The compelling autobiography of Jon Schueler opens with a map of the Hebrides. Scotland meant a lot to this eminent American abstract expressionist painter - central to his life, loves, and artistic inspiration.
He first came to Mallaig in 1957, returning to live there with Magda Salvesen from 1970-5 and every summer afterwards. For Schueler, Mallaig and the Sound of Sleat over to Skye were perfect: his dream place. ''I chose northern Scotland as my cathedral. Mallaig was the story of my life.''
He began as a navigator. ''There in combat the sky held all things: life, death, fear and joy and love. It was storm, enemy, friend. It was the memory of a beautiful woman.''
Later the Woman in the Sky became an indispensable universal underlying presence. Initially, Schueler was just happy with the fishing village of Mallaig itself. ''I was looking for a sea and a sky with a northern look; a rugged landscape - a peninsula or island in the distance to watch the sky move across.'' After Arisaig, he says: ''I knew I was approaching my place. My Geiger counter went berserk. I was yelling with excitement.''
Schueler's love affair with Scotland never ceased. He says: ''I kept marvelling at the light and colour. Something struck me personally. Then I realised I was seeing in the clouds all of the violets and ultramarine reds I'd been putting into my paintings for months!'' Mallaig was ''strangely beautiful; everything is sexy here to me''. He painted hundreds of pictures there and back in his 22nd Street New York loft. ''I wanted to push through figuration into abstraction. My 'avant garde' was to paint not nature, but about nature. I had to live inside my paintings.''
Till his death in 1992, Hebridean skies remained his key subject. His book is a paean to their fierce beauty.
Schueler came to painting after studying literature; he was to some extent a writer manque. His passions were painting, women, and words - in that order!
Schueler's self-portrait illuminates the reality of an artist's daily grind of finding a studio, a dealer, enough to pay the bills. He also gives a vivid account of his inner life: the struggles with his pictures, his book, himself. Part memoir (wartime experiences scarred him); part confessional, (Schueler bares his soul with ease); part philosophical discourse, it can also be viewed as a long love letter.
Schueler adored women and married many times. Including his mistresses and one-night stands it comes to a lot of loving. Mostly he couldn't live with them - or without them. Working obsessively, alone in order to paint, he recounts his torments, ''slugging at the devils in myself'', in self-indulgent detail. ''I am a bad father, bad stepfather, bad husband, an indifferent friend, and disloyal lover. Only one thing: I am a good painter.''
When I met Schueler in the 1970s he'd mellowed. Still handsome and charismatic, he married Salvesen in 1976, and she proved the perfect partner.
Schueler was a 1950s protege of Castelli, the famous dealer. Letters demonstrate his cunning. What an operator! Castelli always got his way. ''My secretary put down $600 instead of $750. I didn't notice the mistake. I could grant a $150 reduction as the buyer had overpaid on your Wave painting.'' Schueler's memoirs of New York's 1960s Bohemian art scene are worth a look as he recounts first hand the gossip, prices, rivalries, divorces, and affairs; its jazz and literature.
Above all Schueler's words - as his brush - do justice to the Scottish landscape. The Scottish Tourist Board should make his book recommended reading.
Clare Henry
n Jon Schueler: The Sound of Sleat, edited by Magda Salvesen & Diane Cousineau, Picador, #16.
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