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Back in the late 1970's an incandescent recording of Alexander Scriabin's Fourth Piano Sonata was released by the Russian pianist Andrei Gavrilov. An aspiring pianist at the time, and raised by my father on a musical diet in which Scriabin figured as the principal protein, I was pretty obsessed with the Fourth Sonata, though dubious about some of the composer's's later works which I considered excessively ego-driven and priapic in conception. I had been left underwhelmed by recordings of the Fourth Sonata by several well-known pianists (Sofronitsky's incomparable vintage reading had not yet become available). Under Gavrilov's visionary hands however, at last the sensual, langorous opening, and the way it exploded into the 'presto volando', finally succumbing to the orgiastic fever of F sharp major (bright blue in Scriabin's colour language), suddenly made absolute sense. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=scriabin+4th+sonata+gavrilov Concurrent with the recording being issued, Gavrilov gave a rare radio interview. Speaking in gentle, persuasive tones which belied the fury of his playing, he expressed the opinion that all musicians should seek to study other art forms from the epochs of composers whom they are studying, something with which I have always agreed. In particular, he cited that pianists studying Scriabin should know about the paintings of Kandinsky. PAINTING WITH GREEN CENTRE - Wassily Kandinsky (1913) Extremely interesting to me is that both Scriabin and Kandinsky were drawn to Theosophy, a deeply spiritual movement embracing, among other concepts, reincarnation, universal brotherhood and social improvement. Thereafter however, their paths appear to diverge. Kandinsky had read the writings of Rudolf Steiner, including his proposal that we all inhabit several bodies including the astral, which is invisible. He believed that Art could be 'higher than Nature' and, most interestingly to me, he was deeply drawn to simplicity and primitivism in Art. The almost psychedelic abstraction of Kandinsky's late work does indeed echo aspects of Scriabin's flights of fantasy, but his early paintings embody a disarming simplicity. MURNAU, BURGGRABENSTRASSE 1 - Wassily Kandinsky (1908) Scriabin meanwhile, seemed increasingly drawn to high-flown ideas of an all-embracing and, as it happened, unfulfilled artistic utterance, to be named 'The Mysterium', in which all creative forms would be united. The composer Cyril Scott, himself a follower of Theosophy, has stated the following: “Various forms of pantheism, including Eastern religions and theosophy, propose that nature has an indwelling intelligence. Scriabin's harmonic system, especially Prometheus, therefore has an almost inhuman quality about it. Scott says that Scriabin was not under the supervision and protection of a spiritual teacher and that his mysterious death from a pimple was due to his inability to handle the strain he was under from contacting the higher intelligence of nature”. Perhaps Scriabin stepped off an artistic precipice, losing contact with the simple, the humble, even the naïve, which may be at the root of all human creation. Kandinsky however, the art critic Matthew Collings tells us, “needed the primitive, the musical, and the way colour works....He liked unknown artists, as they got to the essence of the spiritual”. Most fascinatingly, Kandinsky likened painting to playing the piano, something that regular readers of this blog will know is a profound conviction of my own. HOUSES AT MURNAU - Wassily Kandinsky (1909) I possess a wonderful book, OUTSIDER ART, by Colin Rhodes (Thames and Hudson) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Outsider-Art-Spontaneous-Alternatives-World/dp/0500203342 in which Rhodes delves into the world of art produced outside the mainstream, by self-taught, untrained visionaries, spiritualists, eccentric recluses, folk artists, psychiatric patients, criminals and others beyond the imposed margins of society and the art market. There is a chapter on Art Brut (as exemplified by Jean Dubuffet), and on Art by the Insane; I am reminded of many affirmations of the fine line present between madness and sanity by, for instance, Alexander Pope, and Jean Dubuffet himself who stated that “For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity”. I would recommend this engrossing, moving and absorbing book to anyone interested in Art from beyond the orthodox path. I also feel that Kandinsky might have appreciated it for its honesty, candour and lack of snobbishness. I have always considered myself to be a person outside the mainstream. I do not fit the mould of bourgeois conformity and predictability of the affluent area in which I live. I am something of a maverick, forging my own path and casting my own mould in life, and I am proud to be so. Abstract Art is itself a burning, unpredictable flame. EPILOGUE: Alexander Scriabin, whose birthday fell on Christmas Day in the Julian calendar, considered himself to be the new Messiah. On that note, as well as on a more conventionally seasonal one, I wish a Happy Christmas to all my readers! Copyright Haydn Dickenson 2022

My regular readers, friends, colleagues and clients know that I believe all artistic outpouring to come from the same well-spring of creativity. It doesn't matter whether you are a film-maker, a poet, a painter, a musician or an actor. In every case, what is being channelled is the same human, spiritual core. I am deeply interested in how artists of any kind approach their 'canvas', be it a physical or a metaphorical one. I have recently been watching the 2015 documentary “Listen To Me Marlon”, a compelling and engrossing portrait of the actor and activist Marlon Brando. The film utilises many hours of audio material recorded by him at various points in his life, some of which were made under hypnosis. Brando comes across as a deep and beautiful soul. Reading about Brando, I was particularly fascinated to learn that he would often chat on set to cameramen and other personnel about their weekends and other ephemera, even after the director had called for action. Brando felt that, only once he could begin the dialogue with the same naturalness as that casual conversation, was he ready to commence the scene. I need to be in a similar mental state when I begin a painting. Preconception and premeditation are thrown out of the window on every occasion when I start. Frequently, I am not even looking at the canvas when I make the first mark; I liken the gesture to opening a door, whether violently or gingerly. I am reminded of the magical realm into which Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy enter when they open the wardrobe door in CS Lewis's 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe'. My incomparable piano teacher, Peter Feuchtwanger, taught his students that movements at the keyboard should never be premeditated, or tension would set in. He recounted how the legendary pianist Clara Haskil, when beginning to play, would make the listener feel that the piece had not 'begun', but that it had always been there, that “nothing seemed to start or end, and everything became timeless.” In a similar way, Marlon Brando's dialogue on set flowed out of his casual conversation, as if it had always been there. There is no starting-pistol in the making of Art. A drop of dew or melting snow can fall off a leaf neither too early nor too late. The other day, I went into the studio to approach work on a fresh canvas in the series of small paintings on which I am currently engaged. In the usual way, my arm uttered the first gestures, unfettered, and I was not displeased with the results; indeed the canvas still hangs there, awaiting the next move when the moment is right. Suddenly, after producing those marks, my eye was drawn to a shelf in the studio which was full of a lot of rubbish. I found myself tearing aside this years-old detritus to find a very small, forlorn and forgotten square canvas on which I had begun work, at a guess, some twelve years ago. It had been abandoned, unsatisfied and unsatisfying until I remember picking it up again some years later, revisiting it briefly but again failing to establish a connection. Since then it had languished on the shelf, with only spiders for company. When I picked it up this week however, things were entirely different. I immediately sensed a hitherto unrecognised, crackling energy in this tiny, grimy canvas. Feverishly, I dusted it down and engaged myself with it, eschewing any thought or preparation, completing the painting in one sitting. A SCENT OF NIGHT - Haydn Dickenson (2022) For me, the process of painting is akin to a state of self-hypnosis; but that is a subject for another article in which the spirit of Brando may once again be invoked.