Sunday, October 13, 2019

After I'm Gone




As with many artists that received limited recognition in their lifetime, I consider the chance - slender though it may be - that it could come along after my death.

For this reason I am reluctant to part with the hundreds of paintings in my series Daughters of the Caribbean Sun. The paintings span a period of over thirty years and they form a single entity. Very few have suffered what the artist James Whistler described as the indignity of being sold.

I can count on my hand the number of artists, past and present, who have allowed watercolour the freedom to suggest the beauty of the female form. I stress freedom as against as against contrived restraint. My method of working direct and rapidly from the model is unpredictable. A painting that I might perceive as a failure nevertheless contains an element of truth. Today’s painting is a case in point.

One reason for my book Notes on the Nude is that after I am gone, I can still have a say as to what my work has been all about. I hope that my models will also have their say, as they have done in the closing pages of my book. They have shared my struggles and celebrated our occasional success. I would much sooner that my models have their say rather than some art academic that wouldn't know a painting if one fell on his - or more likely her - head. 

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