Painting the sonnets

Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know’st thy estimate,
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
My bonds in thee are all determinate.
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?
And for that riches where is my deserving?
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
And so my patent back again is swerving.
Thy self thou gavest, thy own worth then not knowing,
Or me to whom thou gav’st it else mistaking;
So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,
Comes home again, on better judgement making.
Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter,
In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.

William Shakespeare. Sonnet 87

The work on this sonnet translation was somewhat haphazard, with short and erratic studio sessions (and woefully irregular studio notes).

There was an excuse: the on-going construction work on our building. The building was as well as de-constructed around us and is now being put together again. This has meant a lot of deafening noise and commotion, and, quite often, construction workers’ friendly faces looking right into our windows (including bathroom windows and studio windows, both at most importune moments).

And there was what felt like a deeper reason. This sonnet begins a new sub-sequence, a new multi-sonnet composition. A “farewell” sequence, hence a series of painting united by the motive of “letting go”. Immersing myself in it sent me into a full-blown existential crisis (partly reflected in the last week’s series of essays).

It sounds irrational, but these two don’t feel completely unrelated, but rather like two manifestations of essentially the same thing. The experience of construction work on a building you live in is like a metaphor of reality crumbling around you, and then slowly repairing itself back into a semblance of stability.

I think Cat has had a similar experience.

We, at least, had had some warning, and some kind of reasonable understanding of what was happening, and why it was necessary. Her world was shaking (noisily) without any warning, without any rhyme and reason.

But she has this uncanny ability to adjust to anything the life throws her way after a minimal exposure to new experiences. And she also has me to look at with this questioning expression on her face — so I had to keep calm if only to reassure her that all is right in the world. Another metaphor, I suppose.     

All in all, it feels like a miracle that this sonnet got painted during this time at all.

June 22, 2016

There is this weakness, softness, femininity in the sonnet. The impression is mostly due to feminine rhymes, so unusual for Shakespeare, these repetitive ing endings. Visually, the verse invokes Renoir’s seascapes. The first colour associations are around light violets and deep greens, but it’s all very vague still.

June 24, 2016

A clearer vision of the future painting in meditation: a diagonally divided picture plane, with a seascape with distant land on the right (very dreamy, very sad), and a still life with bills and charters on the left.

A moment of panic: where will I find historically accurate bills and charters to paint from? I saw such documents from Shakespeare’s time in museums, but there is no chance I can get something like that into the studio.

These occasional (inner) demands for historical accuracy come, I think, from my linguistic past. A part of me wants to approach this whole project as though I were a Shakespearean scholar.

But this series is not a scholar’s inquiry into literary history, I keep reminding myself. If anything, it’s an artist’s inquiry into eternity. What is essential here is not how everything has changed, but how everything has stayed the same. The visual impressions that feed into this series can only be my own, from my life and my time. So I banished the thoughts about historical accuracy, and threw together a still life arrangement of my own random bills and envelopes, my check book, and my mother’s old wallet.

I keep all kinds of random finance-related oddities in this wallet (like my Italian taxpayer’s card, which I needed for about a week many years ago, so I could be paid for a couple of guest lectures). For this occasion, though, I put in a real credit card (even though the inside of the wallet is not visible at all).   

I just painted this still life today, as a preliminary study for the sonnet. While painting, I realised that the essence of this part of the painting should be in separations, divisions. The focus is on the boundaries between these objects, and the subtle shadows they throw onto one another. So how they themselves look like is of no consequence at all.

June 27, 2016

A start on painting the sonnet, focusing on the contrast between the more realistic “still life with a check book”, and the dreamier, dissolving “farewell” seascape (with some internal references to Renoir). The unformed quality of the seascape, as a translation equivalent of weak rhymes in the sonnet.

I read this sonnet as a commentary on absurdity of thinking about love in terms of business transaction, so the uncharacteristic weakness of the verse becomes an expression of inadequacy of this approach.

While the society has moved away from the finance-based concept of marriage in the meanwhile, the tendency to assign monetary value to anything and everything has only increased. This makes the motive personally relevant.

These decidedly “non-painterly” still life objects correspond to the sonnet’s decidedly unpoetic financial and legal language.   

June 28, 2016

I could only paint a little today (because of the construction work), but the painting seems to be taking shape. All in all, I see the future painting; it just has to be clarified a bit from its current state.

Shakespeare, of course, could play with weakening his verse deliberately. He could afford to. But can I afford to play with weakening my painting? Why not, after all?

June 29, 2016

What I want to emerge in this painting is the utmost absurdity of the check book, and the dazzling colour in the seascape part. Dazzling colour of separation — trembling and vibrating.

June 30, 2016

Again, a short painting session. The painting is still not quite where I want it to be. There is this vision of vibrating blues crossing the boundary between the two areas of the painting. It is in my mind, but not in the painting.

July 6-7, 2016

I returned to the eight seventh sonnet painting, because its weaknesses and inconsistencies were bothering me. I guess I couldn’t afford this radical weakening of my painting after all.

There were few changes today, but the painting seems to have “come together” and clarify itself at last. I leave it be for now.