Palm and Cypress
2021 Oil on Canvas Format: 30x24 cm Paintings and Text: Gian Michael Merlevede Palm and Cypress, Detail
2021 Oil on Canvas Palm and Cypress, Detail
2021 Oil on Canvas Palm and Cypress, Detail
2021 Oil on Canvas Palm and Cypress, Detail
2021 Oil on Canvas |
Palm and Cypress
- Yearnings of the soul - Random thoughts about this painting This small oil painting belongs to the My Yearning Places Series. The Feeling of 'Sehnsucht' cristallized in my work since 2016. (German pronunciation: [ˈzeːnˌzʊxt]) I became fond of this little gem, though it was not love at first sight. My first reaction was to look critically at it. Who needs a palm tree that grows crooked? But it definitely felt good to paint it that way. It's a freestyling picture, painted completely intuitively in a short period of time. Smoothly. Then, accepting a painter's obligation, I hung it against a wall to slowly observe it. I still see Picasso sitting in front of his easel, very still, musing. As these iconic Photographs of the private life of Pablo and Jacqueline by David Douglas Duncan made a lasting impression on me in my teenage years. The rewards of taking the time to find out what lays behind one's own restraints... So I run across this composition, with all its internal shifting logic, and then I start noticing the feel of certain colors. Especially this distinctively 'beak yellow & drake green' of the wild duck hits me in the stomach. I enjoy it immensely. I have been quietly fascinated by this very color combination since I was a Teenager. Oddly enough, call it contradictory, all that time I wasn't bothered much by the apparent fact, that meanwhile I never even tried to actually use this color combination more in my art work, if at all. Somehow my psychological attitude to this color combination is tricky. Maybe my soul has been only waiting to find a good reason to do so, or for the tide to come in. Anyway, I'm glad all finally came together in this painting. I actually think it's totally cool that a lot of things in my soul, and then also in my art, have a kind of secret life of their own. In my view and experience, the intuitive levels in life often seem to be far more rewarding than for that matter the so-called rational levels. It was my mother, with her exemplary appreciation for ducks, who opened my eyes to the loveliness of these waterfowl many years ago. She always verbalized her surprise for the stunning designs in nature. She could not but recognize the superior call of the external, yet personal Creator behind it. As a young child, I often ran into ducks, but I did not really look closer - as if my soul was like partially deaf - until my mother unintentionally shook me awake by her good example. Some small earthquake jolted through my sensitive soul at that time. I felt like shamefully awakening from deep slumber. Nowadays, I can't bump into any male mallard (wild duck) without shuddering inwardly before God's unparalleled genius. An overpowering inventive ingenuity which exposes the (in)voluntary conceit of artists and scientists, exactly then, when all such divine mastery hides in plain sight, occurring with apparent casualness. „It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings“ - The Bible in Proverbs 25:2 The British children's book illustrator John Burningham (1936-2019) also gave me, already as a child, an impetus for this captivating color combination of 'cool yellow vs. cool green' by using it in the extraordinary picture book "Seasons" (1969). Namely, with the delightful illustration "ducks dabbling" and also with other Double pages in this children's book. The My Yearning Places Series includes both paintings and drawings. The paintings are made in oil or with acrylics, carried out on canvas and on paper. The drawings are mainly executed with pencil on paper (in some cases also by means of black Conté chalk, charcoal or colored pencils). |
Copyright Artborne Erdeborn / Merlevede