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October Exhibition

Saturday, 10 October sees the opening of my one-man show of recent work at Carmel Gallery in Constantia.

A serendipidous meeting with Leonard Schneider at the Olympia led to a chat, and we both saw the opportunity for a solo exhibition in October.

I hope to see you there!

Rue Saint-Denis

Paris resonates to many rhythms.

On that hot August day, walking home from yoga, I decided to take a different route. All intense and receptive and spiritual, I turned into an arcade to wander down the next street. This was the Rue Saint-Denis.

My skin was tingling, my eyes fresh and alert, my sense of smell and hearing heightened. But the sensation that struck me was none of these. It was an overwhelmingly sensual, tangible awareness of the air. I had moved within twenty meters from a spiritual to an erotic nirvana. On my left, and to my right, and even, looking back, behind me, were the most beautiful women, dressed to the legal limit of seductiveness. Silk and lace, leather and boots, immaculate in grooming and health; cool and remote but clearly available, they observed me.

I moved down the street in slow motion like a character in a ballet, looking this way and then that; pausing to turn and tilt my head, then moving on again. What I could not understand was the sense of perfect ease with which I could move. Not one of these women approached me. They made eye contact as they moved their hips or shoulders, looked me up and down, but not a word from any of them. It was scary, but in its way, comfortable.

My friends at le Mazet laughed. "That would be the Rue Saint-Denis." The authorities in Paris had set aside this one street for their "Belles du Jour", part time and free-lance hookers, on condition that within limits they could stand on the sidewalk, but they could not touch or talk to anybody but their own friends. To make sure of this, plain-clothes policemen and women walk up and down the street at all times.

A couple of days later, I went back and sat down at a sidewalk café with my sketchbook. Secure in my knowledge of how it all worked, I sketched the buildings, the cars, and one or two of the girls. A tall, elegant woman, Eurasian, in a stunnning black and gold oriental jacket/dress, watched calmly as I drew her from the safety of my cup of coffee. As I lowered my cup, she strode, long-legged, across the road. "Do you mind if I sit down?" she asked. "Please do." I pulled out a chair. Where, I thought, are the cops?

She seemed to enjoy paging through my sketches, and we chatted broadly about art.

"Do you find me attractive?"

"Ah oui."

She smiled, got up and moved back to her doorway. I carried on sketching and enjoying the summer sun.

Eventually I developed these sketches into smallish paintings. They were among the best I had ever done, and were sold in Johannesburg in the eighties, but sadly I have no photographs of them. What set them apart, I think, was their simple truthfulness.

Where good enough ends...

What is it that can make a good painting so horribly unattractive, and a great painting so wondrous?

Anything worth doing takes time, thought, and care. One of the most irritating things to me is when an artist tells me that he or she did a painting in only half an hour, or in only three hours. That is, for God's sake, how long it takes to paint a wall. What they are doing is to tell me how bad they are, how uncaring, how arrogant, and how stupid.

The process of creating a work of art involves careful planning, slow and thorough building, and patient finish. The Bible makes a point of this, "I wish that you were hot or cold, but because you are lukewarm I shall spit you out of my mouth."

Part of the problem lies in what we understand by the term "good painting". We normally mean that we can recognise what is shown... as in "Wow, that looks so real! Just like a real dog," or "Wow, that looks just like a photograph!" To get a painting to this level is difficult enough, but this is the level of the newspaper journalist. Beyond this lies the level of the novelist, then of the poet, then of the singer and the chorale; but only when we go beyond the words, beyond the description and listing of items, do we approach the level of pure music.

This may sound difficult, but it is not. It just involves more time, more observation, more passionate care; simply put, more work. Much more work. It takes work to match the mystery and the confusion of nature.

All distinct art must be bad art, and nothing can be right until it is unintelligible. Ruskin. Note that "until".

Great art is not a list of eyebrows and mouths and noses. It deals with atmosphere, with dissolves, with edges and fields and transitions. It communicates in notes and passages, and most of all, in chords.

Where good enough ends, art begins.

Envelope

We were chatting about the use of the word "background" and the risks involved with it. First, it delegates part of our picture to a position of inferiority; second, and worse, it causes us to think of our picture as an artefact, an item of manufacture with a practical use: to impress and to sell.

To my way of thinking, the picture is more like like a remembered melody, living in consciousness. It may sell, it must even sell, but it can no more be made to sell than can a poem.

This reminded me of a famous statement by Monet; that the artist should paint the envelope. This concept intrigued me. He seemed to refer to that envelope of air which surrounds the subject, church or trees or model.

There is more to it. All of existence is filled with something that we can feel, something like ether, tangible, in which light and air flow like water over rocks. This is the "envelope".

In my first painter's sketchbook in 1976, I wrote this note to myself:

"Don't create a background, create atmosphere. This atmosphere may include setting, but mainly it is the air around the model, up to and including the lenses of my eyes."

Website

http://artistvision.org/

Ryno Swart Exhibition, Carmel Gallery, Constantia, 10 October 2009

You are invited to the opening of a one-man exhibition of recent work by Ryno Swart on Saturday, 10th October at Carmel Gallery in the Constantia Shopping Centre.

For details on exhibitions as well as workshops in Cape Town and Europe, click here

A glowing ember.

Hidden in every painting lies a small ember, glowing faint and dull. You have to cup it in your hands, hold it to your breast, breathe on it, gently, coax it and cherish it until it flares to life. This is the light; and light is the soul of your painting. Explore that glow and all its nuance; sheen, splark, flash, murk, shade, dusk and shimmer and blackness.

The art of Ryno Swart