Work 7. Winter Landscape
Look here, you know I like to get my correspondence off while it’s fresh but last night I was forced to postpone again due to caring for my father who had come to spend the night. He has what we call Alzheimer’s, you call dements and used to be generally known as being old. He has been with it for several years and last night was the first time in perhaps 15 years that my father and mother have spent a night apart so I was prepared to be, let’s say, ‘on duty’ but I had expected to write my DS entry later that evening, however a scene erupted at about 10pm that rather left me reeling, in fact it was worse, it was the realisation of a childhood nightmare of my father suddenly becoming alien and violent.
Of course it is the dements behind it, although my passionate reading of TAS Work 23 entry did not help, but the sight of my father becoming more angry and aggressive than I have ever known him to be, seemingly without reason and directed squarely at myself simply cannot be brushed off like so many of life’s regular difficulties. He wanted to speak to his wife so we dialled her up. Then not twenty seconds passed before he repeated the request and so we did it again. The next time I said no owing to the late hour and my mother’s need for respite and he went off to the bathroom seemingly resigned, only to burst out a minute later fists clenched and hellbent on seeing his mother. This threw me so I restated calmly that she was in fact my mother and his wife and with this came a frenzy. He demanded to be taken to his mother immediately and telling me in the strongest possible terms that I was a 'clown' and that he was 'fucking finished with me' (please bare in mind I have never heard his swear before). Any attempt on my part to exchange was met by a kind of geriatric bums rush1 as he staggered towards me threatening his fists. As I backed off he turned and limped down the corridor towards the girls bedrooms (looking for him mother) and when I layed a hand on his shoulder he turned and threatened the right hand so i let him go.
Watching his slow progress I thought simultaneously of Jack Torrance2 limply hunting his son with an axe and of an incident from my past in which my father and I visited my grandma and became trapped in a Mexican standoff in a tight passage with an elderly resident. On seeing us she turned in absolute terror as if she had been confronted by le horla3 and made off in the other direction as fast as she could. As my father and I patiently followed her at snails pace the old woman would turn to check and become terrified afresh before redoubling her efforts to escape. I’m afraid that our initial respectful concern gave way to smirks then corpsing.
How to deal with a man whose behaviour reflects only the escape/attack binary? It was a new experience for me and naturally if this occurred with some drunk outside a pot house one would of course box their ears but when it is ones own elderly father, who could easily suffer a life changing injury from a mere fall, what does one do? Luckily my sambo awoke and calmed the situation and as I receded into the background I was shaken and quite unable to write. So, now, with the new day upon us and my father back in Norrtälje I made haste to Flygfyran and here I sit now to tell you of my latest session in front of the subject.
In fact it was a two session study. A wide expanse of snow covered fields in which there was just enough wheat visible to pattern the flat of the land. The spot chosen for the relatively long distance on offer, because, as I’m sure you have noticed, the space in the landscape in these parts is sooner or later closed off by the ubiquitous row of birch and pine trees which I have been battling to render for several years now. You know they are frustrating! Often they appear as though they were performing or dancing, each tree delightfully vying for attention but just as often they appear as a hostile, impenetrable military force that might attack at any moment. In either case I have learned to not take this perimeter lightly, it is a subject in itself really, full of variation of form and colour. I feel I am drawing closer to it and perhaps by the summer I can tackle it in its own right but today it was the backdrop. I feel my more successful goes at the perimeter have come as a result of one or two quick salvos then leaving it rough. That was my approach again in this work.
You know it is easier in winter. Easier to see. Contrary to what one might expect the absence of leaves actually provides more form and colour as the bare birches appear distinctly purple against the darker tones of the pines. This allows one to perceive horizontal movement across the trees far more easily and that's the way to do it I fancy. The subject in this work however is space. Space and the pattern of the land perceivable under the snow. I would like another go at it as this one was painted with genuine abandon due to the temperature, which was -6, made less comfortable by the wind and less still by the tooting of the horns from Norrtäljevägen which appeared simultaneously appreciative and mocking. At one point, as I was setting up, the driver of a tow truck yelled at me to move my car as he had to pull out a stricken vehicle. "FLYTTA DIN BIL!" Oh how his voice echoed. All in all a vigorous enough study but painted very much with the back to the wall on several fronts. Another double square to decorate the barn and on to the next one.
A handshake,
John
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1 Boxing terminology - an energetic but flailing attack of an unskilled boxer.
2 Protagonist in Steven King's The Shining. It is likely that John is referring to the Stanley Kubrik film.
3 Le Horla is a short horror story by Guy De Maupassant.