Sunday, June 15, 2025
Jan Sandek
Sunday, June 8, 2025
Calling Vietnam
Sunday, June 1, 2025
Insights: curtesy of lovers, muses and models.
Monday, May 26, 2025
The passage of time
Fifty years separate me in the photo above and me in the self portrait below. Other than the transition from red to white, not much else has changed.
Saturday, May 17, 2025
My fling with flowers
My fling with flowers further demonstrates my way of rapidly working in watercolour. For these paintings I am quite literally, flinging paint on the paper and scribbling in the ink lines, wet on wet.
In my younger days I stove for an exact botanical rendering, But now that I'm in my eighties, I realise that life is of the essence.
The sculptor Jacob Epstein, claimed that he has earned more from his flower paintings than what he had earned from his controversial nudes. Perhaps I'll find the same.
Saturday, May 10, 2025
Throwing off all restraint
For my video Variations on a Theme, by way of the abstract, I threw off all the restraints associated with depicting a certain piece of the female anatomy. The paintings were elusive to the extent that few viewers could fathom them out. Therefore, instead of inducing shock and horror, they attracted favourable comment as to the beauty of line and colour. They also sneaked by social media censors.
In contrast, my interpretation of flowers, if assembled in a similar collage, might be damned by the "isn't that pretty" beautificationists.
In point of fact, there's no difference between the two. Both celebrate the raw beauty of nature.
Sunday, May 4, 2025
Under my nose
Each morning, when I open my studio door, this is the view that greets me. Within the confusion of its component parts, right there under my nose, in the first rays of sunlight, are countless subjects for my paintings. Furthermore, unlike the complication of arranging and paying for a model, they are there for the asking.
Thursday, April 24, 2025
Breaking the Ice
Tuesday, April 15, 2025
Annihilating a whole oppressive culture.
The girl with dark hair was coming towards him across the field. With what seemed a single movement she tore off her clothes and flung them disdainfully aside. Her body was white and smooth, but it aroused no desire in him, indeed he barely looked at it. What overwhelmed him in that instant was admiration for the gesture with which she had thrown her clothes aside. With all its grace and carelessness it seemed to annihilate a whole oppressive culture, a whole system of thought. (George Orwell, 1984)
One day, a young woman, undeterred by the teasing of her mates, planted down her basket of washing on a boulder close to my chosen spot. I rapidly made sketch after sketch until she had scrubbed, beaten, and rinsed her last item. But her day’s wash didn’t end there, for she next deftly took off her dress and added that to the wash. Then, unabashed, she soaped herself down and - using a calabash bowl as a ladle - knelt and poured the cooling river water over her naked body.
Friday, April 11, 2025
Prêt-à -porter
Saturday, April 5, 2025
ÔøΩ ÔøΩphanous
The bronze torso of my wife Denise drapped with clinging cotton voile.
Diaphanous is derived from the Greek word diaphanes. The prefix dia- means "through", and ÔøΩ ÔøΩphanous means "to show or to make visible". Thus, diaphanous translates directly as "to show through".
This leads me back to my Bare Minimum fashion designs and the allurement of the fleeting glimpse. A video of the collection is one of my works in progress. The word ''video'' is appropriate as it is derived from the Latin videre ''to see''.
Sunday, March 30, 2025
Out of the blue
Saturday, March 22, 2025
The subtleties of the nude
Continuing my experiments in allowing the photograph, the painting and the sculpture to blend as one. Today's image is from my video of sculptures in my series Daughters of the Caribbean Sun. It could equally represent a screen shot of my brain as I struggle to capture the subtleties of the nude.
Sunday, March 16, 2025
Now you see it, now you don't...
As I mentioned in my last post, to promote and find funding for a forthcoming documentary on the creative relationship between artist and model, I am faced with the curse of social media censors. However, by combining the painted image with the photographed image, both of which are to be seen in motion, I may be able to avoid the degrading compromise of pixilation. This still image from my most recent video is an experiment in that direction.