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A new art.

It is nice to take a bit of a look at our lives. About two years ago I realised that something was missing in my work, an excitement, drive, wild imagination. In the privacy of my studio and in my sketchbooks it endures, but too much of my work had become instructive, aimed at making a teaching point, rather than a passionate encounter.

When I took my first steps into painting, realistic work was a complete taboo. There were no galleries that accepted figurative painting, and the various art schools I had attended or lectured at, regarded realistic work as either kitch or as bereft of all value.

In my mind I abandoned the very idea of doing anything called 'art', and mentally refered to myself as a 'picture maker'. Until, that is, I found out that that exact term was in use by the academics to denigrate real painting. This led me to describe myself (and my fellows) as an artist. The word artist carries no more baggage that the word dancer, singer or musician, unless we allow it to. If you sing, you are a singer; if you paint, you are an artist. You might be a lousy singer or a lousy artist, but you are an artist.

Around 1910, the Avant Garde divided painting into two camps: on the one hand, pictures, images; and on the other, pure abstraction. Abstraction, for them, represented good; and pictorial qualities, evil. The works they produced were often exquisitely beautiful, but ultimately meaningless. They dominated the 20th century, but around the 1980s some reactionary materialists, struck back by declaring pictures as good, and abstract as evil. The result was cold, lifeless realistic images which cannot be distinguished from bad, overlit, photography. In truth, art is one, all art is abstract, and all art is image.

Art is, at one and the same time, 100% abstract, and 100% image. No tree can be painted without quality of mark; and no colour field can be devoid of atmosphere. This is the past and the future of art. And this is where I want my work to go: to achieve a rich fusion of mark and meaning. To craft images of profound beauty and of suggestion. To limn, to savour the viscosity of paint, the play of hue and value, the pull of canvas on brush; and the slow genesis of image in revelation.

Blessed with beauty.

Looking out over the sea with a hot cup of coffee, Mark remarked that the first mention of the spirit of God coming over people was in book of Exodus, when the love for, and the abilities to create, objects of beauty came upon the crafsmen of desert. This is a remarkable and important insight in a time of great materialism: that the greatest spiritual blessing is linked to beauty and to creativity.

'...In the beginning the earth was void and without form, and the spirit of God dwelt upon the waters...'

While artists have long loved the subject of Creation, they have tended to concentrate on its physical and material aspects. But imagine this eternal moment outside of creation... how beautiful this must have been; how beautiful it is.

Swamiji.

Of all the special friends and teachers I have know, one of the most remarkable was Swami Nishreyasananda. I met him when he was 82, and spent every possible moment, mostly around 5 a.m. studying with him over a slow breakfast. His english was excellent, but it took me about 5 years to decipher his accent, a time during which I culled broken phrases such as "...we can never see our selves... the eye cannot see the eye.." One day he looked at me and said, "Never use raw umber in skintones..." Another morning it was just me and Dorothea with him; she was desperate because she had just lost her job as a music teacher and needed help. Swamiji was relaxed, " You can have anything you want simply by not asking for it, but by wishing it for all people." Two weeks later she had a new job, and I had put down the deposit on our first home. "It feels like cheating," I said. He just smiled.

About two weeks before his death at 93, I was sitting with him, massaging some pressure points in his foot, "I have to go and teach now, Swamiji."

He looked at me. "These things we discuss... Do they not interfere with your teaching?"

"Not at all, Swamiji; this IS what I teach." That smile... It will stay with me forever, with the first tear on the cheek of our baby boy, and the sun on the golden curls of a young woman.

Upstairs, 10th August.

Upstairs at Bamboo is a gallery space in Melville, and it is here that I shall have my first major exhibition in several years.

The exhibition will feature a selection of small works, intimate studies of places and moods, together with a number of important pieces.

You are invited to
the opening on Monday,
10th August, 2009, at 6 pm
at Upstairs at Bamboo,
9th St and Rustenburg Rd.
Melville, Johannesburg,
of an exhibition of
work by Ryno Swart.

Please feel welcome to bring a friend or two, and join me for a glass of wine and much talk about art and life.

Website

http://artistvision.org/

Workshops

For details on workshops and classes in Cape Town and Europe, click here

The art of Ryno Swart