8^th January 2012

 

My mother, had she lived would have been 100 by now and the New Year has me thinking of her and her attitude to my artistic leanings which I think started in the 1950’s.

She was very supportive in this area just as she had been with my brother’s musical leanings, arranging for him to have lessons which he then continued for many years becoming an excellent pianist and teacher.

As to my musical ‘talents’ she also got me learning the piano at the age of eight. Of course I hated having to practice and go to lessons and at that time, was not at all interested in playing music although I enjoyed listening.

I continued reluctantly to learn finally giving lessons up at around the age of 16. My teachers had patiently attempted to teach me to read music and to play but I continued to play by ear rather than take notice of the notes on the page and so never gained the facility to think in the language of music.

 

In the late 1950’s music came to mean more to me with the arrival of Bill Haley and the Comets and Elvis Presley, playing what some thought of, in those days as the Devil’s music. I was very quickly hooked and quickly expanded my taste to include all of the music which incessantly blared from the Pop radio stations on my transistor radio, which went everywhere with me.

 

By the early 1960’s, especially when I began attending the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology I of course wanted to fit in and quickly developed a taste for Jazz which I still have to this day.

My musical taste extends now from Miles Davis to Mahler and still includes Blues and Rock.

 

In the early 1960’s my painting was mainly abstract and I loved, and still love the cubist painters, particularly Georges Braque. My mother would not let me destroy any of my dabblings, most of which were very ordinary and I occasionally took her to exhibitions. Her usual comment was something like ‘that’s nice love. What does it mean?’ This was before the current fashion of Artists’ Statements. The work may or may not have a title and if it did it would be something like Quantum Leap No 2.

I never pretended to have any more insight into the meaning of an abstract piece than my mother but I don’t think she ever understood that the meaning didn’t matter. When she saw a painting it needed to tell a story much like the genre paintings that the candidates for the Melbourne Gallery School had to submit for the travelling scholarship in the late 19^th century.

 

Why I became a tonal realist painter I will leave for another day but I have always regretted not having learned better the language of music especially as I now am trying to teach myself the guitar and much of this task requires that facility.

I am pleased, however that my painting teachers taught me the language of painting to the point where I can now think in that language which after all is the proper definition of fluency in any language.

Whether it is Rothko or Holbein I continue to enjoy looking and enjoying the tones, shapes and colours that make up many paintings.

The painter needs to be something of a voyeur like the photographer, someone who uses his or her eyes to the full and plays with light.

 

It is the language of light that painters must become fluent in, be they realist or abstract. Unlike sculptors who have a plastic medium and work in three dimensions the painter must rely on a two dimensional surface to convey their ‘message’. The viewer’s eyesight is the only sense that can be used to receive that message and of course it is light which is the key.

 

To a tonal realist painter the lights and darks in a subject are paramount and give meaning to the picture. I like to think of tone as the third dimension in a picture.

 

Edouard Manet is quoted as saying ‘The principal person in a picture is light.’

 

Don James

 

 

 

 

 

Over The Fence