Well so much for our attack on the blossoms! Only four canvases none of which really got near the heart of the matter in the way I had hoped. I felt sure I could make a fist of it by at least tackling the apple blossoms in my own garden in Bergby, of which we have four, but this year there was hardly a flower to be seen. It has been the same all over with even the proud orchard of the dutch family in Gribby languishing. You know last year I saw a tree at their premises which produced both apples and pears! Quite extraordinary…they spliced them together!
Alas the fruit blossoms escape us again. If only we had a spring like 2018 where one could have ones way with the blossoms for 14 days at least but as luck would have it I was wasting my time painting dainties for the local garden centers, yoga cafe’s and paytoeats.1 Thank goodness the Dignity Scholarship has come around and put a stop to that dallying, but look here, I do not regret the foray as it taught me a good lesson regards the negative effects that a commercial motive can have on the hand and imagination of the painter. It quite robs one of any real vigour or zeal, lost as one becomes in speculation over what subject style and size the mysterious public may find most appealing. Naturally commercial logic sends any ambition towards the political or critical dimension down the drain and with it, for me I speak, the seeds of sanity. That is where we are.
So the blossoms have fallen and the season moves on and of course we now have the lilacs in bloom as always, (a far more dependable flower) but their appearance always brings out my allergies. There are many other specimen bloomers on offer but none that announce themselves as subjects quite as forcefully as the fruit trees. Another attractive feature of early summer however, and a subject that I have tackled before many times during my SAS campaign, is the first cut of the grass in the field opposite the house. You see in the first year I lived in Bergby the big field was sown with rape seed, then it was I believe wheat and for the past two years it has been left to grow out.
I was brought up a million miles away from the realm of farming2 and now the process seems so magical perhaps because of my concrete youth, but I tell you it is quite a mystery to watch the farmer go about his own season. For example for these past two summers of grass crops I have never once seen any seeds sown? Is grass some sort of default crop of the soil emerging automatically enless beaten to it by some more energetic seed? I know not but in any case I woke this morning to the sight of the field with its hair cut and layed out very graphically in the most perfect rows ready for subsequent collection and packing into the white plastic covered rolls that one can barely escape seeing these days. I much prefer the natural, uncovered hay rolls but the plastic wrap produces a slightly fermented grass that the cows like to eat apparently. One thing I do know from experience is that the farmer could turn up at any point and commence his collection so if one wants to take the view there is no time to lose. Indeed the farmer, Petterson his name is, has in the past arrived as I was at the easel forcing me into a race against his tractor to get something down but luckily, today, as you can see, I managed to get it.
Look here, I heard a worrysome the other day and no mistake: there are apparently only sixty harvests left in the earth's soil!?! I hope I have misunderstood, perhaps you can confirm with someone at Kommune Norrtälje.3 I only discovered this most worrying of concepts while eavesdropping on the conversation of two young girls on the norrtälje bus who were dressed in business suits. They seemed to be too young to be the company women they appeared to be and they talked only of environmental activism. Can it be true?4
With the threat of the farmer appearing and quite literally removing my subject there was even more reason than usual to work fast. I ploughed into it and after only the sparest of sketches I went all in with salvos of colour twatted5 on using the side of one of my pre cut brushes to establish the grass piles. Despite the commitment to direct application I was careful however to capture the sense of perspective of the receding lines and this took a little pause but my experience painting the same view last winter stood me in good stead. The perimeter came together in numerous separate tries which individually may miss the mark but as I have learned produce a better effect when it all comes together.
Too and fro, painting first here then there, I tried not to hesitate or even to mix the color much. The post impressionist style allows for and in fact one could say is even characterized by, the modulation of the painting by adding touches of autonomous color and that is something I would do well to remember but today I took a similar approach to the overall technique whereby I could take liberties with colour and tone knowing that it can all be modulated into a whole as the process develops and this, rather than any sense of ’getting things right’, creates a better energy.
Yet another view of the field then, but it does show a progression in the way the work is put together. You know Lennon once said of a Dylan record he had taken in that it was ’a good noise’, meaning I believe that the component parts have come together and that is how I would describe our effort today, nothing groundbreaking but a good noise.
John
1 Restaurants
2 Leamington Spa in central England
3 A request has been made.
4 The claim originates from a speech at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization in 2018.
5 British slang word for a hit or strike.