Going Bananas

Since this photograph was taken we've eaten the bananas and the tree converted to handmade paper. The handmade paper was then converted to my sculpture of the life-size torso shown below.

Below is the clay sketch upon which the paper was laid. As with taken a plaster cast from clay, the original is lost in the process of removing the cast from the clay. Three layers of paper create an incredibly strong form at a total thickness of less than 1/16". 

It's Me!

The photograph is of me taken 76 years ago when parents saw nothing wrong in photographing their beloved offspring naked. 

In earlier times artists decorated their paintings and sculptures with putti (naked children, sometimes with angel’s wings) but I doubt if any artist would dare do it today, and certainly not as Titian did 500 years ago in his painting “Putti Cavorting in a Landscape”

Flaunting the sexual as against revealing the beauty

Photo Credit Dominica News on Line

Thirty years ago, through my work as a painter and sculptor, I attempted to extol the natural beauty of the Afro-Caribbean woman, unadorned by foreign concepts of beauty. To achieve my objective I had to go beyond Marcus Garvey’s plea to “take the kinks out of your mind, not out of your hair”.

The nude figure is less sexually provocative than one that is scantily dressed. After the initial shock of the nude, the eye takes in the beauty of the body as a whole rather than being drawn to the so called "private parts" tantalizingly hidden in the name of decency. I know that this is something that many people have difficulty getting their head around, but it is a fact. If I wanted my models to look sexy, I’d put them in a bikini and have them pose seductively, hand on hip.

The opening pictures are of this year's Dominica Carnival Queen contenders. They are all attractive young ladies and it's not their fault that they feel obliged to flaunt for the audience the sexual as against revealing their God given beauty. 

Elsewhere in the Caribbean my work once convinced the judges to give credit to natural appearance. And a few years ago one contender wrote in my visitor's book, "You have opened my eyes and mind to true beauty".

The sculpture shown below is of my model Verlena: the epitome of true beauty.

Searching for colours and textures

For using hand-made paper as a casting material for my sculptures I am for ever searching for new colours and textures from what grows around my studio. The Royal Palm grows in profusion, as can be seen in the above photograph of my driveway. But it's fronds have a prickly sharp center and are difficult to convert into paper. 

However, the results are worth the effort, especially as the colour comes close to some of the purple skin tones that I'm after.

Pudendum

This cast is taken from the clay sketch shown below. It indicates the potential of handmade paper - banana, sugarcane, pineapple and Royal Palm - as a medium for sculpture. Here are exciting possibilities in terms of colour and texture.

Pudendum Definition: The external genital organs, especially those of the female. From the Latin, “that whereof one ought to feel shame”.  

The full-figure

The painter Lucian Freud (1922-20110 had an obsession for models with flesh, and lots of it. 

If only I could be attracted to "the full-figure", or in Caribbean terminology "the thick figure", I would have plenty of choice for models. But try as I may, I cannot. This week I did try, as shown in the sketch below. I give credit to my model for also giving it a try.

Alas, too much Kentucky Fried Chicken, as against carrying bunches of bananas down steep hillsides, has converted many of the slender "Daughters of the Caribbean Sun" that I painted in earlier times into ample figures that would have done Lucian Freud proud.

Spewed out of the furnaces of Gomorrah

Page 80 in my book Notes on the Nude is headed Tame in Comparison to Rodin. It reads as follows:

Despite every effort to resist finish, my torso of Marcella is tame beside how Camille Lemonnier, Belgian, writer, poet and journalist, describes one of Rodin’s sculptures:

At the Maison d’Art there is a torso that seems to have been spewed out from the furnaces of Gomorrah. It has been savagely torn and splayed the way a fissure in the earth cracks open, as though a crucible were exploding in its depths.

But Marcella can quite literally claim to have brought down the curtain. The curtain in question being the neutral canvas backdrop that I judge my models against. One gust from the tropical trade wind and it was gone. But my models are made of tough stuff and I doubt that a hurricane would deter them. 

Perhaps the life-size torso that I've cast from handmade paper pulp comes closer to Rodin's torso. It was released from the mold prematurely, not by me but by the same tropical trade wind that brought the curtain down on Marcella. 

With shades of Jackson Pollack

My latest experiments in paper making have extended to throwing dyes onto a sheet while still in the mold. The result suggests shades of Jackson Pollack. The sheet size is 20" x 24".

The picture below shows the dyed sheet drying and alongside is one of my experiments of casting paper pulp in a mold. In this case the rear of a life-size torso. 

Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) was a leading figure in the Abstract Expressionist movement. His technique centered around throwing paint on canvas.

New Dimensions

Continuing from my previous post; the above picture shows the completed torso and the one below shows the surface finish.

Now that I found that it is possible to cast with hand-made paper I can explore new dimensions with my sculpture, in particular colour and texture. Furthermore, the raw materials - banana, sugar cane, pineapple, exotic grasses, palm and bamboo - grow in profusion right outside my studio.

Coincidentally, my handmade papers match my watercolours and hence the shades of my models.

Avert Your Eyes

In my last post I warned you that my mind was racing towards other sculptural possibilities of hand-made paper. The above picture shows work in progress in converting a portion of the cast of figure from plaster to paper. The sculpture that I have used as a form dates back to the mid 1990's and was my first attempt at a life-size figure. With the exception of the two images below, photographs of work in progress on the original have been lost on crashed computer hard-drives. Furthermore, I only retained the upper part of the plaster cast when I re-located my studio from England to the Caribbean.

It was an incident when work was in progress on the original that led me to title this post "Avert Your Eyes". My studio in the North of England had previously been a Church Assembly Hall and its dramatic features were listed with English Heritage. The listing protected the building from undesirable modification and church covenants on the sale of the building protected the building from undesirable usage. The covenants banned the sale of alcohol (but fortunately not the consumption) and lewd entertainment.  

My wife Denise modeled for the standing figure and while work was in progress a group of church elders asked if they might visit. On the day of their visit I draped the figure for fear that it might fall under the "lewd entertainment" category.

All went well until a lady, well into her eighties, began lifting the veil and asked, "What do we have here!" Before I could utter an explanation she had completely removed the covering. She then stood back and exclaimed, "This is beautiful!"

How I wish that all visitors to my studio could appreciate the beauty of the nude, as did that elderly lady. On occasions a decorous visitor - young rather than old - averts her eyes and departs the studio faster than she came in.  

In contrast to pictures of one of my earliest sculptures, the most recent pages of my book Notes on the Nude contain notes and images of two of my most recent. You will find the serialization of the book at notesonthenude.blogspot.com    

My harlequin dress-maker's mannequin

My dress maker's mannequin has developed into a multi-coloured sculptured harlequin. The colours originate from the various hand-made papers that I finally used to cover the wood, chicken wire and canvas armature. The pictures below show the work in progress.

Wood left. Wire Center, Canvas Right 

                                                                

      

The covering is a collage of scraps of various hand made papers shown in the picture below. This project has brought home to me the amazing strength of hand-made paper. Even sheets as thin as tissue paper are difficult to tear. My hands ache. 

And it is not only the strength of hand-made paper; its potential and versatility as a creative material has my mind is racing towards other possibilities.