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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Blue-green sea, Florianópolis

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Blue-green sea, Florianópolis, oil on card, 12.3 x 8.8 cm -  available

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Pyramid

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Pyramid

These enchanting gems were bought in Beiramar mall at a stall near the bookshop. I bought them , furtively: they seemed such a wanton luxury, and I didn't permit myself to open the bag in the street but waited until I had made to my car thence all the way back to Trindade and up my stairs and through the door to open the bag and deliriously pop the sweetie into its rightful home... 

And I can declare without equivocation  that they are magnificent, their platonic geometry so pleasingly contradictory in the rounded wet cushioned cavern of the mouth. It's a huge pleasure to feel their edges soften, and the rough sugar surface  melt into smooth salival syrup: intoxicating. 

 The sugar encrusting, so blatant, so bling, suggests the most decadent moments of the 1920s- very Gatsby- as are those wonderful Deco colours.

They are surely the most jewel-like of our sweets so far, and the most suggestive of mystical transportation. 

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Trees near a church, Trindade

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Trees near a church, Trindade, oil on card, 26 x 28 cm

It is getting very hot, and even when painting in the shade one returns sun-dizzy.

 It may be time to start painting still lives again, perhaps flowers...

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A road and bushes near the university, Florianopolis

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A road and bushes near the university, Florianopolis- available

 oil on card, 26 x 28 cm

Does the plein air painter go out and respond to the world with paints?

Or is it like this: the artist goes out and finds a motif. This motif is like a key which opens a door in their mind.

Behind the door is a pre-existing image which the artist then reproduces, albeit usually adaptng it so it corresponds wih the scene that they are, ostensible, depicting.

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A flower opening

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A flower opening

 

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Vargem Grande, evening

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Vargem Grande, evening

There are some smallholdings and houses. Boggy fields with bits of rubbish strewn here and there. Soft hills in the background. 

There is a stables here. Two children rode past on bareback. They were laughing. The kids here seem to be jolly without that air of menace that British children sometime bring.

It's a pity the evenings aren't longer here, it's such a kind time of day.

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Chickens

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Chickens

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The big cock, a bellicose brute and a serial rapist, is locked away in a fenced area.

 The chickens are free, in paradise. They run about, pecking gaily. Maybe they should form an independent republic?

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Shop window

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Window display

The window display suggests conflicting notions of intimacy: as pleasure, as peril, and as commercial transaction. 

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Window displays in the centre of Florianopolis really are like this: I didn't set it up, I promise.  I do wonder what they tell us about the sexual lives of the population?

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Eyeball

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Eyeball

These eyeballs are sold from a coin operated dispenser outside the local supermarket. I wonder who comes up with these glorious designs? In an ideal world the maker would receive at least a knighthood.

 Anyway, the presence of these dispensing machines and the utter pointlessness of the crap within them is, in these times,  reassuring,: we haven't yet been reduced to exclusively utilitarian existences.

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There's a colour range which I fall very easily into as a photographer, consisting mostly of secondary colours, greys and browns. It can be a little serious.

So it's nice to step outside that sometimes, and what better subject that the surreal world of sweets and toys, and I'll try to do more. It allows me to change gear. Plus, for sure, they are often rather agreeable.

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Pavement; recent photography; camera

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Pavement

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Recent Photography

I've put my brushes down, and have returned to taking photos for a while. I'd been working very steadily on landscape paintings for a good few years and felt the need for a change. I started to think "this is what I can do" or "this is what I do" and with that comes ennui. The difficulty of travel because of Covid reinforces this. 

Image-making with´painting for me has begun to follow very set processes- finding a place to work, mixing colours, a initial tentative sketch, revising that sketch, then blocking the larger areas, usually with the more distant elements first, Then adding darks and becoming more detailed. 

It's nice, indeed essential, to have a method. But I started to become aware that the method is one that permits certain statements, and negates others, and couldn`t easily shift process. It became uncreative. 

Hence, photography.

I've often had my doubts about photography because it can seem too easy, to be glib. But that is perhaps because I gave insufficient attention to the decision making processes which it can involve, underestimating their possible sophistication;

These photos are extensions of previous essays- the neighborhood through it's architecture, still life, and rustic or woodland themes. Some of them create or suggest narratives, and think of adding texts to some of them.

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Camera

The camera I use is a Lumix DMC-LX7. It's small enough to fit in my pocket but has a Leica lens and works very nicely. Larger cameras are cumbersome, and their SLR feature is much less necessary nowadays when editing on the computer is so easy compared to in the darkroom .

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Armação, rocks on a promontory

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The Splendid Rocks of Armação

Armação, rocks on a promontory, oil on card, 26 x 28 cm

I continue my work here on the rocks with their weighty, uncompromising forms. The colour is beautiful: pinks and dard reds. They darken so when wet to a dark reddish brown.

I think of a series with this title. Twelve pictures...or is that overambitious? It might be nice to have a tiny show of them somewhere.

You can probably guess that I`m pretty happy with how the paintings from down here  in Armação are going. I started visiting here about a month ago exactly. This season is subtle in lighting and my painting today is correspondingly reserved in tone, rather md-nineteenth century like Courbet. 

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Santa Monica, a tree in the sun

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Santa Monica, a tree in the sun, oil on card, 26 x 28 cm  unavailable

A painting from the nearby suburb of Santa Monica, where I`d move to if I had a bit more money. It`s spacious, leafy has good local serives but isn`t snooty or pretentious.

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Armação, from the hill above

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Armação, from the hill above, oil on card, 26 x 28 cm - unavailable

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Armação, a view of the river

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Armação, a view of the river   SOLD

, oil on card, 26 x 28 cm

Perhaps the view is obvious, but it so suited my mood to work so easily.

This is the second from here and until (or if, given the COVID-19 situation) tourists come in droves I shall work here every Friday. The new airport road makes the south of the island much more accessable.

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Corrego Grande, a path; dots and lines; Paul Klee

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Corrego Grande, a path, oil on card, 26 x 28 cm - duscarded

I`m attempting to use dots and simple lines and blocks for fun, to give a cryptic aspect to the picture. I set myself a challenge, a limitation on the sort of marks I can use. There seems something intrinsically humorous about the dot, I guess maybe because of how a dot can make such a strong impression despite being so little

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I've been interested in the dot, or dab for a while but I think for some sessions I'll give it particular attention.

This kind of approach to painting is like trying to make a musical composition for certain selected instruments except I have the additional issue of representation. I guess it I`m following Paul Klee though I am not sure he worked much directly from nature.

I am continuing in the suburb that I visited last week. 

Today one of the residents brought me a plate of food for lunch- very kind.

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Puzzle: can you find the man in the picture?

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Armação, rocks

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Armação, rocks, oil on card, 26 x 28 cm SOLD

This is the first of a series from Armação. 

This fishing village offers a considerable variety of landscapes within a very small area.

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Suburb, Corrego Grande

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Suburb, Corrego Grande, oil on card, 26 x 28 cm - available

Suburb, Corrego Grande, oil on card, 26 x 28 cm

(picture damaged and discarded)

I messed about a fair bit with this. 

It`s a little scrappy but I think that`s ok.

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Houses near a canal, Lagoa

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Houses near a canal, Lagoa, oil on card, 26 x 28 cm - available

Here attempting to take advantage more fully of the greater freedom with brush movements and marks that a larger scale permits.





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Above Lagoa, July, 2020

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Above Lagoa, July, 2020, oil on card, 26 x 28 cm - unavailable

I painted the same view some years ago, in June 2015.

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