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Life

artist as a baby

No beginning.

 
Rue d'Argens

I had my first painting lesson at the large wooden table in my grandmother's house at 24 Rue d'Argens in Msida, Malta. My Uncle John sat me down one afternoon with a small box of watercolours and some paper and showed me how to work them. I was seven and I was hooked.

 
Francis

When I was in grade six I had a friend named Francis. He was from Calabria in southern Italy. Francis was incapable of being intimidated by anyone. He would sit at the back of Miss Palosso's class at St. David's Catholic School and draw all day, oblivious of the teacher and the lesson. I admired him immensely.

Francis introduced me to the Art Gallery of Toronto as it was called then. I was amazed. I had no idea that such places existed.

One day during one of our many walks together he told me that he had lived previous lives. I was perplexed and a little dubious, but I could tell from the way he had said this that he was being completely in earnest.

 
Geisha

As a kid I used my allowance to go to the movies every Saturday. One afternoon I saw something called "My Geisha" with Shirley MacLaine, Yves Montand, Edward G. Robinson and Robert Cummings. That afternoon, at the ripe age of twelve I discovered Shirley MacLaine, Puccini, Madama Butterfly and Japan. In one scene Shirley MacLaine dressed as a geisha walks along a shore, water ablaze with sunset gold, an enormous gate rising out of the water just off-shore. I made myself a promise right then that one day I would go there.

In 1983 at age thirty-five I finally made it to Japan for the first time. I made a point of going to Miyajima, a sacred Shinto island in the Inland Sea, and walking along the same shore I had seen Shirley MacLaine walk in the movie. The day I was there, however, the sky was grey and it drizzled rain all day long. All the same it still felt like I had come home.

I have made a painting of that gate floating over the water. My friend Jules owns it now.

 
Michelangelo's sculpture of David

When I was in high-school I read a book called "The Agony and the Ecstacy" by Irving Stone. This is how I discovered and became fascinated by Michelangelo, his troubled life and incomprable body of work. In high-school I also discovered the Ontario College of Art, as a result of a visit by a certain Mr. Butts who had come to our school to promote student enrollment at the college.

As a consequence, after the tortures of high-school I headed over to the pleasures of art college. Nevertheless, after a brief couple of years I left, eager to visit the land that had given birth to the artist I admired most. A year's work at a bookstore earned me enough to fund my first pilgrimage to Italy and ultimately Florence.

In Florence I ended up at the Pensione Morandi on the Piazza S.S. Annunziata. It was run by the English wife of an Italian husband with the assistance of her son Roberto and daughter Alba as in some E.M. Forster novel. Behind the pensione stood the Academia whose domed roof I could see from my room. Below that domed roof stood and still stands the astonishing "David" by Michelangelo.

 
Rembrandt self-portrait

The first time I was in Amsterdam I arrived tired and hungry after the long journey from London. I found a room with a very high bed in a pension on the Singel Canal. After settling in I went out for a walk to explore the city.

My first stop was a sandwich place where I had steak tartare on a bun. My very first time. It was delicious. I was so hungry that I had a second.

Afterward I wandered aimlessly noting how much the quality of light matched that in Dutch paintings. At one point I found myself stopping in front of an old house. I looked up and noticed a plaque which identified the house as Rembrandt's. I could hardly believe my eyes. I went in, of course.

 
Stonehenge

In 1978 I took a job as a scenic painter in a shop that makes theatrical scenery (I've been entombed there since) in order to earn some money to get to England to see the summer solstice sunrise at Stonehenge.

The day before the solstice I was in Salisbury and as I viewed the journey as something of a pilgrimage I thought it would be appropriate to walk to Stonehenge, a hike of about ten miles.

I arrived in the little town near the monument at about three in the afternoon. Once I had secured a room in a bed and breakfast I immediately collapsed exhausted onto the bed and fell into a deep sleep.

I dreamed that I was flying about twenty feet off the ground along a country road at night. Just below and ahead of me was a young black boy. He ran ahead of me, periodically looking back and smiling, beckoning me on.

I awoke suddenly to discover that it was now three o'clock the next morning. I dressed quickly and stumbled out into the dark, following the same path I had seen in the dream. I arrived just in time to join hundreds of others standing around the famous circle of stone. Together we waited and watched the sky lighten as the sun rose on the first day of a typically overcast English summer morning. High above our heads a kite futtered furiously in the morning breeze.

 
Delphi Temple of Apollo

One bright day in the summer of '84 I found myself walking up the slopes of Delphi. Despite the numerous signs warning visitors to stay off the monuments, I also found myself stepping up onto the floor of the temple of Apollo, the heart of that fabled site. I walked directly to the centre of the space. Suddenly, all hell broke loose. Whistles blew and guards shouted at me in Greek. I ignored them and walked calmly down the centre axis and on down the grooved ramp that would have been the front entrance at one time. No one had come near me, no one had tried to stop me. The other tourists stared as I walked on beaming with an Apollonian smile on my satisfied face. One annoyed woman even asked me what I thought I had acheived by walking in there, as if I had inconvenienced her personally. I kept my silence then. Now, I would answer that for a few moments I had joined the august company of Alexander, Hadrian and numerous others who had trod that same sacred ground.

 
Koyasan

Ever since my friend Pamela told me about it, I have made a pilgrimage to Koyasan whenever I have found myself in Japan. Koyasan is a community of Buddhist temples situated on a mountain top some two and a half hours' train ride almost due south of Kyoto. It was founded by a man named Kobo Daishi whose last resting place is located at the far eastern end of this enchanted place. The last leg of the journey to Koyasan is made by a fifteen minute ride in a cable car that glides smoothly past immense Cryptomeria cedars. It was the end of my fifth visit and I was making my way on foot to the cable car station at the far western end of the plateau. Just outside the town there is a small wooden cabin that functions as a guardhouse. I had passed this guardhouse before on each entrance and exit without incident. Today as I passed, a small older man in uniform and cap came out and approached me. At first I thought that something was wrong. However, as he came closer he smiled and gestured for me to take the path just behind the guardhouse that clearly led down the mountain. I indicated that I was heading to the cable car. Continuing to smile, he again indicated the path more insistently. "Does it go to the train station?" I asked in my broken Japanese. "Yes!" he emphatically answered me. So, that day I walked off the sacred mountain as pilgrims had for hundreds of years before me. It was arguably the most beautiful walk I have ever taken. As i descended, each step revealed a fresh view of encircling mountains clothed in their finest autumn kimono. That day I learned that magic comes unexpectedly and unbidden, sometimes in the form of a friendly old guard who took the trouble to show me an alternate path.

 

No ending.

 

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