Let there be life

 

 

My message to my fellow artists for the New Year is, Let there be life! 

Let there be no slavishly copying from photographs. 

Let there be no social media censoring of the nude.

Let there be no carefully contrived compositions.

Let there be no constraints. 

Let there be no erasing. 

The painting above was made at 3.00am in a Leeds night club, and the painting below was made from life on a beach in the Virgin Islands. It is one of hundreds of illustrations in my book Notes on the Nude. No photograph, no censoring, no constraints.

A Christmas Story from the Caribbean

 

Thirty-five years ago, the only way I could get a Christmas message to my three children was to pay for the following to be published in the island’s newspaper.

I have just spent a day searching for Christmas presents for my three children. The burden of the task has been on my mind for weeks. As I feared, it was a fruitless day and I came home empty-handed. Money was not the restraint, nor the selection of toys. The problem was one of circumstances.

My children are aged three, five and six, against their wish, are separated from me through a marriage that ended in divorce. Father Christmas, no matter how laden with toys, cannot substitute my children’s right to a real father. Even the toys lovingly created for them by my own hand - as they always used to be - cannot fill the void needlessly created in their lives.

But against overwhelming odds, some measure of justice prevailed. A few months ago, the court awarded them what was to have been their real Christmas present - a better deal. But the order was never allowed to take effect. The present was taken from them before they had a chance to experience it.

A child's fairy-tale world demands miracles, especially at Christmas. They expect immediate results, with angels and bright, shining lights. Their reasoning takes no account of court orders, the mischief of lawyers and the conniving of government ministers. All they know is that, for some unaccountable reason, love for them manifests itself in restrictions, resentment and revenge.

“I wish you a Merry Christmas..." in the circumstances, even the message on the cards is a fallacy. They cannot honestly be sent. My children can do better. On the card my son made at school for Father's Day, he drew a picture of an exploding volcano!

Perhaps for Christmas, they will show similar insight. The story of Jesus, if honestly told, would do quite well. Beneath the façade of romanticized stables, cute nativity plays and comforting carol services, nothing has changed.

I'm so sorry my sweethearts...Love Daddy

The story of my fight for access is told in my book: For the Sake of the Children.  

The book is my personal account of parental alienation. There are millions of similar cases worldwide, but mine has the distinction of being one of the worst. My story begins on an island in the Caribbean forty years ago and continues up to the present. My fight for the right of my children to have access to their father was fought under the most difficult circumstances. Other than to attend court hearings, I was for the most part forbidden to set foot on the island that was their home, and which had previously been my home. By fighting for a basic human right, I was deemed an undesirable person and a menace to the public good. For a period of five years, I had to wage my campaign from the cabin of a small boat while sailing from island to island. The term parental alienation had only just been coined when my problems began. There were no books on the subject and no guidance for those expected to advise and judge.  

Following in the footsteps of Laurie Lee

 

Road Town, British Virgin Islands

What began over fifty years ago out of dire necessity became one of things that I've enjoyed doing most in life. That being, sketching and selling on the pavements of the places my travels have taken me to. 

To pluck up courage and declare myself an artist on the pavements of France 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. 

This video of a walk through the back streets of Havana has me longing to pick up my sketching bag and practice it again.

The books that contain sketches I've made from pavements in the Caribbean can be found at Studio Publications.

The Art of Making Love

The painting and following note is taken from my book Notes on the Nude.

If artists make love with the same restraint that many of them paint pictures, it must be a boring business. Making art, like making love, is 99% passion. Tie it down to a set formula and you screw up. 

Notes on the Nude is available as an eBook and can be viewed and purchased at: https://www.studiopublications.org/

My life has been the poem I would have writ...

 

The Launching of Born Free of Higham.

My life has been the poem I would have writ. 

But I could not both live and utter it.

(Henry David Thoreau)

Those words aptly sum up my own life. In the books listed in my last post I have attempted to utter some of it. They are a mixed bag, but as such they express the triumphs and tribulations of my life. 

The boat shown in the opening picture played a significant role in the tribulations. I designed her for working and living aboard in the tropics and built her in a farmyard in the heart of Constable's Suffolk countryside. During the two years I spent building the boat we lived in a cottage that is included in one of Constable's paintings of the village of Higham.

John Constable's painting of the village of Higham.