Home, boys home…

In my sailing days a song made famous by the Dubliners was one of my favourites when uncomfortably holed up in a foreign port.  

And it’s home, boys home

Home I’d like to be, home for a while in my own country

On my occasional visits “home” I was able to see my native Yorkshire with a renewed vision.  Whereas the tropics gave my paintings vibrancy; the mists on the moors gave them subtlety.  Today’s painting dates from 1993.

What next

By its very nature creativity is different to what has gone before. Repeating the same picture over and over again is anything but creative. Variations on a theme are all well and good but eventually the theme itself becomes exhausted. Hence, after a successful run of one thing, I eventually have to ask myself: what next. 

A pictorial image is the world’s most universal language. Currently these diary pages are accessed in over 40 countries, the most recent follower being from Myanmar (formally Burma). But language is most effective when you have something to say. And this brings me back to: what next do I say and what next can I get passionate about. If I cannot get passionate about my work I cannot expect to seduce you, the viewer. 

It is the same with these diary pages. If I have nothing new to say I get bored and the reader gets bored.

While seeking an answer to this enigma, I will use the forthcoming diary pages to review the subjects that have excited me in the past. But before turning the clock back fifty years, let’s take a look at the painting that began my present series of the nude almost two years ago.  The model is Jessica and the painting was made on her first modelling session.

In the beginning

My on-line diary pages began seventeen years ago from my studio in England.  In those days digital cameras were in their infancy and blogs a thing of the future.  Every night my brother burned the midnight oil and set up the pages as a website.  On re-locating my studio to Dominica the website became redundant and many of the early diary pages have been lost forever. 

However, a few survive on CD and what follows is my diary page with picture for the 19^th of November 1999.

Up until today anyone visiting the studio had to rattle the letterbox to gain admission.  It was the only sound that penetrated the building.  Regular letterbox rattlers will be relieved to learn that scores of visits from potential models over the last few days has finally driven me to fitting a proper door bell. 

Between those visits (and fitting the doorbell) I have been building up the wax mould of the maquette for the dancing girls.  On a cold day just the smell of molten wax helps to warm me up.  Sitting as close as I dare to a portable gas fire does the rest. 

At about the time I began my diary I exhibited a collection of 25 paintings and drawings that followed my wife through the pregnancies of our daughters.  My series of the pregnant nude may have been the first of its kind.