Pandemic Poverty

 

A recent collection of paintings on the theme of the Corona Virus approached the subject from all angles but omitted the poverty that it has brought about. 

To fill the void, my pastel sketch is of the long queues for money sent to and from family members overseas. It is an everyday scene just across the road from one of the island's lavishly stocked supermarkets.  

The 14" x 16" pastel paper from a range of papers I make from my island's natural resources.

Self Sufficiency

One thing that the Corona Virus Pandemic may impress upon the world is the value of self sufficiency. I believe we may see a revival of crafts and a demise in office pursuits. As a craftsman I work alone with the unpolluted tropical trade winds and my island's rugged terrain and pure rivers for company. Not only do I make my own art materials, make my own furniture and sew my own clothes, I also make many other of life's less obvious necessities. 

When I was a child in the North of England gypsies came around selling handmade clothes pegs. They were sold as a bundle, bound together with elastic bands made out of discarded bicycle tire inner tubes. Nowadays clothes pegs are made from plastic; a poor substitute that breaks in next to no time. Except, that is, for mine! 

The ones in the picture are made from a Dominica hardwood that does nor easily split and, unlike some hardwoods, does not leave a stain when wet. An hour's satisfying work that will peg clothes out for a lifetime. 

Perhaps I should hawk them door to door and tell fortunes into the bargain.

One other love

Yesterday afternoon, while viewing equipment in a remote rum distillery, I was reminded by a friend that I had omitted one protracted love affair from my last post: that being my lifelong love affair with machinery - the older the better. It is firmly lodged in my genes and inherited from my father and grandfather. 

The opening painting is one of the first I painted after making a landfall on Antigua and the picture below is the gearing of the relatively small sugar cane crushing mill that I visited yesterday. Over the years I've been called in to advise on machinery in many of the remaining rum factories in the Caribbean, the most memorable being the River Antione works in Grenada which is still powered by a huge waterwheel. The owner was worried about the condition of the bearings. After inspection I was able to assure him that they were good for another 200 years.

A bonus that is part and parcel of this work is sampling the end product. Yesterday's rum was one of the best I've ever tasted! 

One love affair after another

After spending the last few days reading through old diaries I realise that my life has been one love affair after another, whether it be the girl in my arms, the boat beneath my feet or the painting before me. A romantic life is invariably an uncomfortable one but the discomforts that condemn such a life for many are the attractions that attract it to the few. My life has been fated towards those attractions.

The photograph was taken in 1973 at the start of a voyage from the Canary Island to the Caribbean. Nothing could appear more idyllic: Blue sky, a gentle trade wind and my five year old daughter waving to the boat astern. It says nothing of storms in the Bay of Biscay, a north-east gale off Portugal and an Atlantic crossing that lasted five weeks.

The girls in my arms have likewise brought their share of happiness and pain. And to that you can add seven children from my three marriages. Thomas Campbell (1777-1844) says it all in his poem "Freedom and Love". It begins:

How delicious is the winning of a kiss at love's beginning...

But by the second verse he warns:

Yet remember, 'midst your wooing, love has bliss but love has ruing...

As one endearing love and muse was fond of telling me: 'tis true Roger, 'tis true.

Making art, like making love, is 99% passion. 

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)  

                                   

Drawing from my series A Portrait of Alice

Digging deep into paintings from my past

If nothing else, the corona pandemic has sent me digging deep into my archives for paintings from my past; if not the original then at least in the form of a faded photograph.

Today's picture is taken from a photograph of a painting that dates from a series I made twenty-five years ago of Halifax, Yorkshire: the town of my youth. As I remember, the original was purchased by a young couple as a wedding present to themselves. 

The sketches for this series of paintings can be found in my book Townscapes.

I'm thinking

Whenever I go silent, whether it be while resolving an engineering problem or how best to take the mold from a piece of sculpture, I tell those looking on: I'm thinking. 

Some may have difficulty accepting that I'm ever silent. But the fact is that due to dyslexia I couldn't say a word until I was five. My brother claims I've made up for it since.

My current silent mode is connected with unfinished business. I'm rapidly approaching my eightieth year and there are some things I want to say in connection with the campaigns I've fought before leaving it be. Just as my grandfather Enoch made clear to my grandmother when they were arguing as to whether the lightening overhead was sheet or fork. My grandmother insisted it was sheet, whereas Enoch claimed it was fork. This went backwards and forwards until my grandfather, stamping from the living room said: enough is enough, let's leave it be...but it was fork!

Enoch Burnett (1879-1950)

If I gave trouble when I was growing up, my mother would throw her hands up in despair and say: you're just like your grandfather. I now take that as a compliment! His war medals were for "Work at the Forge".

To calm those who are disturbed

A child playing on the beach. One of hundreds of sketches I have made on this theme.

My mission as an artist is to calm those who are disturbed and to disturb those who are calm. The latter task is by far the more difficult one of the two. It seems that nothing is sufficiently disturbing to banish the apathy that pervades the lives of many people. 

Robert Henri opens his book "The Art Spirit" with these words:

When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressing creature...He disturbs, upsets, enlightens... 

This week has been one of controversy in connection with one of my earlier blog posts. I therefore choose today's opening sketch and closing painting with the intention of calming rather than disturbing. 

A rare painting of my wife Denise dating from 1992.
It was painted on the same Virgin Island beach as the opening sketch.

From different perspectives

The above watercolour is one that I made in the 1970's of Halifax, the West Yorkshire town of my youth. The photograph below is one hundreds that my brother made of the same town between the early 1960's and the late 1970's. What I attempted to capture in colour, my brother captured in reels of black and white film. His photographs are masterly and a unique historical record. 

 

For the subject of this photograph he has this to say:

I come from Halifax, and my West Yorkshire genes are programmed to find beauty in muck and grime. In the grey sky being reflected on stone cobbles. In black chimneys punctuating flat clouds. In mischievous curves creeping into twisted railway lines. A sack-load of art on the back of an old wagon parked in the shade of North Bridge. I took this photograph fifty years ago. It's all been knocked down now and they have built a nice new Leisure Centre in its place. There are probably inspirational pictures inside the Leisure Centre of mountain paths and bright green fields.

You can find more of his work at: https://newsfromnowhere1948.blogspot.com/

Three in a row

Today's opening picture is an initial sketch for three bathing figures, my Caribbean equivalent of the Three Graces. 

But the three in a row that the title of this post refers to are not the three graces but the three knockout punches that over the last five years have been delivered to my island of Dominica. First, Tropical Storm Erica which wiped out entire villages; then Hurricane Maria which wiped out the entire island, and now, the Corona Virus pandemic that we are sharing with the rest of the world. 

You can add to the foot of the account that we have just entered this year's hurricane season and three days ago we had storm force gusts as a gentle reminder. With this one the only thing that was wiped out was the fiber-optic broadband cable that loops its way down the valley en route to connect me to the outside world. 

I'm hoping that it will be repaired before the end of today. Trying to communicate via a hand-held device is liable to give me a nervous breakdown. On the positive side, it was on the tablet that I found today's sketch. It's one that I can't even remember making but finding it was a pleasant surprise.

From Model to Wife

Once again the Corona Virus has sent me searching through old photographs. Today I struck gold and found some early pictures of my wife Denise. The paintings sold a long time ago and I forgot that I had these images. Although the colour cast shows signs of being too long in the tropics they nevertheless retain the spirit of the originals and the passage of time has tinted them rose coloured rather than sepia.

They were painted twenty-eight years ago in the cabin of my gaff cutter Born Free. 

A pivotal point in time

The opening photograph dates from 1973. It was taken aboard our thirty-foot ketch Sarah Hannah, half way across the Atlantic Ocean. We were en-route to the Caribbean. As I plotted our noon day position I had little idea that the voyage was to be a pivotal point in my life. From then henceforward the Caribbean was to be my adopted home.

After five weeks at sea we made our landfall on Antigua. The ship's purse was empty and I immediately had to shoulder my sketch bag and "sing" for our supper. The colour and vibrancy of the Caribbean was new to me and the first paintings sold straight from my sketch book. Those early years resulted in hundreds of paintings of my new found subject matter. 

But the good fortune of selling means that I am left with an empty portfolio from that period. The two paintings below are rare exceptions and I've held onto them tenaciously. The first is an inter-island trading boat and second; two fellow small boat sailors who, like ourselves, were singing for their supper. 

In those far off days most of us sailed on a shoe string. We were far removed from the affluent "yachties" of day.

Father's Day

Today, being Father's Day, my daughter Tania brought my latest grandchild to visit. Like his tee-shirt says, "I get it from my Grandpa". And not only that, he's been named after his great, great grandfather. Like it or not, it's in his genes.

When I was growing up in England immediately after World War II we didn't have a Father's Day but we did have fathers, even if for some of my friends it was only in fond memory. In more recent times many children have been deprived of their father, not only by way of death or shirked responsibilities, but by a marriage that ended in divorce. 

In 1990 I published a small booklet that told of my experience under the Guardianship of Infants Act, Cap 233. My children were then aged two, four and five. After thirty years, for the sake of others in the same predicament, it is perhaps time for me to bring the story up to date.

20th Century Lyrics and 16th Century Poetry

Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, USVI

Faded photographs, covered now with lines and creases
Tickets torn in half, memories in bits and pieces... (Buddy Buie, J.R. Cobb, Emory Gordy Jr. 1960's)

The limbo months brought about by the Corona Virus have sent me digging deep into old photographs and the memories therein. Many are of paintings from thirty years ago. They were hurriedly photographed, right there on the pavement where they were painted before a buyer whisked them away. Most are colour transparencies, so it's not so much lines and creases but mold and scratches, together with film that has deteriorated from being too long in the tropics. 

Looking back I now realise that this was the heyday of my Caribbean town and beach paintings: an Englishman far from home with a sketch bag slung over his shoulder and a couple of dollars in his pocket for a cold beer. It was a period that is gone forever.

O how feeble is man's power,
That if good fortune fall,
Cannot add another hour,
Nor a lost hour recall!   (John Donne 1572-1631)

Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, USVI

Missing a muse

My early paintings were simply songs for my supper. If necessary I could turn my hand to any subject in order to survive. If I grew weary of painting I turned my attention to other things: build a house, build a boat, sail across an ocean. To paraphrase the words of Henry David Thoreau, My life was the poem I would have writ, but I could not both live and utter it.

All of that changed in the late 1980's when, financially secure but at a creative low point, I sensed the need to express something deeper through my paintings and sculptures. It was then that Sheila, my first muse, entered my life. 

I had known Sheila since her late teenage years and before her early death we worked together on a studio edition of her poems. It was through her poetry that Sheila served as my inspirational muse. Sadly, the only photograph I have of Sheila is one that was printed on the cover of of her memorial service program. 

Sheila Hyndman

Fate can be both cruel and kind. Cruel in terms of depriving me of Sheila but kind in providing me with Alice. Alice worked with me for a year as my studio assistant and model. This time it was my muse's sweet simplicity and unwavering support that inspired and revived me.  

Alice Matthews

Sales and commissions may provide an artist with the means of survival but it is the muse, in whatever form she takes, that provides inspiration and understanding.

To Christopher Gable with thanks

In 1997 I received a call inviting me - nay, begging me - to attend a talk by Christopher Gable, ballet dancer and choreographer. The talk had been arranged at short notice and the organizers feared poor attendance. As I had no interest whatsoever in ballet my response was, do I really have to attend. But fortunately I did and the speaker's inspired interpretation of ballet marked a turning point in my life. Christopher Gable died of cancer in 1998.

His remarkable career included being soloist and principal dancer of the Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet and Artistic Director of the Northern Ballet. Between the two he appeared in numerous musicals and starred in the classic 1970's film The Boy Friend. 

The sketch below is one that I made of the Northern Ballet at rehearsal and I have since had ballet dancers as inspirational models.

Christopher Gable was all for finding new directions for ballet and to this end he would have been pleased that three years after his death the UK company Ballet Black was formed. The company consists of international dancers of black and Asian descent with the aim of bringing ballet to a more cultural diverse audience.  

Ballet Black

In recent years there has emerged an interest in ballet for children here in my Caribbean island of Dominica. But for the most part it has been the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy in pink tutus rather than a dynamic ballet interpretation of the island's Africa Heritage. How I wish that Christopher Gable and Ballet Black could be here to redirect and inspire them.

Ballet Class at the Dominica Institute for the Arts 

I'll leave you with Christopher Gable alongside Twiggy in this scene from the Boy Friend. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBBEs8jglfo

You must believe in Spring

In 2001 I was asked to consider ways in which my work as a painter and sculptor could be used to give hope to patients of the cancer care wing at a new hospital in the UK.  

  

As I pondered on how to fulfil the commission, the lyrics of Maxence’s Song from The Young Girls of Rochefort began to haunt me and they helped to determine the course my work would take. From the shadow of death and despair my figures would sing to high heaven in praise of life.

One of the UK sculptures is a life-size figure seen through a vortex of autumn leaves. It represents spring emerging from winter. We don’t have the same winters and springs in Dominica but yesterday I gathered the fallen leaves from around my studio and used them to adorn one of the sculptures in my series Daughters of the Caribbean Sun. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the sculpture and lyrics may help to give hope for tomorrow.  

            When lonely feeling fills the meadows of your mind,

            Just think when winter comes can spring be far behind.

 Beneath the deepest snows

 The secret of a rose

 Is that it merely knows,

 You must believe in spring.

Just as a tree is sure its leaves will reappear,

It knows its emptiness is just the time of year.

The frozen mountain streams

Of April’s melted dreams,

How crystal clear it seems,

You must believe in spring.

You must believe in love and trust it’s on its way,

Just as the sleeping rose awaits the kiss of May.

So in a world of snow,

Of things that come and go,

Where what you think you know

You can’t be certain of.

You must believe in spring and love.

The sculpture that illustrates this post is a life-size torso created from the paper I make from the stems of banana plants.

At the back of my mind

Over the last few days I've had a commemorative relief portrait bust in mind. It was brought about by an indistinct old photograph of the internationally acclaimed author Jean Rhys (1890-1979). It is not the photograph that her followers know her by but one that is in profile and from the period in her life that I can relate to.

Jean Rhys

Jean Rhys was born and grew up in Dominica. In her mid teenage years she left for England and worked on the stage as a chorus girl. The photograph was most likely taken during the period of her early novels. Her acclaimed award winning novel Wide Sargasso Sea was written when she was in her seventies. The scenes that open part two of the book are within sight of my studio.

Two weeks ago her family home in Roseau, the capital of Dominica, was demolished and that, together with the alluring photograph, set me thinking about a commemorative sculpture. 

I share with Jean Rhys an admiration of the jazz singer Billie Holiday. However, on knowing the author through her writings, I have a sneaking suspicion that she'd respond to my idea with the message contained in this recording. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBd5Bev5yt0

Billie Holiday

From Sensual to Shame

Below are three images that, over a period of fifteen thousand years, take the nude figure from sensual to shame: from acceptance to embarrassment, from the comfort of the nude to the Christian horror of nakedness.

Reclining female nude, cave wall engraving, La Magdelaine Cave, France. Circa 15,000-10,000 B.C.

Engraving on the back of Greek mirror. Circa 2nd Century BC

Adam & Eve doubled up in shame on being expelled from the Garden of Eden, 

A panel from the bronze doors at Hildesheim Cathedral. Circa 1010 AD

Enough is enough and a plea for models

I am never satisfied. I keep coming back to make adjustments when I should be leaving the clay sketch well alone. But I'm stopping right there. Enough is enough! I have already gone too far and lost the spontaneity of my earlier stage. 

It would be a different matter if I had the model before me. Then I would see where the meaningful broad adjustments should really be made, instead of which I'm playing with pointless and boring detail that adds nothing. 

If potential models are viewing these posts in response to my recent plea in the press for models I look forward to hearing from you. Without a model my work cannot exist. You are an essential part of the creative process.

To learn more about modelling from both the artist's and model's point of view go to the most recent pages of my book Notes on the Nude.

Running on empty

My low relief of the reclining nude is still a work in progress but as you can see, I have promoted it to the header of my blog. First, because it suits the header format and second, because this blog is all about work in progress. 

The splodge of working clay in the right-hand top corner is there to keep it at the same consistency as the rest. I can then dip into it for small adjustments: defining the left foot and correcting the hollow on the right thigh.

Since the Corona Virus lock-down I have not stopped working, albeit without the inspiration that live models contribute to my paintings and sculptures. To be honest, I am now "running on empty". With the easing of restrictions I am looking forward to seeing new faces emerge from behind face masks. 

Sculpture possibilities

One of my files of photographs is labeled "Sculpture Possibilities". For the most part the pictures have remained just that: possibilities. But the Corona Virus has resulted in the absence models and I now find myself resorting to portfolios of photographs and sketches for inspiration. 

Yesterday I found a thumbnail low resolution photograph of what was originally intended as the pose for a half-life size sculpture. The picture was intended for no more than to remind the model how her body was placed. 

I also found a preliminary sketch: same model, same pose..

What with one thing and another - one being a major tropical storm and the other a disastrous hurricane - the sculpture never went beyond those initial stages. A pity because the pose, with the model's head tucked in the crook of her arm, was a good one.

This set me thinking: would it be possible to translate what was originally intended as a sculpture in the round into a small low relief. This morning I decided to give it a try and by this afternoon work was in progress. It measures 7" x 18".

That beautiful frontier between drawing and sculpture

In his definitive book on the nude, Kenneth Clark describes low relief as "that beautiful frontier between drawing and sculpture". The German sculptor Gustav Seitz (1906-1969) was a frequent occupier of that frontier and a master of both low and medium relief. 

A collection of the sculptor's erotic reliefs, including the second of the above examples, have been assembled as a bronze door (Porta d' Amore) at the Museum for Art and Crafts, Hamburg.

For those who have been following work in progress on my latest relief, the final plaster cast is show below. The cast has been given a rinse of tinted shellac to tone down the whiteness of the plaster.