Poem by Robert Finlayson 1990s

IN FEAR OF THE LANDSCAPE

IT COMES INTO SHARP FOCUS
                                TANTALISING
ITS DEFINED AND CLEAR REALITY
                                                 A SHIELD

IT BLURS INTO A FOG
THE MIND’S EYE PROBING SECRETS

IT SPLITS OPEN
                       REVEALING
MOMENTARILY
                        THE UNDERPINNING
OF ITS LINES

THE FORMS RUSH IN
                     A DEAFENING SILENT RUSH
DEFENDING THE SECRET

THIS IS A BATTLE ZONE

ANYTHING COULD COME OF THIS

AN ANNIHILATION
A PAINTING
A DEATH
A SAVIOUR
A REVELATION
A SYMPHONY

                         AN AWAKENING

                         OR PERHAPS

A VISION

 

(FOR EZEKIEL)

Written by Robert Finlayson in the 1970s

“Real painting occurs when the mind, the eye and the hand move together in perfect unison.

It was Kant who insisted in his third Critique that for an adequate account of the world, philosophers should investigate the ideas and visions of art and artists.

It is my belief that the art of painting has been brought into disrepute in the last fifty years of our century because of the eccentricities of certain demi-puppets who pass for art critics, and pretend to knowledge they could never experience.  They, and the intellectual chattels who follow them, namely the uninformed nouveau riche, and all small and ineffectual minds who choose to follow think it is their right to explain to the artist what it is that he or she performs on canvas or board.  How few have considered it a useful source of information to consult the practising artist.  With Cezanne, modern art, we might say begins with a father who would have disowned and disinherited his children, and it continues by accident and misunderstanding.  To quote Yeats’ words which forty years after they were written remain sadly relevant to our own age particularly with regards to the art of painting “The best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity”.  In short the pure dispassionate intellect which is the cornerstone of worthwhile art is regrettably unfashionable in our era.  Artists have become pathetic followers of various and macabre ‘isms’ (abstract expressionism, hard edge painting, field painting, conceptual art etc).  While the truly original artists languish in penury.  As a true affirmation of the artist’s stance it may profit us to remember the words of Baudelaire “The artist is responsible to no one but himself. He donates to the centuries to come only his own works; he stands surety for himself alone, he dies without issue. He was his own king, his own priest and his own God”.