The art of Ryno Swart

In a close harmony

During the 70's and 80's, I spent every day at Pact and then at Capab Ballet, teaching myself to draw from the moving dancers. I'd arrive with the dancers at 9, and leave when they did around 6 p.m, but I never sketched at the theatre, with one exception.

When "Rhapsody in Blue" was performed at the Nico Malan Opera House, I went backstage with the dancers. What I did not reckon with was the absolute darkness that cloaks that world, total, dense, touchable black. Not only could I not see my sketchbook, I could see nothing, just blackness.

The only light was that which spilled sideways from the stage. How the dancers moved into position, I have no idea (bats, I suppose).

For this show, everything was blue, the stage, the costumes, even the light. None of this blue glow reached my sketchbook, but I drew nonetheless, to the amusement of the dancers. At least at the Alcazar in Paris I had a candle to work by! The close harmony of blues was exquisite, with the gold of the dancers bodies as the only counterpoint.

The presence of harmony moves us to a deep joy, as if the music or the colours are resonating in our very bones, which in fact they are.

Music pervades the entire environment, affecting air and resonating through solid objects and water, bringing peace to animals and plants. Beyond emotional response, heart rates and brain activity are affected.

The experience of beauty is not an emotion; it is a sense, like vision, or hearing, but independent of these. Beauty overwhelms us in any situation. It is a coming together of self and nature, a common vibration, a lining up of attention, a focus on what is shared. Harmony has been described as the vertical aspect of music, the various notes that make up a chord, and the playing together of various melody lines.

All music is not harmonious, nor is all painting. In art it is the rarest of things, and in contemporary art, virtually absent.

And yet the laws of harmony are surprisingly simple. They depend on shared values. In society, teams of sportsmen or musicians or animal lovers experience little discord while focused on a common interest.

In art, the shared value that creates harmony is colour. The three primary colours are exclusive, pure, confrontational. Thrown together, they are discordant. The simple act of mixing them together, or of grouping them sympathetically, takes the edge off, and immediately makes them more harmonious. This can result in a harmony of greys, a muted harmony. But there is a more beautiful, more powerful harmony, the harmony in the key of a dominant colour, as in a harmony of blue, or yellow, or gold, or greens. When these harmonies are close, the sense of power and beauty is heightened.

For truly fine harmony, the introduction of a single, carefully weighted discord makes all the difference between dullness and energy.

We often forget that our entire experience of this world is just consciousness. When we bring our consciousness into sympathy with the moment, we experience harmony. But we have a  far greater gift.

As artists, we can create harmony. This may be our role in life.

The last workshop

The last workshop (figure painting in oils) for 2008 takes place next week, 25 to 28 November. After that, a nice holiday season, and then I take off for my seven weeks in Venice; no teaching, no worries, just seeing, feeling and painting. I hope to tackle some large and ambitious canvases, as well a few atmosperic studies of Venice and its women...

Monday figure painting starts again on 23 February, and the 4 day workshops will follow soon after, the first planned for the April school holdays to give young people an opportunty to work with the rest of us.

Getting it just right

Getting it just right is a sensual pleasure. Like cooking, mixing your colour on the patette is a matter of mixing and savouring, adding a bit of oil, making it thicker or more viscous... You don't actually know when it is just right, you feel it; the texture, the flow, the veiling, the opacity and the sheen of the mixture. It takes sensuality, it takes pleasure, but mostly it takes time. There is a point when the paint just oozes off the brush, rich and generous.

If we have good harmony, good texture and a good feel of matiere, with relative flatness and well-mapped darks, everything just right, the painting will resonate, no matter what the subject.

In this issue

• In a close harmony
• The last workshop
• Getting it just right

Website

http://artistvision.org/

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