Rust Anima

Pablo Picasso observed it would be interesting to take photographs of a painting while in process, to capture its complex organic emergence. Here are two moments for viewing - one obliterated forever yet preserved in digital form; the other as 'final' as any work can ever be, yet subject to physical decay.

My anima wanders - sometimes leaving me deserted for months at a time. This week she has made an unexpected visit, an intense ferment of feeling. Intoxicated, suffering, the paint drips darkens coagulates like heart's blood, undrunk, unwanted. Another Pablo (Neruda) provided this torn lament, scribbled onto the painting, an appropriate epiphany:

Those who wanted to wound me wounded you,

and the dose of secret poison meant for me

like a net passes through my work - but leaves

its smear of rust and sleeplessness on you.

I don't want the hate that sabotaged me, Love,

to shadow your forehead's flowering moon;

I don't want some stupid random rancour

to drop its crown of knives onto your dream.

Bitter footsteps follow me;

a hideous grimacy mocks my smile; envy spits

a curse, guffaws, gnashes its teeth where I sing.

And that, Love, is the shadow life has given me:

an empty suit of clothes that chases me,

limping, like a scarecrow with a bloody grin.

- Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets, LX (translated by Stephen Tapscott)

Two self-portraits

Seven years separate these two self-portraits. I finished the one on the left (Cubist Self Portrait) earlier this week in a flurry of intersecting vertical and horizontal brush strokes. Twenty minutes of rapid wrist work to complete a painting that sat glumly on my easel for six months, blocking all efforts to move beyond. In those six months I traveled to Barcelona, read both published volumes of John Richardson's biography of Picasso, and studied the blue, rose and cubist periods in detail, not knowing what for. Now I know, dimly: a new direction in portraiture has opened for me. Ghostly, the image glows through, like an X ray, unlike the firm fleshy visage of the younger me in the self-portrait on the right. Have I dematerialized, becoming ectoplasm or phantasm? They say the body completely renews all its cells over a period of seven years. Perhaps they never return with the same self-confident solidity.

Truth

This painting is one in a series of six inspired by Chinese calligraphy. The underlying ideogram (executed in sumi ink) poses a basic concept. Ink spatters and successive overlays of red tones in acquarelle pencil and water colour problematize the strength and durability of the central motif, without ever succeeding in totally obscuring it.













The great Tao flows everywhere.
All things are born from it,
yet it doesn't create them.
It pours itself into its work,
yet it makes no claim.
It nourishes infinite worlds,
yet it doesn't hold onto them.
Since it is merged with all things
and hidden in their hearts,
it can be called humble.
Since all things vanish into it
and it alone endures,
it can be called great.
It isn't aware of its greatness;
thus it is truly great.

Tao te Ching 34.