her up' so naturally I imagined she was a thoughtful and caring human being. But when I saw this portrait she had made of this murderer I was not only surprised but also disappointed that a woman whom I had always understood to preach the practice of empathy and kindness on her site, would somehow stoop to the glorification of this murder of a man walking to work in the early morning. 

Yes, I know, I know, the internet has lit up with support for this (alleged) killer, he is popular with women, along with a Go-Fund-Me page and expressions of lust and love for him. But like what we saw on January 6th, it was all recorded on video for the world to see. There is no disputing this act of a cold-blooded murder. (On a side note, if he had been  a fat, small and balding guy, would anyone have been made 'Hay' over all this?)

I live in The Northern Rivers near Byron Bay. It's a chronically hip New Age kind of place where everyone does yoga and regularly attends chanting and meditation retreats, etc,,, etc,,, It's a 'special place' like so many other hot yoga spots around the world where people actively advertise their higher state of consciousness. 

So, I ask; what has happened to us that 'kind' and otherwise 'thoughtful' people exalt the murder of an insurance executive half-way around the world because we deem him unworthy to live?

Where is the empathy, compassion, and concern for this guy's family? Sure, he may have been the bean-counting CEO of a deceitful company that routinely screws Americans through the denial of benefits and services that effectively send their sick clients to the morgue via a slow death. It's company whose reputation routinely makes life miserable for millions of ordinary Americans.

But, if any executive of any company can be executed in broad daylight to the delight of millions, where does it end? Why stop there? Why not kill everyone everywhere who we suspect are linked up with malffeasance? If we did, lots and lots of people around the world would die meaningless and shameful deaths. And for what? Who gives some of us the right to kill others who some believe deserve to die? Are we moving back to the 9th century by choice or ignorance?

What I find really upsetting is that all of the supporting comments on the subsequent post threads that fully support the murder like it's an extension of the film series 'The Purge' on Netflix. This tells me that many in the community find murder, as a solution, to be completely acceptable in selective cases. Whew... Apparently, lots of people in America also do too because now we've all been freed from any measured or moral restraint. Good people are being displaced by internet trolls, it's the wave of the future.

Not wanting to get into a food fight online, I didn't comment on the thread. I thought hard about it but I realised I'm not interested in provoking trolls, or attempting to change their opinions on a Facebook or Instagram thread. Silence is my choice of operation both in life or online. So, I simply unfollowed her because I'm not here on earth to change anyone's mind. Sadly, The Northern Rivers community is apparently just like everywhere else now. Trolls and conspiracists push the boundaries of what 'polite society' could hitherto bear. Apparently, people now don't practice what they pretend to live out in their own daily lives. That is a great shame.

Taxi

 

          The Bernie Madoff dollar, (only for suckers)  by T Coffey for Digital Mischief

(another reprint from October 2009)

I got a call from my old friend Frank who I have known for a million years. We went to elementary school together. We speak often (souvent) and its usually to  bitch about the state of the world. It seems pretty easy to do these days. 

The French, believe it or not, also have this wonderful (merveilleux) reputation for bitching and moaning, as well as for being argumentative and self-righteous. I understand this now having here lived (ici) so much of my life. And France, of course, as anyone who has ever been here, knows, just how little it has going for itself.


One could experiment: 


Suppose for example (par example), an American finds himself on a street in Paris exclaiming to a frenchman:


"Ah,,, its so wonderful here in France!" (Ah, c'est merveilleux ici!)


This would certainly trigger off the 'allergy' as it were, and to which the frenchmen would invariably retort: 


"Ah... you think so?,... well, let me tell you: its too expensive, the government is rotten (pourri), the taxes (les impots) are too high, and no one wants to work!" (travailler!) 


If, on the other hand, you had initially said to him:


"Listen (ecoutez) ... France stinks, its too expensive (cher), the air is dirty (sale) and the Parisians are rude!"


In this case, he would inevitably lurch his head high and begin to tell you "what an idiot (imbecile) that you are, Paris is the most beautiful city in the world, if not the Universe, not only that (en plus), he would tell you that you dress like shit (comme la merde) and eat like shit (ditto)!!!"


Ah!! zee french!


But back to Frank, who lives on an island by the way, he is ranting and raving,  going on and on about how screwy thing have gotten in our life time. Youth has gone crazy etc, etc... I was sympathizing from across the ocean when finally he stopped, and after a pause, he said:


"Hey, you remember when we were young (jeune) and we'd get into a taxi in New York, and we'd hear some older guy going on and on about how life 'just wasn't the same anymore',.... everything is just a 'damn mess!' (la pagaille), and how we'd look at each other, and how we'd jump out at the next corner laughing because we were young, and because we could! Do you remember that?"


I nodded into the telephone.


"Well,.... NOW, I'M that cab driver, that old guy bitching and moaning!"

El Nina, weathering emotions

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

These are two pictures from the very last week of the year 2024. This was the first, on top, and I like it the best. It's funny because it only took a few quick minutes, and lucky for me that I was able to say STOP! So, thus I have been able to save an interesting study, one which reveals something that I really wanted to express.

I've always heard writers say that it can take several pages in a writing session each day before they come upon what they really need to say. In Painting too, though the time frame may not be the same, this rings true because an idea  only comes forth realistically when a painter begins working. OKAY, this might not work for everyone whose working process is more calibrated and planned out, but it does work for me in the kind of images I'm after.

I like this top one especially because I see a future in it. How else can I put it? I see something elusive, something that's deep inside me yet at the same time, I recognise it completely like a long lost twin from whom I have been separated at a young age. But maybe too, it's like those lucky people who fall in love easily and seem to always be finding their 'other halves' at the next lunch counter. 

In any case, for an artist (like me), it's not an object of desire, it's more like another piece of the jig-saw puzzle hitherto hidden deeply within me only to surface suddenly and find a home on my own personal visual map of life. But it' not a cerebral thing, it's profoundly emotional. 

I wrote this yesterday but this morning I found myself thinking further about this idea of how deep feelings inside of us can rise to the surface and steer our work in unusual directions. I’m sure this happens to everyone in all walks of life but I only address this for myself. I think artists must be like the miners of yesteryear, the ones who put on their steel hats with small lights and dug with a pick and shovel into the earth for months and years before hitting anything of value. Lots of dirt but few rubies or sapphires.   

All this came to me while practicing piano last night as I was thinking about how my own feelings seem to only be changed through taking right actions as the Wise Buddha guys from the East have always told us. This is to say, practically speaking, that I can act my way into right thinking but I can never think my way into right action. 

This has taken me long years to understand and to also implement into my own behaviour. And still, I don't always get it right.

It thus came to me that only through a long experience of working at a craft or vocation can I be really sure that these ‘feelings’ coming up are of any real value in the long run. This subconscious process is arduous and comes through lots of work for these are not just random emotions flailing about me like butterflies on a walk through a field. They come up like volcanic eruptions, and they can be powerful and even dangerous in the wrongs hands. Just witness all the murders, and ignoble acts that go on in the world each and everyday. But unlike those, these are creative emotions for my own work that can be trusted as personally legitimate for me alone to use freely and with no harm to anyone else. 

So, I read that EL NINA is making another return to the Asia Pacific region. That makes four out of the past five years that it has reappeared. This means, of course, lots of rain and storms along the Eastern Seaboard of Australia. It's cooler, which is great because 28 degrees is a far cry from 33 degrees celsius. So though it makes painting excursions to the beach slightly more complicated, I don't mind, as anything is better than that awful hot, dry summer that's been on the menu for eternity here DownUnder.

      

This one below, a subtle variant of the first, came immediately afterward, it's OKAY, but I cannot fall in love with it like the one on top. It's another idea, but one with less 'space' in it. It does have space, yes, but just not an 'infinite' space like exists in the first image.  Maybe this is a personal take that cannot be communicated. But for a painter like me, space is the place, like they say. Once in a blue moon, even such a small picture can elicit the vast dome of sky overhead. 

But Hey! As my Uncle Morty used to say up in Yonkers; "Another day, another dollar!"

Evening Prayer Brunswick heads, 26 December 2024. oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

 

Happy New Year from l'air de rien!

Happy New Year to everyone all far and wide, clever and not so, lovers of Art and less so. Be healthy too, but also be a little crazy this next year for L'air de rien loves you all, somewhat equally!

What a world it was this past year. Whew.... If ever there were a God who took the time to look after this earth, I imagine she would shrug her slender shoulders and sigh softly. 

"What can we do about humankind?" 

She thinks to herself. 

"When they come up to see me at the end of their lives, I always ask each of them the following question:

"So, how was heaven?"

"Most them (usually the adults) look at me dumbfounded, but the children always smile and say "It was great!!" 

But here on earth, I just keep working at the beach most afternoons. Perhaps these pictures don't change much, as a friend once noted to me, but I don't worry, I just show up there like an old miner, hoping that tomorrow will bring me an emerald or a ruby. Either one would make my day but in the meantime, there's always a lot of paint to mix and apply. I never know what'll happen out there but it's a lot better than being in Kiev, or Gaza, or so many other God-forsaken places around the globe. What’s the matter with us that we put clowns and villains into office like Trump and Putin? This is on us.

But here anyway, the show goes on, as they say. We've had a lot mercurial skies over the past months which I appreciate, though it has sometimes kept me from getting to the beach. So far the weather hasn't been super hot or humid but I expect it'll arrive soonish. 

The top and bottom pictures were both re-painted as I had brought a few older canvas boards that displeased me from last year's crop. Of course, the point of these sessions is to 'nail them' in one session but I don't always so I like it when I can do. But as ever painter knows, pictures, like toddlers, don't always come forth when called. But hey!

So, I may now begin re-working many older paintings which 'Father Time' has told me aren’t as good as I had thought. So when the sky looks promising I'll continue taking older boards out with me to see what can be done to them.

At any rate, this top one initially repelled my effort and it began sinking just like my heart and I was just about to lather it up with some gooey-looking colours from the palette to surrender, when rather miraculously, I managed to make some pull something from it so I left it and packed up my things in the dark. I looked at it the next day, and despite its mess, I kind of liked it. 

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

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

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