Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget'st so long

Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget'st so long...(William Shakespeare, Sonnet 100) 

When my muse deserts me, more often than not, I find her flirting with other art forms. Poetry and music are the most likely possibilities. 

She was by my side when almost thirty years ago I painted this picture of wind blow washing and trees in my native North of England. 

But she deserts me when it comes to inspiring my current attempts of capturing the tropical scenes that surround my studio. Even the subdued browns and yellows of our dry season are wasted on me.

Which brings me back to find solace in other art forms. This song by the incomparable Eartha Kitt is appropriately titled, If You Go Away.

Back to the drawing board

 

This week has taken me back to the drawing board and back to the days when I worked in engineering design almost sixty years ago. My task has been to design a custom rear interior for a Land Rover which is almost as old as my restored 1970's model. 

My days in a drawing office preceded computers, calculators and photocopiers. I wonder how many of my follows were around in the days of slide rules. The one in the picture was a sixteenth birthday present from my father. The scale rule and compass dates from the same period, as do my engineering text books. My drawing board is mounted on a heavy cast iron frame. The maker's name plate dates it as 1922. 

Sixty years ago the view from my drawing board was the one shown in the picture below.

My dreams in those days were of sailing away to the tropics and earning my living as an artist. That I achieved. And even if I do occasionally revert back to the drawing board at least my sunset days are spent looking over a lush valley that leads down to the Caribbean Sea.

Back to nature

Egon Schiele (1890-1918)

When I first came to the Caribbean my subject matter was the way of life of the islanders. As the traditional scenes declined I turned my attention to the islanders themselves. I began my series Daughters of the Caribbean Sun in the 1980's when I could still find lithe models to work from. However, in recent years Kentucky Fried Chicken has added pounds to their figures and I now search in vain for potential models.

It seems that my chosen subjects, in what ever form they take, are fated to disappear soon after I capture them in my paintings. My books Virgin Island Sketches and Caribbean Sketches are now historical records.

This week, while mulling over these events, I decided to revert back to nature before the flowers become extinct and the trees are cut down. It's a difficult transition and I'm not sure that I have the passion and skill to pull it off. 

Many artists from the past have turn to nature and some surprisingly so. The open painting is by Egon Schiele, the master of erotica. Jacob Epstein claimed he had earned more from his flower paintings than he had done from his sculptures. Before he painted his hallmark acres of fresh, Lucian Freud painted incredibly detailed wild flowers. If Vincent Van Gogh could get passionate about a field of stubble and Claude Monet paint powerful images of waterlilies, why shouldn't I see what can be made of what is supposedly the "Nature Island of the Caribbean".

Below are my tentative beginnings: two paintings that I made within a few yards of my studio.

Lessons learnt in the Garden of Eden

Work on my screen involved taking one hell of a chance in terms of techniques and materials. Fortunately the unknown elements worked to my advantage. The plywood had a slightly raised grain which gave texture, the vinyl paint had a slight sheen which gave life, and my random collection soft pastels from thirty years ago gave me the colour effects I was after. My only concern was the clear matt spray varnish that I used to finally fix the work. I did a test panel beforehand and that worked well. However, on the actual panels pressure from the spray tended to blow away some of the pigment and slightly reduced the depth of colour. But in general I would say 99% successful.

Below are the panels in detail.

Naked without shame

And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed (Genesis II, Verse 25)

Likewise, my Eve is naked without shame. In my Caribbean Garden of Eden fig leaves are superfluous; there are no forbidden fruits, no serpents and no Adam to distract Eve's reverie. 

Completed panels 1, 2, 3 & 4 of side one of the screen.

Below are the panels in detail: Passion Fruit, Mango, Guava and Orange.

Once again I thank Verlena, my Dominican model and muse, for inspiring my work. When Verlena modelled for a sculpture of her standing figure three years ago we never foresaw that one day the same relaxed pose would depict Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Decorative Arts

James McNeill's (1843-1903) interior design masterpiece The Peacock Room falls under the category of Decorative Arts, as does the work of hundreds of artists from the past. In a more humble way the designs for my screen follow suit. The pictures below show work in progress on Screen 1 and Screen 2.

Eve tempted by Passion Fruit

Eve tempted by Mangoes

The work of the potter, being both beautiful and functional, also falls under the category of Decorative Arts. My son Karl, alienated from me at the age of three by way of divorce, is such a one. But court orders take no account of genes. Now in his thirties he has established himself as self-taught studio potter. Below is an example of his work and a link to a recent interview.

I'm trying to decide

I have completed the figures on one side of my screen. I am now trying to decide if I should bring this side to completion before turning it around to work on the reverse side. Pastel drawings are vulnerable until they are fixed and I can't fix them until they are finished. Like a coin, I cannot view and work on both sides of the screen at once.

Initially, I had in mind nothing more than trailing vines for the surround of each panel. But now my idea of Eve wandering through a Caribbean Garden of Eden has taken hold. Our fruits are more exotic than apples from temperate regions. Off the top of my head I can list at least twenty fruits that grow in abundance on my island; more than enough to decorate my panels twice over.  

It would take a strong-willed Eve to resist the temptation of sampling the Passion Fruit that grows within a stone's throw of my studio. 

The subtlety that I'm after

 

I am making progress on the screen I featured a few posts ago. I foresee that the difficulty will be keeping harmony on all eight panels. In progressing from panel 1 to panel 2 my method of applying pastel as already changed. I may have to wipe out my first attempts to achieve the subtlety that I'm after. Foliage in the form of exotic vines will balance the compositions and create a tempting Garden of Eden for my Eve to wander through.

The picture below shows work in progress on panel 2.

My children as models

The opening photograph is of my children, Tania, Tristan and Trina. It dates from when we first came to Dominica sixteen years ago. A couple of years early they had all been subjects for my sculptures. 

First Tania

Then Trina

And finally, Tristan

At about the same time Tania and Trina also modelled for my sculpture The Dancing Girls. The ceramic flowers were made for the unveiling by school children that had followed the project on my website. That was in the days before blogs. The bronze cast stands in the gardens of the Allen Gallery in Hampshire, UK.