HAMLET   YORRICK   FORTINBRAS

In another century, in another country, in another world, a headmaster set an essay
All Art aspires to the condition of music. Discuss.

I have now been obsessed with this idea for fifty years, and this painting is a continuing part of that discussion.

As in music, the shapes, colours, edges, hard and soft, are self referential.

(In music, the sounds that make it make sense are all inter-related, and refer to one another.)

The shapes in the painting are rather amoeboid pseudopodial shapes that are as positive (overlapping) as they are negative (overlapped).

I call them "chuppas", a term derived from those rhythmic chuppa chuppa chuppa sounds one hears in the background of a Beethoven symphony, sounds that are going to mutate into the full-blown glory of the return of the heroes, or become one of the composer’s more introspective and lyrical themes.

Bach’s "chuppas" are different. Bach’s chuppa chuppa chuppa sounds I feel are the rhythm of Bach’s walking – he lived eight miles from his work as Kapellmeister, and I feel one can hear his stride and sense his breathing as he strides through the German countryside, his head swathed in the pantheistic glory of God and given substance by the rhythm of his feet, and the rhythm of his respiration – and when he eventually greets his choir, he does so with a fresh Cantata pulled from the sky.

In the Hamlet Trio I have layered the chuppas sometimes in front, sometimes behind.  I feel there are further musical analogies to be found in these pictures.  Such as repeating the same chuppa chuppa theme again and again, yet never painting two chuppas the same.

Colour and tone for mood and feeling.

I should stop at this point, because it is always a mistake for an artist to instruct; you dear viewer, on how to look at his painting - leave a bit of mystery, etcetera.

But, I have now dug myself in so deeply, that it would be more tedious to go back than to go on.

‘The Hamlet Suite’ not only refers to the musicality of the work but also to the play and the theatricality of the work. For me (and it certainly does not have to for you) it conveys something of the ambience of Elsinore, Hamlet’s castle. Its brooding presence, its sinister smokiness, for surely there is no smoke without fire in this place.

Hamlet - it goes from hot to cold, from bright to dark, hard edged soft edged, variable.

Yorrick – who is, as you know, the Court Jester, the Comedian to the old King – but now a skull, admired by Hamlet – ‘Oft have I kissed these lips’ – and then rejected after whiffing it. - Pah, it stinks!

Fortinbras - being of a more regular rhythm, maybe martial rhythm. Fortinbras is hardly there, he passes through Denmark before the play begins, Hamlet refers to him in the middle of the play when he regrets that he is not a proper prince like Fortinbras, the man of action, but rather prevaricates, delays and complicates matters. Fortinbras appears at the end of the play, to observe the carnage, and lament the death of Hamlet.

As I say, it is a mistake for an artist to explain that, that needs no explanation.  Please put it down to chuppa chuppas, ignore this bit of bumf, and enjoy the Hamlet suite in your own way, it can mean anything to anyone.

- George Haynes.