Throwing down a thunderous wash

As a water colourist I pride myself on being able to thrown down a thunderous wash.  There’s nothing delicate and finicky about my way of painting.  Onlookers have learnt to stand back, as otherwise they get drenched in the process.

But two nights ago Mother Nature won me hands down.  Up to then, Dominica had experienced the longest drought in living memory.  But tropical storm Erika put an end that with a vengeance.  In six hours we experienced the rainfall that should have been spread over six months.  Every one of the island’s famed 365 rivers burst their banks.  Houses and bridges were swept away and hundreds of vehicles now lie buried beneath landslides.  Many roads remain impassable. To date, is the death toll is twenty. 

On a personal note, our biggest lose is the stretch of river that winds its way around our property.  With its gentle waterfalls, crystal clear bathing pools and lush tropical flora, it came as close to the Garden of Eden as you are likely to get this side of paradise.  Now, all has been swept away and we are left with a featureless boulder strewn watercourse.  I doubt if the river has seen such a change in the last two hundred years, let alone the last two thousand!

Today’s painting - made between rain squalls - shows the aftermath; a roaring torrent of mud.  The second painting shows the river as it was this time last year.

All in a day’s work

Somewhere in the letters to his brother Theo, Vincent Van Gogh writes about an exhaustive day’s labour of balancing one colour against another.  I know the feeling all too well. 

This morning I worked with Marcella.  It was her first modelling session and she did extremely well.  In the afternoon I worked with Annabelle.  I’ve lost count of Annabelle’s sessions.  I first painted her three years ago but each time she visits the studio she brings a fresh approach to my work and dares me to reach new heights. 

Below is my first painting of Marcella and my most recent of Annabelle.  

Once again, these are large water colours, measuring 24" x 15". 

Below is a detail at the approximately actual size.

Awestruck

Shani is a Dominican who has distinguished herself in the field of ballet.  She first visited my studio seven years ago but her time overseas has meant that in recent years we lost touch.  Now she is home again and a week ago she telephoned out of interest in my search for models.  The upshot was that yesterday afternoon Shani came to my studio for her first modelling session. 

I have always envied the good fortune of Degas and Rodin in having ballet dances as models.  Now, from the next world, they must be envying me!

To begin with I suggested a relaxing reclining pose.  But for Shani reclining is out of character and towards the end of the session she suggested stretching exercises.  From that moment I was awestruck and challenged beyond anything in my fifty years of painting the figure.  I am now mentally preparing myself for our next session. 

In the meantime, here is my first five-minute sketch of Shani stretching for all she’s worth. 

Proving my point

Continuing from yesterday’s entry, today’s modelling session proves my point.  The first two paintings didn’t meet my expectations; I had tried too hard and labored too long.  But then, just as I was about to wash my brushes and put away my paints, my model paused to look at some press clippings.  Once again, it was the last five minute sketch that saved the day. 

Today was Tashani’s second modelling session.   She is now totally relaxed.  When my model is relaxed, I relax! 

The naked human form belongs to no particular moment in history; it is eternal, and can be looked upon with joy by the people of all ages.  (Auguste Rodin)

From start to finish

I work from the model for no longer than one and a half hours.  By the end of that time I am exhausted and my model has begun to wilt.  Not that I expect my models to hold a rigid pose.  In fact I encourage my models not to pose in the accepted sense of the word. 

The first painting in a session is usually the most formal; the second, seldom meets my expectations, but the third, usually done minutes before the end of a session is sometimes the best.

Here are the three paintings from yesterday’s session with Annabelle.  I tried to do credit to Annabelle in the first painting, especially as her sisters had come along watch.  The second painting didn’t work as well.  Then, just as we about to call it a day, Annabelle twisted herself around to massage her foot.  I yelled, stop…don’t move…hold it there…just give me five more minutes!  

Incidentally, for water colour, these are large paintings: 24" x 16".  Thank you Annabelle for your part in the creative process.

Termites have taste

Today’s picture shows all that remains of my LP: Duke Ellington Meets Coleman Hawkins.  On my record shelf there are lesser recordings, but termites have taste!

A P Herbert’s poem about another troublesome creature succinctly sums up my feelings.

Greenfly, it’s difficult to see

Why God, who made the rose, made thee.

Long ago I saw Duke Ellington in concert but alas, never got back-stage to sketch him.  Instead, from the Halifax Symphony Orchestra, here is an oboe player that I sketched from the wings.

A Model Society

There are times when I despair in my endevour to pay homage to the profound beauty of the nude and fear that my paintings and sculptures are in vain.  But this week my spirits were uplifted when I discovered a community of artists, models and photographers that passionately share my objective.   

Just when I thought to be alone in my respect and gratitude to models, I find that they too give credit to the model’s contribution to the creative process.  I quote from the first issue of their magazine:

The images within the pages of Model Society would not be possible without art models.  Art models give our work its soul.  They lend their hearts, their minds, their imaginations and their bodies to our cause.  Without the art models’ courage to be vulnerable, to allow their body and soul to be seen, the Model Society community – along with hundreds of years of art history – would simply not exist. 

You can freely access the magazine on their website: modelsociety.com

Once again I thank my models for enabling my work and I thank Model Society for giving me the courage to continue.

Today’s painting is from the series I made last year of my poetic muse Jessica.

Patron of the Arts

Today’s painting is one a series of thirty-two large (20in x 30in) water colours commissioned by Richard DeVos in the 1990’s.  At the time he was one of the ten wealthiest Americans and the owner of Peter Island, in the British Virgin Islands.  Had I lived two hundred years ago the King of Spain may have been my patron.  In my time it was the manufacturer of toiletries!  

Be that as it may, I was given absolute freedom to paint whatever took my fancy, providing my fancy didn’t stray beyond the bounds of his property. The series contained some of my best Caribbean seascapes. 

The painting shows two people on a remote beach.  Or should I say the suggestion of two people, as shown in the detail.  

Faint heart never won fair lady

Or more to the point, a faint heart would never have found models for my series Daughters of the Caribbean Sun.

My search is not for professional models but real people between the age of eighteen and eighty.  I have found them carrying bananas down the steep hillsides of St Vincent, bathing in the rivers, selling mangoes by the roadside or passing me in the street.  I met Denise, my wife and model for twenty-three years, in the queue at Barclay’s Bank.  All I ask of my models – after I have plucked up courage to approach them - is that they do not disguise their natural appearance in preference to a foreign concept of beauty. 

How much easier it was in Paris in the 1880’s.  In those days there was a weekly model market and statistics reveal that a total of 671 models were professionally employed.  At least in Dominica I have the field to myself.

My search continues and I ask my regular readers on Dominica to pass the word. 

Today’s painting is my most recent of Naomi.  She is an inspired model who came to my studio and into modelling, quite by chance. 

On a cloud

Works on paper are often rejected by buyers because of their supposed impermanence. 

Having trusted my life’s work to every type of paper - from cheap news-print to the finest all-rag - I have come to the conclusion that it is one of the most permanent materials known to man.  My water colours have survived storms at sea and hurricanes on land.   After forty years they are still intact, which is more than can be said of my files on celluloid and the contents of my hard-drives.  For safe keeping, my daughter claims to have put the contents of my present hard-drive “on a cloud”.  Sixty years ago, the comedian Bob Newhart would have had a heyday with that one!

Nevertheless, when a painting finds a buyer, the only means by which I can keep a record is by way of the camera.  In my early days it was a 1930’s large format bellows, then a Kodak 35mm and now, a miniature digital Cannon. 

Yesterday, I came across a CD upon which, years ago, I had copied some rapidly deteriorating colour slides.  And lo and behold, upon it were some paintings that I had almost forgotten about. 

Sometimes, after a gap of twenty-odd years, I hardly recognize my own work.  For second it takes me by surprise and I am tempted to say, I wish I’d painted that!   Now it all comes back to me and I remember that I had only a few minutes between tropical downpours to capture this street scene on Grenada.  I trust the original is still intact upon someone’s wall.

With the benefit of hindsight

I have learnt not to labour over a painting once the original intention has been lost.  Better to put it aside and start afresh.  I have also learnt to resist destroying work that, at the time, I perceive to be a failure.   With the benefit of hindsight, a rejected painting is sometimes found to have merit. 

More often than not, the initial dissatisfaction is due to the impossibility of capturing the full force of nature.  That which I put down on paper appears to be but a shadow of the real thing.  It is only when viewed after time and distance have detached it from reality, that some vestige of reality is seen to remain.

From past portfolios I have found two unfinished paintings that illustrate my point.  The first was painted in Bermuda twenty-three years ago.  At the time my dissatisfaction was such that I used it as packing when sending other – and what I now consider to be inferior – paintings to an exhibition.  If you look closely, you will see that I have scribbled across it the words, packing: please destroy.  Luckily, no one did!

The second painting was made on a brief visit to the South of France.  I remember feeling at the time that I was not capturing the colour and vibrancy of the scene before me.  Now, with the benefit of fifteen years of hindsight, I regret that I cast it aside unfinished.  But perhaps it says more in its unfinished state than if I had finished it.

The Moon and Sixpence

My self-exposed exile from the land of my birth began with a voyage through the French canals in 1969 and cumulated in 1974 when, with my wife and small daughter, we sailed a 30ft ketch from England to the Caribbean. 

Somerset Maugham, in his novel The Moon and Sixpence, expresses the reason for this estrangement as follows:

…Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels he belongs. Here is the home he sought, and he will settle amid scenes that he has never seen before, among men he has never known, as if they were familiar to him from his birth…

But even before setting foot in the Caribbean, I was lured to the region by the image of a seated nude by the sculptor Enzo Plazzotta titled The Jamaican Girl.  Thus, my love for the Caribbean and my attraction to the beauty of the nude really began at an exhibition of the sculptor’s work at the 1971 Kings Lynn Arts Festival.

Following on from my last entry, today’s painting is again of my wife Norma.  It dates from 1975 and represents my very first attempt at painting the nude.

A soul without a stain…

A few days ago, as I delved through past portfolios of my work, I found a portrait that I painted forty years ago.  It is of my faithful and courageous first wife Norma (1946 – 1980).  Although my painting shows her in pensive mood, she is remembered best for her laughter.

Andrew Lang’s poem Lost Love offers consolation for a life and love that is lost all too soon.

Who wins his love shall lose her,

Who loses her shall gain,

For still the spirit woos her,

A soul without a stain;

And memory pursues her

With longings not in vain.

He loses her who gains her,

Who watches day by day

The dust of time that stains her,

The griefs that leave her gray –

The flesh that yet enchains her

Whose grace hath passed away.

Oh, happier he who gains not

The love some seems to gain:

The joy that custom stains not

Shall still with him remain;

The loveliness that wanes not,

The love that ne’re can wane.

In dreams she grows not older

The land of dreams among;

Though all the world wax colder,

Though all the songs be sung,

In dreams doth he behold her

            Still fair and kind and young.

A poem and the view from my bathroom window

The deadline for this year’s Literary Festival poetry competition is fast approaching.  The theme is the environment: a repetitive subject here on the Nature Island of the Caribbean. 

My dear departed friend, Virgin Island poet Sheila Hyndman, at the tender age of 16, wrote the definitive lament to the Caribbean environment in her poem To Virgin Gorda.  

                They will come

                With tools and machines

                They will bring to light your secret places

                They will demand your mysteries

                They will destroy,

                Build up.

                They will dilute you of your treasures

                And rob you of your chastity.

                They will adorn you like ancient Jezebel.

For poetic inspiration I take myself down to my bathing pool at the river.  Today’s picture is the view that greets me each afternoon as I lay relaxing in the crystal clear waters.  My Dominican poetic muse Jessica Bellevue has christened it, The Fountain of Youth.   

The sketch is one that I made of her at the bathing pool last year, not composing verse but doing her week’s washing.

About these gates!

For four days I have been working around the clock, not as a painter or sculptor, but as an engineer.  Two badly damaged helical gears have brought the Dominica Brewery to a stand-still.  To make replacements comes as close to rocket science as your ever likely to get on a small Caribbean island.  The machine that I use to cut replacement gears is as old as I am and the micrometer show in the picture belonged to my grandfather. 

When my day comes to enter the next world, I suspect that the Master of all innovations will take me aside and say: Rog, About these gates…before going further, take a look at them and see if you can fix the hinges!

Salon des Refusés

For ten days my “Nude Seated in a Cane Chair” has been out on the streets a begging.  For a good cause she was prepared to sell herself for a song.  But alas, she now hangs in Dominica’s equivalent of the Salon des Refusés

Perhaps she would have found a client had her breasts not suckled five children.  Perhaps she would have been more sexually alluring if I had shown her temptingly veiled.  Perhaps I should have kept her indoors and put the chair out alone.  Perhaps I’ll never learn!

Today’s sketch was made forty years ago.  Perhaps it comes nearer to convention's dull restraints.

In one way or another

Over the last fifty years my paintings have help others, in one way or another. 

They have been auctioned to raise funds for sending children from the Caribbean overseas for surgery. They have helped to rehabilitate prisoners.  They have rescued those suffering from depression.  They have given fellow dyslexics confidence to develop their own creative talents.  My on-line diary pages have introduced thousands of school children to painting and sculpture.  They have given my models pride and confidence in their own identity.  They have calmed those who are disturbed and disturbed those who are calm.

During the coming week the painting that illustrates today’s diary page is being auctioned to raise funds for the Dominica Cancer Society.  To find out more go to: www.becausewecaredominica.com

Better never than late

I paint in water colour directly from the live model - and that’s about as demanding as it can get.  I can only maintain the intense high that is needed for a little over one hour.  However, it takes me an hour beforehand to mentally brace myself for the ordeal that lies ahead.  And let me tell you, balancing one wet colour against another is an ordeal.

At the end of the preparatory one hour, I’m all keyed up and ready to go.  That is assuming my model has arrived on time! 

Being on time is important.  When my studio was in the England, the prompt arrival of my models was as good as a time check.  One of my UK models applied to join the armed forces and put my name down as a referee.  When the form arrived from the recruiting office I was at a loss as to how an artist’s model could qualify.  Then I had a brainwave and wrote: “If battle commences at 12.00 hours you can be assured she’ll be there on time!”

Alas, Dominicans are not the world’s best time keepers and many sessions end before they begin.  To save my frustration I tell my models, it’s better never than late.

Today’s abortive modelling session gave me time to complete repairs to a 75 year old mantle clock.  The clock was brought to my workshop some weeks ago.  Many parts were either missing or damaged and I almost gave it up as a bad job.  But clock-making is in my family’s blood and I doubt if my grandfather Enoch would have forgiven me if I had thrown in the towel.  Thanks to his spiritual guidance from the next world, aided and abetted by my father Albert alongside him, the clock is now ticking and chiming to perfection.

Incidentally, for the benefit of any clockmakers who might read this entry, I made a replacement pendulum-suspension-spring out of a Wilkinson Sword Edge razor blade.  I bet that’s never been done before!

Today’s picture shows the clock mechanism before work commenced.

Now you see it, now you don’t

Today’s painting of Naomi continues the theme of the suggested, rather than the defined detail.  The left hand that rests on the model’s waist doesn’t leave much to the imagination.  But the right hand is yours to interpret as you may!

The American painter and writer, Charles Movalli has this to say about those of us he terms as “painterly painters”.

The painterly painter uses the viewer's experience to give life to the work. Instead of being a passive receiver of information, the viewer becomes a participant.

Painterly painters believe that an abbreviated style is best suited to capturing elusive effects. But although they consciously strive to develop a rapid execution, their detractors often criticize this characteristic, dismissing their work as little more than sketches. 

The painterly painters labor under a disadvantage, since their idea of finish is not that of the general public.

Nothing to lose

During the last three weeks and with the help of three models, I have been desperately trying to re-invent my passion as a painter and to break new ground. 

After a lifetime of painting, fertile new ground isn’t easy to find.  I keep telling myself to be more daring, to take more chances, to break down more barriers.  After all, I’ve nothing to lose.

Yesterday, with the help of my model Naomi and working on my largest sheet of water color paper, I took courage and threw down washes regardless.  

Today’s picture shows that, at last, I am getting there!

The devil is in the detail

In my style of painting, the devil is in the suggested detail. 

Rodin in later life said that he no longer had to count fingers to define a hand. Likewise, I no longer have to count toes to define a foot.  Today’s pictures illustrate the point.  The detail is from the foot on the left of today’s painting.  The painted toe nail gave me the excuse for a splash of cadmium red.  Your imagination can paint in the remaining toes.

On the subject of colour, I have used the last of my last tube of sepia and without it I’m at a loss when it comes to capturing the subtle tones of “the colour black”.  Last year, with my model Jessica being very light skinned, I never noticed its absence.  But now my models are of darker hue.

In the Caribbean art shops are few and far between and I can’t just pop into town and buy a couple of tubes.  Here’s a deal: if anyone in the UK or the States can send me down a couple of tubes, in return I’ll send a little of it back to you in the form of a painting.  The picture below gives the details: Winsor & Newton Artists’ Water Colour “Sepia”, either two 5ml tubes or one 14ml tube.  If you can help please e-mail me at: sculptor@cwdom.dm

Embryo

 

For nine months the embryo of the next spate of my work as a painter and sculptor has been forming in my mind.  Like has been said of the poet: I work hardest when I appear to be doing nothing at all. Now for the agony of birth! 

Today’s sketches are from the first session with a new face and figure.

I always get puzzles for Christmas

When I was little, I always got puzzles for Christmas.  But those puzzles always had a picture on the box that gave a clue as to which piece went where.  Now, seventy-two years later, my puzzles don’t come in boxes and they are harder to fathom.  I got three this Christmas.

The first puzzle is connected with my work as an engineer.  It arrived early and took a couple of months to resolve.  Number one picture is of a factory flow diagram as I found it and number two is my logical solution.

The second puzzle relates to the Burnett family’s affliction to deafness.  My mother’s form of deafness actually added a new term to the medical dictionary.  It is known as “Gladys Deafness”.  In other words: only hearing that you want to hear.  Mine is more specifically related to cell phones.  On Christmas Eve I got a call from Jessica that sounded like: Rog come help catch my pig, it’s in d road!  As I didn’t know Jessica had a pig, I was sure I’d miss-heard.  After countless requests to “say it again” I gave up, only to find – via a follow-on text message - that she does have a pig and it was in the road!

The third puzzle was when I asked Denise what she would like for Christmas.  Her request was for what she claimed I had never given her in twenty-three years of marriage!  This one had me really stumped and I had to ask her to spell it out.  Answer: A Bed-Side Table. 

I don’t have a picture of the pig, but here’s the bed-side table that I made from an assortment of Dominica hardwoods.

The practical vs the poetic

As much as I enjoy waxing lyrical on these diary pages, I invariably find that it is practical instruction that many readers are after.

To make amends, here are some pictures of work in progress on a bas relief that will serve as a sign for my studio and gallery.  A few years ago I used the same figure for a small relief dedicated to the memory of the Virgin Island poet Sheila Hyndman Wheatley.  This time the relief is to a larger scale: 3ft x 5ft 6ins. 

I am taking a wax impression from the clay and strengthening the wax with a plaster backing.  The relief will be cast in three sections.  

Thirty-five years ago

Thirty-five years ago, on the shore of an idyllic cove in the British Virgin Islands, I opened shop in the Caribbean with the Marquee Studio and Gallery.  My boat, along with half a dozen sailing yachts, swung at anchor a few yards off the sandy beach.  The water in the cove was crystal clear.  Seldom did a day pass without the sale of a painting or a copy of my book Virgin Island Sketches.

Today the anchorage is crowded with charter boats and the shore jam-packed with marinas, restaurants and hotels.

Ten years ago, after a period in the UK, I relocated my studio and gallery to the island of Dominica.  Scenically, it is paradise re-found.  On the down side, a month can go by without making a single sale. But then again, I no longer paint the expected!

Today’s pictures show the Marquee Studio and Gallery and my present Antrim Valley Studio and Gallery.

Albert and Enoch

Albert and Enoch, my father and grandfather, would have if field day if they were with me now.  They were both inventive engineers and the work I am doing would have been right up their street. 

One of my earliest memories is of my grandfather’s attic workshop.  Indeed, some of the tools in my own workshop began life on his workbench.  Like me, he was the town’s factotum: when not repairing clocks he cleaned windows.  One of his war medals is inscribed: For Work at the Forge.

At the age of twelve I was helping my father build scale models of factory layouts that he devised the Mackintosh toffee and chocolate works.  If there was a way of improving a production line Albert was intent on finding it - and a scale model was his way of getting the idea across to managers and company directors.

Following in his footsteps, I am currently commissioned to re-plan the layout and production lines of Dominica’s leading food and drink manufacturer.  I have made similar studies for processing the country’s agricultural products. 

On these projects Albert and Enoch would have been in their element.  I often sense that they are looking over my shoulder and guiding me to add a conveyor belt or devise a mechanical devise to speed up production. 

Today’s picture shows an interactive scale model that I made a couple of years ago to show how the layout of Dominica’s main agricultural processing plant could be improved.  

Figaro here, Figaro there, Figaro Up, Figaro down…

Like the Barber of Seville, I am Dominica’s factotum and these days I barely have time for painting and sculpture. 

On the engineering side of things I have recently been called to the rescue of all three of the island’s utility services: electricity, water and telephone.  If a bus engine blows a gasket, the cylinder head finds its way to my workshop for re-surfacing.  Bakery dough mixers are another regular item on my workbench.

A more unusual request came my way over the telephone this afternoon when a young lady asked if I could give her a hot bath!  On delving deeper into this tempting inquiry I found that it related to Jessica’s most recent business venture:  Home Visit Therapeutic Massage.  When not modelling, my studio assistant is quick to find an alternative means of livelihood.

Last Sunday I helped Jessica set up her stall at a Health Fair for the Aged.  I confess that I was beginning to feel my seventy-one years until the banner over an adjoining stall gave me renewed hope.  It read: Practice Safe Sex, Use a Condom.     

The picture shows Jessica doing good business.   Perhaps she’s convinced her clientele that therapeutic massage improves one’s sex life regardless of age!

Where is the life that late I led?

Cole Porter’s lyrics from Kiss Me Kate could well be adapted to lament the models that I have known. 

We can keep Carolina and Alice as is, but in place of Mono, Lina, Lucretia, Rebecca, Fedora, Venetia and lovely Lisa we can add:

Hemo, Pearl, Pearline, Elizabeth, Samantha, Geneen from the distant past and more recently Annabelle, Dionne and Jessica.  And not least, past and present, my wife Denise.

Today’s pictures date from 1989 and are of the twin sisters Pearl and Pearline, so young and gay.  Where are you now - still auditioning as extras for the movies?