You are receiving this email because Ryno has sent it to you.
You can also view it on our website.

Beauty and strength

A horse is not a horse, and a woman not a woman. They are aspects of our psyche.

In the absence of a coherent set of myths, we are called to construct our own personal mythology from nature, from our musings, and from our dreams. There is nothing strange about this; it is the way all myths are formed; understandings rather than fancies, insights rather than stories.

The horse symbolises the energy and power of emotion, a wild and even dangerous masculine force that needs careful management. This is why I like to portray the soul as feminine, the delicate and sensitive in control of the powerful - a theme that I had painted for many years before I grasped its significance.

Recently this role of symbol and the subconscious has had renewed importance in my art, and my pilgrimage to Venice was to make time and space to reconnect to these deep truths. What we call reality is of course as much the creation of consciousness as that which we we call dream. The only difference lies in where we find our deepest delight.

We always paint what we love.

The green Anglia

It was 1969. At the beginning of my final year at Stellenbsch University, my parents presented me with my mother's 6-year old Anglia. I was torn between pride and embarrasment as I tootled sedately along the oak-lined streets and country roads... until, that is, my friends Maans and Frikkie decided to take matters in hand.

"Why don't you," said Maans in his smooth radio-presenter voice, "Let Frikkie and me have your car for a week or so... We'll do some work on it, and when you get it back it will be much better."

And that was how it started.

Two weeks later my little green Anglia was transformed into a mean nasty snarling brute... free flow exhaust, cylinders rebored from 1100 to 1250cc, twin downdraught Weber carburator, and high-lift cam-shaft, with, of course, four fat takkies. It was in fact a racing car, and it was created as a labour of love by my friends and their brothers and friends and fathers and their fathers' friends... it was a man thing. All that work cost me nothing, not even for any of the parts. Nothing. A gift, freely given. I remember the first time we set out into streets of Bellville, five of us squeezed into the seats. Pulling up at a robot, the guy in the next car sneered haughtily, and Maans said, "Dice him!" The light turned green and I let out the clutch... I felt myself slammed back into my seat; such power, barrelling down Voortrekker Road in the middle of the night!

That little Anglia became a legend from Stellenbosch to East London, to Johannesburg, and into the badlands of Mozambique; but nobody loved it more than my sister. Heléne was in matric at the time and had just got her driving license. How she loved to pull up to a robot in Nigel, and to kick a low growl out of the engine, and then to leave the competition standing... it was a girl thing. As for me, I raced, and beat, Mustangs, Volvos, Alpha Romeos (OK, that was on a wet road), in street dices and out on the winding countryroads and mountain passes.

The sad end came some seven years later, when I damaged her in Johannesburg and sold her to a car enthusiast. In that car I experienced greatest happiness, deep despair, and crashing heartbreak, but always, always, simple joy. No car could replace her, so I moved on in the only way that made sense to me, I bought a motorbike.

To this day, I cannot see an Anglia without a surge of joy. It was created without purpose nor profit, just for the joy of making something truly exquisite. In the hands of my friends, it was, in fact, a work of pure art; love made manifest.

Sonata and concerto

The humblest form of music is not in fact the sonata, but I use the term because it conveys simplicity, intimacy, and beauty.

It seems that the shorter, simpler musical forms allow, even demand, a more expressive performance, ranging on the virtuosic. Symphonies and chorales, by contrast, require the performer to rein in their skills so as to enhance the general harmony of the full orchesrta.

There might be a parallel in painting. Large paintings require restraint on the part of the artist. Excessive impastos and over-energetic passages can distract from the overall charm and power of the whole. Smaller pictures or simpler pictures need a more forceful expression. The brushmark takes centre stage. Virtuosic brush or knife impastos, generous glazes, layers of palimpsest, expressive linework and suggestive washes, even scratchmarks, scrapes, wipeaways and fingerprint smudges give the equivalent of what in music is referred to as "surface" to the painting. A small painting or a more contained subject (still life, landscape or colour field abstract) depends not on what is said, so much as on how it is said; not on subject and content, as on form.

Maybe this is why the music that makes me cry tends to be simple: gypsy violin pieces, Argentinian tangos, Edith Piaf and even, when caught unawares, a boere-sitees.

And the great orchestral pieces which bring tears to my eyes... they transcend the symphonic form. In the cadences of Beethoven's great violin concerto, the soloist is alone, a single soul in a multitude, tearing the music out of his own flesh. As artists, the greatest form we can aspire to is the artistic equivalent of the concerto, where the expression and lyricism of our brushwork join with the swell and surge of our orchestration.

These are the high point of art; the glory of the grand concerto, and the intimacy and heartbreak of the sonata.

Website

http://artistvision.org/

Workshops

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