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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Lagoa- houses on an incline; Urban Sketchers; photography and social meetings

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Lagoa- houses on an incline, oil on card, 17.5 x 19.5 cm -  -unavailable
 

The Urban Sketchers group seems to focus more on taking photos of their work and each other than actually producing work.

 Actually this is an observation one might make about many social gatherings here- that the taking of photos is their real function- the stated objective of a meeting being merely to provide a vehicle for the narcissism that is endemic in Brazilian society and which Brazilians feel no shame about.

The effect of the picture taking is to disrupt any flow that social exchanges might have, and to impose a very limited and specific interpretation on the meeting (happy, positive, glamorous, fun, in which all attendees are comfortable together, etc). This robs any true spontaneity from meetings (though, ironically, the photos are often posed in a pseudo-spontaneous way). The photos are put on social media and our and our recollections of how things truly were is distorted or rendered questionable. 

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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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Joaquina, sea, the end of March, 2016

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 Joaquina, sea, the end of March, 2016, oil on card, 15 x 13 cm  SOLD

Joaquina, the end of March, 2016, oil on card, 15 x 17 cm

Two from Praia Joaquina- there is that high key light there, shadow-less and strange. Ensor, a hero, painted similarly near Ostend.

It's delightful to sit there and paint, and forget about daily life. It is difficult and slow here: it is difficult to achieve things and Brazilians are forever cancelling meetings or messing about with the arrangements. It is annoying to do stuff with them, 

Next week I travel to Chile.

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On the way to Rússia

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 A Hamlet on the way to Rússia, oil on card, 15 x 18 cm   SOLD

Brazilians rarely miss an opportunity to make a noise. 

You could be in the most tranquil place.surrounded by peaceful fields, fine mountains extending before you, and some Brazilians will come with a horrible music player and some of their detestable Serteneja music and subject you to it. Or, in this case very loud cross-country motorcycles which they, for no obviously good reason, see the need to drive up and down this pretty road,

I am not sure why they are so unappreciative of silence, but in general they like a certain intensity of aesthetic experience: or rather, they don't cultivate the opposite. Thus, cities are constructed with one building on top of the other, with no parks or recreational breathing spots,while meals shy away from simplicity- there is a maximizing of ingredients and options.The hot dog here has become  a fantastical melange of sausage, peas, corn, onions and whatever else you might imagine. Horror vacui, perhaps?

.

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Entrance to a little favela, Ratones

Entrance to a little favela, Ratones, oil on card, 15 x 18 cm - unavailable

Dogs, adolescents and rubbish: both the adolescents and the dogs roam about this little area, the adolescents smoking cigarettes and looking at each other or at the dogs and then occasionally conversing. The dogs do a lot of sniffing.  Both the adolescents and the dogs are are quite friendly. 

The male adolescents have some bizarre vanities: they smell very strongly of a particularly nasty aftershave (or is it insect repellant?) and one has managed to bleach his hair so it appears that someone has glued a sponge to the top of his head. Both the adolescents and the dogs roam around this little area.

I am not sure if, technically, this is a favela. But then, the definitions vary widely to encompass both from social to architectural criteria.

A week in Salvador, part 1: the city

 A stationers, oil on card, 15 x 13.5 cm

A lady being served in a shop, oil on card,  14.5 x 10.5 cm  - available

A little restaurant, oil on card, 14.5 x 18 cm

A view from the market, oil on card, 16 x 17.5 cm

A view of a promontory, oil on card, 13  x 15 cm

An Arch, entrance to a public garden, oil on card, 14 x 17.5 cm  unavailable

                           Rooftops, oil on card,16 x 17.5 cm NOT FOR SALE

Salvador

Salvador is a big city, beautifully located on a series of hills on a peninsula. It is an interesting place and is often melancholy.

This is, in part, is because it is architecturally claustrophobic, often turning away from the sea in a series of small, crooked streets. Many of the shops seem peculiarly small and cramped  too, as if designed for children, with everything sold in comically small quantities.

The city is generally in a state of ruin:  handsome old buildings are falling to pieces; there is vandalism, graffiti, neglect and filth.  Much recent construction is shoddy. I watched workmen construct a brick set pavement: the result was something that will surely become impassable after a day of rain.

 In this mess are beggars begging, children begging, prostitutes offering themselves,  crack users lying asleep on the pavements, and every other example of social degeneracy that you might wish to discover. 

There are also a remarkable number of stray cats: these are considerably more pleasant creatures to have as strays than the dogs that roam other Brazilian cities. Does their presence there in Salvador have something to to with many Salvadorians having Middle eastern heritage?

But the population is majoritively African in racial origin, usually mixed in some way. I found everyone very pleasant. There is a genteel quality to many of even the most banal social exchanges in Brazil, which appear to comment ironically on the crumbling infrastructure ( this serves as a rebuke to those, usually on the left, who believe that poverty somehow necessitates nastiness, as well as pointing a contrast with the people of New York who seem considerably less capable of simple courtesies, despite having far better living conditions). 

 I met some Jehovah`s Witnesses (there is an awful lot of God in Salvador) who were so pleasant and sweet tempered in their little suits and long dresses that I almost took their offer to join them for Bible studies classes seriously. There are also, in touristic places, splendid women wearing  gigantic dresses, so that they resemble huge dolls.

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At first I stayed in Pelhourinho which has a fine concentration of colonial buildings, a well restored enclave.

Then I met a Frenchman called Pierre Pophillat who offered me the use of an apartment in the centre in exchange for a painting, an offer I was happy to accept as my hotel room was noisy at night from the carousing in the street below (making noise is a popular pastime in Brazil generally: Salvador perhaps especially. 

They also like to talk a great deal. Anything can become the subject of an interminable conversation, and if you have nothing new to say, you can simply repeat what you have already said many times over, as it is doubtful that you interlocutor is really listening anyway: this is conversation as a social ritual taken to its logical conclusion: everyone, other than those stupid or unfortunate enough to actually want or need to achieve anything, derives great pleasure from this).

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This first set of three blogger entries shows firstly some of the small shops and buildings in the market, and more general views of or from the city. I feel that I have managed to move up in size. There is a children`s book quality about some, and this derives both from my decisions to use larger brushes, brighter colours, and from a quality of the place itself. And there is a Sickertian quality about the first two, I feel: Sickert is a painter of  claustrophobic sadness.

A week in Salvador, part 1: the city

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 A stationers, oil on card, 15 x 13.5 cm

A little restaurant, oil on card, 14.5 x 18 cm

An Arch, entrance to a public garden, oil on card, 14 x 17.5 cm

                                    

  Rooftops, oil on card,16 x 17.5 cm NOT FOR SALE

Salvador

Salvador is a big city, beautifully located on a series of hills on a peninsula. It is an interesting place and is often melancholy.

This is, in part, is because it is architecturally claustrophobic, often turning away from the sea in a series of small, crooked streets. Many of the shops seem peculiarly small and cramped  too, as if designed for children, with everything sold in comically small quantities.

The city is generally in a state of ruin:  handsome old buildings are falling to pieces; there is vandalism, graffiti, neglect and filth.  Much recent construction is shoddy. I watched workmen construct a brick set pavement: the result was something that will surely become impassable after a day of rain.

 In this mess are beggars begging, children begging, prostitutes offering themselves,  crack users lying asleep on the pavements, and every other example of social degeneracy that you might wish to discover. 

There are also a remarkable number of stray cats: these are considerably more pleasant creatures to have as strays than the dogs that roam other Brazilian cities. Does their presence there in Salvador have something to to with many Salvadorians having Middle eastern heritage?

But the population is majoritively African in racial origin, usually mixed in some way. I found everyone very pleasant. There is a genteel quality to many of even the most banal social exchanges in Brazil, which appear to comment ironically on the crumbling infrastructure ( this serves as a rebuke to those, usually on the left, who believe that poverty somehow necessitates nastiness, as well as pointing a contrast with the people of New York who seem considerably less capable of simple courtesies, despite having far better living conditions). 

 I met some Jehovah`s Witnesses (there is an awful lot of God in Salvador) who were so pleasant and sweet tempered in their little suits and long dresses that I almost took their offer to join them for Bible studies classes seriously. There are also, in touristic places, splendid women wearing  gigantic dresses, so that they resemble huge dolls.

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At first I stayed in Pelhourinho which has a fine concentration of colonial buildings, a well restored enclave.

Then I met a Frenchman called Pierre Pophillat who offered me the use of an apartment in the centre in exchange for a painting, an offer I was happy to accept as my hotel room was noisy at night from the carousing in the street below (making noise is a popular pastime in Brazil generally: Salvador perhaps especially. 

They also like to talk a great deal. Anything can become the subject of an interminable conversation, and if you have nothing new to say, you can simply repeat what you have already said many times over, as it is doubtful that you interlocutor is really listening anyway: this is conversation as a social ritual taken to its logical conclusion: everyone, other than those stupid or unfortunate enough to actually want or need to achieve anything, derives great pleasure from this).

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This first set of three blogger entries shows firstly some of the small shops and buildings in the market, and more general views of or from the city. I feel that I have managed to move up in size. There is a children`s book quality about some, and this derives both from my decisions to use larger brushes, brighter colours, and from a quality of the place itself. And there is a Sickertian quality about the first two, I feel: Sickert is a painter of  claustrophobic sadness.

They eat: our shared humanity.

Tenderness. Sharing food is important for Brazillians.

 

 I thought he might come over and assaut me at this point.

 

But in fact he was merely enjoying a Proustian moment.

 

And, fortunately for me, the needs of the stomach took precedence over honour.

My favourite: the chip resembling a moustache.

 Satiation. But is he happy?

A series of photos celebrating our shared humanity; part of an open-ended photo exploraration of Brazilians in their glorious diversity.

Rio: Botafogo beach

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Botafogo beach, oil on card, 11.5 x 9.1 cm   SOLD

I wanted to capture the footballers playing on the sands, but by the time I had chosen my viewpoint and laid out my things they had finished their game, and after a big argument, departed. Actually ,I very rarely see arguments in public here: I seem to remember them being much commoner in the UK, and British life, despite it's reputation for calm, being far more fractious.

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A trip to the mountains, part 2; large Brazillian cities

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View from a valley, oil on card, 14 x 9.6 cm

 

A community in a mountain valley, oil on card, 9.4 x 6.6 cm discarded

Two more paintings from one of the valleys near  Morro de Campestre. The little houses, which are often wooden and tiled, huddle at the base of  splendid mountains.

Large Brazillian cities are extremely ugly, unless they have the fortune to be sited as impressively as Rio. (Florianopolis is not beautiful -though you might hear people say it is- what is attractive about it is the closeness and variety of its natural surroundings).

The Brazillian inability, or refusal, to plan, their lack of understanding of public space and their instinct to merely improvise, or sort something out at the last minute means that anything which needs large scale co-ordination often goes terribly wrong, so that all large Brazillian cites are largely squalid, ugly monstrosities, crime infested, grafitti covered, filthy rat-holes, containing significant areas of extreme poverty and social degradation (usually, for visitiors and the rich there are showcase tourist streets and enclaves for those with private wealth to escape to - shopping malls, restaurants, posh condominiums, fancy gyms etc).

These cultural failings do not affect so negatively smaller places, and I believe there is a cultural element at play too in the Urubici area, which is that the cultures which lent the mountians their native populations are generally central European. They came there with the specific intent of creating a worthwhile life for themselves through their own labours. They do not have the negative attitudes towards work commonly seen in latin or slave populations.

Having had a British education, I aquired this sneaking admiration for people who don't want to work, but the truth is that people who are not industrious are rarely creative either, and all this means that Brazil is less interesting in terms of culture than it might be: certainly, there is not much happening here in Florianopolis.

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Condominium life, Brazil

The letter reads:


"Notice- infringment of articles 35 and 46 of R 1, you are advised in accordance with article 67


"Occupant without a key to the entrance gate using the wall as an entrance in the absence of a nightporter*, if seen by third parties putting the security of the condominium at risk, an irregularity seen by our camaras on 17 November and 00.30 hrs. Florianopolis, 20 of November 2010"

*customarily the nightporter would open the gate.

The wall in question is about 50 centimetres high. I did have a key but I carry so many that it's easier to climb the wall than to find the right one.

The condominium is run by a diminutive fat man with a beard and glasses that seem too big for his face, who has an intense love of rules ( he is called a sindico). He has no sense of humour, but he has been fair. However, he has a bunch of sidekicks who are quite unpleasant, and who enjoy catching people infringing the rules. I guess it makes them feel somehow complete. There are many rules, so the sidekicks are generally very happy people.

I was putting my little business cards in the mail boxes in the condomium, not realising that this was an infringment of the regulations. The janitor, an old man with a lined face and a limp came to me, and said, "You know that isn't permitted. But don't worry, I didn't see anything."

So I thanked him, what a decent old guy, I thought: he warned me, but he didn't make a big deal about it.

But the following day, when I was being questioned by the Sindico about climbing the condo wall, up steps the janitor- "he was putting card in the mailboxes too", he said to the sindoco, gleefully.


So I asked the janitor, " Why did you lie yesterday? You said you wouldn't mention anything?" In response, the janitor started shouting, "go away, go away!" and limped off.

I guess he saw a chance to curry favour with the sindico (who to his credit chose to ignore what the janitor said), and if that might cause me problems, or he might have promised otherwise, so be it. The janitor has a slyness that I've seen a few a few times with people form the island: a rapacious peasant quality, in which immediate private gain is the only objective.

The little story illustrates a number of features of Brazillian life:

1. Superficality.

The janitor pretends to be my friend. Fake friendly abounds here. If you come here as a holidaymaker its charming, but once you live here and realise it's fake it loses its appeal.

2. Dishonesty.

Making promises you have no intention of keeping because it will make you seem more likable (this is especially common with invitations, and takes the form of, "what are you ding next weekend? I'm going to invite you for a  drink/ to meet my wife etc. They don't mean this at all- they are trying to be charming, but it is confusing and annoying.).

3. Rule obsessed.

I think, because their public spaces are degraded by violence, squalor, grafitti, filth, stray dogs,  sewage and violent mayhem, and they've in large part abandoned them, Brazillians become obsessive in the readily controllable zones of the home or condominium. There also might be a Portuguese element here of legalistic pedantry.

Rules are not evenly handled: the security guards in the offices I work are considerably more pleasant to some than others, depending on their status- Brazillian society is very hierarchical.

Because I ride a bicycle (I suspect) and in Brazil only students and poor people ride bikes one of the security guards thinks it's acceptable to speak down to me. Or maybe she is just a rude cow.



4. Obsession with security.

Actually. it would be pretty hard to steal anything from here at night. None of the apartments have ground floor windows, the apartments are close together and nestle about a courtyard.