Sexy Sam

When Samantha modelled for her sculpture twenty years ago she was a college student and her e-mail address was "sexy sam". From more recent correspondence I learn that she has climbed to the top of her chosen profession, got married and is expecting her first child. 

Actually Samantha didn't come to my studio with the view of being a model but to chaperone a friend that did. It is not the first time that I have chosen the chaperone rather than the applicant. Hence, the end of  beautiful friendships.

Samantha re-entered my life today as I was looking through images to illustrate my forthcoming book "Notes on the Nude". Samantha's sculpture qualifies as it includes, as she put it in her student days, her boobs.

In the days when peasants were pheasants and plaques were plagues

Dyslexia is not the best ability when it comes to proof reading. It took four reprints of my book Virgin Island Sketches to purge my spelling mistakes. And the more recent device of word prompting doesn't help. I sign off my personal emails with "Rog" only to find that behind my back it had been converted to "Dog". The cheek of it!

As you might guess, I'm doing the final proof of my forthcoming book "Voyage Into Ireland". The illustrations are more in my line and today's picture is a sketch I made fifty years ago of one of the Barrow Navigation lock keepers.

Reading between the lines

For my book "Voyage into Ireland" the gestation period from conception to impending birth has been fifty years. By comparison my book "Notes on the Nude will be with you in next to no time. The embryo showed the first signs of life two years ago and it has been growing ever since.

The collection of notes and images will give an insight to my lifetime's experience of working from the nude figure. As with my watercolours, the text will suggest rather than define. I will put down 75% and then leave you to read between the lines.

Through these diary pages I will keep you updated on work in progress.

In a matter of seconds

It takes only a matter of seconds for my model to twist from one position to the next. My task is to get that elusive moment down on paper - in a matter of seconds.

Maybe you can't make head nor tail of the end result. But I can, and equally important, my models understand what I am attempting to portray. We hope that one day the rest of the world will cotton on.

A Voyage into Ireland

Fifty years have passed since making the voyage that is the subject of this book. The manuscript that began as an up to the minute guide is now an historical document. Like the canals, it is a miracle that it has survived. 

When my original publisher to put the book on hold due to financial restraints in the early 1970’s, the typed manuscript took off on an amazing voyage of its own. It twice crossed the Atlantic aboard small sailing boats, survived storms at sea and two major hurricanes on land. For years it languished on a shelf in my studio, all but forgotten about.   

Between making the voyage and retrieving the manuscript, there is a time lapse of half a century. During those intervening years the inland waterways of Ireland developed beyond belief. What was then abandoned is now restored and the navigations upon which we once sailed in solitude are now popular cruising grounds. I have resisted updating the text in memory of those earlier idyllic times.

What a difference a year makes

The two pictures are a year apart. The first was taken a few days after Hurricane Maria and the second was taken this afternoon.

Nature has made an amazing comeback. Flora that I thought was lost forever is blossoming again. Our bananas, oranges and limes are again there for the picking. Even the river has reverted back to its old course.

How I wish that building back structures could go at the same pace. In my case it's not so much a case of Kipling's "building them up again with worn-out tools". The tools are okay, it's more a case of worn out me.

For weeks my days have been spent putting things back together again. And there's a lot more to do before I can get back to painting.

I spoke too soon

Just as I started picking up the pieces from last year's hurricane, Tropical Storm Isaac headed directly towards Dominica. This time around it was torrential rain rather than hurricane force winds. Nevertheless, outdoor work is on hold.

As sitting around doing nothing would drive me insane, I've spent my time making a shirt. Over the years I have frequently been reduced to making my own shirts and shorts. The reason being that here in the tropics it's impossible to find clothing suited to a hot climate. Shirts are in polyester and shorts come way down below the knees. My shirts are in light weight cotton and my shorts are even lighter and shorter.

Today's picture picture shows Marcella's torso doubling as a tailor's dummy. I'm sure that when she finds out she'll claim the shirt as her own!

Incidentally, some years ago I launched my own fashion label for the tropics and named it, "Bare Minimum".

My cure for vacant and pensive moods

It is almost a year ago since Hurricane Maria wracked havoc to my island of Dominica. Luckily, my main studio and workshops survived but our gardens and the gazebo that I used for life classes did not fare as well. 

After the hurricane I was on a creative high and up until now my time has been spent painting and sculpting rather than repairing the damage. But for the time being I have exhausted my creative muse and vacant and pensive moods have taken hold. Fortunately, for this malaise I have a cure: that is to throw myself into hard physical work. Hence, I am now picking up and putting back together the pieces that Maria blew down.

The curious thing is, when my muscles ache my hands are blistered, my muse shyly begins to favour me again.

Recognizing my own limitations

V. S. Naipaul, to my mind the greatest and most perceptive Caribbean writer of the 20th century, died last month. In memory, I am re-reading (I've lost count of the number of times) his masterpiece, "The Enigma of Arrival".

In that book he refers to a writer friend's "admiration of certain writers and artists (and) his wish to do again, but for himself, what they had done.."

How true of myself! In a hundred year's time I doubt that anyone will bother about my work as a sculptor, regardless of my admiration of Rodin, although it is as a sculptor that, during my lifetime, I have received some degree of recognition. However, there is a chance that someone will re-discover my watercolours, especially those in my series "Daughters of the Caribbean Sun".

Today's painting was hurriedly chosen at random from hundreds of paintings in that series.

Different perspectives

Actual studio visits, as against virtual visits to these pages, are few and far between. But last week I had two.

The first was a government sponsored group of "tourism stake holders". My studio is seen as a "niche market tourism product". The stake holders left me feeling unsure that my work had been understood. Anyone seeking sexual content in my work, as against the beauty of the nude, would be be better off tuning into the Disney Channel.

I was initially wary of my second visitor because knew his interest, for very legitimate reasons, was the sexual. But it was my method of depicting the nude that drew his attention, not breasts or pudenda. I felt rewarded and comfortable.

Today's sketch dates from almost twenty years ago. If I had wanted my model to appear sexy I would have penciled in a bikini. 

My twice daily ritual

Each morning, and again before evening, I go down to the river to bathe. 

In the thirteen years that we've lived here the river and the path that meanders down to it, has changed beyond recognition. Before Tropical Storm Erica there was a bathing pool large enough and deep enough to swim in. Three subsequent smaller pools were swept away by Hurricane Maria. But climate change has been around since before the dinosaurs and geologists tell me that the entire valley was once a large lake.

The path is now an obstacle course with a climb over huge fallen trees and a ladder to negotiate a section that has eroded away. But the challenge of getting there is rewarded by ladling cool river water over my naked body.

The first picture shows the river in earlier times with a life-class in progress. If you look closely you can just make out the model perched like a mermaid on one of the boulders. The second picture was taken today and shows the river cascading down to my present pool.

Off days

At last, here is the plaster cast of my latest sculpture. The molding was one problem after another and after week's of effort I almost gave up on the job. 

Working on a remote Caribbean island means that I have no means  of obtaining fresh plaster. I have to recycle outdated stock by regrinding and reheating to a high temperature. But beyond that, my biggest mistake was using questionable washing up liquid as a mold release agent. It appears to have prevented the cast from fully hardening. The surface is powdery and I have lost a lot of detail.

But it is from mistakes that I occasionally make a break through. To bind the powdery surface of the cast I brushed on a liberal coating of shellac. As I could not obtain clear shellac I used a version that carpenters use for sealing knots. And low and behold, the effect was a patina that I've spent thirty years searching for!

The loss of detail may also be seen as a positive. Many of Rodin's plaster casts have a similar suggestive appearance. Maybe his mold makers also had an occasional off day. But they had good old-fashioned soft soap rather than today's washing up liquid.

Capturing beauty

It has happened to me so many times. I see a beautiful face and I ask the recipient to model. But alas, by the time she reaches my studio her natural charms have been modified to a foreign concept of beauty: straightened hair, lightened skin and heavy makeup. Even worse, one young lady who was high on my list of possibilities has recently taken to wearing a wig! 

Afro-Caribbeans appear to have developed a hatred for their own natural hair. The machismo male shaves it all off and the daughters of the Caribbean sun disguise it in anyway they can.

In contrast, the nude figure, for the most part, remains true to itself. Hence my preference.

Depicting love

The poet Jon Stallworthy in his introduction to an anthology of love poems, writes as follows:

“…Given the high premium that artists set upon intensity, and given the relationship between creativity and sexual energy, the artist is likely to have more intense moments and more emotion to recollect than most of his fellow men. An artist, moreover, is a maker; one who assembles existing materials to give substance and a name to something that did not exist before, or something that existed unperceived…at moments in the act of making…he experiences an intensity of awareness and exaltation comparable to those experienced in making love…”

He goes on to say that an aging artist will recall the beloved of his youth and bring her to life again.

Jon Stallwothy's perception of rekindling love in old age comes close to a similar quote that I once read, but cannot remember where. In essence it was saying that the artist in old age has an insight, and hence, a valuable contribution, that younger fellows lack. Maybe love, like youth, is wasted on the young.

Today's picture comes close to the above theme. It is a detail of a “two in one” torso that I am currently working on. Making my own paper opens up a new world of creative possibilities. In this case my hand made cotton paper has been formed into the contours of my models torso. The form creates the sculpture and to that I add my watercolour washes.

In pursuit of beauty

Seventy six years ago today I was born amidst the destruction of an air raid. Perhaps, subconsciously, that is why I have spent my life in pursuit of creativity and beauty.

My vision of beauty has taken many forms and my search has taken me from my native West Riding of Yorkshire to the palm-fringed beaches of my adopted Caribbean. For the last thirty years my figurative  paintings and sculptures have collectively fallen under the title "Daughters of the Caribbean Sun".

My life continues to be a work in progress. Today's picture shows the colour and texture of my most recent batch of handmade paper. It could be said that the pattern has something of the cosmos about it. A secondary meaning of the word cosmos is, "the sum total of experience". It is the sum total of seventy six years of experience that I invest in my work, no matter what form it may take - and continue to take.

Think fast!

The picture shows my hand testing the consistency of a bowl of plaster in readiness for pouring into the mold of my most recent sculpture. Because plaster sets within minutes I sometimes add a few grains (and I mean a few) of sodium citrate. This delays the setting time and allows the plaster to find its way into all the nooks and crannies. But if you over do the amount the plaster will take for ever to set. This once happened when I was making a life cast of a model's torso.

It takes a committed model to submit herself to a life cast. Plaster heats up when it sets rapidly. For the model's comfort, I add a tiny amount of sodium citrate to the mix so that it becomes no more than pleasantly warm. But on that one occasion I added too much and after ten minutes the plaster was showing no sign of setting.

Think fast! Here I am with a naked model covered in wet plaster from her neck to her thighs. I can't leave her like that. If she stands up the plaster will run down the rest of her and we'll be in a worse state than ever. I had no option but to scoop it off by the handful and then sponge her down.

And you know what...the brave girl volunteered to try again the next day!

Try as I may

Through my paintings I try to get to somewhere where no one has ever been before. For the last twenty-five years my spontanious water colours have focused on the female nude and, thanks to my adopted home land, my models are Afro-Caribbean. But try as I may to explore new ground and avoid being repetitive I sometimes despair. This is all the more frustrating when my models have given their body and soul to progress my work.

Over the last few weeks I have taken a break from my regular subject matter and made an attempt to revert back to landscapes, townscapes and still-life from fifty years ago. It has been a dismal failure. Deep down inside I know that I cannot desert the ultimate challenge of the live model.

Thirty years ago my dear friend, the Virgin Island poet Sheila Hyndman (1958 – 1991), inspired me to explore the sensuous. In recent days I have discovered a writer in a far off land who is beautifully saying in words what I am trying to portray in paint.

But more about this later. In the meantime today's picture is a detail from a painting from two years ago.

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A Flair for Art

If it wasn't for Miss Atack, my primary school teacher, and Miss Shepard, my secondary school headmistress, I would not be writing this blog today. Before the word was invented, they both recognized dyslexia. Up to the age of five I could not talk - my brother says I've made up for it since! 

If my music teachers had had a passion for jazz, I might have also got top marks in that subject. But alas, there's not much improvisation you can do around "Who is Sylvia". Likewise with history. I have no interest in the reign of Kings and Queens but tale of everyday things enthralls me.

I submit my report card from sixty-six years ago to offer hope to other creative minds.

A passionate love affair

From my earliest days I have always painted with a passion. My subjects have varied but my way of working with watercolour has not. I swing a big brush and leave space for accidents to happen.

A few days ago I came across a box of colour transparencies from twenty-five years ago. In those days my passion was for life as it was then lived in the Caribbean. I do not have the originals as they all sold straight from my sketch book. I had even forgotten this photographic record of a few paintings from that period. Although the quality of the celluloid image has deteriorated, I still recall these scenes from the Virgin Islands that had set my heart on fire.

Beneath the veil

To keep the clay moist, in recent weeks my latest sculpture has been hidden beneath a dampened veil. I must now take courage and make a plaster cast from the clay. If anything goes wrong, all is lost.

Today's pictures reveal the beauty that lies beneath the veil. In past centuries, sculptors were masters at modelling the seductive draped figure. The first picture shows how even my wet clay rag subtly highlights the breasts. It is the sculptural equivalent of today's wet tee shirt.

My model Verlena deserves credit for this is her third sculpture in a row.

Winds of change

The 1st of June marked the start of this year's hurricane season. Last year Dominica, along with islands to the north of us, suffered the worst hurricane in the region's history. We are still reeling from the effect and the island is in no fit state to suffer another blow.

But the winds of change I refer to concern the future direction of my work. My studio, workshops and contents miraculously survived hurricane Maria. Perhaps this portends that I ain't finished yet!

Today's painting of washing hung out on a windy day in the north of England dates from twenty-five years ago.

Work in progress

While the current work is in progress I will do my best to keep the posts flowing - not easy after a hard day's work. From today's pictures you can see that I have added the arms and head: hands and feet will follow.

I have found it best, when the head is anything but upright - in this case it is turned to the left and tilted forward - to model the head separately and then attach it to the figure. I have placed a temporary prop behind the figure to keep the torso at the correct angle.

I am fighting against the temptation to overly define. 

Edouard Lanteri's book "Modelling and Sculpting the Human Figure", originally published in 1902 and now available in paperback by Dover Publications, is the indispensably portrait and figurative sculptor's bible. My copy has fallen apart at the seams.

While I remember

I was too tired yesterday to begin work on the torso but today, while the image of my live model was fresh in my mind, I worked my way up to the shoulders. By the time Verlena returns for her next modelling session I will have roughly defined the complete figure...arms, hands, head and all.

While my brain has difficulty remembering my own telephone numbers (I always fail those bank security checks) it has no difficulty in remembering the intricacies of the human form.

From the biblical clay

Although my last post was titled "Resisting Temptation" the perfection of Verlena's pose has lured me from working quarter life-size to working half life-size. 

We have spent all morning taking scores of measurements that will enable me to replicate the twist and inclination of the torso. The incredible complexity of the human form becomes all the more apparent when trying to recreate it from the biblical clay. 

As today's picture shows, from the very beginning the clay takes on a pulsating sensuous life of its own.

Resisting temptation

The perfection Verlena's pose for my next sculpture tempts me to work life-size. But I am trying hard to resist the temptation and keep to my recent intent of working on a series of quarter size figures.

Speed and spontaneity are the advantages of keeping it small. Also, the limited time that my model has available and the economics of materials. On a small island in the Caribbean everything has to be shipped in from overseas. Clay can be recycled, but my stock of casting plaster is running low.

The pose is crucial, not only for 360 degree interest, but for how well it lends itself to casting. Michelangelo claimed that the figure should be compact enough so that it could roll down a hill without breaking. In this pose, only the right arm (hidden from view in the above sketch) is out on a limb.

Once the pose has been decided upon, and before the model moves an inch, I chalk around her form so that she has reference marks to return to.  These are shown in the picture below.

Sculptural key-hole surgery

Many of the art students throughout the world that follow my blog, do so in a thirst for hard to find information on traditional working methods and materials.

To fulfill that need today's post covers taking the waste mould from the clay sketch that I featured a couple of weeks ago under the title, “Sculptural Spontaneity”. As the figure is quarter life size, I have risked making the mould in one piece. Inevitably this involved some key-hole surgery when it came to removing the clay from the center section. The pictures tell the story.

Verlena, who modeled for the piece, moved heaven and earth to get here to watch the process and to model for my next sculpture. She then moved heaven and earth twice over to get home again…walking all the way. Now that's dedication!

Intermission

My memories of the early days of BBC television, relate not so much the programs but the "short intermissions" due to technical failure. These took the form of pictures and music; my favourite being a pot being thrown on a potter's wheel. http://youtu.be/jUzGF401vLc

My intermission is more down to earth and likely to be long, rather than short. The main road that passes my studio and links the island east to west, is closed for major repairs. Unless I buy my model a donkey, there is no way she can reach me. Hence, painting and sculpture is on hold.

My intermission painting dates from the 1980's and is one of hundreds of sketches that I made on the beach in the Virgin Islands. My subject: a girl picking up sea shells.

Sculptural spontaneity

As a sculptor, I work as a modeller rather than a carver. I need to capture the mood of the moment, rather than calculated exactness. The clay sketch is the sculptural equivalent of a watercolour thrown down at the speed of light.

Today's pictures follow on from my last post and translate three dimensionally what I have in mind. 

An off guarded moment

I consider my recent standing figure as one of my most successful sculptures. It will be a hard act to follow. Having succeeded in depicting the figure in its most natural pose, I am now about to take on the challenge of the off guarded moment. 

Last week's session ended with Verlena stretching in sweet relief. Could this be the off guarded moment that I'd been waiting for? Would it work as a piece of sculpture... hair cascading in all directions, the curve of the spine, the glimpse of the face and breasts, the sole of her foot, the arms outstretched. But for each positive I can foresee a negative and my initial enthusiasm may be misplaced. 

Will-o'-the-wisp

Two days ago we past a major milestone in the recovery from Hurricane Maria. After seven months of candles, flashlights and warm beer, we now have electricity. Let's hope that it's not a will-o'-the-wisp.

But the elusiveness of today's paintings, done rapidly one after the other, can fit that definition. In the same way a child will boast, "look no hands" when showing off riding a bicycle; my boast is, "look no lines". My washes have been given the freedom to find their own way and to run as they choose.

I only dare work with this degree of freedom when I have a model that understands what I am reaching for and accepts that it's a hit and miss affair. Verlena is one such dedicated model. Incidentally, she was brave enough to attempt that upside down pose that I mentioned a few posts ago, but after twice toppling over we both came down to earth!

The most expensive mode of making a living

"Sculpture, I should say, is about the most expensive mode of making a living. I cannot think of any other occupation into which you have to put in so much. When you come to reckon your out-of-pocket expenses against your remuneration, the balance is invariably on the wrong side...It takes some courage to remain a sculptor." (Jacob Epstein 1880-1959)

I can vouch for that. When, after 18 months of hard labour, I had completed my group of four life-size figures in bronze for the City of Leeds, the Income Tax Inspector was on my tail. After a year of producing every receipt and all my bank balances, it was found that I was at fault: I had paid too much tax, not too little!

For the last 15 years I have worked in obscurity on a small island in the Caribbean. In that period I have produced, both as a painter and a sculptor, what I believe to be by far my best work, hundreds of paintings and scores of sculptures. As the artist James Abbott Whistler said of his own best paintings: they have successfully resisted the danger of being sold! No doubt their time will come but it may well be after my time.

Today's picture is of a half life-size reclining figure I made over a year ago. It was followed by a life-size reclining figure. Annabelle modelled for both, in between working double shifts at a call center. Hence, sleeping poses!

I'm lost for words

Today's post follows on from my diary entries dated February 13th/21st and March 2nd. The first picture shows the figure emerging from the waste mold followed by pictures of the finished sculpture.

I have held back on revealing the figure in its final form because my model has been away and I wanted her to be the first to see it. 

Her reaction: Wow...it looks incredible...I'm lost for words! Thank you Verlena for your part in the creative process.

Upside down

For the sculptor the standing nude figure poses a problem. In modelling and casting the spindly legs have to support the rest of the body. You can get around it by swathing the legs with drapery, as in the Venus de Milo, or by adding the stump of a tree, as in Michelangelo's David.

Today's picture is from a press cutting that I saved many years ago with this problem in mind. Turn the figure upside down and therein lies the solution. 

Perhaps it is time for me to try it out in practice.

Preferring the rough to the smooth

Fifteen years ago, when my studio was in the North of England and I had the luxury of the Times newspaper, mention was made of a sculpture to commemorate the painter James Whistler.

The sculptor Nicholas Dimbleby had been chosen to produce the memorial and I clipped out the picture of his maquette thinking, I wish I'd have made that! The sculptor's intention was to make the whole piece very impressionistic and loosely modelled, as if Whistler himself had made his own self-portrait in clay. 

In the maquette this he certainly achieved. But a few days ago I searched the Internet for a picture of the finished sculpture. Alas, as Rodin himself found - and I can equally vouch for - the spontaneity of the maquette can seldom be carried through to the finished piece.

While we are on the subject of taking the rough with the smooth, it is now six months since Hurricane Maria devastated Dominica. We are still without electricity and 50% of Dominicans are still living under tarpaulins.