Laments to a flea, a greenfly and a mosquito

Troublesome insects have been lamented by poets for centuries. Over four hundred years ago John Donne wrote his erotic love poem The Flea and more recently A P Herbert lamented The Greenfly. Poets from D H Lawrence down have attempted to wax lyrical about the mosquito but to no avail. 

Yesterday, one of those troublesome insects played havoc with my modelling session. As with A P Herbert's Greenfly I find it difficult to understand how God who made the beauty of the female form then conceived the bothersome mosquito. 

Greenfly, it's difficult to see
Why God, who made the rose, made thee. 

I give credit to my model for willingly working through mosquito bites and stifling temperatures in the 90's. I'm normally envious of my model's comfortable nakedness on sultry tropical afternoons. But with the ground to hot to stand on in bare feet and with the full force of the afternoon sun belting down on her, for the above sketch she sweated a bucket full...and another bucket full could have been wrung out of my shirt!

The painting is testimony to my brave model. Thank you Collean.

Too much green

Much of the action in Jean Rhys's literary masterpiece Wild Sargasso Sea is set on the Island of Dominica and not far from my studio. She describes the countryside as:

...too much...too much blue, too much purple, too much green.

As a painter I know the feeling, for these colours are the most difficult to depict. I prefer earth colours. It gets easier on days like today. We're now in the hurricane season and the first of this year's storms has brought torrential rain. I made the painting below from my studio window in a frustrated five minutes of not being able to do anything else. It's not the kind of scene that would induce tourists but better for me than too much green.

By this afternoon the sky had begun to brighten and the view looking down from the same window was returning to too much green after being flooded out with too much rain.

Technicalities

As I get very little in the way of feedback to my posts, I am unsure what my followers are after. Is it my paintings, sculptures or the technicalities of work in progress? 

Just in case it's the latter here is a picture of the first stage in taking a mold from my base relief. 

Fine casting plaster mixed to the consistency of cream is flicked over the clay figure. It is a technique that has remained unchanged since the time of Michelangelo. There is no other way; and believe it or not the plaster can pick up every finger print on the clay. Once this first layer has hardened a thicker coat of plaster is troweled on to strengthen the mold. 

This is the first stage of making a "waste mold". An apt term because if it goes wrong everything is lost!

I'll let you be the judge

Comments to my posts are few and far between. That's a pity because working in isolation on a small island in the Caribbean I get very little in the way of feedback. Below is my standing figure at today's close of play. Those who regularly follow my work know what I'm after. I am reluctant to go further - to add more would be less. But as I am too close to judge, I'll let you be the judge. 

While you're pondering on that, by way of a diversion, below is a painting that I made this afternoon of a stand of palms just outside my studio door. 

The  sculptor Jacob Epstein (1880-1959) claimed that he had earned more from painting flowers than what he had earned from his monumental sculptures. If I could have been content to continue painting palm fringed beaches, as I did forty years ago, I would very likely be a millionaire by now.

Lead me not into temptation

In the context of this post, the temptation being to overly work my clay sketch of the standing figure. Clay has similar accidental and suggestive qualities to water colour. It is best when put down in the heat of the moment and then left alone. Details distract and strangle the very life out of the subject. 

The above picture is a detail from the initial clay sketch of my life-size bathing figure from five years ago. Below are the same breasts in the final master plaster cast. More accurate but cold and less inviting. 

I am trying not to be led into temptation with my current work in progress. Here she is  as the last rays of the Caribbean sun embrace her at the end of the day.

Simply sensuous

The hundreds of paintings and the sculptures featured in my book Notes on the Nude for the most part depict the model twisting and turning. Even my reclining nudes are contorted in order to explore new visual dimensions. While this is all well and good for painting, I am beginning to learn that sculpture is best when simply sensuous. 

In my last post I alluded to the possibility of developing my sketch of Naomi's standing figure into a bas relief. That possibility has become a reality. Nothing fancy, just the innocent beauty of my model. My suggestion to Naomi was that she should stand relaxed with her arms by her side. Below is a preliminary sketch and the beginnings of the 1/3rd life-size sculpture.

Thwart with difficulties

As if attempting to capture the subtle nuances of the female nude in water colours is not enough, the very business of getting down to work can in itself be thwart with difficulties.

Tropical downpours earlier in the week meant cancelling a modelling session. Then, when the weather improved the model I had in mind couldn't make it but her best friend (who is also one of my models) offered to take her place. I prepared the studio well ahead of time, walked down to the river to bathe and mentally prepare myself for the challenge that lay ahead. 

But on my return to the studio I caught a whiff of something that didn't smell right. Thirty minutes before the start of the session, the whiff became the stench. Opening all the doors and shutters only made matters worse. Whatever had died was somewhere in thick undergrowth outside. 

It was too late to cancel the session as my model was already on her way. Actually two models were on their way for the one that couldn't make it finally could. As best friends, Collean and Naomi are inseparable. As there was no way we could work in those conditions we frantically began relocating all that I need for painting to the studio I use for sculpture. 

For my mind to be free and to work at the speed of light, I need everything around me to be in its place. Now everything was in disarray. The painting below is as muddled and stressed out as I was. 

This lightening sketch of the standing figure is closure to the mark.

It was that sketch led me to consider a sculpture rather than painting. I straightaway put down my paints brushes and began taken the key measurements, not for a sculpture in the round but for a bas relief. The relief shown below was destroyed by the hurricane that devastated Dominica two years ago. Perhaps I can now replace it with a new piece of work. If so, the difficulties that frustrated my painting session will not have been in vain.

Naomi more than earned her fee for modelling under such circumstances and Collean was happy with a bag of sawdust for her hamster. If only I could pay all my models in sawdust I could afford to keep them working seven days a week! 

But this post doesn't end there. While I was taking Naomi's key measurements I noticed Collean was intent on scribbling something down on one of my work tables. I know that poetry is one of her passions and after she left curiosity got the better of me. I can only make out the odd word here and there. But therein lies its attraction. Poetry like art should not reveal all of its secrets at a first glance. 

The Sad State of the Art

Photography is an art form in its own right but alas, when it comes to the nude, the censorious Facebook does not recognise it as such and even the painted nude is frowned upon. This sad state of the affairs was brought home to me when browsing through images on the "Face Book Art Gallery" (sic).

A follower of that site had posted a female nude, in all its innocence, by the masterful Ukrainian photographer David Dubnitsky. How sad that the nipple is considered obscene and hence obliterated. In doing so the missionary zeal of the censors has defaced a beautiful work of art - and moreover, attracted attention to the very thing it attempts to conceal.

In earlier times painters were adept at giving a tantalising glimpse of the nude in the most innocent of subjects. In Ruben’s painting Christ and the Penitent Sinners Mary Magdalene’s left hand demurely covers her right breast. However, her fore and middle fingers are parted to reveal the delicate beauty of the nipple.

Below is another of  David Dubnitsky's photographs...this time uncensored.

Tain't what you do, it's the way that you do it

The title of today's post is taken from a 1939 composition by jazz musicians Sy Oliver and Trummy Young. The verse that reads: "You can try hard, it don't mean a thing...take it easy, greasy, then your jive will swing" could well apply to painting in watercolour. In other words, it's not what you put in but what you leave out that matters.

In my book Notes on the Nude I have this to say about leaving out.

When asked what I first look for in a model, without hesitation I can answer, it is the face that attracts my attention. This holds true even though in my paintings the face is secondary to the figure and sometimes it is not shown at all. Nevertheless, the spirit of my muse is personified in her fleeting glance. Here lie her subtle moods and changes.

The above picture is a detail from a painting I made of Naomi and which was featured in my last post. Had I have left out more face there wouldn't be any face at all. Nevertheless, what's there is enough to capture her likeness - and I might add, her fetching beauty and charm. To add more would be less.

Beyond the face it is the hands of a potential model that attracts my attention. They speak volumes. When painting I put the hand and arm down at a glance and leave others to interpret it as they see best. The secrete of a successful painting is not how much you can put in but how much you can leave out.

The detail below is taken from the second painting of Naomi that was featured in my last post.

Making love and making art

In my book Notes on the Nude I refer to the similarities between making love and making art. Passion and creativity are the key ingredients of both. If the task is belaboured you screw up. 

The artist's experience lies so unbelievably close to the sexual, to its pain and its pleasure, that the two phenomena are really just different forms of one and the same longing and bliss. (Rainer Maria Rilke)

Like true love, the creative endeavours of artist and model are thwarted with difficulties and success verges on impossibility. Inspiration is dependent on the united body and soul of both. Trying too hard induces failure more often than not trying at all. Our shared muse "laughs and flies when pressed and bidden".

You can add that both endevours demand one's full attention. After seventy-six years I thought that I could paint my model (Naomi) and tutor my model/aspiring art student (Collean) both at the same time. Well, to a degree I can, but not to the nth degree. And it takes the nth degree to pull off a successful painting when working from the live model at the speed of light and to give my student the attention she deserves.

Poor light and mosquitoes that were intent on eating Naomi alive, didn't help matters.

I failed on two attempts but came close on the painting above and the one below. Thank you Naomi and Collean. Without my models my work would not exist. I can't get passionate about a photograph. And while I am still in this world I remain committed to enthuse the next generation of artists.

My initial despondency that followed yesterday's session was dispelled when I was shopping in town this morning. Two of my followers begged me not to give up...your passion and paintings make life so much more worth living.

Going back to go forward

If Michelangelo and scores of Renaissance painters and sculptors from the past were to visit my workshops and studio, here on a small island in the Caribbean, they would find that my materials and techniques have changed very little since their time. Because my nearest art shop is thousands of miles away I make many of my own materials - just as artists did centuries ago.

Today's picture is of a sketch made on pastel paper of my own making. It has taken no end of trail batches to find the colour and texture best suited to my requirements. Toulouse Lautrec  and other artists from his period found that brown wrapping paper or cardboard suited their needs. This led me to experiment with pulping heavy duty brown paper bags and adding them to my paper making mix. 

Now that I have succeeded in getting the paper to my liking I need to begin making my own pastels in colours that reflect the skin tones of my models and to a degree of hardness that suits my technique.

Incidentally, many of Toulouse Lautrec's oil sketches were painted on cardboard, as shown below.