228. Geburtstag (Birthday)
228. Birthday, 2025, Öl auf Leinwand, 40 x 30cm, (Darryn Ansted)
The painting ‘Birthday’ is now finished. It was hard. It was mainly hard because it was not naturally forming into a composition with which I could easily… agree. Therefore, I did a lot of work to bend things around and into a situation where I could meet the motif on the right terrain. There were a lot of technicalities, such as the need to have a presence of the midwife with the serious expression of the midwife, but without it leaning too much into a portrait of the particular woman who happened to be the midwife or conversely having it become an anonymous eerie shadow. It is a painting about new chapters opening.
Many times I have wanted to write about my book collection, or library. I never even consciously thought of it as a library, until I had to give it away when I left Perth. During way too many years at university (12) I gradually assembled some great books on philosophy and art, and I used them to write my own book. I had to scour the earth to find some of them, particularly during the writing of my PhD. One book even cost me a few hundred dollars. Besides the pain of putting it together, there were also wonderful times spent accumulating the books in my small library. I spent many evenings in the bookshop ‘Readings’ in Melbourne, poring through their great range of books, sitting in a comfortable chair, reading some philosophy before purchasing a book to take home for my own collection. Pride of place in my library is taken however by an autobiography, a signed copy of ‘The Boy Adeodatus’ by Bernard Smith. That was also from when I lived in Melbourne. That was perhaps the greatest moment of my life in Melbourne, being invited into Bernard’s house, and perusing his library. Of course, I have still got that particular book.
When I left Perth, I begrudgingly went to leave my beloved books with a second hand bookstore. I drove up and opened my car boot (trunk). A young storeman from the bookstore came with a trolley. I put several boxes of books on the trolley and we walked it into the rear of the bookshop. The boss came out and said that she would call me with a valuation later that day, as the young man started taking the books and throwing them pretty aggressively into two piles. I could see books that I had held so carefully in my hands for decades now having their covers pulled and bent out of shape, their pages ruffled and folded. It felt like a part of me was also being roughed up. It’s one of those times in life when you just bite your tongue, smile and say thanks, and walk away. Nevertheless, the experience made it easier to leave Perth. I was a man whose library had been extinguished in a fairly painful way. At least my books will find new owners and people will continue to read them, I thought. And to be honest, the separation from my books was also made easier by my break from the main artists and philosophers who had influenced me at university.
I was always telling painting students who were confused that they could answer this question. If you were in the university library right now would you go either for the newspaper or a poetry book? I was always more drawn to the newspaper back then but with walking away from academia I probably became more interested in the poetry of things. It’s probably pretty natural to spend your twenties and early thirties accumulating knowledge, ideas, information, even friends, and for that matter also wealth. Needing-to-know is a feeling that characterizes study. That glint of desperation eases perhaps for many people in their late 30s. I don’t think I would have painted a birth for example until I was involved in one, at age 40. I don’t think I will paint one again however. It has been exhausting. (Obviously it is indeed absurd to describe a painting of a birth as exhausting. Compared to actually giving birth, painting it is a ‘leisurely’ experience and a process of making many small judgements that proceed at walking pace). This painting is not attempting to be a scientific analysis nor a shocking statement. If anything, it could be perhaps just like a simple poem. A life comes into the world through the colossal endurance of a mother, through the diligence of the midwife. the sun rises outside.
So, I noticed a lot of people have opinions on birth. I rarely quit a painting and I thought about quitting this one but I did not. I heard from a former midwife that she thought it was an important painting. I wanted to know why. She explained that 50 years ago people were not born like this. They were not born in a bathtub, with the mother in an upright position. This helped to explain why I felt like I had never seen a painting of a birth as I was doing it. This small vote of confidence in my work encouraged me to continue. She liked the centrality of the midwife being shown. When you are involved in a birth you realize that midwives are the unsung heroes of life. I had so many questions for them at every opportunity I had as a new dad. So, it seemed important that the painting of a birth here is partly also the site of a workplace of somebody who is doing a shift, that in this case went through the entire night until the dawn.
As usual with many paintings I do, I am learning a lot from what I am seeing. Discovering the shape things take when they come into being… That is the obsession of philosophers, artists and people at a birth, as well as gardeners, farmers, engineers, architects and authors. I finished listening to Knausgaard’s magnum opus. He pulled it together into quite a nice ending. Oddly, he seemed to address all the things that I have been grumbling about. He explained the role of his editor in detail for example. This really extended the feeling of the book, that I was having, that it was like a kind of fireside chat with Knausgaard. Coming away from the whole experience, I get the feeling that Norway perhaps partly felt to him a little bit like my experience of the second hand bookshop in Perth felt to me. It is the feeling that here is a place that is going to tear apart not only my books but me too unless I walk away. Fortunately, I had a friend who was able to hold on to my most treasured books. They reside now in a stone cottage in Fremantle, treated with the greatest of care. Knausgaard put to one side, I am moving on with a couple of other texts. I’ve got a library to rebuild after all. I am trying to get further into the corpuses (corpi?) of Herman Hesse and Thomas Pynchon… and more of Knausgaard. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Lastly, I should add that this is not a painting that I expect anyone to have an interest in. It is a painting that comes from my interest in seeing what happens when I attempt to paint something without making too many assumptions. It is a painting that is therefore made autonomously. It is there now. Other paintings no doubt will have more resonance with other people. It is important to paint things that present a challenge because otherwise painting would be a populist activity and not the paradigmatic exercise of freedom that characterizes it. You will see the scratches and frustration on the surface of this painting precisely because it does not emulate anything or get drunk on beauty. Every time it reappears there will not be the scratches, uncertainty, the doubling-back and hacking forth into the unknown.
