Let there be life

 

 

My message to my fellow artists for the New Year is, Let there be life! 

Let there be no slavishly copying from photographs. 

Let there be no social media censoring of the nude.

Let there be no carefully contrived compositions.

Let there be no constraints. 

Let there be no erasing. 

The painting above was made at 3.00am in a Leeds night club, and the painting below was made from life on a beach in the Virgin Islands. It is one of hundreds of illustrations in my book Notes on the Nude. No photograph, no censoring, no constraints.

A Christmas Story from the Caribbean

 

Thirty-five years ago, the only way I could get a Christmas message to my three children was to pay for the following to be published in the island’s newspaper.

I have just spent a day searching for Christmas presents for my three children. The burden of the task has been on my mind for weeks. As I feared, it was a fruitless day and I came home empty-handed. Money was not the restraint, nor the selection of toys. The problem was one of circumstances.

My children are aged three, five and six, against their wish, are separated from me through a marriage that ended in divorce. Father Christmas, no matter how laden with toys, cannot substitute my children’s right to a real father. Even the toys lovingly created for them by my own hand - as they always used to be - cannot fill the void needlessly created in their lives.

But against overwhelming odds, some measure of justice prevailed. A few months ago, the court awarded them what was to have been their real Christmas present - a better deal. But the order was never allowed to take effect. The present was taken from them before they had a chance to experience it.

A child's fairy-tale world demands miracles, especially at Christmas. They expect immediate results, with angels and bright, shining lights. Their reasoning takes no account of court orders, the mischief of lawyers and the conniving of government ministers. All they know is that, for some unaccountable reason, love for them manifests itself in restrictions, resentment and revenge.

“I wish you a Merry Christmas..." in the circumstances, even the message on the cards is a fallacy. They cannot honestly be sent. My children can do better. On the card my son made at school for Father's Day, he drew a picture of an exploding volcano!

Perhaps for Christmas, they will show similar insight. The story of Jesus, if honestly told, would do quite well. Beneath the façade of romanticized stables, cute nativity plays and comforting carol services, nothing has changed.

I'm so sorry my sweethearts...Love Daddy

The story of my fight for access is told in my book: For the Sake of the Children.  

The book is my personal account of parental alienation. There are millions of similar cases worldwide, but mine has the distinction of being one of the worst. My story begins on an island in the Caribbean forty years ago and continues up to the present. My fight for the right of my children to have access to their father was fought under the most difficult circumstances. Other than to attend court hearings, I was for the most part forbidden to set foot on the island that was their home, and which had previously been my home. By fighting for a basic human right, I was deemed an undesirable person and a menace to the public good. For a period of five years, I had to wage my campaign from the cabin of a small boat while sailing from island to island. The term parental alienation had only just been coined when my problems began. There were no books on the subject and no guidance for those expected to advise and judge.  

Following in the footsteps of Laurie Lee

 

Road Town, British Virgin Islands

What began over fifty years ago out of dire necessity became one of things that I've enjoyed doing most in life. That being, sketching and selling on the pavements of the places my travels have taken me to. 

To pluck up courage and declare myself an artist on the pavements of France wasn't easy. Laurie Lee in his book, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning expresses what he felt in similar circumstances.

Presently I got up and dressed, stuck my violin under my jacket and went out into the streets to try my luck. It was now or never. I must face it now, or pack up and go home. I wandered about for an hour looking for a likely spot, feeling as though I was about to commit a crime. Then I stopped at last under a bridge by the station and decided to have a go. 

I felt tense and shaky. It was the first time, after all. I drew the violin from my coat like a gun. It was here, in Southampton, with trains rattling overhead, that I declared myself. One moment I was part of the hurrying crowds, the next moment I stood nakedly apart, my back to the wall, my hat on the pavement before me, the violin stuck under my chin. 

When I'd finished the first tune there was over a shilling in my hat: it seemed too easy, like a confidence trick. But I was elated now; I felt that wherever I went from here, this was a trick I could always live by.

To this day I am never happier than when on the pavements practicing that trick. It has taught me far more than what I would have learnt had I gone to art school. 

This video of a walk through the back streets of Havana has me longing to pick up my sketching bag and practice it again.

The books that contain sketches I've made from pavements in the Caribbean can be found at Studio Publications.

The Art of Making Love

The painting and following note is taken from my book Notes on the Nude.

If artists make love with the same restraint that many of them paint pictures, it must be a boring business. Making art, like making love, is 99% passion. Tie it down to a set formula and you screw up. 

Notes on the Nude is available as an eBook and can be viewed and purchased at: https://www.studiopublications.org/

My life has been the poem I would have writ...

 

The Launching of Born Free of Higham.

My life has been the poem I would have writ. 

But I could not both live and utter it.

(Henry David Thoreau)

Those words aptly sum up my own life. In the books listed in my last post I have attempted to utter some of it. They are a mixed bag, but as such they express the triumphs and tribulations of my life. 

The boat shown in the opening picture played a significant role in the tribulations. I designed her for working and living aboard in the tropics and built her in a farmyard in the heart of Constable's Suffolk countryside. During the two years I spent building the boat we lived in a cottage that is included in one of Constable's paintings of the village of Higham.

John Constable's painting of the village of Higham.

Studio Publications

I have spent the last four months converting my ten books into eBook format, and moreover, creating my own publishing house to market them. So goodbye Amazon: there will no more censoring my Notes on the Nude, and no more of my hard-earned dollars going into your coffers.

I began my journey into self-publishing sixty years ago when I sold my prints door to door in England. The price tag was ten shillings and within a week I had sold a thousand copies. In the 1980's, I hawked my book Virgin Island Sketches from boat to boat in the Caribbean. By these means - person to person, face to face - the book sold over 14,000 copies. 

Although selling eBooks online lacks the personal touch, it enables my work to reach a worldwide market from my small island in the Caribbean - just as my blog posts are followed by thousands of artists and art students in over eighty countries. 

Studio Publications is virtually a one-man band. I am publisher, author, artist and general factotum rolled into one. Computer mastery, an essential requirement for E-publishing, is beyond my octarian dyslexic capabilities. But my computer savvy son helps me with that. 

In the days of hard copies, I had to contend with the gremlins that infiltrate printers ink. But they are tame in comparison to the gremlins that frustrate the conversion of Word Documents to eBooks. We fight them off on one page on one day and by the following day they have creeped back on the next. 

But the final appearance of an ebook depends on user preferences and the receiving device. The recipient can alter fonts, text colour and line spacing, and hence enter into the creative process - just as my models share the creative process of my paintings and sculptures. The books that contain illustrations are in PDF format to ensure precise layout and quality reproduction. 

Below are images of the front covers of my books. Further information about contents and ordering can be found at: https://www.studiopublications.org/

  

At the click of a mouse

Porto

My book Townscapes includes a series of sketches I made of Porto twenty-five years ago. But the one that illustrates this post somehow got lost by the way. I found it today when searching through a past portfolio. As I am in the process of republishing Townscapes as an eBook, it can be included this time around. One of the advantages of an eBook publication, especially when self published from my studio, is that I can revise contents and add new books as my fancy dictates. I'm not beholden to Amazon or anyone else.

Another advantage, is the speed by which a new eBook can take shape and then, at the click of a mouse, reach the far corners of the world from my small island in the Caribbean.

He's made a mess of that!

 

Today's picture is a still from a video I am making, the purpose of which is to show work in progress. What the still fails to show - but the moving picture does - is one colour running into the next. What I'm trying to get across to the viewer is the importance of allowing watercolours freedom. They rightfully resist being constrained.

Looking at the picture you might well say, as has been said of my work on occasions, "He's made a mess of that!" But when a watercolour appears to be going wrong, it is invariably going right.

Making the video has not been easy. I am struggling as both artist and cameraman and working in the absence of a model. Whist help would be appreciated, the following offer, via the contact form on this blog, is not what I'm after.

Hello,

I hope this message finds you well.

My name is Araz, and I am writing to express my strong interest in joining your team as a Content Writer.

I believe that my skills and experience would be a great fit for your team. As such, I would like to inquire about any potential opportunities available.

I would be happy to discuss my qualifications further and answer any questions you may have.

Araz

On the other hand, my models have stood in behind the camera, and on occasion, stepped down naked to help me bend steel for the armature of the initial clay sketch of their figure.

 

A Rare Find

Rain Over Calderdale

 

I am preparing for publication a book titled, "The Calderdale Portfolio". It features paintings and sketches I made over thirty years ago of the towns, villages and countryside of my youth. The portfolio has survived storms at sea and hurricanes on land. In recent years it has languished unopened on a shelf in my studio. Most of the contents can I remember as if they were painted yesterday. But the one above took me by surprise. 

How evocative is a painting that is fleetingly jotted down from life! Even in the warmth of the tropics, I can feel the searching wind and the expectant cold shower of rain. 

A tantalising glimpse

Jeune Fille en Bust (Portrait of a Young Girl) by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin (c.1794)

The above portrait led me to discover a remarkable series of YouTube videos. These videos by The Anonymous Art Historian, are a welcomed addition to the visual arts. They are in themselves a work of art: excellent visuals, intelligent commentary and valuable transcripts.

Pierre-Narcisse Guérin 's portrait caught my eye due to the similarity of pose to Ruben's image of Mary Magdalene in his painting Christ and the Penitent Sinners.

In earlier times, painters were adept at allowing a tantalising glimpse of the nude in the most innocent of subjects. In both of the above paintings the hand demurely covers the breast. But tantalisingly, the fore and middle fingers are parted to reveal the delicate beauty of the nipple.

A Creative Health Warning

  

A detail from a painting in my pregnancy series.

An overdose of instructional videos on "How to Paint in Watercolour" can seriously damage your creative health. This health warning has been brought about by looking at too many carefully contrived, tame insipidies that have been drearily painted to rule. They lack very essence of the medium: that being spontaneity and freedom.

I remember one such regimented practitioner shaking his head in despair at my work. His advice was that I should use a smaller brush, less water and paint more carefully. 

The Colour of her Soul

 Raw Sienna, Indian Red and Ivory Black.

At one of Dominica's Literary Festivals my daughter and I were competing against each other in the poetry category. Tania's poem was The Colour of her Soul and mine, The Colour Black. Both poems related to the range of skin tones found in the Daughters of the Caribbean Sun.

The same subtle colours are mirrored in the island's vegetation. The picture below is of a variety of banana known locally as Cou Cou. The bananas that grow in the grounds surrounding my studio are different to those that are grown commercially. Ours come in all shapes, sizes and flavours, and they grow in abundance. 

Today's crop of Cou Cou. In  Raw Sienna, Indian Red and Ivory Black.

The indignity of being sold - yet again!

The Jamaican Girl 

A life-size bronze sculpture by Enzo Plazzotta.

My love affair with the nude dates back to 1971. In that year I was seduced by Enzo Plazzotta’s sculpture, Jamaican Girl. The infatuation was such that I followed my temptress to the land of her birth, and thereafter, the Caribbean became my adopted home. Little did I realise that, in my search for my seductress, she had sought me in my native land. 

But alas, my seductress, like her African forefathers, has yet again suffered the indignity of being sold. This time around, it's the Yorkshire Sculpture Park that has put her on the market for thirty-six thousand pounds inc. vat. They in turn acquired her at action in 2019.

One a brighter note, the sculpture was originally cast as an edition of nine and I understand, from one of my models, that the University of the West Indies has one of the casts. I hope they ensure that she remains in the region of her birth.

Regrettably, I never met Enzo Plazzotta's model for the Jamaican Girl, but over the last fifty years I have had the good fortune of working with equally inspirational models from most of the Caribbean Islands. They are depicted in hundreds of paintings and scores of sculptures in my series Daughters of the Caribbean Sun. The image below shows my clay sketch for a life-size sculpture of my Dominican model Annabelle.

Tribal Decoration

 

Hans Silvester's images and the following account from his book Natural Fashion: Tribal Decorations from East African puts our westernised dull concept of fashion in the shade.

Body painting, as practiced here in East Africa, the cradle of humanity, seems to me to represent a way of life that dates from prehistory and once enabled humankind to overcome the hostility of nature. Art was then a means of survival.

The images above are of the Surma and Mursi peoples, two of the fifteen Ethiopian tribes indigenous to the Omo Valley in Southern Ethiopia. Both nomadic communities living close to and with nature, and placing great importance on decoration of the body over the spatial environment. Bright minerals for paint to embellish the skin, flora and fauna for ephemeral adornments . Whereas the Surma often draw from the varied “closet” of the plant world, the Mursi predominately adorn themselves with items derived from the hunt such as tusks, skins, shells and the like.

As Silvester describes in his book Natural Fashion: Tribal Decoration from Africa, no underlying systems seem to exist. Mothers begin painting infants, and from there adolescence frolic in this pastime avidly dedicating themselves to this activity. One’s skill at bodily adornment is not judged by viewing ones own reflection as these are communities that are said to live in the absence of mirrors. Not even the waters of the Omo river provide a reflection in their muddy waters. The image of self, in particular, the adroit body ornamentation is deemed through the reaction it elicits in others, thus body painting amongst the Surma and Mursi is a group activity. Often boys will paint boys and girls, girls or one might paint themselves several times within a day. Lounging by the river, applying expressive, gestural quick strokes with natural pigments of red ochre, yellow sulfur, white kaolin and grey ash in a multitude of patterns and combinations. Motifs emblematic of families exist.

This ephemeral art form elevates and celebrates the body making it the ultimate canvas. The dextrous individual is the one that sees beyond the obvious, that perceives a leaf can transform to become a hat or a necklace, a reed becomes a ribbon, a branch with pods rather a head ornament. 

A man I am proud to have known.

Peter Penfold CMG OBE (1944-2023)

I quote from my forthcoming book "For the Sake of the Children".

"After a further three months in limbo, we decided to sail back to the Virgin Islands and challenge the immigration ruling in the High Court. As no lawyers in the British Virgin Islands would represent me, our only way forward was with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, my Member of Parliament in England and the Governor’s Office. We were fortunate that Peter Penfold, a man of courage and high principles, was at that time the Governor of the territory. With the help of his aide Alan Penrith, he ensured we received fair treatment. 

After serving as Governor of the British Virgin Islands Peter Penfold was appointed High Commissioner to Sierra Leone where he was widely considered a hero for his controversial role in restoring Kabbah. While he was giving evidence to the UK inquiry, 20,000 people took part in a demonstration demanding his return to Sierra Leone, and upon his arrival he was appointed an honorary Paramount Chief."

Peter Penfold is a man I am proud to have known. I deeply appreciate his courage to stand by me during my fight for access to my children. Ironically, my stand for a basic human right in the British Virgin Islands, and Peter Penfold's stand for human rights in Sierra Leone, resulted in us both being deemed persona non grata in some quarters. 

The world has lost a remarkable man, to whom the Times Obituary gives deserved credit.

To delight the senses, arouse the passion and excite the imagination...

Detail from one of my painting of the nude figure.

 

I get terribly bored viewing most paintings of the nude. Although they may be anatomically correct in every detail, they lack what Sir Walter Scott claimed for the artistry of the 13th century troubadours: 

To delight the senses, arouse the passion and excite the imagination.

If the artist is devoid of passion, there is no way that his work can arouse the senses in others. The painting that illustrates this post was motivated by the passion and presence of my live model. 

He'll finish it better when he gets home.

 

A page from my book "Caribbean Sketches"

My book "Caribbean Sketches" records a journey I made through the Caribbean thirty-five years ago. It comprises of hundreds of pen and ink sketches that I jotted down in the heat of the moment. To the uninitiated viewer they are hard to fathom. Hence the comment from one onlooker to another: "He'll finish it better when he gets home."

Flattery will get you nowhere

Alice relaxing after a modelling session.

Today's sketch is of a modelling session from over thirty years ago. The subject is Alice, the very first model in my series "Daughters of the Caribbean Sun". The sketch was accomplished in less than 30 seconds and it captures the mood of the moment. Please note: my crayon hasn't had time to leave the paper.

The sketch came to mind a few days ago when I was glancing through the results of an art group's first session with a live nude model. Their stilted attempts were towards likeness and by extension, flattery. They failed miserably on both counts. My advice would have been: forget the likeness, forget the flattery, but passionately fall in love with the model and powerfully express your love a matter of seconds. 

Maybe I will add this advice to my forthcoming book, "Notes for Life Class Students and Models".

Times have changed

Milk Churns, Ballygub, Ireland. 1972

In the early 1970's my studio was what once a village school in County Kilkenny, Southern Ireland. We lived in on classroom and I taught art classes in the other. Our land led down to the River Nore and we were surrounded by green fields for miles around. The milk churns were awaiting collection at the gate of the farm next door. 

Out of curiosity I looked up the location a few evenings ago on google earth. It took me a long time to recognise what had once been familiar landmarks. Our next door neighbour's small farm is now a huge commercial undertaking and alongside the path that led down to the river is what appears to be a car-breaker's yard. Times have changed!

Fit for human consumption

 

Sketched in seconds on the beach (circ. 1980)

The novelist Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) writing with reference to an author's rough notes says:

If they are interesting enough when enlarged to the size of an article, what must they have been like in their concentrated form? Pure rectified spirit, above proof; before it is lowered to be fit for human consumption.

That is all the more true with a sketch before it becomes modified as a finished painting. 

The bare minimum

My model sleeping

 

The bare minimum applies to the sketch as it does to my concept of dress. A few lines says it all. With the patina that fifty years gives to a random sheet of cheap paper, the effect is all the more enhanced. 

Father and Son

Father and Son 

From a series of sketches I made in the 1990's 

of families on the beach.

When I look through my portfolios of past work, I occasional find a forgotten sketch that makes me exclaim: "I did paint that!", I find it is the same with my literary endeavours over the years.

For a forthcoming book, I have been delving through my 1990's literary contributions to the British Virgin Island press. The following commentary was prompted by a news item that read: 

The majority of babies born in the Virgin Islands in 1991 were born out of wedlock, and the number of births to teenagers rose 47 percent last year, according to statistics from the Development Planning Unit. A total of 169 babies, or 58 percent of all births, were born out of wedlock last year, up from 153 in 1990.

The image and reality of the West Indian father.

There can be few images saintlier than that of a West Indian father and child. It conjures up hope that the inherent good in man will survive against overwhelming odds. There are those who claim that the vision is a rare sight, and others who scathingly dismiss as an illusion. But as always, the greatest condemnation comes from those who prudishly hold themselves aloof.

Generally, the West Indian mother who has been through the mill is less critical. Through practical experience, sees her man in a kindlier light. Understanding is the crux of the matter.

First, we must understand and come to terms with a terrible fact: At least 95 percent of all West Indian children are unwanted at the time they are conceived. The lyrics of the popular Trinidadian song tell a lie: “I wanna have a baby with you” is not a sentiment of the West Indian man. Sex, yes; a child, no! The West Indian woman shares his needs and his aversion. Her body, like his, urgently wants the one but not the other. Within a month the baby in her womb has become a hateful thing to them both.

The seed that they carelessly planted becomes a barrier between them. Their relationship cools considerably. There is no real love to sustain it, only a fleeting ecstasy which soon gives way to shame, anger and - so often for her - sexual revulsion. Other than a tacit understanding that she is pregnant with his child, they do not talk about it. The tension heightens as the weeks go by. Their main worry is that of revealing the pregnancy and the reaction of others. For that reason, no one must know, or at least not until the secret can be concealed no longer.

But not much escapes the notice of the West Indian extended family, least of all a pregnancy in the confines of a yard space. The father is found out, rather than proclaimed by his own initiative. Any strength that the couple may have found in each other is soon invalidated by domineering parents or siblings. Instead of insisting that the father be accountable, they collectively undermine his responsibilities. Marriage is rarely considered by anyone as a way forward.

Fathering children within a happy marriage is the ideal, but in this region not the reality. If a marriage fails the court can ruthlessly deprive the father of any function other than that of providing money. He can be denied all reasonable contact with the child. His love is not considered a necessity.

In a society where marriage is the exception rather than the rule, the accidental pregnancy that we have so far assumed should not go unchallenged. More often than is realised, fathering a child is intentionally used as a means of securing a woman without the commitment or complication of marriage. This form of bondage uses the child as a means to its end and is vulnerable to the father abandoning, or threatening to abandon, his support if the relationship breaks down.

From such troublesome beginnings, the West Indian father must materialize. He does so, but slowly and grudgingly. In the months before the birth, he does not take the girl out any more, and even if he offered, she would be reluctant to be seen in public. Her belly is an embarrassment to them both. He might occasionally drive her to the doctor or clinic, providing that it does not interfere with anything he had planned to do with his friends. He would not consider staying by her side for the visit itself. He will give her money to buy things for the baby, but not help her shop for them. At the time she goes into labour he may not be found.

With the birth of the child there emerges the first timid assertion of the man as a father. He visits the hospital. He feels awkward and conspicuous and can think of nothing meaningful to say. There doesn't seem to be much he can do. Her family have attended to her needs. He does not stay long, but before he goes, he gives the mother a small screwed up paper bag that forever redeems him. It contains a present for his child.

In an attempt to pick up life where she left off, the mother returns to work as soon as she can. That is assuming that she is fortunate enough to have a job to go back to. Her family looks after the baby. The father's life continues without interruption. His family may help with minding the child when it gets older. In the meantime, he contributes money toward the child's upbringing. The amounts vary. In true West Indian fashion, the arrangement has no hard and fast rules. They rekindle their feelings for one another, and from each develops a love for the child.

It is from this period that we owe the saint-like image of the West Indian father. In reality, his role as a father leaves a lot to be desired. His love tends to be possessive. The child that began as their child, in conflict becomes her child or his child. His commitment is minimal; his understanding is sometimes shallow; his support spasmodic; his interest in the child’s schooling is often slight.

But at the end of the day, the miracle is, not so much that a child is born, but somehow, out of the most unlikely set of circumstances, a father evolves.

In life we don't work like that!

Camille Claudel

 

There are two films about the sculptress Camille Claudel. One that has won the awards and one that hasn't. Of the two, the latter is true to life and the former, a portrayal devised for box office success. As you might guess, box office success is all the more readily attainable if you throw in sex and action. But when the sex predominates and the action resorts to scenes that in terms of accuracy are laughable, then the total effect is lost. With a multi-million dollar budget, you'd think that they could employ a sculptor to advise on working methods.

I find that most films that depict artists at work suffer from the same defect. In life we don't work like that!

Below are the films: watch them and judge for yourself.

A pleasant surprise

My Goddaughter Oceana at her Christening 34 years ago. 

 

Alice was the very first model in my series Daughters of the Caribbean Sun. She then worked for a year as my studio assistant. During the course of that year her daughter Oceana was born and I became her Godfather. The pleasant surprise is that after all those years I'm back in touch again with both mother and daughter.

My portrait bust of Alice.

80 years ago

 When the world was young.

 

By this time tomorrow, I will have been on this earth for eighty years. My life began in the back of an ambulance in the middle of a WWII air raid and has since taken many adventurous turns; almost all of which have been for the better, with only a few for the worse. In the words of Henry David Thoreau: 

My life has been the poem I would have writ, but I could not both live and utter it.

Just occasionally

Ceramic and textile by the Italian sculptor Matteo Lucca.

Just occasionally I come across work by other contemporary sculptors that stops me in my tracks. Matteo Lucca's ceramic and textile portrait deserves my greatest compliment, that being: I wish I had made that. His fragmented figures and portraits are in a league by themselves. They urge me to create.

I can't be sure

Ayodel, maybe? (Circ 2013)

I'm not sure which is the worst; discarding a painting or discarding a model. In this instance I regret them both. I think today's painting is one that I made of Ayodel on her first session, but I can't be sure. She modelled for me only once: for the second session she slept in. 

I ruthlessly discard models when they fail to keep their appointments and I sometimes foolishly discard paintings that I perceive to be failures. I rescued this painting from a pile that I had set aside to reduce to pulp for my papermaking. I wish now that I could rescue the model, for she had all the attributes I need for my work.

The rapid paintings I make during the first session with a model are exploratory. They allow me to explore the model's natural stance and features. 

Born Free

 

One of many paintings that I made of my three children almost forty years ago.

Court documents relating to my fight for their right to a father.

My last week has been spent monitoring the track tropical storm Bret and wading through a stack of court papers that relate to the children of my previous marriage. 

There are millions of similar parental alienation cases worldwide, but mine has the distinction of being one of the worst on record. The fact that it happened in what are perceived to be the idyllic British Virgin Islands, doesn’t help matters. In 1990 I published a small booklet that told of my experience under the Guardianship of Infants Act, Cap 233. My children were then aged two, four and five. For the the sake of others in the same predicament, I am urged by human rights organisations to bring the story up to date.

The UK study on Parental Alienation  is essential further reading.