Beginning to Paint
I rest on the hills of Ta’ Cenc, satisfied, tired and vulnerable after running a fast half marathon. A warm African wind blows wild wheat sideways on the terraces 100 metres below. Beyond, the island of Malta guards the left horizon whilst all else is a shimmery joy of silver blue Mediterranean waves. White spotlights descend from fast moving clouds, racing towards Italy.
“I have to paint this feeling,” I say. “I’ve never painted, but I can’t understand how else I can do what this scene is asking of me. I have to go home soon but there I’ll learn to paint, and when I can do what must be done I’ll return.”
I begin to sketch during lunch break. I’m aware that it’s important to try to discern what my motivation to paint is, so as to find my own style now instead of stumbling upon it when I’m 80. I don’t want to spend 30 years learning to paint a certain way just because others paint like it, or because I can find certain tutorials on YouTube, or because some critics have decided what is good or bad. There’re so many areas where I have to compromise in life, but this isn’t one of them. Not if I’m doing it for myself rather than for selling.
And I do want to do this for myself. My day job is in the funeral business. It's not my dream job, I've taken what I could get. I make goods for the dead. Often I inscribe their details and notice how many didn’t reach my age. I’m only in my 50’s. They probably thought they’d see 65 at least. It’s a daily reminder of the uncertainty of life. One day we’re dreaming of 30 years time, the next our date of death is being written into a book by a stranger. I want to try to live my true life, in some way, whilst I can. Maybe I can’t do the job I want, or own a plot of land where I can grow my own food, or even go where I want now that Covid has descended. But I can be myself in my painting.
I find I can draw quite realistically, and if I practiced I’d get good enough for people to say it was ok, but it gives me little satisfaction. This teaches me that realism, and affirmation, aren’t of primary interest to me. But the feeling I get when I guide the brush through a flowing line, with no sharp corners, now that lights a spark.
I recall hiking the Drakensberg Mountains in 1996, where there are over 30,000 rock paintings by the San people. I’d wondered then what'd driven the artists to create. Some figures are shown moving through the landscape carrying babies, bows and arrows. They must’ve had little paint pots, too, and maybe a brush, tucked into their waistbands or quivers. What'd guided their minds, and their hands?
“I have to paint this feeling,” I say. “I’ve never painted, but I can’t understand how else I can do what this scene is asking of me. I have to go home soon but there I’ll learn to paint, and when I can do what must be done I’ll return.”
I begin to sketch during lunch break. I’m aware that it’s important to try to discern what my motivation to paint is, so as to find my own style now instead of stumbling upon it when I’m 80. I don’t want to spend 30 years learning to paint a certain way just because others paint like it, or because I can find certain tutorials on YouTube, or because some critics have decided what is good or bad. There’re so many areas where I have to compromise in life, but this isn’t one of them. Not if I’m doing it for myself rather than for selling.
And I do want to do this for myself. My day job is in the funeral business. It's not my dream job, I've taken what I could get. I make goods for the dead. Often I inscribe their details and notice how many didn’t reach my age. I’m only in my 50’s. They probably thought they’d see 65 at least. It’s a daily reminder of the uncertainty of life. One day we’re dreaming of 30 years time, the next our date of death is being written into a book by a stranger. I want to try to live my true life, in some way, whilst I can. Maybe I can’t do the job I want, or own a plot of land where I can grow my own food, or even go where I want now that Covid has descended. But I can be myself in my painting.
I find I can draw quite realistically, and if I practiced I’d get good enough for people to say it was ok, but it gives me little satisfaction. This teaches me that realism, and affirmation, aren’t of primary interest to me. But the feeling I get when I guide the brush through a flowing line, with no sharp corners, now that lights a spark.
I recall hiking the Drakensberg Mountains in 1996, where there are over 30,000 rock paintings by the San people. I’d wondered then what'd driven the artists to create. Some figures are shown moving through the landscape carrying babies, bows and arrows. They must’ve had little paint pots, too, and maybe a brush, tucked into their waistbands or quivers. What'd guided their minds, and their hands?
 |
| Me, in the Drakensberg, South Africa, 1996. |
I believe I’m much the same as anybody else, in many ways. If I could only get some ideas about why the Ancestors painted then maybe I could understand more about what drives me to do the same. And if I understood that, then my true style might spring from there.
I paint copies of the San work, then of Anishinabe rock paintings. Then any Ancestor art I can find. I make hundreds of images. I’m not looking to make exact copies but to follow their lines and in that process gain insight into their hearts. I try not to share any of it online - I want to avoid being guided by approval - but I give in occasionally. Like many, my attachment to phone and social media - and my desire to connect - approaches something of an addiction that I struggle to control. As I draw I try to feel the ancient flow. A love of curved lines emerges, or is it an absence of hard edges? Is this the representation of a life with few boundaries, either in the field or in the mind? Or is it just how real life is when you really look at it? Is this what guided the Ancestors’ hands?
I paint copies of the San work, then of Anishinabe rock paintings. Then any Ancestor art I can find. I make hundreds of images. I’m not looking to make exact copies but to follow their lines and in that process gain insight into their hearts. I try not to share any of it online - I want to avoid being guided by approval - but I give in occasionally. Like many, my attachment to phone and social media - and my desire to connect - approaches something of an addiction that I struggle to control. As I draw I try to feel the ancient flow. A love of curved lines emerges, or is it an absence of hard edges? Is this the representation of a life with few boundaries, either in the field or in the mind? Or is it just how real life is when you really look at it? Is this what guided the Ancestors’ hands?
 |
| Top row was painted with sumac and oil, the bottom with watercolour. |
They often painted hearts into their animal drawings. No other internal organs. Isn’t that interesting! That artists separated by thousands of years and miles both thought to paint the heart as one of their only details. I wonder how they knew it was important?
 |
| My copy of a San goat, showing the heart. |
As for the matter of detail; there’s enough to show they could achieve it technically, but not enough to suggest they thought it of utmost importance. It’s as if detail were going too far, overrunning the finish line, missing the point.
I watch films for added insight. In ‘The Colours of Pride’, made by Henning Jacobson in 1973, Alex Janvier sheds light on the curves vs straight edge question when he’s asked why his style has changed from spontaneous realism to a much more planned abstract. He says that it coincides with his move from the country to the city, and...
“...the more you live a city style life, you acquire another kind of influence. A concrete sidewalk influence. You can’t help but acquire it, you can’t get away from it…People paint in squares when they get in the city, that’s about what it amounts to.”
I make paint with plants, to further build a connection with something I can't see, and perhaps can't yet imagine. Sumac, dried and mixed with aquafaba, is my preferred red. It’s delicate and light; using it reminds me to value that which knows how to lower its voice.
 |
| Painting a starling feeding on sumac, using paint made from sumac. |
I began to identify with this idea that the more time you spend in nature, the more you paint with a flow, whilst the more you spend in the realm of man the more you paint clinically. I've also an inkling that there's something valuable that won't remain in places polluted by either road or electricity pylon. And from this crossroads, an initial route forward takes shape.
