On the spur of the moment

Leinster Bay, St John, USVI

My recently rekindled passion for jazz has made me again realise the similarities that exist between that art form and my paintings. Both rely on spur of the moment spontaneity and for both the end result can be fleeting. For the jazz musician it is the unrecorded impromptu improvisation and for me, the hundreds of past paintings that were made within the timeframe of a passionate fifteen minutes and then whisked away by an equally passionate buyer. 

In those days there were no cellphones or digital cameras by which the memory of a painting could be quickly saved. Luckily the for above painting my 35mm camera had one frame left on a roll of colour slide film. The image is less than perfect: film deteriorates quickly in the tropics.

Over the years jazz has benefitted from the perceptive writing of its reviewers and critics, the best of which verges on prose and reads as an art form in itself. Good examples being James Lincoln Collier's definitive The Making Of Jazz and Philip Larkin's All What Jazz. 

NB. My copy of All What Jazz has been out on loan for almost forty years. Perhaps a closely related regular reader of this blog could look to see if by chance it can be found languishing on his bookshelf.  

Unfortunately, writers and reviewers of the visual arts run a poor second. A rare exception being how Camille Lemonnier (1844-1913), Belgian, writer, poet and journalist, described one of Rodin’s sculptures:

At the Maison d’Art there is a torso that seems to have been spewed out from the furnaces of Gomorrah. It has been savagely torn and splayed the way a fissure in the earth cracks open, as though a crucible were exploding in its depths...

 

How can I hope to be popular?

Bermuda 1992. Water Colour 15" x 20"

My art flatters nobody by imitation, it courts nobody by smoothness, nobody by petitelieness, it is without either fal-de-lal or fiddle-de-dee; how then can I hope to be popular?   

(John Constable. English Landscape Painter. 1776-1837)

My landscape painting of a Bermuda might have won popular approval had I followed the advice that was once given to me:

"You need to work more carefully...use a smaller brush...avoid getting your colours too wet."

In the 1970's, while building my boat in a Suffolk farmyard, I lived in a house that is included in one of Constable's paintings. My eighty year old neighbour lived in an18th century timber-framed thatched cottage. The entrance passage was dark and Harry wanted to put a glass pane in the front door to let in some light. But like many buildings in "Constable Country" his house was listed by English Heritage and as such he was not even allowed to paint his door a different colour. 

Harry's carping comment was: Bloody Constable. I wish he'd been born in Liverpool!

One splash leads to another

The secret of painting in water colour is to allow accidents to happen: a painting can't go right until it has gone wrong. And the same holds true for fabric designs. 

Today's opening picture of a recent design for my Bare Minimum fashion label. The first splash of dye was accidental and I was cursing myself for having ruined a length of my precious cotton lawn fabric. But one splash led to another. Perhaps this is how Jackson Pollock's abstract impressionist paintings first came about. 

Jackson Pollock (1912-1956)

Cotton lawn is semi-sheer but with a closer weave than cotton voile. Its smoother texture helps to prevent the dye from bleeding and hence allows for crisper outlines. The picture below shows the same length of splashed fabric hurriedly thrown around my mannequin as a wrap-round skirt. Oh for the return of my real life models when one day this pandemic comes to an end.

The sensuous suggestiveness of draperie mouillée

One of Jan Sandek's works on the theme of draperie mouillée

Over a year ago my post titled, Weird or not weird featured the work of Jan Saudek, a Czechoslovakia  born artist whose work represents a unique technique of combining photography and painting.  No other artist or photographer comes close to Jan Saudek's ability to daringly capture the human form in all its moods and changes. 

Rarely has the sensuous suggestiveness of draperie mouillée been explored since sculptors used the device in the 2nd century BC. For photographers it has the potential of adding an extra dimension to the limited repertoire of the nude. My own interest was aroused through using semi- sheer cotton viole for items in my Bare Minimum fashion designs. The material fulfills my objective of allowing a fleeting glance of the figure beneath.

 Cotton voile hand painted with fabric dyes allows a tantalizing glance of what lies beneath.

How it all began: Venus Genetrix (2nd Century BC)  

The indignity of being sold

 My wife Denise with a red lace chemise thrown over her shoulders. (Watercolour 18' x 25")

Four months ago my post What price can be placed on a love affair touched upon my reluctance to part with paintings. The painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler had a similar evasion and referred to it as: "The indignity of being sold".

The painting that opens this post may have avoided the same indignity. I am always at a loss when the first thing a visitor asks on viewing a painting, is the price. In recent years so few of my paintings have sold that I haven't paid attention to prices. In the days when my studio was based in the Virgin Island, virtually all of my paintings sold. Since then, I consider that my work has developed immeasurably. My run-of-the-mill palm fringed beach scenes have been replaced with the subtle beauty of my Daughters of the Caribbean Sun. You might add, as I'll soon reach octogenarian status the adage: "No artist can earn a living until he is dead." may begin to attract speculative buyers.

But be that as it may, I took the average price of a painting from my Virgin Island days in the 1980's and adjusted it for inflation; no more, no less. Perhaps the figure, albeit reasonable, took the potential buyer aback! 

But there are occasions when I do take pleasure in selling a painting. My first one-man show in the 1970's was a sellout, but it was the love of the paintings rather than the price tag that motivated sales. One elderly couple asked if I could reserve the painting they liked until they returned the next day. They did return carrying the price of the painting in a shopping bag. The money had been saved over the years beneath their mattress for "something special".

A painting from my 1971 exhibition Lynn and Locality.

 

Transmuting banality into beauty

A detail from the painting shown below.

John White, in his book on the jazz singer Billie Holiday (Billie Holiday, Her Life and Times) writes in reference to her interpretation of the hackneyed lyrics of songs: 

Her supreme achievement was to transmute banality into beauty, the trite into the profound.

Here she is singing, Fine and Mellow.

My watercolours of the nude attempt the same: they express the challenges and passions involved when working from the live model.  The laboured definitive is replaced by capturing in seconds what I see at fleeting glance. Risk is involved and risk may become risqué, but never repetitive and dull, as I find are so many paintings and photographs of the nude.

Annabelle. (16" x 24" and captured from life 20 minutes)

Improvising in A2 sharp

The derilict organ in All Souls Church, Halifax, Yorkshire.

The organ dates from 1868 and my sketch was made in 2001.

Work on the piano that I began restoring over two months ago is nearing completion. It entered my workshop in a similar depressed state as the church organ in the opening sketch. Had I known in advance the extent of the damage caused by rats, woodworm and ravages of the Caribbean climate, I doubt that I would have attempted the task. Thankfully, the invaders stopped short at the sound board, otherwise all would have been lost, and neither could they get their teeth into the cast iron frame.

The following pictures give an indication of what I was up against.

The original guide and balance pin rails. 

This I remade from scratch with pins spaced to a tolerance of 0.010".

Guide pin rail eaten away by woodworm. 

Keys eaten away by rats.

There are no replacement piano parts available on a small island in the Caribbean. To that I might add: "period". Importing items from overseas is expensive and time comsuming, hence the need for self sufficiency, skill and improvisation. These requirements included making a machine for winding replacement single and double wound bass strings. The inner steel piano wire I had to import but the copper windings were recycled from the old strings and electric motor armatures. A disused two speed washing motor provided the exact copper wire diameter for A2 sharp. My "Made in Dominica" strings tune to a "good enough" tone and pitch.

Below is the piano with work on restoration almost complete. 

Faded Photographs

Photographic prints from long ago fade faster than the memories they captured. Nevertheless, they survive better than those saved on crashed computer hard drives. While sorting through boxes of survivals I came across one the launching of my boat Born Free in 1980 and another of a portrait bust from the year 2000.

The building of Born Free was every bit a work of art as the sculpting of the portrait bust. 

Age need not rob thee of thy beauty

The Helmet Maker's Wife (August Rodin 1840-1917)

August Rodin's sculpture The Helmet Maker's Wife is testimony to the fact that age need not rob thee of thy beauty. Likewise, age need not rob you of resilience and a zest for life. Testimony to this is 102 year old Veronica Elsina Burton. Last month her own natural immune system enabled her to defy the odds and beat the Covid-19 virus.

My Caribbean island of Dominica holds the world record for centenarians. The score currently stands at twenty. This says a lot for our healthy climate and a generation that worked hard and lived off the fat of the land.

Centenarian Veronica Elsina Burton.

For crying out loud!

Exhibits at the Dominica Pavilion, Dubai 2020

I began life as an angry young man and I'm ending it as an angry old man. One reason being the pictures that illustrate this post. They were taking at the Dubai Expo and the mannequins are meant to depict Dominicans wearing national dress. This would be all well and good were it not for the fact that 99.9% of Dominicans are of African or Kalinargo descent, therefore black rather than white!

The response from many Dominicans is: "Does it matter"? Well, to my mind it certainly does. Without pride of identity all is lost. 

As I was ranting, raving and crying out load about this to a Dominican friend calmed me with the following massage:

"No need to end life as an angry old man, you've ensured that you left your mark here. Even after your passing you will still exist through your legacy. And this my friend is definitely not a reason to end life angry. As always it’s a pleasure to hear from you. And from the tone of your email I can tell that you’re in good spirits, just disappointed yet again by the foolishness which surrounds you."

Thank you Kamarsha. The painting I made of you some years ago, reassures me that being black and beautiful is something to be proud of.

Kamarsha

When the world was young

Unveiling of the Dancing Girls at the Allen Gallery, Hampshire.

The opening photograph was taken in the year 2000 at the unveiling of my sculpture Dancing Girls. My daughters Tania and Trina were the models. They can be seen standing besides me; Trina to the left, Tania to the right. 

Fast forward 21 years....Tania's passion for sport has resulted in her working fulltime for the Dominica Olympic Committee and she now has a bouncing son of her own. 

Tania

Trina is now working as a banking computer consultant and busy renovating her house in the UK. In addition to rooting out tree stumps she has learnt to put her hand to carpentry, plastering, plumbing, painting, electrical wiring and brick laying. This is what the "useful arts" are all about.

Trina

Twenty-one years ago sculpture dominated my days but now my creative interests cover a broader field. As with my daughters, the pandemic has not slowed me down. Within the confines of my studio, workshops and three acres I happily live the life of a recluse. Hence, I rely on my God-given immune system, regardless of persuasive efforts otherwise. 

The title of today's post is taken from Jonny Mercer's English lyrics to the original French song  "Le chevalier de Paris" composed by Philippe-Gerard and Angele Vannier.

Here is Jonny Mercer's version sung by Earth Kitt. 

Musical Chairs

 

My piano restoration has involved dismantling and re-assembling the 1,200 parts that make up the action that transfer the depressed keys to the strings. It's intricate work that can be best done from a stable sitting position. The processes move from one position to another and one workshop to another. In all I found myself shifting between six different stools - all of my own manufacture. Four of the stools, along with work in progress, are shown into today's picture. The brown paper bags contain the various pieces from each section of the action.

If it should happen that I'm reincarnated I've always wished to come back as a jazz pianist. When I once mentioned this to a visiting musician, his response was: stick to your paintings. He bemoaned the fact that some nights he plays his best to the dinner crowd but no one's listening. 

My rare LP collection contained recordings of all the great jazz pianists but alas the termites thought better of it. Fortunately YouTube has enabled me to discover some of their worthy successors. Here is Cecile McLorin Salvant with a trio that features the pianist Aaron Dielhi.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G99FfalLFWQ

The Useful Arts

Detail from "In the Carpenter's Shop"

A painting by the Swedish artist Carl Larsson (1853-1919)

The term "Useful Arts" went out of fashion over a hundred years ago, along with the skills that it encompassed. Engineering and carpentry are two of those skills, and they are the ones that I practice along with my work as a painter and sculptor.

You will not find a college or art school offering a course in the useful arts. Their remit falls under the titles, Fine Arts, Visual Arts, Applied Arts, Decorative Arts, etc. That's a pity, because only one in a thousand students with a degree in the arts end up actually working as artists. At best they finish up teaching something they cannot do themselves. Had they acquired a skill their lives would have been more productive and rewarding.  

But skills are learnt via apprenticeships and alas they went out of fashion along with the concept of useful arts. It was by virtue of my apprenticeships in engineering and carpentry that yesterday I was able to make a tuning hammer (wrench for the uninitiated) for the piano I'm restoring. I doubt if there's an art student in the world able to fashion the 1/4" square hole in the head of the hammer.

Be careful what you wish for

I keep reminding myself to be careful what I wish for. As an engineering apprentice in the 1950's I was envious of the inventive engineers of earlier times who had to put their hands to all things. Both my grandfathers worked as engineers at the tail end of the 19th century. I have inherited many of their tools and their skills are in my genes. Enoch, the city of Bradford's factotum, was as adept at repairing clocks and restoring musical instruments as he was at winning war medals for efficiency at the forge.

But it was not until I located my studio and workshop to the small Caribbean island of Dominica sixteen years ago that I got what I wished for. My machine tools - some of which are as old as I am - make the replacement parts that keep the island going. Moreover, the income the work generates keeps me going. 

On the other hand, it means my paintings and sculptures have to be put on hold, so I have to be careful what I wish for.

 

My grandfather Enoch Burnett

It's been a while

A message from one of my models begins: "It's been a while". For the rest of the world life was put on hold with the beginning of the pandemic over eighteen months ago. But for those of us on the Caribbean island of Dominica our life change came about four years ago with the worst hurricane on record. Since then it's been one thing after another and my models are now scattered far and wide.

These diary pages began in the 1990's, before the days of blogs, with the intent of setting down in words and images the trials and tribulations that are the lot of those who toil upon the forge of art. It has been said that, however much skill an artist may develop in later life, it cannot result in great work if, by that time, he has settled down to a measure of contentment. Regardless of a degree of success along the way, as I approach eighty, I have not yet arrived at a state of complacency. 

The opening picture is what remains of my first life-size figure. The cast now languishes in a corner of my workshop. The subject is my wife Denise and the picture below shows work in progress twenty-five years ago. I had a lot to learn...and still do.

Sensual pleasures

As with Rodin, it has been said the sculptor Ralph Brown (1928-2013) sort ways to express sensual pleasure. He also had an obsession for the veiled face and today's face masks may have held a curious fascination for him. 

Girl with Knee Raised Ralph Brown 1977

Cache-Cache Ralph Brown 1983 

Ralph Brown came to prominence in the 1950's with his public sculpture Meat Porters and figures in an earthier style.

Mother and Child  Ralph Brown 1954

A gauge to measure beauty by.

It has been said that the craftsman's eye is a gauge to measure beauty by. It therefore follows that good design is more likely to be the product of the workbench rather than the drawing board. The designers of our cathedrals served their apprenticeship as stone masons - Michael Angelo included. Thomas Chippendale was the son of a carpenter and began his career as a journeyman cabinet maker.

The case of piano that I am presently restoring dates from the 1950's, a period when interior design was hellbent on boxing in and straightening out any suggestion of paneling or curvature. The end result was either veneered or painted in gloss magnolia. 

The original supports for the keyboard were so obnoxious that yesterday I tore them apart and substituted ones with kindlier lines - at least to my craftsman's eye.

Before and After

I would never have guessed

 

The above painting is of Collean at her first modelling session. It was made in a matter of minutes, its purpose was to break the ice between model and artist. I cast it aside and it was only after reviewing it years later that I realized the painting captured the shyness of modelling for the first time. I might add, on a first session I am as nervous as the model.

The painting below is of the same model four years later, at ease and brimming with confidence - likewise the artist. Very often it is those who by nature are shy and reserved that throw decorum to the winds and become the most daring - myself included. 

I always suspected that Collean had creative potential but I never would have guessed that this reticent young lady's own mode of expression would be talking intimately on camera. Not many can do it naturally. Creativity is something different to what has gone before. As such there is risk involved and many mistakes to be made along the way. But as Collean says, I'm learning and getting better. 

Here she is dispelling the myths of what others think. 

Reunited after 60 years

The piano in today's picture was recently offered to my wife for the cost of taking it away. It now sits in my workshop awaiting restoration. It will be the third piano I've restored in my lifetime. But this one is special: two machines in my woodworking shop began life sixty years ago in the London piano factory where it was built! 

Although rats, termites and woodworms got to the piano before I did, I nevertheless feel confident that I can bring it back to concert pitch and showroom condition. It has a good pedigree: the make is Chappell and the piano's action is by Schwander.

You can follow the work in progress in future posts. 

Bored to tears

Ballpoint sketch Circ. 1961

Today's sketch was made on a scrap of paper while being bored to tears before a television set that was never turned off - as was often the case in the early days of television. Fast-track sixty years and I am now bored to tears on a rainy day during yet another lockdown. Up until recently, the safest place to be at this point in time was on a small tropical island with limited access. But alas we let our guard down and we can no longer boast of being ''Safe in Nature''.

True enough, engineering emergencies are keeping me busy, yet how I yearn to get back to painting. First the hurricane, then the pandemic, have effectively deprived me of models. I still follow them at a distance but the distance is not six feet but thousands of miles. I give credit to my models for putting the years to good use. Three are at university and one has developed her own creative identity.  

A model, a chair and the artist in retrospect

This red chalk drawing is steeped in memories. It was made over thirty years ago during a transient period in my life and work. My studio was a haven of calm in a tempestuous matrimonial sea.

My model was a young lady from St. Vincent who worked for a year as my assistant; the chair was from the set of a film made on the island of Hemmingway's The Old Man and the Sea; and the artist was tentatively beginning work on a series of paintings and sculptures titled, Daughters of the Caribbean Sun. 

The world has moved on since then and the series I began with Alice as my model, now amounts to hundreds of paintings and scores of sculptures. 

Alice, my model and assistant.

It comes as a surprise

It comes as a surprise to those who visit my studio to find that my work isn't all about painting pictures. As a forewarning, I usually lead them in through my engineering shop. If Leonardo da Vinci was to visit me from the next world, he'd stop there and then. The same applies to the master carpenters I have known when it comes to my woodworking shop. In both workshops the spirit of my father and grandfather keep watch over the skills and tools they have handed down to me.

Over the last five months the greater part of my working day has been divided between those two workshops. As a engineer I have made major repairs and modification to the machine that lays the island's water supply pipelines, and as a carpenter I have customized the rear body of a Land Rover with a lining of locally grown mahogany. 

My son Tristan has assisted me with both projects. He has inherited the eye to hand coordination that is a requisite of fine craftmanship. His grandfather and great grandfather would have been proud of him. 

Below are the before and after pictures of the Land Rover.

Attempting to resurrect a dear friend

 

My faithful laptop gave up the ghost five weeks ago and with it went my copy of Photoshop Elements 2; a dear friend that has been with me for over twenty-five years. My computer savvy son is attempting a resurrection. I have the disk but my new slimmed down laptop is not equipped to take it. However, it seems that there are other ways of bringing back the dead and this he is working on.  

Photoshop 2 did all I have ever needed to do. And moreover, it came with a 255 page hardcopy user manual. 

A big hug

At a time when hugging is frowned upon I got a big hug while cashing out after doing my week's shopping. It came from one of my models, who in a spontaneous burst of affection threw pandemic precautions to the wind. She cheered me up no end. 

Here is the plaster cast of sculpture she modelled for before the days of facemasks and social distancing.

 I'm still struggling to keep posting minus my camera and computer. By next week I hope to be back to normal. In the meantime thank you Marcella for the hug and an excuse for this post.

It's not what you'd expect

For those searching for a painting of the Caribbean, today's painting is not what they'd expect and they wouldn't give a penny for it. Nevertheless, it is what I see as I look across my valley after a succession of rainy days. The Caribbean isn't only a succession of idyllic palm fringed coral sand beaches and my Daughters of the Caribbean Sun are presently few and far between. At the moment my days are spent solving engineering problems rather than waxing lyrical with paint. You can also add that my computer is still awaiting resurrection and I am struggling with this troublesome handheld device.

Gone with the wind

 

June through to November are the hurricane months in the Caribbean. The first past just south of Dominica a week ago. As always at this time of year, I look at the contents of my studio and wonder if over the coming months a lifetimes work will be gone with the wind. 

Over the last forty five years I've survived three major hurricanes and numerous minor ones. As a landsman I'm doing repairs to doors and shutters as a means of appeasing the weather gods. In my sailing days my concession took the form of laying out extra anchors.