My friend had an exhibition. Said he wanted to clear his artroom, which is probably his loungeroom.
Darren lives on his own because he doesn't like people. He likes painting and surfing. He is probably one of the nicest people I know, in that paradoxical manner of the likeable curmudgeon.
So he had the exhibition and I went along to the opening and most of the paintings sold. Everyone seemed to think they were underpriced. 'I just wanted to get rid of them,' he said, viciously, as if he knew each painting too well, like a nasty aunt.
They are idiosyncratic and strange and modernistic and populated by odd stretched-out people in vast land- and seascapes. I bought one that was blue. I planned to put it in the beachhouse, in the room where we sleep, the room that catches the roar and howl of the ocean at night when the wind is up.
Each painting had an anecdote attached, typed out on a piece of paper. The anecdote on my painting was about surfing. Darren surfs all over the world, obsessively. All over Australia, naturally; and every year he goes to New Zealand and a couple of months ago he was somewhere in the US.
The anecdote on my painting was how he once wiped out badly somewhere while on a surfing trip, so badly that it nearly killed him. The painting is all blue and white swirls with a thin black figure circling and pointing down, as if to his doom. Well, the painting looks better than I describe.
- Where did this happen? I ask.
He tells me. It rings a bell.
- Where is that exactly? I ask.
He tells me. Oh my God. Out of all the surf beaches in the world, all the hundreds of beaches and coves and secret places that obsessed surfers know, I had, without knowing, chosen a painting of the exact cove from which that fearsome howl gets up on wild nights, making its way into my open window at midnight.
Now, when the surf roars at night, I look at the blue swirls on my wall, lit palely by the moonlight which creeps in the open window, and it is like the painting has come home.
Darren lives on his own because he doesn't like people. He likes painting and surfing. He is probably one of the nicest people I know, in that paradoxical manner of the likeable curmudgeon.
So he had the exhibition and I went along to the opening and most of the paintings sold. Everyone seemed to think they were underpriced. 'I just wanted to get rid of them,' he said, viciously, as if he knew each painting too well, like a nasty aunt.
They are idiosyncratic and strange and modernistic and populated by odd stretched-out people in vast land- and seascapes. I bought one that was blue. I planned to put it in the beachhouse, in the room where we sleep, the room that catches the roar and howl of the ocean at night when the wind is up.
Each painting had an anecdote attached, typed out on a piece of paper. The anecdote on my painting was about surfing. Darren surfs all over the world, obsessively. All over Australia, naturally; and every year he goes to New Zealand and a couple of months ago he was somewhere in the US.
The anecdote on my painting was how he once wiped out badly somewhere while on a surfing trip, so badly that it nearly killed him. The painting is all blue and white swirls with a thin black figure circling and pointing down, as if to his doom. Well, the painting looks better than I describe.
- Where did this happen? I ask.
He tells me. It rings a bell.
- Where is that exactly? I ask.
He tells me. Oh my God. Out of all the surf beaches in the world, all the hundreds of beaches and coves and secret places that obsessed surfers know, I had, without knowing, chosen a painting of the exact cove from which that fearsome howl gets up on wild nights, making its way into my open window at midnight.
Now, when the surf roars at night, I look at the blue swirls on my wall, lit palely by the moonlight which creeps in the open window, and it is like the painting has come home.
Wow. Slightly creepy, or what?
ReplyDelete