Sebastiaan Spit - From here on...
Sebastiaan Spit is fiercely fascinated. By clouds and by jazz. The two may seem to have little to do with each other, but on closer inspection they are definitely related. A cloud has no fixed shape. A cloud changes (even if the change is not immediately perceptible to the human eye) constantly.
And pre-eminently, jazz is the art form that prioritises constant transformation. The art form in which every fact, every discovery, is at most temporary, an intermediate state of affairs. One of the most underrated achievements of jazz musicians is that they want to leave behind what they find by chance on stage or in the studio at the next opportunity. They dare to become a cloud, accepting that yesterday they were imposing and sumptuous, even overwhelming, but perhaps today a puny white streak that virtually falls away against the steel-blue sky.
Jazz is supposed to be the imperfect art, but I think the essence of all art is the courage to fail. To try and fail, to try and fail, again and again, to try and fail, again and again and again, just as, according to Albert Camus, every man must be like Sisyphus and proudly roll a stone up the mountain every day, even though he knows he will never get it to the top.
That Pit's work can be so intense is related to its apparent nonchalance. This is precisely where his painting touches on jazz. It can hardly be a coincidence that one of Spit's favourite albums is Miles Davis‘ “Bitches” Brew’. On that groundbreaking record, the first note played by Davis himself is a so-called kicks, a swirl note. To the ears of purists, a technical error, but, error or not, in terms of intensity, that quirky note is almost impossible to beat.