The opening picture shows the sketches I make from all angles in readiness for a sculpture of a standing figure. The finished sculpture of my model Verlena is shown below.
In order to retain a rapid sketch effect I'm tempted to try working in pastel, fixed with a spray varnish. In future posts I'll show you the work in progress.
As luck would have it, one of the guests remembered my work from the BVI and by sticking my neck out I sold four paintings. Confidence restored!
Today's painting dates from those early days. The scene was a short deserted walk away from my studio which was nothing more than a shack on the shore of an idyllic cove. My boat was anchored in the crystal-clear waters of the reef-fringed cove with a handful of others. The cove is now a crowded marina surrounded by hotels and restaurants and the short walk now leads to the private grounds of palatial residences. My paradise was alas, ripe for development.
The act of painting reveals who we are. We are betrayed by what we love. (Jean Jansem)
I might add that an artist is also betrayed by the work of those he admires. Jean Jansem's oeuvre, materials and technique come close to my own attempts to master a similar way of recording what I love.
Hovhannes Semerdjian, also known as Jean Jansem, was a French/Armenian painter of international renown. He was awarded the French Legion of Honour in 2003 and the President of Armenia awarded him a Medal of Honour for his reinforcement of Armenian/French cultural ties.
Civilizations are built on creativity and so too is the well-being of society. Twenty years ago a mixed race school on the outskirts of London had all the usual problems of low grades, bullying, truancy and antisocial behaviour. Then there came on the scene a headmistress who might have been Miss Atack and Miss Shepard reincarnated. With amazing effect she placed art, drama and music at the core of the school’s agenda with amazing effect. It was not long before the school’s steel band played at the Royal Festival Hall and her pupils performed in the “Merchant of Venice” at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. Her strategy for embracing the arts had a marked effect on academic achievement. Results for English, mathematics, science and history were above the national average. School inspectors cited pupil confidence, high moral, pride of achievement and exemplary behaviour.
I have witnessed a similar success story here in the Caribbean. In the 1980’s two music teachers from Canada – a husband and wife team – came down to the British Virgin Islands and started a school orchestra from scratch. Students had to save up to buy their own instruments and the orchestra’s repertoire ranged from classics to jazz. The village baker’s son, a boy of enormous girth and by no means academically inclined, became a maestro on the tuba. At the end of the couple’s two year contract, the orchestra made a tour of cities in the United States and received standing ovations.
A book titled Caribbean Style, first published in 1985, contains a superb photographic collection of Caribbean architecture, interiors and furniture.
The forthcoming retrospective collection that I mentioned some weeks ago should really begin with the original of the work of art that illustrates today's post. It dates from 1945 and was drawn in crayon, along with hundreds of other sketches, on the blank pages of an old invoice book that my father had rescued from the garbage where he worked. When I had filled every page the book was again put in the garbage (dustbin in English). In those days parents didn't pin their offspring's creations on the wall. Although the originals are long gone I have a vivid recollection of many of them and the above reproduction is one I liked the best.
The chair is still a work in progress but days of breathing shaving scented air cleared my mind to ponder on what it takes to be an artist. I am not sure how prospective students are judge for entry to an art school or college, but if it was up me I would place eye-to-hand skill high on the scale of requirements.
The skill I use as a sculptor relates to the skill I use as an engineer which in turn relates to the skill I use as a carpenter, etc. etc. One skill leads to another and all of them enable an artist to survive.
It takes four years in art school and a MA degree in art to create the colour subtleties and finely balanced composition of today's painting....or does it!
I have titled the painting Mood Indigo. It was painted this afternoon by my eighteen month old grandson in four minutes.
Research has shown that we are born with 98% the creative potential of genius. By the time the majority of students leave college it has been reduced to less than 2%.
Where have we gone wrong!
While you mull over that one, here's Ella Fitzgerald's 1957 recording of Mood Indigo from her Duke Ellington Song Book LP. Incidentally, I bought the LP the year it was released with my first week's wage. You might also add this recording by Duke Ellington and his Orchestra.
I am taking the content of this post directly from my brother's blog News from Nowhere. I quote:
This is my entry for the 2021 season of Sky TV's Landscape Artist Of The Year. Watching the show on a regular basis I have become intrigued at how the artists use their smartphones to compose and record a scene, which they then go on to paint. Once painted they use the same smart phones to photograph the painting to submit it for consideration by the program. My approach is slightly different: I cut out the middle man. The smart phone records the scene, paints the picture and then submits it. Saves time all around.
My brother's satirical post exactly corresponds to my own views on the cowardly copyists who attempt to pass as "artists". The painter J M W Turner (1775-1851) must be turning in his grave. To capture the effects he needed for his painting Snow Storm: Steamboat off the Harbour's Mouth he instructed the the sailors to lash him to the mast so he could observe it.
Having said that, I have always been tempted to portray Christ on the Cross on my own terms. The opening sketch was made years ago with that in mind. I do not have a name to which I can attribute the sculpture shown below. Like many images I find on the internet, the source was not given. What I can say is, I wish I'd done that!
UPDATE: !5th March 2021
Thanks to Goggle Image Search, I now do have a name. The image below is of a bronze maquette by Jacquire Binns for a life-size sculpture for St. Peter's Church, Plymouth, UK.
Today, as I was searching through my drawing cabinet, I found that the troublesome little creatures were at it again. Luckily I discovered their attack in the nick of time and rescued scores of paintings. These two pastels dating from the 1990's are amongst those I managed to save.
I am proud that the students at one of my island's secondary schools choose natural hair styles as their theme for Black History Month. Their action proclaims pride of identity for the race from which they were born and fulfills Marcus Garvey's plea: "Take the kinks out of your mind, not your hair".
All to often those of African decent mimic foreign concepts of beauty, especially in terms of disguising their natural appearance: they bleach their skin, straighten their hair and modify their facial features. Two contestants at last year's Carnival Queen Contest wore wigs!
The Caribbean male fares no better. In recent times the fashion has been to shave every inch of hair from their heads. Sir Kenneth Dwight Vincent Venner (1946-2016) past Governor of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank was a refreshing exception.
I know of nothing more therapeutic than working with hand tools at my carpenter's bench. In comparison my other forms of creative endevour come a poor second.
I believe it was George Orwell who, when giving a talk at a Women's Institute a member of the audience ventured to say, "How nice it must be to be able to write".
He responded: "Madam, writing is the worst punishment I can possibly devise for myself".
Continuing yesterday's theme, today's picture shows another variation. This time dye and pastel as mix media. I have found pastel to be amazingly permanent when applied to fabric and it can be added with speed. And speed is of the essence in the effects I'm searching for.
The semi-sheer quality of cotton voile is a important contributing factor in that it allows the passage of light.
I know how it feels because my experiments with painting on fabric with dye have resulted in hundreds of test samples. The variables are endless and I keep loosing track of which combination works best in terms of colour and permanence. In applying the dye there are many similarities to my technique of painting with watercolour. It hinges between freedom and control. The freedom being daring to throw down colour and the control being split-second time between one brushful and the next.
The frustration is the time spent between one experiment and the next. Dye needs a couple of days to settle into the fabric before it can be washed. Only then do I know if the colours have held fast.
The time on my hands is spent on the never ending task of keeping clear the path that leads down to the river, dealing with engineering emergencies and making a start on a retrospective collection of my paintings. Below is a foretaste from the collection: a watercolour that dates from 1969.
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The picture below, which shows work in progress on one of my sculptures, is a typical example of social media's horror of nakedness. It has been "flagged" time and time again. Thank goodness for Blogger!
The above applicable quote and graphic illustration I found on the internet. I'm not sure who it is attributed it to.
Anne Hollander in her book The Fabric of Visions - The Role of Drapery in Art has this to say about the creative potential of fabrics:
Representative art has always dwelt on the fascinating capacity of cloth to bunch, stretch, hang or flutter, to be smooth and unsmooth under different circumstances, to be wrought upon and then restored, and wrought upon differently another time.
If you add to the above texture and colour you may well ask: why, for the most part, is today's fashion so boring.
My foray into fashion design has giving me the ultimate creative challenge. In all other visual art forms I have found role models, in the world of fashion I cannot find a single source that inspires me. Today’s designers appear to be more concerned about the style of their dresses rather than in revealing the beauty of what lies beneath. I am visualizing from square one and creating from scratch.
My experiments explore the theme of Robert Herrick's poem which dates from the 16th century:
A
sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles
in clothes a wantonness;
A
lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into
a fine distraction;
An
erring lace, which here and there
Enthrals
the crimson stomacher;
A
cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribands
to flow confusedly;
A winning wave, deserving note,
In
the tempestuous petticoat;
A
careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I
see a wild civility:
Do more bewitch me, than when art
Is too precise in every part.
America’s first-ever National Youth Poet Laureate, Amanda Gorman, reads “The Hill We Climb” at the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Gorman has become the youngest poet ever to perform at a presidential inauguration, calling for “unity and togetherness” in her self-penned poem.
Amanda Gorman's poem and her flawless presentation is a credit to us all. She radiates the natural beauty of her race: no bleached skin, no straightened or false hair and no disguised facial features.
"It took me two years to paint like Raphael but a lifetime to paint like a child"
The quote is attributed to Pablo Picasso and the child in the picture is my grandson Enoch framed by one of his own masterpieces. His rapped attention is directed to me on my sewing machine, not I hasten to add at work on the latest addition to my range of fashion designs but making bean bags for himself.
Picasso went on to say:
What might be taken for a precocious genius is the genius of childhood. When the child grows up, it disappears without a trace.
This ties in with the theory that a child is born with 98% the creative potential of genius but by adulthood peer pressure and conformity has reduced it to less than 2%.
My lifetime's search for creative potential in others has always taken unexpected turns. I seldom find it where you might expect. For the most part art college graduates fall on unproductive ground. On the other hand, I am sometimes surprised to find unforeseen talents in my models.
The young lady who modelled for today's picture is a case in point. During our painting sessions conversation was limited to a few words. Her emails were even briefer. But I always suspected that something lurked beneath her reserved demeaner and that one day it would be revealed.
She went away to another land, as did many of my models after the hurricane, and we lost touch. A few days ago a brief email linked me to a YouTube series of unrehearsed and unscripted conversational videos she has made. In each episode she displays a rare ability of talking naturally and intimately face to face with the camera.
I stress "camera" rather than by the microphone alone. During the war years Billy Holt, an acquaintance that I featured in an earlier post, won the BBC's broadcaster of the year award by virtue of a long pregnant pause in one of this talks. If truth be know, he had fallen asleep at the microphone.
My protegee manages to do this on camera! One day soon I'll link you to the secret.
The critics went overboard in praise of Herman Wouk's 1965 Caribbean masterpiece "Don't Stop the Carnival"...An exuberant comedy spiced with sex and tragedy...compulsively, clock racingly readable, etc. etc. What the critics would not have known is how accurately the novel portrayed real life in the Caribbean half a century ago. I know - I was there!
My latest Bare Minimum design is based on a painting I made years ago of the Dominica carnival. In contrast to the restrained colours on many of my earlier designs, this time around I let rip and threw dye down left, right and center. The material is semi-shear cotton voile and the design is hand painted with fabric dyes.
At Hopetown things seemed to take a turn for the better when a family from the States expressed lukewarm interest in one of my paintings. The sale was touch and go but it carried my usual rash guarantee that if ever they decided to part with the painting I would buy it back.
For a few weeks we lived comfortably on the proceeds of the sale. Then a letter arrived saying they had changed their mind and would like to return the painting for a refund. In dismay I rowed across to my good friend, author and fellow sailor, Fritz Seyfarth. Fritz re-sealed the envelop and went searching for what he called his "Termination Stamp". The next day I dropped the letter back in post with the envelop clearly marked front and back "Deceased: Return to Sender".
Those of us who sailed small boats across oceans fifty years ago did so on a shoestring. When the shoestring got to an end we earned our way as best we could. As most of us had built or restored the boat we sailed, we were not without skills.
We sailed our thirty-foot ketch Sarah Hannah from the Caribbean to the Bahamas in 1978 and spent the hurricane season anchored in Man-O-War Key. We shared our anchorage with only four other boats. Just a short walk away was a deserted coral sand beach that stretched as far as the eye could see. It was on that beach, under a makeshift palm fond shelter, that I wrote a little book titled 101 Ways to Earn a Living Afloat.
The content was a collection from all the various trades that my fellow small boat sailors plied in order to survive. I wrote the text by hand. I had no lap-top or Word Document to turn to. Below is the index page.
Included in the contents was the trade of one young man who funded his sailing by making custom bikinis in the cabin his small boat using a hand-crank sewing machine . He told me it was a pleasant task that brought him into contact with countless attractive young ladies and material costs were negligible.
I can vouch for the negligible materials costs, if not the young ladies, because I can make eight bikini bottoms out of one yard of material!
I'm not sure what guarantee I can give with bikini bottoms but my little book ended with these words.
