Like Ice on a Stove

Perseid Meteor Shower, oil on canvas, 2017.

I woke up today remembering something Frank Auerbach had once said:

“There's a phrase by Robert Frost about his own verse, I don't know what it means about verse, and I really barely comprehend what it suggests about painting, but it seems to me to be absolutely true. He said, 'I want the poem to be like ice on a stove - riding on its own melting.' Well, a great painting is like ice on a stove. It is a shape riding on its own melting into matter and space, it never stops moving backwards and forwards.” - In conversation with Frank Auerbach, Arts Council of Great Britain, 1978, p20

The phrase Auerbach mentions is from this essay The Figure a Poem Makes. Frost has said many times that there is a striking analogy between the course of a true poem and that of a true love. Both begin as an impulse, an disturbing excitement the individual surrenders themselves to. And like a “great painting” it is an ecstasy that no one can say should be static and stand still in one place. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. This might be one of the most beautiful ways to respond to the most often asked question I get about my work “How do you know when a painting is done?”