Going home

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This was written a year and a half ago and, for some reason, not published.

"Goodbye Florianopolis"

I'm going home. I've done it here. 

I have to do something with my possessions and sell my flat and get a ticket home.

It wasn't one decision. It was a more like a series of conclusions about each single element within my life.

 Like, how interesting is it, really, to continue painting in Brazil? To live on the island? To converse with people here? Does it make me feel alive, excited? 

Can I renew my engagement with making things here? Painting? I felt I could renew my engagement, by investing more, but the returns have  been diminishing over the last few years. By investing I mean, changing medium, trying to visit new places and view things from different perspectives, pushing oneself to make more effort, to take risks.

 So it's connected to how I feel about creativity. The excitement I feel about making stuff is partly generated from how its received in a community. I don't find that here. It just isn't an inspiring art environment. It lacks an essential element- lively critical debate. I miss the greater critical sophistication of British society. 

Actually, I miss British people in general. They're amusing and often erudite. Their towns are sometimes very beautiful and there is a general consensus on what is correct and what makes sense and that's a consensus that suits me.

I enjoyed travel in Latin America: but my dulled mood is also connected with feeling that I have visited much of Latin America that I want to. I could go on travelling here, but I'm not passionate, not intrigued. 

And the people I know here are always some distance off. They are ok but I don't really belong with them. It's like a bunch of people you meet in a railway compartment. You bond because of an impossibly long delay. But you are bonded by circumstances, not by culture or blood. I could never shake a sense of the arbitrariness of my personal connections here.

That is how I feel and it feels like I should go home.

I began to feel this some years back but I also thought that moving back would be a mistake because I was worried about what I'd do for money. But I don't feel afraid about this now. I'm not sure why, but I just don't. I think it will be ok moving back. 

Goodbye Florianopolis. Goodbye Brazil.  It has been almost 20 years. Thanks. You gave me a lot and you were kind to me, but I need to go now. 

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Back from Brazil to live in Scotland

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I`ve left Brazil and returned to live in Scotland.

I need to be part of something which speaks more closely to me, a society that I mesh more fully with. 

I needed to come back. I`ve liked not belonging for most of my adult life, or at least found it interesting. But now I want connection and depth of communication. 

 Maybe I will stay here for a few years, maybe until I die. I don`t know.  

Above all, be cheerful.

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My sleep

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Bed

This is from my old place. I had been sleeping in this room for exactly a year

The room is like a cell. I strongly sense how arbitrary it is that I'm here rather than any other room.* 

In fact, since I left my parents house over thirty years ago, I have felt this about where I live: the immense arbitrariness of where I am. Leaving home can be an exile or an escape, or just what you must do as a mature person. But home, by definition, is necessarily a place that can't feel arbitrary. 

I believe these feelings of rootlessness are common among the children of immigrants. Their parents made a choice to move. But the children they have in the new country are neither truly of the new country nor of the country of their parents. The children feel detached from the country they are growing up in, but are not really part of the countries of their parents either. They're in a cultural limbo. Sometimes such children are referred to as Two Culture Kids. They are often the offspring of military or missionary families.

 I think I unconsciously chose the role of landscape painter because that way I could examine and insist on, my presence in the world. 

My Sleep

I wanted to write about my sleep, about what might be going on there, because I haven't had a dream for a long time, not for years, and i guess that might be interpreted as the death or the dying of my unconscious mind. Perhaps, you might argue, I've evolved into this super- conscient being, whose mental workings have no mystery. But the decisions i daily  make or fail to make suggest you would be wrong.

I also wanted to tell you about my bed, but then I started to think about how it would be to see a photograph of myself sleeping and how creepy that would be. To see myself lying asleep would be to see someone vulnerable to attack, their body unwilled, corpse like. Part of what makes that thought appalling is, I confess, that it has a glassy appeal as at times I do indeed wish I could rise out of my own being and see myself a corpse, spent through. That isn't a constant feeling, but can come when life seems wretched. But such trains of thought should be controlled as they may lead to rather unconstructive attitudes to life's problems 

One thing about sleep although its a physical necessity, you can't force it, it has to be voluntary.  The are are two of you, one that declares its bed time. He has to make it as easy for the other part  of you, a younger part, wilful and strange, to concede, to sleep. Sometimes the other part is very easy and goes to sleep. But if they aren't accepting you can't force it.

You choose where to lie, probably a strung or foam padding covered by a sheet of cotton, with one or two further items of raised padding to support your head called pillows.Then, there is a blanket or some sort of cover and you assume a position lying, covered by cloth. Ideally only you head or one arm pokes out of that envelopment.

You're in there, your head rests on the pillow, then you close your eyes and try to ease from your thoughts letting any conflictuous moments from the day float away, and you push away also any hopes or aspirations so you are humble, desire free, and your passage into sleep can proceed without rupture. 

If you think about a girl or some sexy thing then it is better if it is a memory of a successful encounter than a ambition, or you will become quite hopeless thinking about how you might contrive an apparently chance meeting outside the tube stop and where that encounter might lead.

But if that process, that embarkation is overlong and you are still waiting for sleep after a time it is better to return to the state of will and rise,  do ironing or arrange your postage stamp collection, some quiet monotonous task. Myself, have arranged all my bookshelves according to colour of book spine. 

The sleep I want is first  a dense, heavy, almost asphyxiating.  I want to be taken by a landscape by Poussin. I want serpentine paths passing giant oaks and a lazy fisherman sleeping, i want farl green forest and a stillness broken only by a wisp of smoke from a dying campfire.

  I want to be free of the need to make choices, to accept everything. I don't want to know that I might return, I want vastness, lostness , a place without or decision or shame.

This photo was taken about six months ago before I moved. 

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Annual Review 2019

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2019

Travels

There were two complete trips: to Peru and to the UK; another will begin on 26 December, to Chile.

 Arequipa, a view from Ponte Grau, oil on card, 22 x 25 cm

The Peru trip lasted six weeks and was a good, extended painting session. One can really go forward doing two solid sessions a day, 5 times a week. I returned with as many as fifteen good paintings. The pictures were of a larger size than on previous trips. 

Green Park, London, Avenue, oil on card, 24 x 30 cm   SOLD

The UK trip was not a success in terms of making paintings because of bad weather. I hade been looking forward to doing paintings in Scotland's beautiful west coast. What a fool! How it poured down, and I even got a cold- in August.

 I will not gamble my time and money in this way again and instead when I go to the UK in 2020 I will also go to a southern European place where I can work happily and cheaply: southern Spain or perhaps Portugal beckon. However, the small exhibition in Edinburgh was well received and sold well. 

The work: travel painting

There was a gradual but definite scale increase and an attempt to use bolder colours and shapes. I continued also to produce black and white still life pictures. I continue to explore expressionistic approaches to landscape. I moved apartment and studio and with this had the chance to discard weak work. Over time one becomes more clearheaded about what is good or not. 

One the whole, the reasons for a work being a success are not technical but connected to the my psychological state at the time of making. A good picture arises from a balance between knowledge about the subject and it's novelty. If it is too familiar one becomes deadened, taking its peculiarities for granted. If it's too unfamiliar, one flounders.  The lack of seasonal variation here is unfortunate: seasonal changes serve so well to renew interest in a landscape through the year.

For this reason, attempts to criticise the works lead to consideration of the mental conditions in which a picture was made. Happily, satisfactory mental conditions arise readily, predictably: when I travel to new places. And happily, the world is very big. To maintain that balance between the familiar and the unknown though I tend to return to places I have at least some previous relationship with.

When I began travel painting the idea that I was telling some autobiographical story- the painter travelling diarist aspect- enlivened me, and I thought about the story I might tell about a trip and a place, and myself, through a series of paintings. With time, however, those stories lose their consequence and one is just left with a series of paintings, good, bad or indifferent. And, of course, the novelty of the activity disappears.

 But a sense of mission is surely vital in any enterprise, however philosophical one might be about the results years later. Without enthusiasm- joy indeed- one might as well stay at home watching Netflix.

In Brazil

Forest, December 2019, oil on card, 24 x 29.5 cm

My paintings here explored woodland and forest, to the almost total exclusion of other subjects. Woodland shade is so agreeable when the sun is blazing down. I explored mainly two places, in Santa Antonio da Lisboa and Parque Florestal of Rio Vermelho. It would be good to find other places to explore as eventually these will become stale.

Still life painting

The corner of a table, a book, my diary, a spoon, my wallet and part of a chair

oil on card, 16.7 x 15.2 cm

It can be said that still life painting is simply a diminutive for of landscape, albeit one in which artists have the God-like power to arrange its motifs as they see fit. I like to work in black and white on these, to have that starkness.

Exhibitions

There were two exhibitions, one in Lagoa and one in Portobello. The former did not sell, the latter did. There appears to be no almost no market for art in southern Brazil. This is not simply a matter of the appalling economy, it is about taste and values.

Social Media

Flicker

I stopped posting here. I somewhat regret this as it did connect me to some sort of community of more serious visual artists, albeit with a focus on photography. I may return, though I would say that the role of this site has for me been largely replaced by Instagram. I have 959 followers. No change.

Blogger

The number of followers is the same. 84. But there are other people looking regularly whose monikers don't appear. I don't write things as much anymore. That's partly becuase working larger I produce less.

Instagram

The number of followers is 221, up from 136. 

Twitter 

There are 247 followers. It is a bit of a waste of time using this site, for my purposes , except maybe to announce exhibitions.

Saachi

There were a few sales through Saachi. These are always a bureaucratic challenge.

Facebook

Following advice, I created a page to represent me.

In the social media world such numbers are extremely low. I don't kid myself oh they are few but very dedicated, as their comments are not many. 


  

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Annual Review 2018; social media

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2018

The year often had an enervated quality. I spend a good deal of time waiting. I was not bold with planning. 

Travels

There were three trips in 2018: Peru, Uruguay and the USA.

Ayacucho, a view across a gully, 21.7 x 17.7 cm

Peru was a success: the weather was kind and the work was often good. I spent a considerable time exploring Lima, a rich and curious city. The people of Peru are modest and leave you alone. The scenery is interesting as is their bizarre culture and it's blissfully cheap. I started working on a  a larger scale, a tendency I pushed across the year.

Cabo Polonia, Uruguay, sea, oil on card, 21.7 x 27.7 cm Not for sale

In Uruguay, a pleasant country for which I feel considerable affection, my trip was ruined by sickness and I spent a week in bed in two hostels. 

This is the risk inherent in shorter journeys, that a mishap or a bout of sickness renders the whole trip worthless. Short trips might be considered a waste of time and money. No sooner have you unpacked then you are off again, and the cost of flights weighs more heavily when taken as per day cost. But such trips do break up the ennui induced by teaching...

Chicago, view down from an apartment on Madison Avenue

 oil on card, 23.2 x 20 cm unavailable

I did some nice pictures in the USA  but the trip was not enjoyable. 

There's a disagreeable atmosphere in the USA: a lack of true spontaneity in relations and sometimes boorishness. It doesn't take a great psychologist to see that there must be something profoundly wrong with a people if they feel the need to elect someone to tell them how great they are all the time. This combination of insecurity and boastfulness characterizes much in Chicago. There is a rarely quiet ease there, a considered pride. Big and brash is best. 

 Despite it's reputation for gracelessness, New York is better but it's often a tired or angry place. I didn't sense that people have much fun in either city.

The work

I worked with fair discipline and the pictures became steadily bigger.  I worked small on some still lives, but moved up to a roughly A4 size for landscapes. I attempted two different approaches.

In the first I tried to push a sort of "Chinese" style- economical and rapid and intimist. The second  style I refer to as "blocky"-  using large squarish marks to delineate simplified forms. The colours are usually bright, rarely tertiary: extrovert. This style works satisfactorily with buildings. There are various crossovers between the  two approaches.

In Brazil

Rua Luis Pasteur, Trindade, Florianopolis, looking down

 oil on card, 20.5 x 22.5 cm

I did a run of pictures in this neighborhood. I also explored architectural subjects. This went nicely and  I didn't go to the mountains at all nor visit other places in Brazil. There are reasons for this. So much of much of my work is concerned with architecture and there is very little architectural variety in Brazil. And what there is is often poor, and poorly integrated into nature.

The landscapes are often very inaccessible because of the way land is closed off by landowners. It is not always easy to find a trail or place you can walk to get views. The rights of way you get in the UK are unknown here.

Exhibitions

There as a show at BRDE. It went well. It sold well and functioned as a review of the last few years and some of the Peru work. There was also work on display in Scotland. There was supposed to be another show here but it never happened because the gallery was messing around. 

Social Media

Like many, I suspect, I am unhappy with social media. It simply does not seem to fulfill much of its promise. Like me, I once thought it would be a means to connect with like-minded people internationally, and while of course this does happen, too often it seems to be a forum for banality or unpleasantness..

Of course, as with all media, one can say what matters is how one uses it, and the user is to blame for the world they inhabit with a specific medium. However, each medium does seem to bring certain emphases, and this medium seems to emphasize transitoriness and celebrity-narcissist culture.

I also dislike how social media- usually Instagram or Whatsapp or Facebook- obtrude, their use determining how social situations develop, with silly set-up photo opportunities breaking the flow of conversations and justifying bossiness on the part of those taking pictures on their mobiles and imposing fake behaviors on the subjects. I dislike how the mediated, parched world of social media is now a substitute for real exchanges and experiences. I see people in galleries taking photos of each other in front of exhibits without even considering the exhibits themselves.

In contemporary art the use of social media is closely related to advertising, especially through the development of easily recognizable visual catchphrases and interjecting a chummy personal aspect.  One should take photos of ones home, situation work in progress and so forth, as well as one's finished work in such a way as to create an image, a brand, and henceforth a following.

Most artists can take a bit of this, and might even enjoy it. They understand that people wish to get to know a bit about them and where they are from and what they objectives are and that this helps in the understanding of their work. But many artists don't want themselves to be focus of their practice. They want their artwork and the things they are developing using art to be the focus. 

Well, all this is a roundabout way of describing my unease with using social media.

Flickr

I am annoyed with the site management for messing with the site. I consider not using more but as it now contains a readily accessible catalogue perhaps that would be unwise- though that catalogue is also available on Facebook. I have risen from 937  to 959 followers. 

Blogger

The number of followers has hardly grown. There are 85, up one. 

Facebook

The site is a good place for showing work and maintain contacts but I sense that it is being used less and that people are transferring to Instagram. I have a "page". It has 82 followers, a good hike up from last years's 3 and connected to my exhibition and some reluctant efforts I made.

Instagram

I started using this and found it rapid and easy. Now I think it it is just another invitation to waste time peering into a tiny screen. There is desolation in all this. I have 136 followers. 

Twitter

I went through a phase of posting stuff here but then gave up as there was so little interest it's not really a site designed for visual arts. There are 253 followers.

Saachi

There was one sale on this site. Sales usually necessitate endless phone calls with the an appalling courier service called DHL. 

Tumbler.

Occasionally I posted here but it opened no doors. There are 31 followers. 

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Thanks

Thanks to the BRDE, especially Prisclla Gobbi,  and Vikki Debden, who helped hang my show, buyers, my ever supportive parents and random strangers who made trips more agreeable.

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2019

The year will begin with Ecuador, a six week trip, then to the UK in July, or perhaps August, for at least three weeks. I want to do more work in Scotland and as ever there is the question of where to stay there that isn't cripplingly costly.

I read things from time to time about travelers who have such and such adventure when their four wheel drive loses a wheel or two in some ravine or other and they seem secretly pleased about this when it happens. But my mindset is essentially bourgeois, though I like the nicer youth hostels as they can be agreeable social spaces.

A pond at a ranch, oil on card, 15.5 x 17.5 cm

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Not showing at Ateliê Casa das Ideias

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I'm  not showing at Ateliê Casa das Ideias as the woman who runs the place tried to change the dates for the fourth time, this time with only six days notice. This will not do.

This is rude and annoying. I spend almost two years dealing with her selfishness (emails not replied to, dates changed at the last minute, not being kept informed of changes, enduring long stupid conversations about herself and her problems and so on and so forth)  and no longer trust her.

 Besides, there is very little point in exhibiting work if there isn't time to publicise it. 

These little shows are very easy to organise: hang fifteen to twenty pictures, send invitations, buy wine, be a pleasant host, have fun and sell pictures. A good time is had by all. In Brazil organizing anything,  however minor, can become a saga and render the whole experience is unenjoyable.

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My Peruvian Adventure- Lima; conclusions; next?

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Lima

Lima, tabernacle, oil on card, 21.2 x 17.5 cm  SOLD

Lima, a block near the courts, oil on card, 17.2 x 19 cm  available

This building near the courts reminded me of the Flatiron in New York. 

Lima, a view of a street in the centre, oil on card, 17.7 x 18.5 cm -  -unavailable

This picture has not photographed well. There are some colour combinations that the camera is very poor with. But it is a good picture with a nice Dufy-ish feel, albeit more tightly composed.

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I spent almost a week in Lima and painted only three pictures. But they are all good: the colours are original and they are unfussy and confident. I stayed in the centre and in Miraflores too. I went to Miraflores because I am a softie and a rotten traveller and the filth of old Lima started to depress me. But Miraflores is also a bit depressing in its blandness and provides nothing much worth painting. I know because when I`d set myself up to work on something I found after some minutes that I could scarcely focus on the motif so glazed with boredom had I become. It was as if nothing in Miraflores told or suggested any story, it was so blandly, nicely, suburban.

Lima proper is very rich architecturally (if in need of considerable restoration), with a more splendid variety of buildings by miles than I have seen in any other Latin American city including Rio, Santiago and Salvador.

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Travelling and painting in Peru 

You come home and within two days its as if you had never been anywhere at all.

Peru is mostly good to paint in. The people are not generally criminals and they don`t harry you sleazily as is the custom in North Africa. They are mainly polite, good-natured and a little shy. That includes the children who are neither nasty and sly like British children, vicious like the stone-throwing prodigy of Arabia, nor like the fat Ritalin-addled slobs you get in Donald Trump`s USA (Brazilian children are also mostly amicable- at least, the children of the lower orders are. The children of the Brazilian bourgeoisie are as revolting as their adult peers, spoilt and self-regarding and forever glued to their moronic smart-phones).

There are dogs everywhere, however, and these are sometimes aggressive. I had to rescue a schoolgirl in Ayacucho from a pack of about six of them. She was traumatized and went back home crying. Occasionally the dogs are covered in sores. I frequently saw pigs too, some of them enormous and shamelessly slothful.

Hygiene is not, generally, a high priority among Peruvians. Restaurants rarely have soap and towels, and the streets reek of urine. There is litter all over the place.

I sometimes found the food to be so poor as to be repulsive, created as it generally is by stewing the innards of uncertain animals for long periods of time. Salad is a rarity. The breads are weird- round and cardboard-y. There are some salty cheeses. Cakes are more impressive in their appearance than taste, which also has the aspect of cardboard. Ceviche is not worth making a fuss about- it`s acidic and gives one a belly-ache. For dinner fried chicken with chips is compulsory but it`s rarely any good and you feel sad after dining. The coffee, which is mainly instant or some concoction made in advance in a tureen, isn't much to look forward to. Milk is uncommon.

 The light is soft and sad and not bad at all but equally it is not remarkable as it can be in Italy on a golden evening or when here in winter it is clear and crisp and the sun is low casting such blue shadows. It didn't rain much at all and I managed to work most days. The landscapes I found did not often convey a grandeur though except near Tarma. I was stymied by the road blockage out of Ayacucho as that route might have given me more dramatic perspectives. I also missed the beauty of tall trees. 

In architecture Peru is quite harmonious. Their modern buildings do not, as in Brazil,  disturb so hideously the older constructions (really Brazilians should be very ashamed of their architecture and how cruelly they have treated their heritage). And the older constructions in Peru are often of considerable interest and merit. 

I met few other travelers and those few I met (4 x French) were unfriendly to the point of rudeness. What a pointless nation the French have become! Anyway, being alone is quite agreeable- my own company is very good.

Conclusions

Some of the paintings are good, some repeat themes. The average size of pictures is greater than in previous trips and I won`t work larger, at least not for a while. Anyway, there are maybe as many as ten paintings I am unequivocally happy with, which isn't a bad number (but what is the right number?). The business is capricious and I am not sure one ever really gets better at it.

Where next?

Chicago and New York. I like to go to a western country after having spent time in an undeveloped country.  Maybe about 9 days in each of these cities? Also, I like Uruguay and want to go back there in winter as the light is so good.

I have only just returned and I am desperate to get another  solid period in which I can do some work.  I hate the bittiness of previous journeys- in fact I am angry with myself for permitting such short essays. And with distant trips one loses days here and there just travelling and finding ones bearings. 

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A visit to the Serra Catarinense:Rancho Queimado; small German towns

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Rancho Queimado: main street, oil on card, 12.5 x 14 cm

Rancho Queimado: little houses, oil on card, 14 x 12 cm  available

Rancho Queimado, trees in the distance, oil on card, 11.5 x 14 cm

 Rancho Queimado, church, oil on card, 13 x 13 cm  unavailable

The brightness of this set pleases me, and I like how they suggest children's book illustration. There is, indeed, something of Toytown in these small German mountain towns here, as if they were created with wooden building blocks.

This is partly because of the style of buildings, which seem to be very self-consciously stereo-typically German, and in their repetition. The constituent parts  vary in their positions, but the pieces are the same, as if taken out of a giant play-box and ordered with a square, restaurant, school and church according to the restrictions of the landscape. The inhabitants are invariably friendly and cheerful, again, like in Playmobil, and the socio-educational level is high (for Brazil). I am sure they are extremely conservative. I find these towns pleasant to visit, but to stay longer than a day or two would be tedious. I doubt the people think much of their compatriots who are very disorderly bunch in comparison. 

Much of my understanding of Brazil is governed by the sense that it is a country of tremendous wastefulness, It constantly fails on account of lack of organisation and collective will to arrive at a socio-economic and cultural level that other nations regard as normal.

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A visit to the Serra Catarinense: Alfredo Wagner

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Alfredo Wagner, afternoon, houses, oil on card, 14 x 14.5- available

 Alfredo Wagner, buildings on a hillside, oil on card, 12.5 x 14.5 cm  unavailable

Both of these were painted from my room in the excellent Saolo Hotel. The breakfast was lacking (why is the coffee in Brazilian hotels so dreadful?*) but you can't really complain for 60R$ a night.

Both paintings are a success- following the terms I have set myself- lively, bright and harmonious,, successful in their description of the sensation of the place, and optimistic. They were rapidly executed, but behind them lie many failed pictures.

 It is important in this style of painting not to contradict oneself: if the piece is about immediacy of impression and spontaneity of response, then one must avoid the temptation to correct, one must accept and work with errors or clumsy marks, incorporating them into the composition: a Chinese virtue.

*part of a larger question: why is the coffee in Brazil so dreadful? Yes, there are occasional fancy cafes where it is good. Here in Floripa there are two, established by Australians. But the standard stuff in bakeries and ordinary restaurants is  dishwater, Stock reply- because the best coffee goes for export. As with all stock replies, one wonders if: a. this is really true and, b. why would it be true? Surely separating some bags of beans for a luxury domestic market would be easy? The same arguments circulate about chocolate.

 Alfredo Wagner, bushes on a hill, oil on card, 13,4 x 11.8 cm  available

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