My dyslexic prodigies

A couple of weeks ago I received two emails that put a smile on my face. One was from my daughter in the UK and the other, from a young lady in Australia. Both are dyslexic. 

My daughter is renovating a house. She had prepared the walls ready for plastering but the plasterer didn't turn up. Rather than wait around she decided to get on with the job herself. When the errant plasterer did finally put in an appearance the walls were finished and he had to shamefacedly admit that she'd done a good job. 

Five hundred years ago Leonardo da Vinci likewise pushed aside the plasterer who was preparing the wall for his painting and did the job himself. Along with many artists and inventors, he was dyslexic. Had the UK Eleven Plus Exam or the Caribbean National Assessment been around in his day he would have failed miserably, just as I did almost seventy years ago. During the year of my failure, I designed and built a model aircraft that could fly the length of a football field: but that didn't count. 

If Leonardo da Vinci had sat the UK Eleven Plus Exam or the Caribbean National Assessment this is what his answer paper might have looked like.

The second message came from a young lady who attended my art classes eight years ago. She was only twelve at the time and I was reluctant to take her on as the sessions were intended for adults. But her parents begged me. She was  brilliant and at the first session I learnt she was dyslexic. One adult student left the class because she was fed up of hearing me showering praise on that "slip of a girl". Her mother told me she comes home saying: Mr. Burnett is the only teacher that understands me. As dyslexics, teachers usually put us down us dumb and stupid.  For the last class in the series she gave me a box of chocolates and I made her a present of one of my paintings. The family then moved to Trinidad and we lost touch...until I received her unexpected email.

That "slip of a girl" is now studying architecture at a top university in Australia and the painting I gave her has pride of place in her room at college. Her message reads: I still remember all the lessons you taught me. Your classes really helped push me to where I am today and I'm so grateful for that. 

The UK charity "Made By Dyslexia" is helping to give confidence to thousands of other young people. This short video is required viewing for all students, parents and teachers. 

Houses are but badly built boats

With my family and friends aboard Dan Bowen's yacht Romadi. English Harbour, Antigua,1973. 

That's me, with a glass of rum, on the far right.

The greater part of my life - and the best part - has been spent living and travelling aboard boats; everything from a canal barge to an ocean going ketch. Pinned to the bulkhead of all my boats were the words of author and fellow sailor, Arthur Ransom.

Houses, are but badly built boats so firmly aground that you cannot think of moving them. They are definitely inferior things, belonging to the vegetable not the animal world, rooted and stationary, incapable of gay transition. I admit, doubtfully, as exceptions, snail-shells and caravans. The desire to build a house is the tired wish of a man content thenceforward with a single anchorage. The desire to build a boat is the desire of youth, unwilling yet to accept the idea of a final resting-place.

I'm proud to have been a sea gypsy in the days when small boat sailors sailed on a shoestring and earned their living as they went along. Now the scene has changed. Rather than swinging at anchor for free, you pay to pick up a mooring or tie up in a marina. Throughout history all travelling people have suffered the same fate: There's a byelaw to say you must be on your way, and another to say you can't wander.

The last line is from the classic song by The Dubliners with vocal by Luke Kelly, Farewell to the tent and the old caravan, The tinker, the gypsy, the travelling man... 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Uq30FeeLTM

Not by painting alone

Five hundred years ago artists earned their living not by painting alone; Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo are prime examples. Their work involved architecture, engineering, poetry and politics. For some of us the situation remains the same today.

For the last four days I have spent every hour of my time solving urgent engineering problems and not a minute for whatever flights of fancy my muse might tempt me with.

Today's picture is not my attempt at abstract sculpture but my attempt to salvage the severely damaged main casting of a very expensive piece of equipment used for laying the island's main water supply pipe line. A collapsed 10" diameter ball race threw the proverbial spanner in the works.

The solution involves innovative design and precision engineering that my father and grandfather would have been proud of, and more especially so as some of their measuring instruments are with me on my workbench. My vernier height gauge began life in the Jowett Motor Car factory long before I was born and my 2" micrometer dates from a hundred year ago. Both remain accurate to within 0.0005". 

It's not painting but equally as creative.

Standing back

In January I left you with the thought that "Life is too Short to Wear Boring Clothes" and on my mannequin I left a wisp of voile that promised possibilities. Since then I have been standing back and considering it from all directions. Thus, in my mind's eye the "wisp" continued as a work in progress. Yesterday I returned to my sewing machine and the "wisp" became an open back blouse. 

The skirt shows how effective semi-shear white voile can be when set against a vibrant colour on the one hand and dusky skin tones on the other.

As I originally intended

Five years ago, when I began experimenting making paper from Dominica's abundant natural resources, I had in mind a paper that would be suitable traditional pastels. I don't like the regular texture and colours of store bought pastel paper and besides, commercial pastel papers are not available on a small island in the Caribbean. 

From banana stems, sugar cane bagasse, pineapple leaves, palm fronds and exotic grasses I created a collection of papers that were unique in colour and texture. But it was the unique texture that had me stumped, for I considered it too course for pastels, which are normally applied to a slighted abraded but level surface.

But the pronounced wood grain on my Garden of Eden screen gave an interesting effect and this led to my recent experiments in using my handmade papers as I originally intended. The tangerens in my previous post and the detail of my pastel painting of bougainvillea shown above open up the unique possibilities.  

Tangerens and bougainvillea bring back memories of two dear departed friends.

Roderick Borde was a saxophonist who in his earlier years played with the Louis Armstrong All Stars. His signature tune was "Tangerine". I first heard the strains of Roderick's playing when I was at anchor off a hotel in the British Virgin Islands in the 1980's. Had not my dinghy been available for rowing ashore, I would have walked on water. 

Bougainvillea was Virgin Island poet Sheila Hyndman's (1958-1991) favourite flower. For her funeral service I raided every garden on the island and decorated every inch of the church. 

I don't have a recording of Roderick playing "Tangerine" but here's Jimmy Dorsey's version with Bob Eberly and Helen O'Connell on vocals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-JDUnZv1N0

 

The last of the tangerines and the first of the mangos

The opening picture is a pastel painting of the last of our tangerines. The ground is a sheet of my handmade banana paper. The terms "pastel painting" and "pastel drawing" are dependent somewhat on how the pigment is applied and the end result. In this case quite definitely "painterly". 

The picture below is mix media painting (water-colour and pastel) of the first of our mangos. 

I worked rapidly on both paintings in an attempt to free myself from past subjects, materials and techniques. It's too soon for me to judge. 

A message from my muse

Following on from my last post, today I sensed this response from my muse. 

After all these years do you think I would forget and desert you? Didn't I enable your escape from an engineer's drawing office? Didn't I sit by you on the pavements of France, sail with you through the canals of Ireland and stand your side for that first one-man show in Kings Lynn? I enabled your first voyage to the Caribbean and supported you when you built your boat for the second voyage. True enough, I gave you hell when you tried to respectably settle down on that Virgin Island hillside. But didn't I then send a poet to inspire you and a faithful assistant to share your troubles? For your sculptures I've been with you every inch of the way, and the same goes for your paintings. And surely you sensed my presence while you created your vision of the Garden of Eden...

As I was musing on those words I received a message, this time by email from this world, to say don't give up on your fashion designs. Perhaps my muse also had a hand in that! 

Three months have passed since I last worked on ideas for my Bare Minimum collection. At the time I needed to stand back to determine the worth of what I had created. A selection of the designs hang on a display stand in my studio awaiting my return. As you might guess, I made the stand and I made the hangers.