Alas, no decorative cartouche…

Since four o’clock this morning, I’ve been working on the maps for the National Trail Guide.  The job was made all the more difficult because the map I was using for reference was to a different scale.  As I could not get it scanned and enlarged electronically until Tuesday, I set about doing it by hand the hard way – grid square by grid square. 

Maybe the French mapmaker, who made this map of the neighbouring island of Martinique in 1732, looked down on my labours with a wry smile.  After all, he had no electronic aids either.  The hand coloured copper plate engraving puts today’s computer generated maps to shame.  Alas, there will be no decorative cartouche or compass rose embellishments on my trail maps.

Love…

Forget the prestigious awards, the accolade I cherish above all others is when someone says they “love” my work.  I find the simpler the words, the more sincere the meaning.  I am all the more touched when the message comes from someone not necessarily schooled in the arts.

Like the old lady who sent me a letter on flowery notepaper soon after the unveiling of my figures for Sowerby Bridge saying…Your sculpture will always be loved by the people of this town.

A few weeks ago, I received an e-mail from one of my life class students saying…Don’t give up, your classes make life so much more bearable.

And, just yesterday a text message to say…Thank you so much. I love the painting, I love it!

I suppose, like the poet Robert Service, I’m just a lowbrow and hence attracted to his poem:

To show you how lowbrow I am,

I’ll readily admit,

When reading Mary and her Lamb,

I wish I’d written it.

Likewise, the simpler the sketch the more profound the meaning…like this one.

Ten years ago in the pouring rain…

Ten years ago in the pouring rain my bronze figures for the city of Leeds arrived from the foundry.  By the time they were off loaded and hoisted in position, I was wet through to the skin.  Moreover, Leeds rain is cold rain, not like the warm showers that fall on Dominica. 

The look of anxiety on my face reflects the tension that accompanies this final moment of truth.  Up to then, the figures had only been seen by a select few, either in the confines of my studio or amongst the clutter of the foundry floor.  Now they are out in the open and exposed to the gaze to their rightful owners – the man, woman and child in the street.

Against all odds…

A week ago, I mentioned the impossibility of keeping a two-year-old still.  Well, against all odds, here she is sat (for two seconds) on her mother’s knee. 

In my mind's eye, this is the first step towards a sculpture on the same theme: the heads of mother and child nestled together.  For that step, if it ever materialises, there will be no need for my sitter to stay still…well, at least not for more than two seconds.  As a sculptor, I can work from a glance and a measurement at a time.  The only thing is - it takes time.

Thank you Jillian and Jaylah, hope you enjoy your portrait.



The saws in my life…

Here’s the collection of panel saws, hand saws, rip saws and tenon saws that have served me well for over half a century.  They have built boats, made furniture and restored buildings.

Two of them (5 & 6 counting from left to right) date back to the 1930’s and were handed down to me a few years ago. 

The second saw from the left was one that I bought out my pocket money while still at school.  It is still in daily use.  

Number 4 and the tenon saw on the far right been around almost as long.  They have weathered two Atlantic crossings, made repairs after numerous storms at sea and three hurricanes on land. 

Saws 3 and 7 date from the 1970’s and were bought to ease the work load of some of the older members of my crew - although the old timers are still going strong.

Most recent, is the tenon saw on the left that I ordered from Spear & Jackson just before leaving England.  It was reputed to be the finest in their range.  But when it arrived, my heart sank.  Its clumsy handle was that of a log saw rather than that of a saw intended for the most delicate and precise work.  When I questioned this, the makers told me that EU regulations stipulate that the users of all saws must wear work gloves!  The handle you see in the picture is one that I made – to fit the bare palm of my hand.

Most saws made today are throwaway things.  So as you might guess, I’m keeping a tight hold my mine…we still have a lot to work to do.

Tearing my hair out…

Today’s picture is of me tearing my hair out at a recent National Trail team meeting.  As these days I can only tear my hair out figuratively, my facial expression suggests that, in order to get my point across, I’ve taken up weeping and wailing instead.

Regardless of an artist’s failing to capture a likeness, the painted or sculpted portrait is kinder to the subject than the flick of the camera shutter.  Take for example my wife and model Denise.  She hates being photographed, but has no qualms about modelling.

Yell at me with colour…

That’s the advice Charles Hawthorne* gave to his students when they worked in water colour. 

It seems that I was intent on heeding the master’s advice when I made this sketch of seagrapes on a beach in the Virgin Islands.  Washes that seem almost too bold when first thrown onto the page appear insipid when dry.  It is necessary to apply more colour than you dare…then, add some more.  

*Charles Hawthorn Hawthorne On Painting

Impossibilities…

In his poem Freedom and Love Thomas Campbell lists the following impossibilities:

            Bind the sea to slumber stilly,

            Bind its odour to the lily,

            Bind the aspen ne’er to quiver,

            Then, bind love to last forever.

Between aspen and love, I might add:

Bind a two-year-old to sit still for two seconds.

This is what Jillian, the mother of Jaylah, my two-year-old sitter, Denise and I collectively failed to do this afternoon.  I can hear my life drawing students saying, “that’ll teach him”….he’s always telling us that you can’t expect the model to sit still!

I once demonstrated how draw from life in ten seconds.  Here’s how to do it in less than two!

Dipping my pen in a bottle of Scotch…

Eight years ago, for the closing chapter of a book about the regeneration of five towns in the North of England, the lead consultant asked me to dip my pen in a bottle of Scotch and come up with something lyrical. 

That I did, and I now need to come up with something equally lyrical to entice walkers from around the world to visit Dominica and sample what is surely one of the world’s premier trails.  This time around, I’ll dip my pen in a bottle of pure cane juice rum: the kind of intoxicating spirit that would have been brewed at the trail-side sugar works shown in today’s picture one hundred and fifty years ago.   

The day that the rains came down…

Yesterday, parts of Dominica (in particular our part) had the highest rainfall in living memory.  Our loss was limited to the water pipe intake that leads from the river and the three-legged chair that I made some months ago (See diary entry for June 1^st).  The flood swept both of them away.  As can be seen in today’s picture, a village down river from us did not fair as well.  

We’ve only just had electricity restored, so busy catching up on many things. 

Photo Credit DNO

The Call Of The Wild…

Have you gazed on naked grandeur where there’s nothing else to gaze on…?

So asked Robert Service in his poem The Call Of The Wild. 

How I wish I was gazing on the naked grandeur of Dominica’s Waitukubuli National Trail rather than spending my days cooped up in the studio writing about it.   Alas, in the time I have available for putting together the guidebook for the trail, there’s no time for walking. 

Working from notes made by others – as I’m having to do - is like trying to paint a picture from a photograph.  I need to smell, see and feel the real thing in all weathers from beginning to end.  To fuel my frustration I am constantly being seduced by the beautiful 2.5” to the mile OS maps that cover every inch of the trail. 

Today’s picture shows a small segment of the trail on one such map.  The trail is the broken green line highlighted in yellow.  As you can see, at this point the trail splits into two alternative routes.  The contours and romantic place names have me spell bound.  In my imagination at least, I’m out there, picking my way over a boulder strewn footpaths, wading rivers and walking through dense rain forests.

Scribbles from the past…

Today, while searching through packing cases, a found a small sketch book diary that recorded a visit I made to the South of France over twenty years ago.  The purpose of my visit was to sketch Frenchmen playing boules.  However, as I glance back through the entries, it appears that my love for churches claimed equal attention. 

Here are two sketches that I scribbled down during a service at Nice Cathedral.  I discreetly tucked myself away on one of the back pews, not realising that the cathedral’s mighty organ was on the balcony right above my head.  On its first thunderous cord, I jumped out of my skin!



Not by bread alone…

Just as the Bible proclaims that man shall not live by bread alone, so too must the spirit of the artist resist the restraints of art alone. 

Michelangelo’s diaries are not confined to painting frescos on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, nor are Leonardo’s notes limited to painting The Last Supper.   Their interests ranged from architecture to astrology and from poetry to politics.

Likewise, I see no reason why these diary pages should be limited to my work as a painter and sculptor.  If, as of now, my days are spent recording a trail that stretches from one end of Dominica to the other, then that is what I’ll write about.  If the National Trail project is followed by the invention of a machine to wash dasheen, so be it.  Perhaps this approach will help art students to develop an interest and a passion for all things.

I’ve been up since four this morning, writing about the trail and walking the trail.  I’m exhausted and ready for bed.  But before I go, here I am, with a member of the trail management team, at a rest stop along the way.  If you think that looks tame, you should see the terrain that comes before and after.



Feast or famine…

One day, there’s no prospect of work, the next day I’m inundated.  The National Trail project was confirmed at midday today.  Within a couple hours, I got a call to say that a major engineering project, one that has been hanging fire for weeks, was all set to begin.  Too late, I’d already dipped my mapping pen in ink. 

Here’s an overview of the trail.  As you can see, it covers the length and breadth of Dominica.  The task now is to map and describe it in detail.  The distances and walking times given to the left of the map bear no relation to reality.  You can’t measure adventure by the mile or by the minute.



I’m sure that my grandfather had similar feast or famine dilemmas in repairing church clocks and church organs.  For months they’d tick and shrill without problems and to make ends meet he’d take up his ladders and clean windows.  Then, when one broke down, so did the other.

Here’s a sketch of a church organ undergoing repairs.  Many of the church organs in the Caribbean were built in the West Riding of Yorkshire.  Alas, there’s no record my grandfather travelling this far to make repairs – or to clean windows! 

Gone fishin’…

Just in case, after a couple of day’s absence, you’re suspecting, in the words of the classic Louis and Bing recording, that I’ve gone fishin’, you’re wrong.

For the next six weeks, it looks like my attention will be diverted from painting and sculpture - and even engineering - for I am to be given the task of putting between book covers all the information that you'll need to walk the Waitukubuli National Trail.  If that’s left you scratching your head, don’t worry, you’ll soon be enlightened.  The trail is the most important discovery since Christopher Columbus first set foot on Dominica over 500 years ago and it ranks with the world’s premier long distance walks. 

To walk the trail from end to end is a major accomplishment and getting it down on paper in six weeks borders on the impossible.  But here goes…

In contrast to the tropical heat of the trail, today’s painting goes back to the depths of winter and the canals of the industrial North of England.  This is the “lost” painting of the yellow JCB that I mentioned some months ago.

 

The field vs. the corn…

John Constable was always ready and willing to sell his finished paintings but reluctant to part with his sketches.  As he said, “I don't mind parting with the corn, but not with the field in which it was raised.”

Today I came across a small sketchbook that I had almost forgot about.  Many of the sketches are of church interiors, a favourite subject of mine.  They range from the simple to the ornate.  Either way my pen takes up the challenge with alacrity and with a freedom that at times makes the resulting sketch difficult for even me to figure out. 

Here, for you to figure out, is my sketch of the ornate pulpit of Sir George Gilbert Scott’s All Souls Church, Halifax, Yorkshire.  Incidentally, the painting sold!

In my mind’s eye…

I am sometimes asked if I paint and sculpt every day.  The answer is, yes I do and no I don’t.  Days, weeks, months and sometimes years can pass, without my brush touching paper or my hands modelling clay.  On the other hand, it is rare for a day to pass without me creating scores of images in my mind’s eye.

Over the last few days, my workload has included devising ways of packaging rum cakes, turning spherical bearings, motivating a workforce, editing a guidebook, battening down for an approaching hurricane and….

In my mind’s eye: capturing the smile in eyes of someone who I see daily in passing, sculpting two figures locked in a passionate embrace, commemorating the memory of a friend in stained glass, painting the figure with such abandon that I no longer count fingers or labour over ears, allowing verse to interweave with my paintings and sculptures and…

How can I illustrate what is in my mind’s eye?  Perhaps the stained glass panels that made up my Christ Triumphant church window, propped at random before installation, one against the other, fairly represent the images that night and day race around in my brain.

Grab a chance and you won’t be sorry for a might have been…

Here are two photographs of the 80 ton Yorkshire Keel Brookfoot, one of the damsels in distress that I mentioned a few days ago. 

Yorkshire Keels were sailing barges that once plied the canals of the North of England.  Brookfoot was built during WW2 (the last of the line) and never rigged for sailing.  Instead, she was powered by a three cylinder Gardner diesel engine.  The gentle rhythmic sound of the engine – as against the thumping of the two cylinder Lister diesel engines installed in the other canal barges -  led to her being know by the old-timers as, “the sewing machine boat”.

A year’s work went into converting Brookfoot into a home and studio.  She was my means of escape and for two years she faithfully carried us through the lean formative creative period of my life.  On turning my back to an engineers' drawing office, I had taken to heart the advice: “Grab a chance and you won’t be sorry for a might have been”*.

The first photograph shows Brookfoot just after she had delivered her last cargo of coal - and just before I purchased her for the princely sum of £200 – and the second shows her two years later, moored on the canal at Bruge. 

* Arthur Ransome We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea

In the limelight…

Publicity can be a mixed blessing, but the artist that shuns the media shuns the public at large.  I have never been one to stand aloof from the crowd.  Indeed, the nearer I can get to the crowd the better.  Hence, I welcome a recent spate of interest in my work from the Caribbean media. 

A few weeks ago, the up-market glossy MACO Magazine featured my paintings and sculptures.  Close on Maco’s heels the regional art magazine ARC carried an article about these diary pages…and today the BUZZ, a new television show that focuses on Dominica’s Entertainment Culture, filmed an interview.   If the combined coverage inspires just one young talented person - and there are hundreds of potential artists out there - to pursue the arts, the publicity will have been a real blessing.

For today’s feature, I worked on a portrait bust of my nine-year-old son Tristan. 

The wow factor…

Yesterday, when listing my damsels in distress, I mentioned the Bolton Brow Methodist Assembly Hall, the building which served for eleven years as my studio in the UK.  I can’t put my finger on a “before” shot, but here’s the restored interior.  From the main entrance at street level, visitors went down a flight of steps before dramatically entering the main hall.  Invariably, when reaching the bottom step they paused and gave out a breathless “wow”!

As is the usual with properties purchased from the church, we had to sign to a formidable list of covenants:  no alcohol, no gambling, no illicit behaviour, etc, etc.  A couple of years after purchase we were visited by the church trustees, all of whom were in respectable old age.  I hurriedly draped my nude figures – surely they violated every covenant in the book - while Denise kept them talking on the stairs.  My heart sank when one of the straight-laced ladies lifted the drape from my most revealing figure.  She gasped.  Then, contrary to my fears, exclaimed, “How beautiful”!

The photograph was taken from a small observation balcony forty foot above the studio floor.  For scale, look for the full-size upright piano on the mezzanine level.   What a studio, what a daunting task, what memories. 



Rescuing damsels in distress…

As an incurable romantic, I have spent the best part of three score years rescuing damsels in distress.  They were all beautiful, at least to eye of this beholder.  Let me tell you about just a few of my amours.

Brookfoot was the last surviving Yorkshire Keel Barge, a direct descendant of the square sail Viking ships.  When I found her, she was languishing at a coal wharf in the industrial North of England.  I rescued her, restored her, and sailed her through the French Canals.

The Gardner 2 LW marine engine that served as the auxiliary power for my 16-ton gaff cutter Born Free, I bought unseen: for the very good reason that she was sunk in eight foot of muddy water on the Bridgewater Canal.  With the help of a diver and crane, I rescued her and spent two winters restoring her to her former glory.

The Bolton Brow Methodist Assembly Hall is a remarkable listed building in the North of England.  She was built in 1882.  Denise and I found her, neglected and forlorn in 1995, when we were searching for a studio.  Restoring her was a Herculean task, not least because of her huge barrel vaulted glass roof.

In comparison rescuing and restoring the Office Letter Press shown in today’s picture was child’s play.  None-the-less, when “she” arrived at my workshop - en-route to the dump - a couple of weeks ago, even this Sir Lancelot doubted the feasibility of her rescue.  But like all my damsels, she awoke from her sleep with the sparkle of a princess.  In her new life, she’ll be pressing hand-made paper made from all kinds of fruits and grasses grown on our land.   

The Painters’ Bible…

On the shelf above my engineers’ drawing board is a copy of Machinery’s Handbook.  Known for nearly a hundred years as “The Engineers’ Bible” and now in its 28^th edition, the definitive tome contains 2420 pages of tables and formula.  When working in my machine shop, I refer to it on a daily basis. 

The painters’ equivalent is Robert Henri’s The Art Spirit and Charles Hawthorne’s Hawthorn on Painting.  First published in 1923 and 1938, they are now available in paperback, by Harper Row and Dover Publications respectively.  Both books consist of collected notes that delve into the why and wherefores of the creative soul.  As such, they are worth more than all the “How To” books put together.

I first came across Charles Hawthorn on the shelf of the Kings Lynn (UK) public library in 1970 and I found Robert Henri in a Boston (USA) Bookshop in 1989.  At one of my exhibitions in England, I met with a lady in her nineties who, as an aspiring art student, had been taught by Robert Henri.

A quote at random from The Art Spirit:

A work of art which inspires us comes from no quibbling or uncertain man.  It is the manifest of a very positive nature…

and from Hawthorn on Painting:

We must train ourselves to keep and preserve our fresh and youthful vision along with all the experience of maturity.  If we do, we’ll be great artists – if we don’t we’ll be academicians…

Buy, borrow or steal a copy of both books.

Erratum…

In the frenzied heat of the moment, I misquoted my extract from Sheila Hyndman’s poem Daughter of Time.  The second line should read, Hardened by hurricane winds.  The mistake dawned upon me in the middle of the night.  At first light this morning, before the wrath of Sheila rained down upon me, I made the correction.   

Incidentally, the secondary figure in “Version 1” shown yesterday, was based on the above watercolour sketch.  Perhaps the pose is too subtle to be picked up easily in clay.

Bas-relief, Version 1 and Version 2…

Here are two versions of my bas-relief. 

In “Version 1”, I feel that the secondary figure distracts from the main figure.  It needed a lighter touch.  I removed it - easily done with clay - added more text, and arrived at “Version 2”.  

When finishing a piece of work, I am rarely sure of the value of what I have created and doubtful if my first intensions have been fulfilled.  I’ll sleep on it. 

In the meantime, let me know what you think.



Daring and restraint…

Two opposing forces that, in art and life, need not equate to dull compromise.

The errant watercolour wash that runs down the page to be caught at the last moment.

The clay that is applied at fever pitch and then defined just enough to reflect the soul of the sitter.

Revealing the passion of the figure yet retaining the purity of the nude.

Sailing small boats across oceans but remembering that the sea does not suffer fools for long.

A whole lot of daring and the restraint went into today’s painting.  The scene is a wind blown beach on the island of St John, USVI.  One brush stroke more, or one brush stroke less, would have spelt ruin.



Work in progress…

On the sculptural front, my work in progress is the bas-relief shown yesterday and in earlier diary pages (July 20^th and July 28^th).   Had someone commissioned the work, I might have been bound, by way of a drawing or maquette, to a foregone conclusion.  But as things stand, I’ve no one to please but myself.  I can make changes as the mood takes me.

Thus, true to form, I am improvising on my theme as I go along.  Just supposing, for instance, I fill the blank areas of the relief with rough line sketches of the figure in different poses, similar to the drawing below.  Or, how about scratching in a couple of lines of verse? 

The photograph focuses on a detail of the figure in its present rough form.  As always, the challenge will be to avoid refining.  The suggestion of the breast is worth more than the breast in detail.

The heart has its reasons…

Selling my soul or my skill and other recent entries on the vicissitudes that beset those that precariously live by their art, have resulted in some sound advice.  Alas, I only take sound advice in order to do the contrary.  As my brother said on visiting us for the first time here on Dominica, “Why can’t you for once in your life do something sensible and normal?”

All I know is this.  Whenever I take a chance, Fate somehow or other sees me through. Whenever I play safe, the Gods take delight in upsetting my apple cart. 

During my time in the UK, when one sculptural commission followed another, the Inland Revenue made a full-scale investigation into my earnings.  They suspected that I was cheating the system and there followed a full-scale investigation.  After a year of delving into invoices, receipts and bank balances, they found that they owed me, rather than me owing them. 

The inspector in charge asked, why I struggled with this kind of work when there is so little financial reward.  In reply, I could do no better than quote the 17^th Century French Philosopher, Blaise Pascal:

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.

So Fate, take note!  Here’s my bas-relief beginning to take shape...perhaps you can conjure up a buyer.

The colour white…

A few weeks ago, I featured my poem The Colour Black.  I do not have a poem for the colour white, because in watercolour there’s no such thing.  The only white, is the white of the paper.  This taxes the painter’s ability to handle the medium.  Before the first wash hits the paper, you have to know where to leave space for the whites and highlights. 

Okay, I admit, you can use a masking fluid, but I’ve no time to mess about with such devices.  I cannot put passion on hold while I dabble with chemicals.  Moreover, I can always tell when a painter has resorted to such tricks: the end result is all too slick for my liking.  Better by far to catch a wash at the critical moment and guide it away from a no-go area. 

Today’s painting is unfinished, but it illustrates how I anticipate my whites.   To the right you see three figures and towards the centre, you see a space left for a possible forth.  If I decide keep to three figures, I can paint over the vacant space left for the forth, but once the white of the paper is lost, I can never get it back again.



Selling my soul or my skill…

For over forty years, when push came to shove, I shouldered my sketch bag and headed to the streets to sketch away my very soul in order to make ends meet.

However, this time around, on returning to the Caribbean six years ago, I decided that it would be my skill as an engineer, rather than my soul as an artist, that would save the day.  And so it has.  My machine shop has kept the wolf from the door and I have welcomed the challenges that have tested my engineering skills and ingenuity.    

But the downside is this.  The street scene from the North of England that I featured a couple of days ago and today’s street scene from the Caribbean, were painted at times when my sketch bag was the only means of survival.  In other words, I had no alternative but to get out there and paint. 

Yes, it’s hard to sell your soul, especially for a pittance, but the best in art is born from the soul.  Maybe the time has come to oil down my lathes and milling machines and return to the pavement.



A happy accident…

Watercolours, by their very nature, defy control.  At best, a watercolour painting is a happy accident.  You might qualify that statement by saying, the better the artist the more often the accident happened in his favour.

Today’s painting is another from my series of my old home town of Halifax, Yorkshire.  The green double-decker bus might be the very same one that I mentioned a few days ago.  This time around there was rain – my God you can feel it – but no wind to carry my painting under the wheels of the bus. 

The painting soon sold and this small photographic print is all I have to remind me of the happy accident of washes merging and dividing in the rain right there on the pavement.  The subject is in total contrast to the palm fringed beaches of the Caribbean, but what a subject!  

My careful choice of subject was confirmed when one wet, carrier-bag laden shopper asked, “Can’t you find anything better to paint than that?”

To utter the unutterable…

My diary pages from England dwelt mainly on my working methods as a sculptor.  The pages followed work in progress, in logical sequence, one day to the next.   This time around, it’s a different kettle of fish.

When working on my figures and portraits, I try to get down to the naked soul.  In a similar way, I want these diary pages to say something about the whole business of creating a work of art. 

Today, while glancing through my copy of  Byron’s love poems, I found that years ago I had marked a page with a copy of a poem by James Kirkup.   It is titled The Poet but the sentiments could equally apply to all who toil upon the forge of art.

Each instant of his life, a task, he never rests,

And works most when he appears to be doing nothing.

The least of it is putting down the words,

What usually remains unwritten and unspoken,

And would so often be better left

Unsaid, for it is really the unspeakable

That he must try to give an ordinary tongue to.

And if, by art and accident,

He utters the unutterable, then

It must appear as natural as breath,

Yet be an inspiration.  And he must go,

The lonelier for his unwanted miracle,

His singular way, a gentle lunatic at large

In the societies of cross and reasonable men.

How do I find a picture to illustrate today’s entry?  Equally by chance, I stumbled across a faded black and white photograph taken in the UK studio when working on one of my controversial NHS figures.  With the dedicated help of Ganeen, my model, I tried to utter the unutterable.