Joaquina: sky, sea, sands; Boudin

Joaquina: sky, sea, sands, oil on card, 12.5 x 15 cm  unavailable

It`s been a while since I had been down to the sea -at least successfully- and I`ll try to do more work there over the next few days, weather permitting.

I`ve taken the French easel out: it`s an elegant thing though rather heavy to lug around. But it allows me to work standing up, and to lay out my colours more easily, and makes me feel rather swish.

I wish I could easily see more of Boudin`s work- he is rather the master of this sort of long marine view, often presented on small, oblong canvases. I see that (bizzarely as I can`t find any connection between him and Brazil, and there aren`t any works by him in MASP) there is a square named after him in Sao Paolo: http://historiadesaopaulo.blogspot.com.br/2012/11/praca-eugene-boudin.html

Boudin is a true petit-maître: he has his province and works it well: he does not shout, he knows his limits and he has wit. Contemporary art is tiresomely full of ideas, as if ideas can be some sort of substitute for sensibility and material transformation.

 

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Scots pines, Ingleses

Scots Pines, Ingleses, oil on card, 14.5 x 16.5 cm  SOLD

The road to Campeche- woman in a red dress

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The road to Campeche- woman in a red dress, oil on card, 12 x14 cm  SOLD

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Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 2014; Under the Tracks, Astoria Boulevard

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Under the tracks, Astoria Boulevard, Queens N.Y., Oil on card, 14 x 10.5 cm  SOLD

I`m pleased to say that this picture was accepted for the Summer Exhibition in the Royal Academy, London, which runs from 9 June to 17 August.

My other submission, a picture of flowers, was rejected: it is larger, and more conventional, both in subject and execution.

But it is always difficult and, as likely as not, pointless, to speculate over the reasons for acceptance in these group shows: one persons subjectivity is complex, that of a panel of judges must be even more so. Or it could be that things are refused on such grounds as size, their excessive similarity to other submissions, or because of fashions, or groupthink, or behind-the-scenes horsetrading.

Given that, it is probably self-contradictory of me then to say that I see the acceptance of Under the Tracks as an affirmation that the N.Y trip produced a good run of pictures and wonder if I should plan a return trip there: next year is too soon for me to feel fresh, and respond in a lively way to things there, but perhaps in 2015?

Scaffolding 10; Liam Maloney

Part of Scaffolding 10, a monotype from 2009, has been used as a cover for Liam Thomas Maloney`s electronic music. The music seems to suit the print, or vice versa...

Rio Cubatão do Sul

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Rio Cubatão do Su, oil on card, 11 x 14 cm - available

Hill, Santo Amaro da Imperatriz, oil on card, 12.5 x 13.5 cm

Both painted in Santo Amaro da Imperatriz.

Pochade carriers, in black, maroon, blue and green. 

I have put labels on the fronts: perhaps they should be slightly smaller. The carriers have to be simple and elegant. But they should also be cheap to produce and robust., fit for their purpose, which is to carry pictures around securely. That they are somewhat irregular should be part of their appeal. But there is a balance to be found between irregularity and sloppiness.

The carriers are popular with buyers, who enjoy seeing the paintings in them. This is partly because the carriers give a feeling of the plein air experience, and because there is always something beguiling about having to open something to see what is hidden inside. 

This touches on the experience of art as the revealing of something hidden: another person`s subjectivity, a notion which sits happily in contrast to the extrovert activity of travel painting.

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My next big trip is in July, the other side of the World Cup. I go to Bolivia. It seems an awfully long time to wait. I find regular "civilian" life extremely boring. I like waking up in hotels and being presented with new scenarios every day.  Brazil is very far away from everywhere else and it is expensive to get around, even to Uruguay. But perhaps I`ll think of something.

Praia Mole, through shrubbery

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Praia Mole, through shrubbery, oil on card, 12.5 x 13.5 cm  - available

There are damp stains on this picture, alas.

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Three pictures from Santo Amaro da Imperatriz

A hillside, oil on card, 12 x 16 cm -  available

 Houses under construction, oil on card, 11 x 13.5 cm - available

 A hut, oil on card, 12.5 x 14 cm  - available

Three from this small and pleasant town. 

I`ve been going there in the last week, but couldn`t make the pictures work. Sometimes it takes a few days to accumulate the necessary knowledge of a landscape to catch it.

Trees on a promontory

Trees on a promontory, oil on card, 15.5 x 18.5 cm

Not long ago...a visit to a doctor.

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Ear, oil on card, 14 x 15 cm - unavailable

Not long ago, shortly on my return from the Pantanal in Brazil, where I had been sent by VEM Engineering to discuss the possible creation of a giant plant for the manufacture of domestic appliances, I began to hear in one of my ears a constant scratching sound, much like a knife scraping against a ceramic plate.

After several weeks of this, I went to see my doctor.

He conducted the obvious examination: peering into my ear with a special eyeglass. Finding nothing,  he began to ask me questions about my home and work life before cutting me abruptly: “Stress.”  He scribbled a note. “Give this to your employer. Take a week. Go to the seaside.”

So the next day I found myself strolling listless on a dull Eastbourne promenade, a paperback unloved in a pocket, the scraping sound in one ear, the sound of waves crashing in the other.

And week later I was back in the surgery demanding further consultations: he sent me to an Audiologist near Paddington station. I stood in a tiny room at the end of a filthy corridor in which elderly, obese, patients quietly rotted like forgotten vegetables in a provincial corner shop. 

I lay on a couch and a nurse, using a fantastical machine made a scan of my ear region. With amazing speed the results were printed out and I was ushered into an even smaller room behind where a man was sitting at a desk: Andreas Andreopoulos, Consultant.

He was Greek and spoke with great emphasis on particular words, as if treats to be savoured.  He was filled with enthusiasm for my case. 

“Tell me all about yourself, please, where have you been?”, cocking his head to one side like a cat.

“Well I went to the seaside”, I began. “Yes the seaside- I read that here.  But before? Perhaps you were in the Congo, Borneo, somewhere tropical? More exotic?”

I told him about my visit to the Pantanal, and the plans for the giant factory and how we would soon be able to produce sufficient vacuum cleaners to hoover the entire Amazon rainforest.

“That is wonderful. Progress. We Greeks,” he continued, with a somewhat philosophical expression, “how would you say?, we laid the foundations of civilisation. Now it is the turn of the new countries. The future is always with youth, is it not?”

I smiled.

He looked down to the scans on his desk: “ We do not often get such interesting cases.”

“Look!” He beamed, indicating with a pen on the scan. “It is like this. There is a fly, a burrowing fly, found only in tropical regions. It loves dark places. Look! It fly into your ear! And see...” He pointed to a channel deep in my ear. “It began here, and now!” - he tapped with his pen, at an area that had been circled with a thick red marker- “It has got all the way... here!” It was a point deep inside my cranium. “ It is making a little home! Home sweet home!, as you English say”

He began giggling, then saw my appalled expression.

“We will cut it out. Not to worry. We will cut it out on… ” - he consulted a computer screen- “Thursday!” And he began laughing again. 

“I am glad this is so very amusing,” I said.

“Oh, you will be fine,” he said dismissively, but then his merry smile fell with unusual speed to one of despondency.

“Be cheerful. There is a sickness, there is a cure! It could be worse, look at me: I am shrinking.”

He stood up, and I could see how his clothes hung in swags like theatre curtains, his trousers bagging round his shoes, how he had rolled up the sleeves of his white coat.

“Every year I have to buy new clothes, a complete set. It is...it is ridiculous. Humiliating. My wife won’t even go to the shops with me. She is ashamed. It is shameful.  Of course she is embarrassed. The nurses make jokes. I hear them laughing on the other side” He gestured to the door and whispered ,“They pretend to care but I hear their laughter when the door closes.”

He fell into silence.

The surgery came, I convalesced and left the hospital: the scratching sound was no more. 

And I didn`t see the consultant until a year later.

 I was walking down Wimpole Street with my new girlfriend- a tall slender woman, an ex-model for la Perla with a phD in Astro Physics from Harvard. We were so very much in love that even strolling aimlessly was a joy. A tender sun sent shimmers to the spring trees.

 A figure hurried along the pavement in our direction: at first I thought it a small boy, albeit one oddly dressed in a white coat. 

I caught his face: it was the consultant. "Doctor!" He stopped. 

 "Alessia. This is the wonderful doctor I told you about!" She bent to shake his hand, but he ignored it. “Ah...you are well I see. I'm so glad for you!”

And off he toddled, somewhere towards Portland Street.

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Read to the Detroit Metro Writer's Workshop, March, 2021 and Edinburgh Creative Writers' Club 13 April 2021

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The shoes are our friends.

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Gothic shoes, oil on card, 14 x 12.2 cm - unavailable

 The Shoes Are Our Friends

Shoes, of all the things we wear, are our dearest friends, protecting us and making our lives possible, accompanying us on every journey, uncomplaining, diligent, dependable.

Perhaps it is because this deep loyalty of service is expressed with so few complaints that we take our shoes for granted, casting them aside at the close of day almost contemptuously, stuffing sweaty socks inside them. And giving them the polishes they require only when they are utterly essential, their un-nourished faces having caught the contemptuous expression of  junior colleagues at the office. You rarely consider their well-being until the moment when, crossing a puddled pavement with wettened feet because the soles have holes, you sigh, I had better take these to the Paraguayan cobbler later this week. How tiresome!

I have long been aware of the wrongness of such indifference, and have been repaid not just with fidelity but loving concern. 

Recently,  I was in a small town in northern Uruguay, night falling, the air cool: a perfect time for a stroll. There were some people still around, closing shops, making their ways home. And out we went, my shoes and I, and I wandered somewhat aimlessly about a square, then down a cobbled street where a charming old church beckoned. The street lighting grew dimmer as I proceeded and, peculiarly, my shoes began pinching terribly. I had to return to the hotel immediately to relieve my feet.

"Have you been for a walk?", the plump receptionist enquired pleasantly.  I said where I had been. He replied, "you should be most careful round there, Señor, there have been many robberies". 

Indeed there was such a robbery later that night, only fifty metres from where I`d stopped. An old woman had been relieved of her handbag and pearls, and suffered a terrible heart-attack.

There is no doubt in my mind that it was a premonition on the part of my shoes that caused them to warn me.

Similarly, a few months ago, I decided to drive to the south of here, where coconut trees sway continually in a state of meditation. I dressed, then reached for my shoe, my foot expecting fully its cool embrace. But the shoe was resistant, as if it reduced itself by several sizes. I tried with the other shoe, but it was the same: I could scarcely squeeze my foot past the opening. I had to abandon my trip. Later I discovered that two tourists had been killed there by falling coconuts, their thick skulls  reduced to bloody fragments on the beach.

The scientifically-minded among you will, quite understandably, question my conclusions. They will mention, I`m sure, such factors, as coincidence, the possible swelling of my feet, or have some complicated ideas about auto-suggestion, or cleverly say, with enormous self-satisfaction, "ah but this is not enough to establish a pattern!" They might even suggest that I have been visited by delusions.

But I suspect that those among you who take such a stance are the very sort of people who, at the end of the day, casually fling their shoes into a corner of the room without so much as a "thank you", or a "goodnight".

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Read to The Vicious Circle writers' group 22 March, 2021

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