Experimenting After the Masters (Yellow House 2)
Why Yellow House? Read here.
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September 18, 2000
9:40 AM, Monday
The sun is still very elusive.
I've started experimenting but nothing's finished yet. I'm still convinced that my work will always be after nature, translating what my eyes see as they are sieved by my emotions and my mind -- if only I had the skills to do it.
The weather changes so abruptly that I could hardly cope with its speed. I want to build solid forms as Cezanne did but I am often tempted to settle for Monet's aerial perspective because of the Baguio City fog and mist.
Can I master solidity even if I combine it with atmospheric effects?
I want to convey the feeling of actually being there. When I look at my daytime works at night I want to reconvey the sensation of the daylight touching my skin. If I paint or draw under the scorching heat I want to feel the same scorching heat when I look at the picture at a later time.
Will my independent study of Cezanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin lead me to believe that the "primitive" Cezanne would evolve into the Cubist Picasso or Braque in matters of form? Are the conclusions of Matisse, Kandinsky and the Expressionists the inevitable direction of the colors of the Post-Impressionists? Is the 20th century's transition from nature to the imagination true for everyone?
I admire the expressionists, I admire Magritte, I admire Malang and his Klee-Chagall influence; but are they my pictures' future? I don't know.
I do know however, that I want to paint solid forms and intense colors. I want to paint from nature. I want Cezanne's solidity, Van Gogh and the expressionists' expression, Cezanne's sense of classical harmony and balance and his romantic exuberance and rhythm.
I want to express man in his totality -- his pain, his suffering and his joys. This can be done even without painting figures, as Van Gogh conveyed the feeling of a picture being inhabited even in the absence of figures.
"I have tried to express the terrible passions of humanity by means of red and green. The room is blood red and dark yellow with a green billiard table in the middle; there are four lemon-yellow lamps with a glow of orange and green. Everywhere there is a clash and contrast of the most alien reds and greens, in the figures of little sleeping hooligans, in the empty dreary room, in violet and blue. The blood-red and the yellow-green of the billiard table, for instance, contrast with the soft tender Louis XV green of the counter, on which there is a rose nosegay. The white clothes of the landlord, watchful in a corner of that furnace, turn lemon-yellow, or pale luminous green."
I want to solve my own pictorial problems but like everybody else I will struggle for my survival. Do help me, oh God.
Life is not supposed to be an 8 to 5 routine. Humanity must find himself in the world that was created for him -- harmonious with himself and with God despite his daily struggles.
Everything is meaningless, admitted the royal author of Proverbs; but he also knew that there was one hope -- the pursuit of God -- a God who is not deaf to human tears, blind to human shouts, nor indifferent to their joys. Or, as Francis Schaeffer wrote, "the God Who Is There".
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September 18, 2000
9:40 AM, Monday
The sun is still very elusive.
I've started experimenting but nothing's finished yet. I'm still convinced that my work will always be after nature, translating what my eyes see as they are sieved by my emotions and my mind -- if only I had the skills to do it.
The weather changes so abruptly that I could hardly cope with its speed. I want to build solid forms as Cezanne did but I am often tempted to settle for Monet's aerial perspective because of the Baguio City fog and mist.
Can I master solidity even if I combine it with atmospheric effects?
I want to convey the feeling of actually being there. When I look at my daytime works at night I want to reconvey the sensation of the daylight touching my skin. If I paint or draw under the scorching heat I want to feel the same scorching heat when I look at the picture at a later time.
Will my independent study of Cezanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin lead me to believe that the "primitive" Cezanne would evolve into the Cubist Picasso or Braque in matters of form? Are the conclusions of Matisse, Kandinsky and the Expressionists the inevitable direction of the colors of the Post-Impressionists? Is the 20th century's transition from nature to the imagination true for everyone?
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| My oil pastel version of Cezanne's House in Provence. I just love the tension and rhythm of his diagonal strokes -- making the picture full of movement without any human actors! |
I admire the expressionists, I admire Magritte, I admire Malang and his Klee-Chagall influence; but are they my pictures' future? I don't know.
I do know however, that I want to paint solid forms and intense colors. I want to paint from nature. I want Cezanne's solidity, Van Gogh and the expressionists' expression, Cezanne's sense of classical harmony and balance and his romantic exuberance and rhythm.
I want to express man in his totality -- his pain, his suffering and his joys. This can be done even without painting figures, as Van Gogh conveyed the feeling of a picture being inhabited even in the absence of figures.
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| Van Gogh's The Night Cafe who wrote about the painting: |
He also wrote to his brother Theo: "In my picture of the Night Café I have tried to express the idea that the café is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad or commit a crime. So I have tried to express, as it were, the powers of darkness in a low public house, by soft Louis XV green and malachite, contrasting with yellow-green and harsh blue-greens, and all this in an atmosphere like a devil's furnace, of pale sulphur. And all with an appearance of Japanese gaiety, and the good nature of Tartarin." Quotes from Wikipedia
I want to solve my own pictorial problems but like everybody else I will struggle for my survival. Do help me, oh God.
Life is not supposed to be an 8 to 5 routine. Humanity must find himself in the world that was created for him -- harmonious with himself and with God despite his daily struggles.
Everything is meaningless, admitted the royal author of Proverbs; but he also knew that there was one hope -- the pursuit of God -- a God who is not deaf to human tears, blind to human shouts, nor indifferent to their joys. Or, as Francis Schaeffer wrote, "the God Who Is There".
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