From one thing to another

 Michelangelo's drawing of architecture and figure 

The diaries of Michelangelo, together with those of many artists from the past, range - as did their work - from one thing to another. My days are the same, and I struggle to keep the subject of these blog post to painting and sculpture. Over the last few weeks my time has been spent writing engineering recommendations for a company in China  and creating Part 1 of a 5 part biographical documentary. The screen shot of which has at least some artistic merit.

The obnoxious practice of obfuscation

Ever since Pope Paul IV initiated the banning of lasciviousness in religious art in 1557, paintings and sculptures that depict the beauty and innocence of the nude figure have been subjected to the obnoxious practice of obfuscation. In the words of D H Lawrence:

A fig leaf, or if you can't find it, a wreath of mist with nothing behind it. 

With the advent of social media censorship, obfuscation reached new heights, but with the irony that in sanitising the image, they teasingly sexualise it. 

Academy by the French painter Alexis Axillette (first image below) shows how nudity loses much of its sexual connotation when the eye is free to accept the beauty of the body as a whole, rather than being drawn to its supposedly private parts. 

The second image shows how the model's breasts would appear after being subjected to social media's brutal surgery. 

At least artists from five hundred years ago carried out the operation with greater delicacy and flair, as shown in the third image.

 

Academy by the French painter Alexis Axillette (1860-1931)

Detail as it would appear after social media's surgery

A detail from Perseus Freeing Andromeda by Joachim Wtewael (1566-1638)

Unabashed and unrestrained

Denise painting the balcony rail

When painting the nude figure in the studio I tell my models to twist and turn as they please. In the fleeting second that they move from this way to that, I see a position that would otherwise have eluded me. But even giving the model that freedom, the pose is to some extent concocted. The studio isn't the real work-a-day world. It's better that the model is doing something; and better still, if she has to contort her body in doing it. Those unseemly positions are what Degas was also after. But other than when bathing, the movements seldom reveal the nude. 

To that end, an opportunity presented itself when my wife took a break from painting the studio balcony rail in order to model for me. The session came about on the spur of the moment and I needed ten minutes to prepare my materials. In the meantime Denise, with her working clothes cast already cast aside in readiness for modelling, returned to painting. By the time I was ready she was upside down painting a hard to reach section of the rail. What was to have been a session painting the reclining nude in the studio became an inspirational session painting and sketching the nude working at all angles in the sunshine. 

In that impromptu half-hour, the rail benefitted from a coat of paint. Denise benefitted from accomplishing two tasks in one, and I benefitted from capturing the nude figure unabashed and unrestrained.

Sketches of Denise painting the balcony rail

Madonna and Child (Censored)

Madonna and Child by Michelangelo di Pietro (active 1490–1520)

I have taken the liberty of modifying Michelangelo di Pietro's painting of Madonna and Child to make it acceptable for social media.

My rash action was prompted due to YouTube blocking a family video made over twenty years ago of my wife bathing and dressing our son in readiness for his first birthday party. I submitted the video as "unlisted'', hence not for public viewing. 

YouTube's response reads:

This video is age restricted. Viewers must be signed in and at least 18 years old to watch it. Our age restrictions are in place to help viewers avoid watching content that they may not feel is acceptable for themselves or for their children.

YouTube's reasoning: anyone over 18 years old can watch it but my 4 year old grandson can't. Either way it was blocked. 

What began as social media's reasonable concern about phonographic images of the nude has now made the innocence and beauty of the nude from birth onwards immoral.  

Unrestrained

 

Norma sleeping

In recent weeks I have been searching through diaries and images that go back to my far beginnings. In terms of my work with the nude this pencil sketch of my first wife Norma sleeping represents one of my earliest attempts in that genre. It dates from over fifty years ago.

It has been said that the artist has no enemy but time. Life is too short for learning the skills and putting them into effect. I have spent a lifetime learning those skills and I have yet to say all I have to say. 

Below is a more recent attempt to get the message across. Given time, I hope to say more. 

Unrestrained

The Hidden Persuaders

Vance Packard's book The Hidden Persuaders, first published in 1957, reveals how advertisers discreetly access and manipulate our desires. Recently, Caribbean online news sites have become awash with full breasted females titillatingly offering their services. They pop up at random regardless of the news item's content. Thus, you may find the above image under a funeral announcement or a school prize giving.

Ironically, the adds are made possible courtesy of Google, the very same Google that is censorious of innocent paintings and sculptures of nude. If that doesn't smack of double standards, I dread to think what else may qualify.

Once again I bring this video to your attention. It beautifully reveals the anomaly. 

What's wrong with this picture?

Many years ago one of Dominica's Carnival calypsos went something like this:

            I’ve got me left shoe on de right foot,

            I’ve got me buttons in de wrong hole,

            And me bucket, it got a hole.

            I’m working hard, both day and night,

            But nothing’s going right.

Those lyrics sum up the frustrations of the last seven days. I depend on my broadband connection for these diary posts and lots more besides. My fiber-optic cable swings pole to pole, three miles up the valley to reach me. Over a week ago, it blew down, and it hasn't been fixed as yet. I've only been able to hurriedly make this post by borrowed means.

Back to the picture. My Chinese clock stopped working the right way up, and now only works upside down. Perhaps that's why my portrait busts of Alice and Albert are askew. Like me they've been twisting their heads to tell the time.

Just a little bit more frustration to add to the foot of the account.

Tell me about it, but say something nice

The vexation that prompts the request, tell me about it, can answered by the artist by way of music, painting, poetry or prose, providing the recipient isn't necessarily expecting to hear something nice. And therein lies the problem, for as artists, more often than not, we are expected to say something nice. 

To fulfill that expectation, my book Caribbean Sketches would have had to contain sanitized drawings of palm fringed beaches, rather than an uncensored record of life as it was lived in the islands.

Field workers on the island of Grenada

And in the higher enclaves of jazz, this is Billie Holiday telling you about it.

 

A Cottage For Sale

Our cottage after renovation in the village of Higham, Suffolk

The poignant lyrics of the 1930's jazz standard A Cottage for Sale came to my mind today when my daughter Di sent me the above picture of the cottage that we renovated while we built our boat Born Free. The "we" being, my wife Norma, our daughter Di and myself.

                                      

My account of finding the cottage reads as follows:

In a last ditch attempt to buy a boat we rented a camper and toured the boat yards in the South East of England. On our journey through the Suffolk countryside we drove past a cottage displaying a For Sale sign. We were weary of looking at boats and out of curiosity stopped to take a closer look. From the call box in the village I telephoned the estate agent. The asking price was within our means and the agent offered to be there in an hour’s time with the keys. He couldn’t find the keys but brought along a gentleman whose skill at opening locks had earlier earned him the pleasure of serving time at one of Her Majesty’s prisons. After viewing the one room downstairs and the one room upstairs, we agreed to buy and secured the deal there and then with a cash deposit. We didn’t need a survey. Years of renovating boats and houses, told me that all was sound. The agent said it was the fastest sale he’d ever made. 

This is Chris Conner's 1954 recording of A Cottage for Sale.

By chance or nature's changing course untrimmed

This pastel sketch came by chance. It was meant to be no more than a means of testing the suitability of a new batch of handmade paper. I didn't have a model at hand; the suggestive lines came at random. The sketch is relevant to my present task of setting down - not in pastel, but in words - my life's changing course untrimmed.

The quoted line from Shakespeare's sonnets, has made me realise how much chance and life's aging cycle, has contributed to where I am now and what I am attempting now.

She's still a hard act to follow

                              

This is the first painting I made of Denise, my wife and model. The image is from a blurred photograph taken just before a buyer whisked the original away. Thirty-three years later she's still a hard all-round act to follow. 

Today she'll be cutting grass, harvesting and planting, pumping water from the river, milking her goats and working on her latest carpentry project. 

The garden that surrounds the studio has a bronze cast of the first sculpture I made of Denise. 

The title of this post relates back to my blog post A Hard Act To Follow from fifteen years ago.

One thing leads to another

 September Morn. Paul Émile Chabas  (1869 -1937)

An internet search for one thing, very often leads to another. In my post When the natural becomes stilted I questioned an art critic's interpretation of William Stott's painting Wild Flower and his model's credentials. My search for similar misinterpretations led me to this video by the Gammell Lack Institute of American Art. The video delves into the scandal caused by Paul Émile Chabas's innocent painting September Morn and the assumptions made about his model.

It brings me back to what painters of the nude - and their models - are up against, and serves to illustrate the adage: He who thinks evil, sees evil.

A passionate love affair

Today's image is of work in progress on the largest sculpture I have ever created. It weighed 16 tons, measured 37 feet long x 12 feet wide x 48 feet high, and was made between 1978 and 1980 on the banks of England's River Stour, just a couple of mile away from where Constable painted his Hay Wain. The model that inspired my creation first saw the light of day 1924 and has since attracted those of my beloved that came in her wake. 

In the eighteen years that the sculpture remained in my possession it was exhibited on both sides of the Atlantic. 

When the natural becomes stilted

William Stott (1857-1900) Wild Flower (Gallery Oldham)

My interest in this painting was aroused when it was exhibited in the 2001 Tate Gallery exhibition  "Exposed: The Victorian Nude". At the time the Times Art Critic, Richard Cork, described the painting as, A full-length painting of an adolescent nude girl looking downcast and possibly abused.

Regardless of Richard Cork's perceived age of the model and her state of mind, I see it as a beautiful painting. I am always cautious of a critic's why, when and wherefore of a painting. A number of my models have looked adolescent when in fact they have been well into their twenties, and on a bad day they might look depressed.

My only reservation has been the stilted appearance of the model's waist. I am therefore grateful to Gallery Oldham's Art Collections Assistant, Louisa Krzyz for her correspondence on the subject. She writes:

Stott may have painted the face of this little girl from life but used a lay figure, a jointed wooden mannequin, for the body. This could explain the rather 'wooden' appearance of the torso and arms compared to the face and legs

I feel sure she is correct for on researching other paintings by the artist I have found the same wooden appearance. It is particularly apparent in his painting titled, Venus Born from the Sea Foam shown below. 

 Venus Born from the Sea Foam (Gallery Oldham)

These inaccuracies almost always occur when an artist takes reference from a photograph or mannequin, as against working from the live model. The same red-haired model is featured in a number of his paintings, together with clues that he may have used of a wooden lay figure.

John Kruse's blog post, Victorian Venus - vice or virtue, gives further insight into the work of William Stott. 

Stott, it must be admitted, was a patchy painter. Another classical scene of his, Diana, Twilight and Dawn, which was painted in 1889 has the same strange stiffness and unlifelike poses that his Venus displayed; plus some faulty perspective too. A similar stiff and slightly unnatural pose can be seen in his Nymph of 1886. His Wild Flower of 1881, displayed in his home town of Oldham, by contrast proves he could just about manage a decent nude when he was in the right mood.

Unknown models

 

Undated sketch of an unknown model

Although I try my best to make a note of dates and the name of models, in the process of making one sketch after another of one model after another, I sometimes forget. 

It was only this morning, in correspondence with an art gallery assistant in England, that we were bemoaning the absence of such records. And my models are of no help. After the passage of time, they cannot with certainty identify themselves in my work. Sometimes, a bracelet or necklace gives them a clue, or for me, the paper the sketch was made on. 

But the omittance does not lesson the value of my unknown model's contribution to the creative process.

How little can I get away with

As I've ofttimes said, it's not what you put into a painting, but what you leave out. The model's face and right breast drift into nothing, while a runaway wash embraces her left side. The darks at her head, nipples and pudendum punctuate the figure. To add more would be less.

Les fleurs de l'amour

Les fleurs de l'amour

The opening image is from my video My Fling With Flowers and the closing image is from my video Variations on a Theme. Both are on the theme but the subject is different. 

Les fleurs de l'amour

I consider the videos to be two of my best, but audience ratings differ. Maybe viewers can't cotton on to what I am portraying. Either that, or the beauty that is inherent in both alludes them. Many artists with a passion for the nude have, like myself, an attraction to the flowers of love in whichever form they take. Both subjects unashamedly reveal their charms.   

The creative potential of a child

 

My Christmas present from Enoch, my six-year-old grandson, brings me back to the theme of the creative potential of a child. Over the years I've featured my own children, my grandchildren and my friend's children. The secret is to catch them young for they soon loose the ability to see the world through the eyes of a child. As Picasso said:

It took me two years to paint like Raphael but a lifetime to paint like a child...What might be taken for a precocious genius is the genius of childhood. When the child grows up, it disappears without a trace.

Enoch's creative signature indicates that for the time being all is well. 

But there's more to come. My brother's Christmas message warns me that one of his grandchildren has been given a box of paints for Christmas and he fears he may grow up like me!

Celebrating one-thousand posts

 
Work in progress on the sculpture You Must Believe In Spring 

This week marks my one-thousandths post from my Caribbean Island of Dominica. Over the last fifteen years these diary pages have been viewed by over half-a-million artists and art students in over 90 countries. What began with thirty hits per day, now has a daily audience of over 300.

You can add to the above score, the hundreds of posts I made thirty years ago from my studio in England. That was in the days before before blogs were invented. My brother laboriously posted my work each evening by way of a website. The opening image is from those early days.

I thank my followers from around the world for being an essential part of my work. 

A different way of seeing

Click on the image to view video

My latest video invites the viewer to join me in a feverish search in lines and paint. As with my video Variations on a Theme the images are illusive. Collectively they form a moving collage that invites you to explore the detailed contents of a painting.

The opening image is taken from the video and was last featured eight years ago in a post titled A Different Way of Seeing. What I said then remains relevant.

My paintings of the nude favour the bare minimum, both in setting and technique. I offer no distractions and I do not patronise the viewer with detailed finish. What I do offer, through my paintings and these diary pages, is an invitation to enter into the creative process. If I’m repetitive; so be it: if I bore you; hard lines. I know of no other way of finding what I’m searching for. And if per chance – usually by accident rather than intent – I succeed, there is then the difficulty of seducing you, the recipient, by way of a language that you can learn to understand.

A comment on that post shows that I'm getting the message across. It reads:

What a fantastic take on nude art! I fell in love with this at first sight.

In recent years I have extended that language by way of videos that invite the viewer to delve deeper into my paintings, and find within them, secrets that are not revealed at first glance.

Below are the fingers of the model's right hand.

I'll fling 'til my fling is all flung

A frame from my forthcoming video.

Nothing puts the back up of today's watercolourists more than my way of working in watercolour. They tell me that I am doing it all wrong: I should use a smaller brush, add less water, take my time and paint more carefully. In other words, they claim I make a mess of things. Be that as it may, I don't intend to change. In my remaining years, I'll continue flinging down watercolours until my fling is all flung.

Just as I encourage my models to twist and turn as they please - and catch them before they roll off the modelling stand - I allow my watercolours to run amok. Sometimes I catch them in the nick of time, but more often than not I allow them the freedom to add their contribution to the creative process. 

Incidentally, the No. 14 sable brush that threw down the thunderous washes, is the same brush with which I signed my name. It's been working in my favour for over fifty years.

The video I'm working on will doubtless send my critics all the more into a tither. It continues the theme of my video My Fling With Flowers, but as with my videos, The Art Of Suggestiveness and Variations On A Theme, it's the nude that I'm deflowering.

In the words of Betty Hutton Don't Preach To Me.

From her shoulders down

My bathing figure is gradually immerging from its waste mould, from her shoulders down. You last saw her over a month ago as a clay sketch in my posts If it were any easier and Can you guess. 

The process of making the mould and revealing what lies beneath has been thwart with difficulties, all of my own making. It serves to prove the maxim: If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong, and at the worst possible moment. 

My first mistake was omitting to reinforce the mould in the vicinity of the figure's waist. This resulted in the mould breaking when separated. My second mistake was to brush too much clay wash on the flick coat, thus causing insufficient adhesion to the outer plaster casing. The sections broke away had to be delicately glued back in place. My third mistake was to miscalculate the amount of plaster needed for the pour. Not filling the mould in one go may have created voids and weakness in the cast. These will become apparent as I carefully break away more of the mould.

 The broken rear cap of the waste mould.

An appeal for models, paintings and photographs from the past

For a catalogue of my life's work as a painter and sculptor I am trying to trace models, paintings and photographs from the past. 

I have kept in touch with Alice, my model and assistant who worked with me in the 1980's when my studio was located in the Virgin Islands, but I have lost touch with others, namely: Hemo, Annetta, Gretel, and the twins, Pearl and Pearline. They must all now be in late middle age, just as I am now in old age. but I would be happy to hear from them.

Hemo and Annetta

Gretel

     

                                                                 Pearl and Pearline

Almost all the hundreds of paintings I made of the Caribbean between the years 1975 and 1995 sold to eager buyers. If you own one of those paintings I would be grateful if you could send me a photograph. The same applies for the scores of sketches I made on the pavements of France and Belgium in the 1960's, and the paintings I made of the Norfolk town of Kings Lynn in the early 1970's. 

Over the years onlookers have taken thousands of photographs of me at work. Perhaps someone, somewhere, has one tucked away in an album.

Please contact me via the contact form listed on the sidebar of this blog if you can help with any of the above.

Life-Classes with a Difference

My wife Denise models for a life-class held along the river that flows by my studio. 

The life-classes that I occasionally teach from my studio are different to the structured life-class taught in art schools. My students are more likely to find the model bathing in the river than posing on the modelling stand. Furthermore, the model remains nude from the beginning to the end of the session, including breaks for rest and refreshments. Thus, the nude figure becomes the comfortable norm rather than the disconcerting exception. And the nude is nude. The model is not sexualised with the distraction of a bikini.

The images below, with Denise again as the model, show the steps from the model, to the preliminary sketch, to the sculpture of my life-size reclining figure. 

My book Notes on the Nude and the related video delves deeper into the challenges of working from the live model. 

Mans obsession with fakes

Leonardo's painting of Mona Lisa isn't a fake, but the background behind the sitter is. 

Man's obsession with fake backgrounds was carried over from painting to photography, as evidenced in the studio portraits of the 19th and 20th century. The image below is from my brother's collection of vintage studio photographs.

The obsession continues today with virtual off-the-shelf backgrounds for videos. The presenter of a Caribbean podcast on the theme of the region's culture, is shown in the virtual surroundings of a wealthy western world study. By contrast, the distinguished guest speaker contributes from his unpretentious West Indian home environment.

To Hell With Culture

Next Tuesday, over 3000 guests are expected to visit Tortola as part of the Ubersoca Cruise’s inaugural visit to the British Virgin Islands. The Premier and Minister of Tourism described the event as a milestone for the territory’s tourism and cultural industries. The island's Junior Minister for Culture and Tourism said the event would provide an opportunity for visitors to experience the authenticity of Virgin Islands culture.

To put the visit in perspective, one must bear in mind that the total population of the British Virgin Islands is less than 40,000, and up to the advent of mass tourism, the island's cultural industry was fishing and farming.

If the Ubersoca visit reflects the authenticity of Virgin Island culture, times have certainly changed since the early 1980’s when I published my book Virgin Island Sketches, a page from which is shown below. In those days the islands proudly boasted, ''Yes, Were Different''. More recently, they have become intent on being the same as everywhere else.

When will Caribbean leaders realize that culture is not a commodity to be flaunted and sold. Its true worth lies deep in the hearts of the people.

My recent video has more to say about the changes brought about by mass tourism in the Caribbean.  

I have taken the title for this post from Herbert Read's book To Hell With Culture.

Delving into the archives

Detail of the finished clay beneath the dramatic roof of my studio.

These images are of work in progress on my sculpture, ''Ýou Must Believe In Spring''. They are from a collection of over 600 that date from the 1990's to the early years of this century that record work in progress for my original website diary. As that was before the convenience of blogger, I depended on my computer savvy brother posting the pages daily by way of a ''sculpturestudio'' website. In those days computer hard drives had limited capacity and to save space the images were later saved in low resolution. I am now delving into those images and the pages of text that went with them. The content warrants reissuing in one form or another for my present day followers worldwide.

The armature for the clay and Denise applying the flick coat of plaster for the waste mold.

Lifting the waste mold and the completed plaster cast 

of my model Geneen emerging from the mold.

The story behind this sculpture, and sculptures in my series ''Daughters of the Caribbean Sun'', can be found in the book Notes On The Nude.