“January 19, 2008, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, 74° F, Round Bay”

Detail, “January 19, 2008, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, 74° F, Round Bay”

“January 26 2008, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, 78° F, Haulover Bay”

“January 30, 2008, afternoon, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, 73° F, Haulover Bay”

Detail, “January 30, 2008, afternoon, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, 73° F, Haulover Bay”

“February 6, 2008, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, 79°, Haulover Bay”

“February 19, 2008, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, 81° F, John’s Folly”

Detail, “February 19, 2008, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, 81° F, John’s Folly”

“February 20, 2008, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, 80°, John’s Folly”

Detail, “February 20, 2008, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, 80°, John’s Folly”

“February 21, 2008, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, 75° F, John’s Folly”

Detail, “February 21, 2008, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, 75° F, John’s Folly”

“February 22, 2008, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, 78°, John’s Folly”.

The life of a failed painting begins like any other. In the case of this small catastrophe, a pristine panel was placed before beautiful Haulover Bay in St. John. A few tender blues and greens were picked from the morning waves, before the sun was high enough to fully penetrate to the white sand below and send back to the surface the intensely saturated aquamarine for which the Caribbean Sea is famous. The pale colors were applied with a small brush in concave strokes to make interconnecting, stretchy pentagons, which is a motif that describes the undulation of small waves. This cool color area was surrounded then with the yellow of an old sea grape leaf and tempered with small patches of white from the sun-bleached coral rubble. In the upper left a smudge of grey-green was added to represent the distant island of Tortola. The painting session was finished when a large, stretchy pentagon appeared on top of everything else as if to describe a large bubble rising from the floor of the ocean.

Back at the house, I returned to the picture. The bubble of space was the most engaging thing, so I set to work to litter the floor below the boil with interesting detritus like fragments of brain and fire coral. Next, I decided on an orientation for the image and placed a vignette of sky and shore in the upper third. And then the picture was put away.

After a few days of looking at the painting, I picked it up again. Although I still liked the bubble of space, the vignettes beneath were pedestrian and isolated from one another. Painting a discrete object is relatively easy, but painting the strong and weak forces that glue a diverse universe together is hard. To get deeper into the world of this picture, I re-entered with a disruptive attitude, intent on destroying the status quo. Large strokes of blue and red, saturated like the colors of the American flag, replaced the shoreline and set off an exciting collision of color. I turned the picture upside down and forced this new orientation into dominance by weighting the new bottom with large forms and intense pigments. By now the nuanced tints copied during the initial session at the beach were lost and replaced with coarser colors, which was a result of working from memory and impulse rather than direct observation. But there was still hope for a successful resolution, since a new visual drama appeared which seemed to benefit from the rawness of color. With the addition of fins, eyes, shiny skin, and slithery shape, three large brush strokes became a barracuda and two fat, fleeing fish. Satisfied with the visual invention that arose through insurrection, I put the picture away and went for a swim.

As more time passed the new spatial disruptions began to bother me, so I put the picture on the easel and once again turned it upside down, back to its original orientation. The crudeness of the scene would have been a virtue if balanced with a little finesse, so I worked with care to soften extraneous detail and strengthen the focus on the fish and the bubble of space. Several times the picture neared balance, but each time something was off and each time the correction led to new problems. The barracuda, disgusted with the lack decisiveness, left the picture. After so many corrections, the surface became overworked. So, in a last-ditch attempt to bestow grace, I rebelled once again by downing a rum and coke early in the day. Predictably, the alcohol improved my confidence but not my judgment and the picture failed.

All that was left was a fish, alone in a muddy sea of compound mistakes.

It’s time, now, is to get rid of everything. The shapes and colors and textures must be destroyed. History must be eradicated. Get the stripper and scrape the surface new. It’s time to annihilate this little failed world. There is a point when an environment can not sustain the mistakes of its inhabitants.

“January 8, 2008. 75° F, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, Haulover Bay”

“January 13, 2008. 73° F, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, Leduck Island”

“January 14, 2008. 75° F, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, Haulover Bay”

“January 15, 2008. 72° F, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, Haulover Bay, Morning”

“January 15, 2008. 78° F, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, Haulover Bay, noon”

“January 15, 2008. 78° F, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, Haulover Bay, noon”, DETAIL

“January 18, 2008. 72° F, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, Round Bay”

“January 18, 2008, 72° F, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, Round Bay”, DETAIL

“January 23, 2008. 72° F, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, Haulover Bay, Morning”

“January 23, 2008. 83° F, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, Haulover Bay, Afternoon”

“January 23, 2008. 83° F, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, Haulover Bay, Afternoon”, DETAIL

“January 30, 2008. 72° F, N 18° 33, W 64° 79, Haulover Bay”

Now, painting in Saint John, I’ve been thinking about Leon’s comment. He was talking about the connection between making an object and living a life. Over time, he suggested, the elements of an examined life — the values, the psychic habits, the social relations — find expression in the process of making art. One would expect the subject of an art work to reveal the motives of the maker, but Leon was noting that the process of making the thing was just as illuminating.

Currently, I’m working on windy, Haulover beach under a canopy of sea grapes, making pictures from shadows cast by the sun as it rises. It’s an exciting process, since the sun and the wind have become active collaborators.

The beach fringes the north shore of a narrow, flat isthmus, which divides the open water of Sir Francis Drake Channel from the shelter of Coral Bay. Slaves once hauled the boats of the Danish plantation owners across this narrow strip to save the masters the trouble of sailing around the east end of the island to get to open water. Hence, the name, Haulover Bay.

I arrive at 7:30 AM, more than an hour before the sun rises over the mountain that shades the bay from the east. Sea Grapes line the shore and at one spot they have grown so tall and thick that they make a shelter. Someone has dragged an old timber that floated ashore into the cover to make a convenient bench. After setting up the easel in this fresh air studio, I take a look around to see what’s new, which is usually a lot of plastic crap that has washed in from the boats. But in a few minutes it’s possible to pick up the worst of it and get back to searching for colors and forms.

First, I mix up little pools of paint to match the color of the water, which changes from minute to minute in response to the sun and passing clouds.

The shades of turquoise are intense, so I balance the palette by adding the neutral colors of beach stones.

And to this cool collection of colors, the copper of a fallen leaf is included for warmth.

Once the palette is set, I look for interesting forms to paint. The shapes of light on the water made by the wind are often inspiring. The sun will soon be rising over the hill, so I have to work quickly to make an interesting ground.

On this particular morning I choose to start with the sky, which is pale and dotted with peach-hued clouds, which I paint upside down as an inconsequential poke at convention. To this up-ended skyscape a few blobs of sea and chlorophyll green are added as well as the ochre of a coral that I observed while snorkeling the day before. Abruptly, the sun rises above the mountain and the strengthening light intensifies the action of the wind and the water so that everything seems to expand and contract, as if caught in an elastic net. On the panel ovals and bars of light shoot across the picture plane and undulate to the rhythm of the wind in the sea grapes. I trace the edges of the waving shadows and let my hand move to the rhythm. Sometimes I use a knife and scrape out ovals of light. There is no lag between the provocations of the sun and the wind and the response of the brush and the knife. Stimulus and response become one thing and the experience is transcendent, like a moment of shared belief.

When the sun first rises, the shapes are slashing diagonals. But as the morning progresses and the sun circles behind the sea grapes, the shapes become rounder.

To check on progress, the panel is turned away from the light and rotated. If one looks at a picture sideways, it’s easier to ignore the subject and study the scaffolding of lines and the repetition of motifs that make a well-built composition.

The picture is complete, when it asks for nothing more.

I love and admire Leon Golub for his life and work and over the years I have felt myself respond to his accomplishments. His mercenaries-in-action are good representations of violence, but they are great paintings because they are convincing demonstrations of violence. His pictures embody the human capacity for destruction because of his actions, which are to use a mighty size, to overwhelm with big gesture and to flay the surface as if it were alive. In life Leon was far from being a violent or destructive man, but in his art he could conjure brutality and show it nakedly. Like Leon I’m interested in human potential, but I’m working on the flip side of the same coin. Playing with the light and wind and water on Haulover Beach is an attempt to demonstrate the human capacity to embrace.