In the beginning

Taking delivery of Brookfoot, with family and friends aboard.

The "About Me" in the sidebar reads: 

60 years ago I gave up a secure job in engineering design and declared myself an artist on the pavements of France.

What it doesn't tell you about is the purchase and conversion of an eighty ton coal barge that made the transition possible. My blog post titled Grab a chance and you won’t be sorry for a might have been…  tells you a little more about that daring escape to freedom. The post includes a photograph of Brookfoot on the day I purchased her just after she had discharged her last cargo of coal to the Thornhill Power Station.

 

My blog posts How it all Began and I Will Repent Tomorrow say more about those early days. I quote:

Having freed myself of a mortgage and nine to five job I declared myself an artist on the pavements of France. My wife Norma and two year old daughter Diana shared those precarious days. For all its hardships, it was an idyllic lifestyle. My sketches were the songs for our supper and when we had exhausted the possibilities of one location, we sailed on to the next.  

The picture below shows Brookfoot passing through the lock at Boston en route for the French Canals. Norma and Di are looking on.

And finally, here she is, safely moored on the canal side at Bruges.

Before and after

The above painting is from the 1982 Peter Island Collection

In 1982, the American billionaire Richard de Voss, commissioned me to paint 32 paintings of his Caribbean island domain. He liked the collection to the extent that in 1995, he commissioned a further 32 paintings. The first series was painted when I was in the depths of a creative low, and I wouldn't give tuppence for it. On the other hand, the second series was created when I was on the brink of a creative high and contained what I consider to be the best of my lifetime's work. It came as no surprise that Richard de Voss preferred the contrived first series to the lyrical second. 

What came between the two was my muse, Sheila Hyndman. Thank you Sheila for reawakening my creative vision. I also give thanks to my studio assistant Alice and my wife Denise for enabling my subsequent transition to the figurative. 

From the 1995 Peter Island Collection

The above blurred images are taken from colour transparencies that have done their best to survive the ravages of the tropics. They are all that is left, for doubt that any of the paintings survived the disastrous 2017 hurricane.

The blight of mass tourism

Cane Garden Bay 1993

Hundreds of my Virgin Island paintings that date from the mid 1970's and up to the mid 1990's, were whisked away by eager buyers before the paint was dry. All I have left is an incomplete faded photographic record of the originals, often hurriedly photographed there and then. They can't be repeated because the lively scenes of those days have suffered the blight of mass tourism.

 Cane Garden Bay 2024 

Photographed at the exact same spot as my painting. 

Raw Sexuality

Egon Schiele (1890-1918)

In his brief life, the Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele, extended the boundaries of the nude. His work exudes raw sexuality to the extent that it becomes non sexual. He was a master of the line and the effects of exaggeration. The lines that define the thigh and torso, being a case in point. 

But as I know all too well, it is well-nigh impossible to carry a masterstroke throughout. With the raised left arm, Egon Schiele struggles and fails, just as I struggled and failed - albeit by an hair's breadth - in my painting of Annabelle. These are the problems that one faces when capturing the figure in motion. In voiding the ridged pose there arises the difficulty of remembering the whole figure as seen at the first fleeting glance. In my case, the model's turn continued after that initial vision, and my memory of the linkage between the left leg and buttocks became confused.