Work 38. Leaning Rowan Tree
Well it is now late summer and needless to say my output has far from matched my ambition, through no fault of my own I might add, but I take what I can get and after all the Dignity Scholarship favours the calm and patient approach. This is not a race after all. The desire though still burns to paint, and especially since the Tate visit I feel like I know what to work on but there has just not been the time. Child/parent care, holiday chores and extra visits have combined, but things will calm down in the autumn.
It is at these times of creative frustration that I am most grateful to the Dignity Scholarship for the framework it provides. You seem to allow one to cope and push on when one can. To give wider meaning and coherence to sporadic creative work that might otherwise fizzle out or proceed only as fragmented thinspread. Yes indeed I have embraced the cubbyhole notion and I am nothing if not sheltered. I feel to think this way does allow for recuperation and repair, as you write yourself but that is perhaps as far as it has gone for me. The quest to then think this state of calm Doing alongside and into the question of
anticapitalist critique in the post truth era' is beyond my reach at present but I feel it coming, its outline on the horizon. If I am able to hold this course for another season I feel sure we can get there; progress is after all but a matter of time. Can you confirm my spot for next season?1
Well, as you know the harvest is beginning but it seems to be mostly grass this year perhaps in response to the 'great lack' of 20182 and unfortunately most of the grass balls that have appeared are of the wrapped plastic variety and not at all tempting as subject. I much prefer the natural dry rolls but as I understand it the wrapped ones keep the grass fresh for the winter, and in any case I have had a fair go at the hay balls over the years.
The Rowan tree however is an autumn subject I am yet to tackle and this year they have put themselves forward like none previous since my arrival. Positively fawning so they are. Is it due to the quirk of the seasons that they are particularly ravishing and dramatic this year or is that my eyes are more ready to accept them having worked the hay balls out of my system during the SAS campaign? Perhaps a bit of both. The apple trees certainly vary wildly year to year so why not the rowan? In any event I have been stalking them rather and found the above angled specimen whilst on a jolly tour with my parents around the rural lanes of the Harka region, south east of Norrtälje. We peeled off Björnovägan and onto Harkavägan where there is an unusual expanse of flat which, I was to learn from the farmer who visited me during the session, is so because the area was once the sea! Across this expanse of some twenty fields the trees appear along the borders here and there creating a splendid non conformity. They stand out most dramatically in the right light owing I think to the position of the perimeter3 which is far more distant than usual and on our return back along the Harkaväg I spotted this angled rowan that has become our 38th work.
The very next day I was able to find a few hours to paint between eight and eleven in the morning due to our resumption of our regular schedule with the children back at fritis. I had it in my mind that I would be having two short sessions on this one but I reached the point of no return at about ten minutes to ten and managed to secure an extension from my mother who thankfully was benefiting from a half decent nights sleep. The timings and rhythm of the process were upturned by the appearance of the farmer who had parked up and made the trek over a 200 meter field to come and see me and to be sure he was definitely not just shaking me down. He was a good egg this one. It is he who drives the machinery over these fields day in day out and you know he tells me there are one thousand balls of green to be harvested from his vast patch but he does all this with a heavy heart it seems as he is actually an IT professional but is back on the farm in part to care for his ageing parents. So in addition to his affable basics I related to him on the question of care. We chatted for a one or two segments4 and when all was said and done I had lost some twenty five minutes in the zone and when my friend had left it was quarter to ten and my study was well on down the road. Too far to stop I divvied and so, to borrow the gamboling5 phrase, I went all in. Although I must qualify this by saying that 'going all in' does not necessarily mean wild abandon, it can and did also mean a selective sparseness, for example my sky has been allowed to remain in its infant state and is none too shaby for it by my reckoning.
It is a study to be sure, painted on hardboard loppis support atop of well meaning still life of slices of watermelon I believe. I gave it a quick sand to rough it then some of the galleria primer, which I secured initially for sizing, then thin turps ground of ochre. My idea on setting up the composition today was a simple; to attempt to capture the feeling of lean and weight given off by the rowan and the rest made up of compacted segments diagonaling out to the right. The plastic balls that fairly peppered the scene may have made the cut if it were not for my time constraints. You know I am not against them on principle, the plastic balls that is, and while we're at it I am not averse to including the equipment and machinery of daily life generally as subject. During my TAS residency I had a right go at all sorts of cars and lorries, not to mention boats, but for some reason, probably that I live in a rural zone, my work for the DS does not include the like and in fact having just had a quick check I see that the only machine on offer is the little digger in featured in Work 2 and that only because it appeared one day in the garden. Maybe some Norrtälje townscapes would be worth a go as the only ones attempted previously were designed only to appeal to the punters and I still hold out hope of securing a sale or two, particularly of the views of the Torn6 under construction.
To the weight of the world. As you know I have withdrawn my self from the brexit melee, it must now be some two months since I managed to hoist myself out of that bubbling stew pot and cool off. Only very occasionally am I moved to lift the lid and asses the general state of the reduction and I can report that it is still bubbling away (not at all nicely). But look here, the fundamental truth in cooking and in life applies here too I fancy, namely if the temperature is too hot something's going to burn. The currant7 outrage by the way is the prorogue of parliament by the Eton Trump. For five weeks no less!
A black sun is rising make no mistake and one can only assume that a boil over followed by a reduction and burn is the motive of those in power. I am reminded of young fella who in his appearance at the Cambridge Analytica enquiry, when asked of the motivations behind people wishing to employ inflammatory disinformation to influence elections responded that one billionaire backer of the alt right believes that in order to effect real change in society one needs first to destroy society. (And so say all the Tories.) I also discovered that a new ingredient has been added to the stew. The political formation of the 'Brexit party' led by that oily heap of shit Farrage. Now he is, many say, a man who 'tells it how it is' and while I do not subscribe to that, he certainly has nailed this one as brexit has been nothing but one long riotous party for him and his far right like from the start and with the possibility of his assent to the premiership a serious real, we can now clearly see the rim of that black sun on the horizon which I am very afraid will shine on us all. Zakhar! The sun cream!9
Well, let us not get too dramatic about it, at least that is what i try to tell myself and besides is there not a chance that a Farrage premiership may put the established Tories out of commission leaving some leftist hodge to oust him, which I suspect would not be so great a task, certainly a lot easier than trying to extinguish him when he is shouting from the sidelines. But what has it got to do with me? I live in another country, as do my children and parents so what do I care? To that I have no easy answer other than to say that I rather wish I could turn it out of my mind. I think that what is happening in the UK is perhaps my best chance to watch and wonder about the future.
Thoughtfully yours,
John
1 Decisions are made in October.
2 Unusually hot summer with reduced rainfall resulted in bad harvest across Roslagen.
3 John's term for the tree line on the horizon.
4 Short but undetermined measure.
5 Typing or predictive error, likely to mean gambling.
6 Real estate agent working on the waterfront regeneration project.
7 Predictive error or perhaps reference to the John's Currant Bun application poem.
8 Another reference to Ivan Goncharov's Oblomov.