Anonymity

Over the last couple of weeks I've been following - at a safe distance - an anonymous on-line art competition on the theme of the Corona Virus. But whereas the fifteen participants hid behind a cloak of secrecy those casting a vote or comment were revealed by name. Moreover, first place went to an artist painting under a pseudonym! 

I'm still trying to head my head around this. I suspect the reasoning is that you vote for the painting, not the person. In other words: the message, not the messenger. But surely, in all art forms the person and the performance are inextricably linked. I would hate for this to catch on to the extent that on visiting the National Gallery I would have to guess who painted what.

For example, many of us would know who painted this:

But I doubt if we'd know who painted this:

As different as they are, Paul Gauguin (1842-1903) painted both.

I talked away most of it

James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1843-1903) had this to say about his sparse and impressionistic pastels of Venice: I thought away most of it and put down what was left.

What was left were masterpieces, as the one above.

Today I did it the other way around: I talked away most of it until there was nothing left!

This came about through trying to reassure a first time model. I have known Francess for many years but was taken by surprise when she told me she wanted to try modelling. It was a tough assignment for both of us. On one hand, her hesitancy and on the other our combined determination to give it a try. I never turn away potential models for I never know where I might find my next muse.

Below is my initial three minute sketch on a sheet of newsprint. The colour effect is due to my camera struggling to find the white balance. For once my camera's difficulties contributed to the creative process, so I let it be.  

Where I usually fail with a first time model is giving the face the same freedom as the figure. The face has to be put down in seconds with a loaded No.12 brush so as not to distract from the painting as a whole. In size it covers an area of less than two square inches. This time around I came close to succeeding with the face but failing miserably with the figure.   

At the end of the morning's session I asked Francess why she had put herself though the ordeal. Her answer echoed that of many of my models: I wanted to increase my self confidence and learn to feel comfortable in myself. If today's session helped towards that end it was well worthwhile.

I wrote my book Notes on the Nude specifically with models in mind.

A potential controversy

My brother alerted me today of a Twitter suggesting that a sculpture should be commissioned to celebrate the life of Anne Lister (1791-1840), a lesbian who in the 19th Century challenged misogynistic conventions and sexual norms.

Anne Lister lived on the outskirts of the Yorkshire village where I spent my childhood and I would welcome the challenge of commemorating that courageous lady in bronze. 

Perhaps one of my rejected controversial nude for the NHS could be resurrected to fulfill the commission. 

Below is a portrait of Anne Lister by Joshua Horner c.1830. Could it be that Ganeen, the model for my NHS sculpture, bares an uncanny resemblance. 

This commission would be more in my line than a recent request for 14 statues 5 feet in height representing the Stations of the Cross plus a life-size statue of our Lady of La Salette and children. I doubt if I'd live long enough to fulfill that one even if I wanted to!  

In desperation

Due to the Corona Virus restrictions it has been weeks since I painted from the live model, or for that matter, since I painted at all. Today, in desperation, I picked up my sketching bag and went outdoors in search of life, regardless of subject. Today's painting of what I call "purple grass" is the end result. The grass grows as tall as I am and I use it for paper making. The painting took my usual fifteen minutes from start to finish.

Here in Dominica we've gone weeks with no rainfall and temperatures well into the nineties. Landscapes that are normally "too much green" are beginning to take on the burnt brown, purple and ocher shades of my models; a colour scheme much more to my liking. 

Perhaps fate looked kindly on my attempt to carrying on regardless, for no sooner had I completed the painting than I received an email from a potential Daughter of the Caribbean Sun suggesting a Friday session.  

From Reality to the Virtual

The above picture shows the dramatic interior of my studio during the years 1995-2005 when I temporary deserted my adopted Caribbean for the North of England, the place of my birth. In those days I opened to visitors every Saturday afternoon. The record attendance was two hundred real life visitors in the space of three hours on a day that you wouldn't have turned a dog out.

Below is my present studio in Dominica. The picture shows a corner of the gallery. In addition there are separate spaces for sculpture, painting, mold making, craft work, paper making, metal work and teaching. It ranks as the largest and most diverse studio space in the Caribbean.

The difference between the two in terms of visitors, is the difference between reality and virtual. They now visit on-line from over seventy-two countries around the world. 

My few real life visitors are flabbergasted. They say it's a rare find!

In a roundabout way

Continuing from my post How it all began published on the 12th of April...

After the canals of France we spent a year sailing the inland waterways of Southern Ireland. The account of that journey is recorded in my book Voyage into Ireland. Then followed a year sketching street scenes in the Norfolk town of Kings Lynn. The paintings and sketches from that period became the subject of my first one man show, Lynn and Locality. 

On the morning of the opening of the exhibition my wife and I had to attend a wedding. The friend we left in charge asked what he should do if anything sells. We told him in that unlikely event to write down the contact information of the potential buyer. When we returned at mid-day, almost all of the paintings had sold, one of which resulted in my first royal patronage. 

The painting below is typical of my style of work in those early days.

In a roundabout way it was the Kings Lynn exhibition that brought me to the Caribbean. The sculptor Enzo Plazzotta was also exhibiting at the festival and his sculpture Jamaican Girl so infatuated me that I eventually followed the temptress to the land of her birth. This in turn led me to begin my paintings and sculptures in the series Daughters of the Caribbean Sun. And here I am, fifty years later on the island of Dominica, still adding sculptures and paintings to the series.

Below is a sketch I made of Enzo Plazzotta's sculpture at the time of the exhibition. 

Speak no English

Above is the final clay sketch of my current sculpture and below is work in progress on the wax mold. I had to force myself from going on and on: enough is enough. My objective was to portray the down to earth beauty of the nude rather than an idealised image. 

In readiness for slightly softening the wax to aid releasing of the final plaster cast, I went to town today in search of a hair drying. In Dominica we have a multitude of Chinese shops that sell cheap electronic gadgets. But alas, the assistants "Speak no English". On miming my requirement, and what I took to be a promising "ah" in response, the first shop came up with an electric hair clipper, the second with a lady's purple synthetic hair piece and the third with a restorative hair shampoo. 

From a snicket in Yorkshire to the scandalous doings of the Merry Wives of Windsor

My brother's most recent post on his blog News from Nowhere reawakens the debate on the title of one of the photographs that Bill Brandt took of my native town of Halifax, Yorkshire. His 1937 photograph is shown below, along with one that my brother took of the same scene forty years ago. Both photographs are masterful. However, the controversy lies not in the scene, but in Bill Brandt's title: Snicket in Halifax. In Yorkshire terminology, is it a snicket or a ginnel? 


Bill Bran Brandt's Snicket in Halifax 1937.          

     

     Alan Burnett's photograph taken 40 years later.

As an apprentice engineer in the 1960's I climbed those cobbles many times over. In Halifax there are some streets so steep that it is hard work working down them and this is one of them. I cannot remember it being referred to by any particular name. 

It was the debate "Is it a Snicket or a Ginnel that led me to the scandalous doings in Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor. I am grateful to John Thompson for the following insight.

Contrary to the other answers posted here, the two terms are only tangentially related:

A ‘Ginnel’, in modern parlance, is any receptacle or device carried on one’s person for the purpose of smuggling liquor. However, classically, it had a much more specific meaning and referred to the small funnel one used to pour gin into a hidden liquor receptacle. Quite often, this would be a long cylindrical container sewn into the leather of one’s boots, but other more creative devices have been employed. Indeed, in the early 19th century, curved tubes of pewter or tin were inserted in the rectum by theater goers, and these were filled with gin (or rum) using a ‘ginnel’ for later consumption during the performance. Generally, a friend would be needed to help drain off small measures of liquor into a cup and the practice was widely known as ‘milking the bum’.

A ‘Snicket’ in contrast has always referred to a small amount of any food or drink that one indulges in secretly, and, in the case of alcoholic beverages, would have much the same meaning as a ‘nip’ of brandy, where taken surreptitiously. Although ‘snicket’ has wide application, it is obviously suited to situations such as the enjoyment of ‘bum milkings’, mentioned above… Probably the earliest recorded use of the term in that specific context is in Act 2 scene 3 of Shakespeare’s lesser known ‘Dirty Wives of Windsor’ where Amelia, feeling faint, is offered a ‘snicket o’ whisky’ from the small goatskin sack secreted in Balderstaff’s outsize cod-piece. Much hilarity was occasioned in the groundlings when Balderstaff’s wife enters (stage left) to find Amelia on her knees, taking a wee ‘snicket’ directly from the ginnel refill nipple protruding from the codpiece.

The above then led me on a merry search of the internet to find an artist brave enough to illustrate Shakespeare's more erotic scenes. Other than this illustration by Eric Gill (1882-1940) that illustrates an edition of All the Love Poems of Shakespeare, I drew a blank. 

Incidentally, Corona Virus restrictions have left me desperate for reading matter. New books cannot be shipped in and those on my bookshelves I have read many times over. That is, with the exception of an edition of The Complete Works of Shakespeare that I purchased over forty years ago. Now that I have learnt to crack Shakespeare's code, I'm hooked! 

I'm getting there

Although still a work in progress, I'm getting there with my relief of the standing figure. The challenge now is to avoid overly finishing. In other words, to know when to stop.

Edouard Lanteri's definitive book titled Modelling and Sculpting the Human Figure was originally published at the beginning of the last century. However, in the absence of masters left alive to teach, its contents are all the more relevant today. It has been republished in paperback by Dover Publications. 

In the book the author gives attention to modelling the relief and divides the relief form into low, half and high. My present work falls under the category of half relief. 

Edouard Lanteri has good advice on searching for the large planes and the avoidance of detail.

...Details, as numerous as they are useless, take away from the largeness of the work, and the public rejoices in this photographic sculpture and says: "How beautiful" where they ought to say: "How petty...How trivial".   

Happy Birthday Tristan

My youngest son Tristan is eighteen years old today. Here he is with a sculpture I made of him when he just eight months old. First, work in progress and second the plaster cast of the finished sculpture.

Of all my seven children only one has followed in my footsteps, that being my son Karl who is a potter. Believe it or not, I've even brought a Chartered Accountant into this world! This begs the question posed below in one of my favourite cartoons. Maybe my grandchildren will one day even the score.

The Ghost of Sculpture Past

My way of coping with lock-down frustrations is to carry on creating. 

I desperately need to get back to painting but under present restrictions artists' models are not considered an essential service. I've tried working without but deprived of direct reference to the live model the results are a failure. I stand a slightly better chance with sculpture. In lieu of the real thing, I am surrounded by three dimensional figures from the past that were modelled from life, together with measurements and notes that I made from each model. The end result is a compromise, but better than doing nothing at all.

The ghost of sculpture past greeted me this morning as I was preparing to begin work on a relief similar to the one of Naomi that I featured two days ago. There, on the support I use for reliefs, was the ghostly imprint of an earlier torso.

On the same support there now stands the beginnings the latest addition to my Daughters of the Caribbean Sun. First the outline sketch and then the first steps in modelling the form. The figure is approximately half life-size.

You must believe in Spring

Over the last few weeks I have increased the frequency of posts to cater for the increase of my followers since the COVID-19 pandemic brought the world to a standstill. Previously my audience comprised mostly of artists and art students. It now extends to the public at large: to new followers in the Philippines, Turkmenistan and seventy other countries around the world. 

My controversial sculptures Reflection and You Must Believe in Spring  were intended for the cancer wing of a new hospital in the UK. Both represented life's renewal and at this point in time the message is apt for us all.   

 You Must Believe in Spring

Go to pages 60-63 of the book Notes on the Nude for more background information on this sculpture.

On a lighter note, I came across this appropriate and true message on a blog that I follow.

With the patina of age

I ended my last post lamenting on the death of the plaster as against the life of the clay. My half life-size relief of Naomi dates from last year and the plaster cast that followed the clay sketch was a disappointment. (Go to back my post dated 19th August 1019 to see the clay sketch.)  But given time to reassess the work and giving the plaster cast time to begin to acquiring the patina of age - albeit less than a year - the end result begins to meet my expectations. I visualised the sculpture as being equivalent to the images of Saints that nestle in the niches of church walls - pure and simple. I can now see it fulfilling that role.

The sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) was the master of the clay sketch, and in particular the female nude. Many of his pieces remained as plaster casts during his lifetime. It was not until more recent years that they were cast in bronze.

The bronze cast of a kneeling figure by Auguste Rodin

An almost forgotten sculptural process

A week ago I was pondering on the options and risks involved in taking a mold from my clay maquette.  Under my post titled "Everlasting Life" I took you through the stages of one option, that being making a plaster waste mold from the clay original. However, due to the small size and fragility of the sculpture, I looked at other possibilities. 

One alternative was a gelatin mold and another, a wax mold. Making a wax mold from a clay original is almost a forgotten process. I used it just once twenty years ago. In all of my books on sculpture there is only one brief mention of the technique. There is nothing on the internet...until now!

First a frame is built around the sculpture so as to enable it to be positioned in all directions when applying wax. A clay wall is also built around the base to collect the wax run-off. Metal tell-tale pins are set on the line along which the mold will be separated.

Casting wax is poured and brushed over the clay to a thickness of 1/8" to 1/4". Casting wax is harder than regular modelling wax. Metal and wood reinforcing is added to strengthen the mold and to prevent distortion. The mold is then separated by cutting through the wax with a modelling knife and the clay gently removed.

I used a soldering iron to weld the two halves of the mold back together again. Before pouring the plaster I filled the mold with water to check for leaks. These I stopped with softer modelling wax. The water also helps to determine how much plaster to mix. 

I left the plaster to set for two days before gently warming the mold and carefully peeling away the wax. 

The above picture shows the plaster cast as it appeared when released from the wax mold. All the detail has been preserved. The separation line can now be filled and other small adjustments made. 

The difference in appearance between the clay and plaster reflects the truth of the saying: clay is the life, plaster the death and bronze the resurrection. 

There's a revolution brewing in the arts

Fifteen years ago the paintings that illustrates this post would not have had a cat in hell's chance of being exhibited other than in the confines of my own studio. Now, thanks to the internet, my paintings and sculptures reach a worldwide audience. Currently these pages are being viewed in 121 countries, and that's not counting individual islands in the Caribbean. 

Pearl was a medical student here in Dominica when she modelled for these painting three years ago. She's now back home in Nigeria and in lock-down like the rest of us. As with all my models, I keep in touch. Her response to a recent email I sent with copies of some of her paintings was: Oh wow, how skinny I was!

A website titled "The only magic left is art" (https://www.theonlymagicleftisart.com/Manifesto) has this to say about the revolution that is brewing:

There is an invisible revolution going on right now. The old ways are being uprooted by a new generation of artists through social media. Ten years ago it was practically impossible to get exposure to a vast international audience without being sponsored by a high profile company. Now all of that has changed. Never before have we lived in a time when artists have an even playing field against the more privileged. Talent is finally becoming the backbone of success rather than nepotism. Money is irrelevant. Vision now has the power to go viral. We are entering an era of artistic equality in the creative stratosphere.

Here is another of Pearl's paintings.

Reverting back to Victorian times

Following on from my last post, the Corona Virus pandemic may find our beaches reverting back to the bathing machines of Victorian times.

The Irish author Walley Chamberlian Oulton notes in his 1805 "Traveller's Guide:

Four-wheeled carriages, covered with canvas, and having at one end of them an umbrella of the same materials which is let down to the surface of the water, so that the bather descending from the machine by a few steps is concealed from the public view, whereby the most refined female is enabled to enjoy the advantages of the sea with the strictest delicacy.

Alas, no more five-second sketches of my refined models unashamedly skinny dipping. 

Little beaches for residents of little boxes

The Corona Virus will undoubtedly result in some new initiatives for the way we live our lives. But nothing could stretch the imagination further than the idea of dividing beaches into segregated Plexiglas boxes. This surely calls for a new verse to be added to the "Little Boxes" that Pete Seeger sang about in the 1960's. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUwUp-D_VV0

Recently little boxes have made their appearance on my island in the Caribbean and those that once had house and land of their own cannot now step beyond their front door during lock-downs. The closing pages of my book Townscapes has more to say on this development.

In a recent message, my daughter in the UK says that she considers herself fortunate: she still has her loved ones and her job. Many have lost both. I also consider myself fortunate. No one can deprive me of my work and twice a day, no one can prevent me from bathing in the river that borders my land. My COVID-19 shield is lush tropical foliage rather than two metres of man-made environmentally unfriendly Plexiglas.

To add more would be less

Knowing when to stop applies to the clay sketch just the same as it does to a water colour. There comes a point, usually quite early in the creative process, when to add more would be less. The secret is to suggest, rather than to define detail. My quarter life-size clay sketch of the figure has reached that stage, and maybe even gone beyond it. 

What you see in these pictures is the figure in its final form. I now have to make a mold from the clay. If it goes wrong, I risk loosing all.

Photographs of work in progress are useful in highlighting faults. Whereas the eye wanders over the form, the photograph mercilessly arrests it at one particular point. It's not so much finding fault with detail but in form and symmetry. For example, in the above photograph I notice that the left breast is slightly out of balance with its neighbour on the right. Having said that, my female followers know that breasts are not always symmetrical!

The sculptor Rodin, on early photographs of his work in progress, sometimes inked in adjustments that needed to be made.    

A trick I could always live by

Bruges, Belgium

My post dated 12th April titled, "How it all began" mentions the sketches that were the "songs for our supper". The above pencil drawing made on the canal side in Bruges is the only one that has remained in my collection. Hundreds of others were sold to survive; on the pavement and direct from my sketchbook.

To pluck up courage and declare myself an artist through dire necessity wasn't easy. Laurie Lee in his book, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning expresses what he felt in similar circumstances.

Presently I got up and dressed, stuck my violin under my jacket and went out into the streets to try my luck. It was now or never. I must face it now, or pack up and go home. I wandered about for an hour looking for a likely spot, feeling as though I was about to commit a crime. Then I stopped at last under a bridge by the station and decided to have a go. 

I felt tense and shaky. It was the first time, after all. I drew the violin from my coat like a gun. It was here, in Southampton, with trains rattling overhead, that I declared myself. One moment I was part of the hurrying crowds, the next moment I stood nakedly apart, my back to the wall, my hat on the pavement before me, the violin stuck under my chin. 

When I'd finished the first tune there was over a shilling in my hat: it seemed too easy, like a confidence trick. But I was elated now; I felt that wherever I went from here, this was a trick I could always live by.

To this day I am never happier than when on the pavements practicing that trick. It has taught me far more than what I would have learnt had I gone to art school.

Everlasting life

Work in progress on my 1/4 scale maquette

The sculpture that I began in my last post is intended as a maquette (model) from which I will attempt a life-size version in hand-made paper. The maquette itself could also be cast in bronze. Either way, it cannot remain for long in clay. The initial clay form is transitory. If left, it will eventually turn to dust. It's one thing saying "let there be life" and another to preserve that new-born life.  

For it to have everlasting life it has to be converted into a more permanent material. Taking a plaster cast from the clay is the first step in the process. Although the clay sketch can be created in the heat of the moment, making a mold and taking a plaster master cast from the mold is a long and complicated business. Furthermore, all could be lost if anything goes wrong. 

My regular readers have followed this process many times over. But for those who have come aboard recently here are pictures of a waste mold being taken from my life-size reclining figure of Annabelle. You can follow the work in progress on this sculpture by going back into my blog archives from January 8th to April 9th 2017. 

Making a waste mold for a complex quarter life-size figure is all the more intricate and challenging - as you will see in the days to come.

The final form in clay.

Brass shims have been added to divide the mold.

 A thin coat of tinted plaster is flicked over the figure.

A thick layer of plaster and metal reinforcing is added.

The mold is opened and the clay removed.

Plaster is poured into the assembled mold and then the mold is chipped away to reveal the cast. Both the original clay and the plaster mold are destroyed in the process.  

The finished plaster cast.