241. Bananna, Malaga, Hazelnut (Banane, Málaga, Nuss)

241. Bananna, Malaga, Hazelnut (Banane, Málaga, Nuss), 2025, Öl auf Leinwand, 15 × 20cm, (Darryn Ansted)

241

Bannana, Malaga, Hazelnut

Oh my gosh. This has been a hard painting to work through. I revisited it after the exhibition. It has kept me out of the flow of disseminating finished paintings together with blog entries. It was not so much the technical difficulty of painting it but the complexity of the situation surrounding it. I wasn’t happy with the painting at first because the elements did not really agree with one another. Much has happened since the time I first ‘finished’ it. The exhibition came and went. Then we had a holiday, then I started teaching the Winter painting course in my studio, then I went to Rome and so on. However, somehow in this flurry of far-flung pursuits I was able to gain a fresh perspective on the painting via a fresh view on my own work. I’m looking for a kind of inner bucolic, subdued vision. All by way of saying that I managed to turn down the volume on this painting and let the creatures come back to the forest. We are in something more like an easy chord now.

I recently started teaching my Winter painting course as I mentioned. It has been very enjoyable. A small class, teaching from my studio in a workshop style, has been a really sublime pleasure. The atmosphere has been gentle and helpful, conducive to making paintings that feel like they come from a good place.

Art allows you to throw, to project, to do a project, to try, to attempt. There are flavors and colors that may combine in such a way that they can have a familial acquaintance, or not. What are families? There are always changes. The game of string held between the fingers of two children changes as they move their fingers in and out from one another’s loops, forming knots and bows and chaos and symmetry. Sometimes art can be an investigation for the sake of investigation, without a purpose, without a resolution. A string game. It can be a thing that just is. That is the spirit of Dada art: investigation without resolution. Not many things can be an investigation without resolution. I don’t want to get too caught up on investigating the investigation. Some things on the other hand are just extraordinarily difficult to reconcile, and maybe the painting is something in the middle. Sometimes it is really just a scraped wall after all is said and done, a grazed shield that has come back from the battle with a patina that means something very different to different people.

I made perhaps my best coffee the other day. I have poured a lot into making coffee, forgive the pun. This particular day it was a blend bought from Berlin but mixed and roasted in Nepal, from Robusta and Arabica beans. I tasted praline, I tasted liqueur. It was something very special. It was a ‘Banane, Málaga, Nuss’ if you know what I mean.