October 13

Here’s how I start every morning.Muesli or oatmeal, tea and computer typing a conversation with you. It’s a lovely way to start the day! ( of course, after I have done Wordle, read Heather Cox Richardson and Joyce Vance to catch me up on the news. (And about those rainbows - I see one every morning so luck is definitely with me)

I have been doing some pondering about what artist I want to carry in my “back pocket’ as I wander the landscape. Frank Auerbach is my muse. Born in Berlin of Jewish parents, Auerbach he was sent to England in 1939 to escape Nazism. He was eight years old when he arrived at a progressive boarding school, Bunce Court, a school for Jewish refugee children. His parents, who remained behind, died in concentration camps.He is one of the leading names in the School of London, with fellow artists Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud. The School of London was interested in figurative painting in contrast to abstraction, minimalism, and conceptualism which were dominant at the time.

Auerbach once used as an analogy a phrase by Robert Frost about his own verse:

"I want the poem to be like ice on a stove – riding on its own melting.” Well, a great painting is like ice on a stove. It is a shape riding on its own melting into matter and space; it never stops moving backwards and forwards.

Now 92 years old, he lives and works in London and has had the same studio since the 1950s.

Although best known for haunting figurative work, I am looking at his landscapes. His active line/stroke is emotional and immediate.His mark making develops over time; with brushes, palette knives, and sometimes paint squeezed directly from the tube. I read that he scraps off 95% of the paint on each surface, constantly striving for the the perfect moment. Sometimes he works years on one painting.

Link to Auerbach: https://www.google.com/search?gs_ssp=eJzj4tTP1TcwNIuvKDdg9OJLK0rMy1ZILE0tSkpMzgAAb-UIug&q=frank+auerbach&oq=frank&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqCQgBEC4YJxiKBTILCAAQRRgnGDsYigUyCQgBEC4YJxiKBTIGCAIQRRg5MgYIAxBFGEAyBggEEEUYOzIGCAUQRRg8MgYIBhBFGDwyBggHEEUYPNIBCDMxNDNqMWo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

I am glad to know I am in good company with all that scraping. I started a painting of rocks, just for the heck of it and ended up scraping it off. In the process, I noticed a figure emerging. I call this Man with Blue Cap in Red Recliner. He hangs in the studio with me. Now I am not drinking alone.