First impressions

The first session with a new model is thwarted with nervous tension for both artist and model.  Arrangements are made and a mutually convenient time is agreed upon.  I set out my materials and anxiously watch the hands on the clock, having stressed the importance of arriving on time.  A couple of days ago the appointed time came and went but no sign of my model.  Just when I was about to give up on her, I picked up a frantic text message: “Sir, I’m lost!”

I’m always losing things, but this is the first time I’ve lost a model, or rather, that a model has lost me.  As I was about to drive off in search (a difficult one to put to passers by, “Excuse me, have you by any chance seen an artist’s model?”) she showed up exhausted. 

Regardless of the upset, we were both determined to save the day.  I made my first two-minute sketch on a sheet of newsprint.  It serves to illustrate a message I stress to my students:  keep all your sketches, no matter how seemingly inferior or insignificant, for within them can be found a line of truth. 

The truth, in this instance, being a breathless model and a muddled artist desperately trying to make the best if it.  But regardless of a difficult start, my model, true to the spirit of artists' models, is game for another session next week.

Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones...

When my sister-in-law was a medical student, my brother would help her memory retention for anatomy by singing, Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.

I do a similar visual lesson for my life class students.  To illustrate the importance of working from the nude, I begin with the model fully clothed.  As such, everything below the neck and above the knee is guesswork.  The all-important linkages to the torso are hidden from view. 

As the model removes her garments, the beautiful construction of the human form is realised.  The spine traces an invaluable line from head to thighs, the navel can be seen as a central point of reference and the breasts, no longer constricted, reveal their masterly rhythmic curvature.  

These reflections on the essential study of the nude came about through leafing through past exam papers for the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate in the Visual Arts.  Option “A” reads:

“Candidates are required to draw a reclining, clothed human figure…the figure must be partially draped with a sheet leaving the head, feet and at least one arm exposed.”

If a student had submitted the drawing shown in today’s picture, he or she would very likely have failed.  Although my sketch titled Black Madonna is partially draped, as per instructions, too much of her God-given beauty is revealed to the eye of the examiner!   

The sketch dates from 1997 is included in my retrospective print portfolio.  

You can’t beat an Old Master

Sandy Wilson’s score for of “The Boy Friend”, includes the following verse from “It’s Never Too Late to Fall In Love”:

The modern artists of today

May paint their picture faster,

But when it comes to skill, I say

You can’t beat an Old Master.

Actually, when it comes to speed, the Old Masters could give modern artists a run for their money, any day of the week.

Eric Hebborn, master forger and author of “Drawn to Trouble” and “False Impressions”, reveals how he divined the speed at which the Old Master draughtsmen worked.  He then practised so that he could achieve the same seemingly unerring whip of the hand.  It is that which makes true Old Masters so convincing.

This brings me back to the benefit of working from life.  There is no way that an artist can pick up speed by copying from photographs.  It is the urgency to record what one sees at a fleeting glance that develops the unerring whip of the hand.

I made today’s sketch of a Caribbean market vendor in a matter of seconds – right there, amongst the limes, sour-sops and plantains.  

Retrospective

When an artist reaches the age of seventy, it is as good a time as any for a retrospective exhibition of his work. 

In my case, the complication is one of location.  The exhibition could be held here on Dominica, and it would be nice for the followers of my diary to take a break and visit the Caribbean.  But alas, I doubt that’s a realistic proposition.

In thinking about alternatives, my mind went back to the days when I sold my sketches on the pavements of France: the days when, “I had but a single shirt and not a single care”.  Had you been visiting Europe forty-five years ago, you could have picked up an original Roger Burnett for no more than 10FF, let’s say a couple of US dollars cash!

The best I can do now, is to put together a retrospective portfolio of 12 prints taken from rare originals in my collection.  Each print will be issued in a limited edition of 100 and priced at US$95.  Background notes from my faded page diaries will compliment the series.

My 1991 watercolour of Standing Nude with Blue Ribbon opens the collection.  The remainder will follow over the next few weeks.

Tap me on the shoulder – as my customers did long ago on the pavements of France, or e-mail sculptor@cwdom.dm if you’d like to buy!  

Backstage with Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec.

Over the last forty-five years, at rehearsals, or during an actual performance, I have spent many hours sketching symphony orchestras, jazz musicians and dance companies from the wings of the stage.  When doing so I can feel the spirits of Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec looking over my shoulder and egging me on. 

A couple of weeks ago found me in the wings of the stage of Dominica’s one and only theatre, sketching competitors at a showcase of talent titled, “Dominica Can Dance”.  Between getting tangled in microphone cables and dodging the ropes that raise the curtain, I had to work at lightening speed in semi darkness.  Dancers don’t stay still for one second!

I have to thank a young photographer by the name of Maccanie Gallaway and his company “Limitless Studio” for capturing me in the act.  Above you have me along with a selection of my sketches below.

       

   

Words of advice on making art and making love...

Making art, like making love, is 99% passion.  Tie it down to a set formula and you screw up. 

I was reminded of this today when reading an art syllabus for college students.  Heavily couched in the language of academia, it read like a gobbledegook script for the comedian Professor Stanley Unwin.  

When it comes to talking gibberish, many art writers and elite art institutions can leave the rest standing.  A recently launched magazine is focused towards “a converging nexus of artists” and offers “the articulation of a contemporary space, and of a place that lies within coordinates that have become scattered and nebulous, without bounderies”........Eh?

In simpler terms, here are two quotes that speak of the similarities between love and art.

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)

If you bring your sexual impulses to your creative work, you'll be working from deep in the genetic code, down where life wants to make new life and feel good in the process. (Eric Maisel)

And just to prove that my passion does not dwell solely in painting the nude figure,  today’s illustration shows how I can work myself into rapturous water colour washes over a clutter of  fishermen’s huts, nets and boats on a tropical beach.

Oh what a pity...

To continue from last week, here is the finished 1/12^th scale maquette of my bathing figure.  In the final life-size sculpture, water will pour from the calabash shell she holds from outstretched arms.

D H Lawrence’s poem, “Innocent England” laments a court decision to destroy his nude paintings.  It begins:

Oh what a pity, Oh! don’t you agree,

That figs aren’t found in the land of the free!

Fig trees don’t grow in my native land;

There’s never a fig-leaf near at hand

When you want one; so I did without;

And that is what the row’s about…

Likewise, fig-leafs are not easily found in Caribbean and I too did without.   

A haunting vision from long ago...

A subject that I saw at a glance twenty-three years ago, has haunted my memory ever since.  The place is a secluded riverside on the island of Grenada and the subject is women washing and bathing. 

I alluded to the scene in my book “Caribbean Sketches” and noted that I have learnt more about drawing the figure at the riverside than I have before the artificially posed model in a life class.   To sketch the figure in real life, be it at the market place or the riverside, one has to take time to become familiar with the subject and accept ribald comments with good humour.  The befriending stage can take days or weeks, but finally the subject relaxes and accepts the artist as part of the natural scheme of things.

Such was my patience rewarded when one day, a young woman, undeterred by the teasing of her mates, planted down her basket of washing on a boulder close to my chosen spot.  I rapidly made sketch after sketch until she had scrubbed, beaten, and rinsed her last item.   But her day’s wash didn’t end there, for she next deftly took off her dress and added that to the wash.  Then, unabashed, she soaped herself down and - using a calabash bowl as a ladle - knelt and poured the cooling river water over her naked body. 

Who says that idyllic scenes of nymphs bathing are restricted to past mythology!

That cherished memory is the subject for my next piece of sculpture and today’s picture shows one of my preliminary sketches with the beginning of a 1/12^th scale plaster maquette. 

The same old thing

Creativity, by its very nature, brings into the world something different to what has gone before.  It demands breaking down barriers and daring the unknown.  The process is thwart with danger, for by-and-large the public prefer a repetitive diet of the same old thing.  Even minor changes can create a backlash from those who have grown accustomed to a particular style or subject matter and anything major can create a revolt. 

On the minor scale of change, today’s picture shows two of my sketches.  The one on the right is from my book “Virgin Island Sketches” and dates from 1980.  In contrast, the one on the left is from my book “Caribbean Sketches” and dates from 1990.  The later sketch is bolder and freer, but buyers prefer the tighter and more precise earlier style of things. 

If I were to publish my more recent sketches - for yes, I’m still moving on - I’m sure the collection would be blacklisted!

   

Mr Roger, don’t you remember me!

Thirty-five years ago, my studio was a shack alongside an idyllic cove in the British Virgin Islands.  The children in nearest village knew that on their birthday I’d make them a present of their portrait. 

On my last visit to Tortola, I was accosted by a large lady with three children in tow.  “Mr Roger, don’t you remember me?”   I had to confess that I could not for the moment place her.  Then she reminded me, I had painted her portrait when she was seven!

A couple of days ago I did a session for a children’s summer programme that was the initiative of Dionne, an entrepreneurial young lady who, in addition to running children’s workshops, works on the family farm and occasionally models for my paintings and sculptures.    

For my portrait, I choose the child with the nearest birthday.  Apart from a day’s difference, Adia shares the same birth date as me - except that we are sixty years apart. 

Perhaps, when I’m a hundred and five, Adia will test my memory by calling out, “Mr Roger, don’t you remember me!”

Body and Soul

I am forever searching for different ways of presenting my work in the belief that there has to be more to exhibiting paintings than static pictures on walls. 

One variation that I have been experimenting with is a fast-moving audio-visual presentation of images for the large screen.  The theme is fifty paintings from my series Daughter of the Caribbean Sun fine tuned to a recording of Duke Ellington’s Body and Soul.

A watercolour no larger than a page from a telephone directory takes on a completely new visual experience when projected to the size of a house wall.   One image follows other within seconds.  Sometimes the screen is filled with the fleeting fragment of a painting.  One such fragment illustrates this entry.

The presentation will be premiered this coming Saturday as part of an evening of music and poetry titled Lyrics Under the Stars.    



Two figures embraced

In my seventieth year, I am attempting subjects that I dare not contemplate in my youth.  Those who toil upon the forge of art are fortunate: as the body grows older, the spirit gets younger.  Creativity, by its very definition, is something different to what has gone before.  I now want to give my sculpture the accidental freedom of my watercolours and to explore the interaction of two figures embraced.  

Working from the nude figure demands passion tempered with integrity and daring tempered with restraint.   These demands become even more challenging when two figures are interlocked in an embrace, for then the element of sex enters the picture.

The following quotations are relevant to the problem at hand.

Sex somewhat remains a forbidden theme, a kind of barrier that provokes sheer hesitation when it comes to represent it and most artists do not have the will or the courage to go beyond was is acceptable in the eyes of the public and even in theirs. (Adrian Darmon)

No nude, however abstract, should fail to arouse in the spectator some vestige of erotic feeling....The desire to grasp and be united with another human is so fundamental a part of our nature that our judgement of what is known as 'pure form' is inevitably influenced by it, and one of the difficulties of the nude as a subject for art is that these instincts cannot be hidden. (Sir Kenneth Clark)

The picture shows one of my preliminary sketches for a sculpture of two figures embraced.



In the beginning…

As God didn’t have a please a patron or satisfy a board of trustees, I doubt if he made a preliminary sketch or marquette before he created the world.  Sculptors seldom have the same creative freedom. 

Usually commissioners need visible evidence of what’s in the sculptor’s mind’s eye.  When the evidence is to their liking, they want the work to follow suit and the creative process stops there and then.  For this reason, I have grown wary of presenting preliminary sketches and maquettes.  I have learnt that the creative spark ignites all the better when the work is in progress.  Sometimes the model relaxes into a more convincing pose or a group of figures fall into a better arrangement. 

On the other hand, a small maquette occasionally has more life than the finished figure.  I believe this to be the case with my maquette of a Frenchman playing boules - one of a group of figures that I made for the city of Leeds.

Today’s pictures show the 7-inch high plaster maquette and the clay life-size figure. And that’s me in the process of making the waste moulds. 

The artist as reporter

In years to come, whoever makes the final tally of my paintings and sketches, will find that a significant percentage of my work falls under the heading of reportage.  I have attempted to follow the lead of Feliks Topolski, one of the masters of this genre. Editions of his 1950’s broadsheet Topolski’s Chronicle set an enviable benchmark.

My books Virgin Island Sketches and Caribbean Sketches fall under the heading of reportage and my portfolios are crammed with more of the same. 

Fifteen years ago, I gathered material on the nightclub scene in the North of England.  It was an assignment that tested my commitment for working from life to the limits!  To catch my subject, I had to set up my stall at two in the morning on the edge of a crowded dance floor, beneath strobe lights and with decibels beyond measure shaking me to bits.   Today’s sketch is from that series.



The creative potential of genius

It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child. Pablo Picasso

Research has shown that children are born with 98% the creative potential of genius.  At eight years, their potential is 32% and by the age of thirteen, it is down to 10%.  On average, an adult’s creative potential is 2%. 

While I resist teaching children how to draw and paint, I welcome opportunities to introduce them to art.  Over the years, I have occasionally shared my work with schoolchildren.  I painted today’s picture – with running commentary – before a class of primary school children in the UK seventeen years ago.

The painting was brought to my attention a couple of days ago when a teacher at the school tracked me down to Dominica via a roundabout series of e-mails, to which the painting was attached.  In a similar roundabout way, here I am back in the Caribbean remembering the winter’s day in England when I showed a class of ten year olds, what a West Indian Market is all about. 

Stretching a watercolour to its limits…

 As a watercolourist, I am most comfortable working to a paper size of 20” x 16”.  Anything less feels restrictive, anything larger can be daunting.  I might not always fill the sheet, but at least it gives me the freedom to manoeuvre.  Without that freedom, I find myself constricting an arm or leg to fit the page.

To work larger than 20” x 16” means pulling out more stops than there are stops.  The washes have to be thrown down at twice the speed and with an unnerving confidence.  Moreover, there is the fear of spoiling a very expensive 100% all rag of watercolour board.  When the page size is increased to 40” x 30”, I really have reached my limit. 

Recently a long admirer of my work requested the impossible.  Well, the impossible took a little time, but here it is.

Incidentally, I find that photographic reproductions enhance small paintings but diminish large ones.  This is true of all media but especially so with watercolour.  In the photograph, the eye takes in the reduced image at a glance and the interplay of suggestive brush strokes is lost.  On the large original, the eye wanders and selects passages as it may.  

For the technically minded, I used was a No14 pure sable brush and that is as big as a sable watercolour brush gets!



Practicing what I preach…

This week I have had to keep reminding myself to practice what I preach.  It is easy to say forget about defining detail but difficult to loosen up – especially when there is the temptation to flatter the face and figure of a new model. 

Fortunately, my models soon enter into the lyrical scheme of things and, more often than not, loosen up before I do. 

Here are a couple of sketches that came about towards the end of a first session, when freedom and synergy between artist and model makes refinement superfluous. 



Loose ends...

I made today’s sketches at the beginning and end of this afternoon’s modelling session. 

The first, as my model stood wondering whether she should stand, sit, kneel or recline.  The second, as she rocked back and loosened up after an uncomfortable pose that might have resulted in a good painting, had not the large sheet of expensive watercolour paper made me nervous. 

As is often the case, it was the loose ends of the session, jotted down on scraps of paper, rather than the intended finished painting on 100% all-rag, that made my day. 

A final fling…

During the 1980’s my studio was located on the shore of an idyllic cove in the British Virgin Islands.  In those days my 16 ton gaff cutter shared the pristine anchorage with no more than a handful of visiting yachts and a couple of inter-island cargo boats. 

All too soon marinas, hotels and condominiums invaded my paradise and I moved on.  However, before leaving I took out one of my largest sheets of watercolour paper and had a final fling.  But alas, even my farewell image was fated not to last.  In moving back and forth between the Caribbean and England the painting was damaged beyond recall. 

For years, those vibrant brush strokes have existed only in my memory.  And mine is a selective memory.  It can remember every painting I have ever painted over the last seventy years but cannot remember my telephone number.  Neither can it remember making a high definition scan of the original painting when selecting illustrations for my book Caribbean Sketches.  

The scan came to light when my high-tech daughter resurrected the hard disc from one of my defunct computers.  So here it is, my last vision of the Virgin Islands. 

Out of the corner of my eye...

 

 Whether it is the fleeting movement of the model, or the transient scene that I glimpse out of the corner of my eye, it is the unexpected that makes my day. 

Twenty years ago, while painting on the Caribbean island of St Lucia, I interrupted an overly laboured seascape to scribble down this sketch.  The fishermen landed and sold their catch in a matter of minutes and I had to catch my subject in the same moment of time. 

At the end of the day, I valued my sketch infinitely more than my “finished” painting.  It is something that in a hundred years time I’d like to be remembered by. 

Fortunately, this sketch of fishermen landing their catch is permanently lodged in my brother’s collection.  If you go back in the archives to an entry posted 8^th March 2011 and titled “Dear Theo” you’ll find out more about the similarities of our brotherly relationship and that of Vincent Van Gogh and his brother Theo.

The following letter brings our correspondence up to date.

Dear Ali,

I desperately need the following Winsor & Newton Artists’ Watercolours:  one 14ml tube of Raw Umber & Burnt Umber and one 5ml tube of Viridian & Prussian Green.  They may have discontinued Prussian Green, but the rest should be readily available.  Post them regular airmail. 

I am sending you one of my recent reclining nudes for your collection.  Keep faith, one day it may be worth a little something.

With a handshake in thought,

Rog

The devil is in the detail…

 

If push comes to shove, I can paint every leaf on a tree.  The job would be tedious for me and boring for you.  Far better, that I throw down a thunderous wash of Prussian Green and let your  mind do the rest.  In other words, it is better to suggest, rather than to define detail.

For the bold watercolourist, the best suggestive passages are often the happy accidents that are beyond the artist’s control.  Except, you might qualify that statement by saying: the better the artist, the more often the accidents happen in his or her favour.

By suggesting rather than defining detail, we allow the public to enter into the creative process and interpret a picture as they may.  As with poetry, they are free to read their own meaning between the lines.

I have illustrated this entry with a suggestive detail from one of my sketches of the female nude.  If I have been more specific, my painting might have had to be hidden from view for a hundred years - as was the fate of Gustave Courbet’s realist masterpiece* of the same subject. 

*The Origin of the World

Starting young...

Whereas my daughters Tania and Trina can claim they started their modelling career captive in their mother’s womb, my son Tristan had been in the world eight months before modelling for his first sculpture.  Now that he is ten, getting him to model is a different kettle of fish.  A portrait bust that I started of him a couple of years ago dragged out so long that the clay turned to dust long before completion.

My sculptures have themselves brought children into this world.  Behind the backs of the commissioners, I added a little boy to the maquette of my figures for Leeds City Centre.  When called to account for this addition to their budget, I shrugged it off as the inevitable consequence of the couple’s liaison.   

Although children have featured in many of my sculptures, I confess that they are not my preferred subject.  Mummy’s little darling can soon become a fidgety thorn in my side. 

Today’s picture shows Tristan pointing out to me the errors of my work while it was at the initial clay stage.   

In the mood…

Between the mid 1970’s and the mid 1990’s it seemed that I had sketched every beach, every coconut palm and every grain of sand throughout the length of the Caribbean.  I then declared enough is enough, and turned to the figure with a vengeance.  

Last week, for the first time in almost twenty years, I put aside my ebony flesh colours and dug deep for tubes of viridian and turquoise.   I slung my sketch bag over my shoulder and headed for the wild Atlantic Coastline of Dominica.  This seascape of Rosalie Bay is the result of my morning’s labour. 

Confronting the real thing…

A few weeks ago, I visited an exhibition that featured the work of regional students who had over the years, won top marks in the Caribbean Examination Council Visual Arts Examination.  Many of the works were portraits of meticulous detail.  A representative of the Council confirmed my suspicion that they had copied from photographs.  Furthermore, it seems that students are encouraged to work from photographic references, whether it is a portrait, landscape or market scene. 

As a staunch advocate for working from life, this approach to teaching the next generation of artists, beggars belief.  There have been occasions when I have sourced technical detail from photographs to ensure accuracy.  The Caribbean postage stamps that I designed in the 1980’s are a case in point.  But when it comes to the landscape, portrait or figure, I need to confront the real thing. 

I cannot walk around a photograph of my subject, neither can I touch, feel, sense or talk to it.  It can be troublesome working outdoors; you get burnt by the sun, drenched by the rain, bitten by ants and easels get bowled over in the wind.  In the studio, models cannot be expected to retain the freshness of a pose for longer than a couple of minutes. 

Nevertheless, the rewards of working from life are worth the effort.  Between the torn up false starts, the exploratory lines and the dashed down runs of colour, there, on paper, is a trace of the breath of life!   

The above watercolour, which I painted from life this afternoon, illustrates my point.  A photograph would have defined five fingers: my wash dribbled down to make three or four.  I leave the difference to your imagination. 

Standing Pregnant Nude

I will begin my collection by going back twenty years to when I painted Denise through the pregnancies of our daughters Tania and Trina. Their birth dates are less than a year apart, so what I missed on one pregnancy, I caught on the other. I exhibited the entire collection of twenty-five paintings and drawings in the UK in 1998. 

A visitor to the exhibition - a lady in her eighties - was pleased that I had captured the beauty that she had not dared to realise in the days of her youth.  She told me that in those days the nude figure – let alone the pregnant nude - was considered shameful.  Alas, my dear lady, for many it is still so!

This is one of those rare watercolours that I painted directly on the page without the guide lines of a preliminary drawing.  Remember, in watercolour mistakes cannot be corrected and a successful painting – one that has avoided a thousand pitfalls along the way - is a minor miracle.  But as G. K. Chesterton said, “The miraculous thing about miracles is that they do sometimes happen”. 

Incidentally, I had this painting in mind when I wrote my poem The Colour Black.  (Search the archives for entry dated August 11^th 2011)

Problems associated with growing younger…

When my father - who lived well into his nineties – made his infrequent visits to the village surgery, the doctor would greet him with the words, “Good God, are you still walking around”!

After an absence of well over a year, I’m sure you’ll be saying about me.  Let me explain.  This year I reach my biblical three score years and ten, and my long absence has all to do with the problems associated with growing younger. 

At this time of life, I have so many projects on the go that it is difficult to find time to sit down and write about them.  Which brings us back to Henry David Thoreau and his line:

My life has been the poem I would have writ,

But I could not both live and utter it.

It is not only projects that I have been grappling with.  Last week for the first time in living memory, we took a day’s holiday.  My family enjoyed it immensely but agreed that we wouldn’t want to repeat the experience too often.  

One of the projects has been tutoring the next generation of creative artists and, as an extension of that initiative, offering my studio life classes to visitors. 

Bythe way, as I grow younger, so does my wife.  Here's a sketch of her as she begins her twenty-second year of modelling.