Peter Kreet Art: Lifes voyage through stormy seas.

Thursday, April 4, 2013

Lifes voyage through stormy seas.

Setting out on life's journey
Painting by Peter Kreet.
Acrylic on board $600

Over the past few months, I have been searching for a visual icon to express the journey of life and the human ageing process. I have wanted to find an image that had weathered a long journey, through storm and calm. Finally, I settled on ships at sea that seemed to hold all the ingredients, long journeys through troubled waters often with unknown outcomes. My images would have to express vessels in distress where the final outcome could be in doubt. My first painting “Homeward Bound” portrayed a container vessel about to founder, losing all of life’s accumulative wealth. The question of survival or otherwise of the doomed ship could represent the optimist or pessimist viewpoint depending on your nature.

As the meridian age of our western population continues to advance ever upwards, the question as to how we cope with these extra year in terms of contentment. Several years ago I discovered that the island of Crete has produced a disproportionate number of long livers. I believe they share this honour with a number of regions in Japan. Often such longevity is put down to diet, or healthy climate. Many elderly Cretan natives I observed seemed to chain smoke, eat whatever they liked without any apparent ill effects. This was confirmed when I walked through various grave yards, so I can vouch for their long life spans. What was highly noticeable was the way they spent their days quietly chatting in taverns and cafe, simply passing the day in undemanding company, playing cards or backgammon in the company of friends.

It was not a look in the mirror that prompted this enquiry, rather an attempt to understand the true meaning of happiness throughout life, particularly as our ship starts on the final leg to its home port. The answer obviously will depend on who you ask, but strangely it is not wealth. In the west we are addicted to cosmetic surgery, jogging, and even youth enhancing hormone treatment. What Epicurus had in mind in Ancient Greece, when discussing life was happiness, this would give you the best possible life. He did not believe in an afterlife, so every decision

you made was critical. He wrote, “It is not the young who should be considered fortunate, but the old who have lived well, because the young in their prime wander much by chance, vacillating in their belief. While the old have docked in the harbour, having safely guarded their true happiness”.

These were the ideas running through my mind when I embarked on this series of paintings. Firstly there would have to be ships in serious distress as they came upon the hazards of life, were it could be touch and go whether one would survive, would you reach a safe harbour. The sea like life can be very unpredictable. The seaman needs to be free of vacillating beliefs to survive. A Chinese friend of mine suggested that the emptiness of striving was what Epicurus had in mind, much as a Buddhist strives for in meditation. Many of us in later life became anxious about what we have not achieved, the unfulfilled dreams of youth, or we believe happiness is bound up in owning stuff the commercial world tells us we really need, sometimes both.

When we free ourselves from these obligations we gain freedom, and like my Cretan friends can sit for hours with friends in a tavern or whatever passing the time of day. There is no schedule at this end of life’s span. Just the great pleasure of shared conversation, laughter, and the shared communal silence. There is no need to impress, these are hallmarks of friendship. Strangely with age it becomes easier to start conservations with strangers particularly with women. I suppose you no longer present any threat, other than perhaps being boring. One final remark from Epicurus "If Death is nothing there can be no fear of it, any more than the fear of nothingness in our pre-birth years".