Like the tide coming in over a beach
Posted by Robert Beer on 7/29/2010 10:43:19 PM
Incoming Tide on Moonlit Beach
The act of painting is for me like the tide coming in over a beach.
Very slowly with occasional surges, the canvas becomes covered with an atmospheric veil of liquid intensity.
Shapes move within this tidal flow, some getting lodged in a particular place, as a covering of other forms leaves them peering through translucent layers.
"Synaestesia" means the overlapping of the senses, e.g. 'smelling' sound or 'hearing' colour. All of my paintings for the last seven years have had the word synaesthesia prefixed to the title, on the basis that every experience (visual or emotional) is an aggregation of all the senses. My early work required nature as a direct stimulus, and markets and beaches provided much of the subject matter. In retrospect I realise that I did not go to the market and sit drawing on an orange box simply to record external reality. I went there compulsively, like a moth flying towards the light. The moving flood of people, together with explosions of colour from the fruit and flower stalls, became a kaleidoscope which mirrored cosmic energy; and I found this the nearest equivalent in external reality to meet a growing inner need. Over a period of years this constant bombardment began to distil into a residual flow, which re-emerged in my paintings as a completely expressive colour language. The momentum of this formative process increased when I discovered that my relationship with life around me had thrown up universal primordial symbols that had a strong link with the collective unconscious.
In the past, artists have synthesised the external world into a series of images both objective and transformative. Realising that the external world could give glimpses of a complete reality, their painting became analogous to gold prospectors panning for gold. The external world became the catalyst for the pure force of reality to rise up from the subconscious.
In work today reality is so often missing altogether! It seems to me that most art college courses make it impossible for students to ever find their own voice. The new academism is the most crippling and abortive in perhaps the entire history of man.
It is worthwhile to search forever and to find nothing; for this is a positive nothing!
But to find nothing, think it is everything and stop searching is not just to live in vain, it is to live a lie. A lie that grows in its own corruptiveness like a huge neon sign which only stops one seeing the stars.
Candlelight is beautiful. Microcosm or macrocosm, scale matters not. But do you crawl into a cave, light a candle and think it is the sun? Beware of thinking that you have seen the light, for you will be blinded by this light and see nothing, nothing at all. Not only will you see nothing, for each sense is only a fragment of experience, but you will negate every sense that you have.
A blind man can see!
Those who have sight and do not see, are blind.
A blind man cannot see the picture of the blind leading the blind.
If you believe in magic then you are real.
If you do not know magic you are not truly alive.
The unconscious has remarkable uniformity
Yet no two people are ever alike. This is magic!
And if you realise this then your whole body is alive.
A month ago I broke my leg playing football. I cracked the lateral malleolus of the fibula and they put the leg in plaster up to the knee.
I could not cope in the house with crutches, and Merlin the cat died aged twenty-one. I buried Merlin in the garden under the Laxton apple tree. Jason held me upright as I balanced on one leg, digging the three-foot hole, with my forearms doing all the work.
The next day I told the hospital that unless they took the plaster off I would go home and cut it off with a Stanley knife.
There were looks of horror at these words but they agreed, putting a sock bandage up the leg. This was after only four days of having the plaster on. Two weeks later the specialist discharged me saying that I had made an astonishing recovery.
I have had three works accepted for the Westward TV Open Art Exhibition, which this year is to be held in Truro. I have been hoping to receive a prize as I am desperate for money, having to pay my ex-wife Carol £800 to 'buy out' her interest in the house. The opening of the exhibition is on Friday 7th October. Perhaps they will not decide on the prizewinners until the exhibition is hung. Surely I have a chance?
There is a special prize of £300 for professional artists, but I am not eligible for this as they specify that one has to earn more from the sale of one's work than from any other source.
I have written and informed Westward TV that I consider this to be outrageous. A Brixham harbour artist or any other 'pot-boiler' is automatically qualified but Van Gogh would never have been eligible!! They agreed that this is a good point but cannot change the rules for this year.
When I arrived by train at Truro with Jason, it did not take me long to see that I had not been awarded any prize. I looked at those things that had 'won' and I was filled with despair.
I have paid the £800 to Carol. Final settlement completed thus.
Very slowly with occasional surges, the canvas becomes covered with an atmospheric veil of liquid intensity.
Shapes move within this tidal flow, some getting lodged in a particular place, as a covering of other forms leaves them peering through translucent layers.
"Synaestesia" means the overlapping of the senses, e.g. 'smelling' sound or 'hearing' colour. All of my paintings for the last seven years have had the word synaesthesia prefixed to the title, on the basis that every experience (visual or emotional) is an aggregation of all the senses. My early work required nature as a direct stimulus, and markets and beaches provided much of the subject matter. In retrospect I realise that I did not go to the market and sit drawing on an orange box simply to record external reality. I went there compulsively, like a moth flying towards the light. The moving flood of people, together with explosions of colour from the fruit and flower stalls, became a kaleidoscope which mirrored cosmic energy; and I found this the nearest equivalent in external reality to meet a growing inner need. Over a period of years this constant bombardment began to distil into a residual flow, which re-emerged in my paintings as a completely expressive colour language. The momentum of this formative process increased when I discovered that my relationship with life around me had thrown up universal primordial symbols that had a strong link with the collective unconscious.
In the past, artists have synthesised the external world into a series of images both objective and transformative. Realising that the external world could give glimpses of a complete reality, their painting became analogous to gold prospectors panning for gold. The external world became the catalyst for the pure force of reality to rise up from the subconscious.
In work today reality is so often missing altogether! It seems to me that most art college courses make it impossible for students to ever find their own voice. The new academism is the most crippling and abortive in perhaps the entire history of man.
It is worthwhile to search forever and to find nothing; for this is a positive nothing!
But to find nothing, think it is everything and stop searching is not just to live in vain, it is to live a lie. A lie that grows in its own corruptiveness like a huge neon sign which only stops one seeing the stars.
Candlelight is beautiful. Microcosm or macrocosm, scale matters not. But do you crawl into a cave, light a candle and think it is the sun? Beware of thinking that you have seen the light, for you will be blinded by this light and see nothing, nothing at all. Not only will you see nothing, for each sense is only a fragment of experience, but you will negate every sense that you have.
A blind man can see!
Those who have sight and do not see, are blind.
A blind man cannot see the picture of the blind leading the blind.
If you believe in magic then you are real.
If you do not know magic you are not truly alive.
The unconscious has remarkable uniformity
Yet no two people are ever alike. This is magic!
And if you realise this then your whole body is alive.
A month ago I broke my leg playing football. I cracked the lateral malleolus of the fibula and they put the leg in plaster up to the knee.
I could not cope in the house with crutches, and Merlin the cat died aged twenty-one. I buried Merlin in the garden under the Laxton apple tree. Jason held me upright as I balanced on one leg, digging the three-foot hole, with my forearms doing all the work.
The next day I told the hospital that unless they took the plaster off I would go home and cut it off with a Stanley knife.
There were looks of horror at these words but they agreed, putting a sock bandage up the leg. This was after only four days of having the plaster on. Two weeks later the specialist discharged me saying that I had made an astonishing recovery.
I have had three works accepted for the Westward TV Open Art Exhibition, which this year is to be held in Truro. I have been hoping to receive a prize as I am desperate for money, having to pay my ex-wife Carol £800 to 'buy out' her interest in the house. The opening of the exhibition is on Friday 7th October. Perhaps they will not decide on the prizewinners until the exhibition is hung. Surely I have a chance?
There is a special prize of £300 for professional artists, but I am not eligible for this as they specify that one has to earn more from the sale of one's work than from any other source.
I have written and informed Westward TV that I consider this to be outrageous. A Brixham harbour artist or any other 'pot-boiler' is automatically qualified but Van Gogh would never have been eligible!! They agreed that this is a good point but cannot change the rules for this year.
When I arrived by train at Truro with Jason, it did not take me long to see that I had not been awarded any prize. I looked at those things that had 'won' and I was filled with despair.
I have paid the £800 to Carol. Final settlement completed thus.
