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Generosity.I have worked with George for many years, and recently, after he gave up is studio, I asked him to be the guest teacher in my oil painting class. Two reasons: first to get is hands on paint again, and second that he has a depth of vision that I have never been able to plumb. Preciousness is the enemy of the artist. My students were astonished when he took hold of their paintings. "What is your favourite part of your painting?" he would ask. Tentatively they would identify a well-constructed object or a crisp passage of palette-knife work, and George would take a fistful of paint, spreading it over that part of the painting. "Destroy," he would mutter, "Destroy, destroy, destroy." Over the years I have watched George at work, creating dense works charged with energy and rich in palimpsest. I wondered at his secret, the secret of painting surfaces that looked like a battlefield, and I could only come to one conclusion. The secret is generosity. Generosity and an elemental belief in the generosity of the universe. Give, give, give. Be generous with your paint, generous with your medium, with your time, with your work. We share a dislike of the facile, George and I, and of the shallow. It is in fact the very struggle which is the "work of art". I am proud of the way I struggle with my paintings, but George would spend 3 months on a still-life, day after day, 6 to 7 hours a day. I have seen him put entire flower arrangements in a refrigerator, only to throw them away a week later, and to restate, destroy, and rebuild the entire painting. This, I want to make clear, is not something to take lightly, something charming but inconsequential. This struggle is the essence of art. Without it there is no depth, no soul. Duende.
There is a dark beauty that haunts our dreams and our longings. The Spanish call it duende. Hard to define, we know it when we hear it in music, or see it in nature and in art. Elemental, it hits our gut. Thanks to Gareth for introducing me to this concept. "To knowingly enter the unknown, to be on the very outside edge of one's ability and still push, is an inherently creative place to be. I regard the no man's land between destruction and creation as very interesting territory. Risk," he says, "is essential." I have cried in the presence of beauty. Often. And I thank God that I was able to determine the trigger of my tears. It is glorious failure that moves me beyond endurance. In ballet, it happens when a dancer exceeds the limits of skill and strength. Failure is the sign of giving everything. Maria Callas tels how, in one of her arias, there is a high C which she can only reach when she is at top form. Audiences know it, and as she weaves the melodies, she has to decide whether to opt for safety or to risk disaster. "I always go for it," she says, "When I miss it, I sound like a frog, but when I hit it, the audience goes delirious." In the words of Lorca: Those dark sounds are the mystery, the roots that cling to the mire that we all know, that we all ignore, but from which comes the very substance of art. ‘Dark sounds’ said the man of the Spanish people, agreeing with Goethe, who in speaking of Paganini hit on a definition of the duende: ‘A mysterious force that everyone feels and no philosopher has explained.’ So, then, the duende is a force not a labour, a struggle not a thought. I heard an old maestro of the guitar say: ‘The duende is not in the throat: the duende surges up, inside, from the soles of the feet.’ Ruskin breaks the chains of his morality in this beautiful passage, written for his Modern Painters, but never published: "...you can't learn to paint of blackbirds, nor by singing hymns. You must be in the wildness of the midnight masque - in the misery of the dark street at dawn... in the boudoir with the delicate recklessness of female guilt ... We forget the dark order of chaos, the charge of the light brigade, the unfinished masterworks of art, the broken glory of the Parthenon, the power of Greek and Shakespearean tragedy, the deafness of Beethoven and the blindness of Degas. It is only when we are weak that we are truly strong.
Why not print the whole damn thing?I am tired of artists claiming talent when all they do is trace and copy. Painting from a photograph is faking drawing ability. The analogy is that of a Marathon. Working from a photograph is the same as doing the first 32 miles of the Marathon in a car, and then running the last 10 (and don't tell me that you are not a cheat because you used your own car!) Also, don't say that you could have run all the way. You didn't; and if you had, you would not have had the same result. The analogy holds. The original maraton was not a race, but a journey, a journey with a message to deliver. Every painting is a marathon, and the message is the story of the journey itself. If you will not reach out from the soft centre of your being, your art can never touch any heart.
Love letter to an artist."If you were my pupil," Ruskin writes, "I should at once forbid all sentiment for a couple of years and set you to paint, first - a plain white cambric pocket-handkerchief - or linen napkin, thrown at random on the table, and kept there - till finished - taking about a week's hard work to said pocket-handkerchief. Then a coloured one, with a simple pattern. Then an apple. Then a child's cheek - perhaps two inches of it - if you were very good - I would give you a bit of lip - as much as would take half a smile. Then a curl or two of golden hair - putting you back to bricks the moment I saw you getting sentimental. If you won't do this I can't help you."
Classes and workshops.For information on all my workshops, click here. The next 5-day workshop, Figure Painting in Oils, is from 30th June till 4th July, and the next 6-month course in Figure Painting starts on 21st July. |
In this issue
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