They've paved paradise and put in a cruise-ship dock...

Pier Park & Cruise Ship Dock, Road Town, British Virgin Islands, 2022.

 

If we substitute "cruise-ship dock" for "parking lot", the lyrics of Joni Mitchell's song from the 1970's, serves as a fitting continuation for my lament to the British Virgin Islands:

With a pink hotel, a boutique and a swingin' hot spot, 

You don't know what you've got till it's gone, 

They've paved paradise and put in a cruise-ship dock. 

As a reminder of what paradise was like in the 1970's, below are two sketches from my book "Virgin Island Sketches". An obsession with greed and flawed priorities accounts for the intervening fifty years.

The building that housed the "Come See Department Store" floated into Road Town during a 1920's hurricane and the building across the road was as far as it went in terms of boutiques.

For those too young to remember, here's Joni Mitchell's song. 

 

Unabashed Curiosity

40 years ago a young lady threw discretion aside on a beach in the Virgin Islands. Whereas the camera lens would have been considered an intrusion into her privacy, a sketchbook invites permissive and unabashed curiosity. 

I was able to captured the memory of that fleeting moment in this watercolour. No words were spoken, but when I had finished she shyly asked, may I see. 

She understood that if my consent seemed hesitant it was only because, through my work, I also stand naked before the searching gaze of onlookers.

Virgin Island Nostalgia

 

Fritz Penn's Yard. British Virgin Islands

My lament for the British Virgin Islands sent me searching through boxes of photographs taken in the 1970s and 1980s.  Some of the photographs are of my paintings from those early days and others are of the islands and islanders. The photograph below was taken at the launching of a boat built by Mr. Frett of East End. Mr. Frett is on the left with the two children in yellow, and on the right, his daughter Rita is being interviewed for BVI Radio by Michelle Abbott Smith. 

The launching of Mr. Frett's boat at East End.

A painting I made of Mr. Frett's boat under construction is featured on the first edition cover of my book Virgin Island Sketches and my paintings on the same theme are featured in one of three series of postage stamps that I designed for the island.  

In the light of current events, I am sure that many Virgin Islanders share my nostalgia for those times past.

My Lament to the British Virgin Islands

 

Road Town. The capital of the British Virgin Islands as it was in earlier days.

In 1975, while sailing north through the Windward Islands, stormy weather caused us to take shelter in the British Virgin Islands. The anchorage off the island’s capital was exposed and uncomfortable but we were told of a sheltered cove a few miles along the coast. Its entrance was narrow but and once inside the surrounding reef offered perfect protection. Our intention was to continue on our way as soon as the weather improved.

The weather did improve, but we stayed on and that idyllic cove became our home for the next twenty years.

My book Virgin Island Sketches was written in the early years of our stay. It celebrated the way of life of the islanders. Those sketches now serve as a reminder of halcyon times past, both physically and socially. 

But the writing was on the wall, and while I was busy preserving scenes from the past, Virgin Island poet Sheila Hyndman prophesized the future.

            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 your treasures,

            And rob you of your chastity.

            They will adorn you like ancient Jezebel.  

Events of the last few weeks have brought the present sorry state of those islands to the attention of the world. My feelings can best be expressed in the title of Alan Paton's novel: Cry the Beloved Country. 

Subtleties

Jan Saudek

When I despair at finding original ways of depicting the beauty of the nude in all its moods and changes, I return to the masterful art photography of Jan Saudek. Born in Czechoslovakia eighty-six years ago, he was for many years considered a disturbed artist and oppressed by authorities. He is now recognized as the foremost art photographer of our time.

I sought him out today as an antidote to the bland "fine art" nude photography that is often inflicted upon me. His subtle combination of dress and undress gives me the motivation I need to revive my Bare Minimum fashion label. 

Putting the conceptual into practice

 

The Queen's Baton at the start of its journey from Birmingham

From a Press Release:

Artist Laura Nyahuve and design experts across the West Midlands have created The Baton with stunning attention to detail and skill...On day 203 of its 294-day long journey, the Queen’s Baton Relay arrived in Dominica for a two day visit as part of its epic journey across 72 Commonwealth nations and territories, leading up to the Commonwealth Games.

Actually, on the morning of day 203 the baton, before going any further on its journey, arrived at my workshop in a sorry state, together with 27 pages of operating instructions. The baton houses (believe it or not) a message from the Queen, a 306 degree camera, a neo-pixel display, an environmental condition sensor, a touch capacity sensor and a heart rate monitor! 

The outer casing and inserts of the baton were in need of repair. Indeed, it is a miracle that the baton had survived its epic journey as well as it did.  

I had just two hours in which to do the job. There was however a "helpful" note from the manufacturers suggesting that I pop down to the hardware shop and buy a two part epoxy with which to effect the repair. Obviously, the writer has never popped down to a hardware shop from my studio up in the hills of Dominica and then found that what he wanted in stock. 

This long preamble leads to what I have been up against many times in the past. That being: putting another artist's conceptual idea into practice and making it work. In the years that my studio was in the UK I was frequently called upon to get other sculptors out of trouble. Their dreamed up conceptual idea had won a major commission but they had no idea how to do the job and seriously screwed up in attempting to do so. More often than not, they possessed a Master Degree in Art.

John Larson, head of the sculptural division at the National Conservation Centre, told me that he was frequently up against the same problem. He found it easier to restore a piece of sculpture made centuries ago than to repair work made by today's conceptualists. 

The picture below shows my grandson Enoch holding the Baton after my emergency repairs.

Moments of magical accident

 

The best poem is that whose worked-upon unmagical passages come closest, 
in texture and intensity, to those moments of magical accident.

 (Dylan Thomas) 

Today's opening painting comes close to that magical accident. It was made almost thirty years ago of washing strung beneath trees on a windy day in my native West Riding of Yorkshire.

The same magical accident can occur between artist and model, usually towards the end of an overly laboured painting session, when both have thrown discretion to the winds. 

I might qualify the rare occurrence of a magical accident by saying: the better the artist, the more often the accident works in his favour.

A whole new creative ball game

The opening picture is the title frame of my latest YouTube video. It follows close on the heels of Body and Soul, my first attempt at a whole new creative ball game.

Now that I have got the hang of it  (with technical help from my son Tristan) I have ideas for others that will explore the potential of this innovative way of getting the message across.

Although many of my followers will be restricted to viewing on a handheld device, the impact is all the more dramatic when the images are projected on a large screen.

A chip off the old block

Two years ago my son Karl, true to his creative genes, declared himself a potter. He is self-taught and proving himself to be a master at the art. He has just fired his first wood burning kiln. The story behind his work can be found on his facebook page. 

Vernacular Architecture

My preliminary art work for a series of postage stamp designs on the theme of 

Vernacular Architecture.

In the 1980’s the Crown Agents commissioned me to design postage stamps for the British Virgin Islands. One proposed series was on the theme of Vernacular Architecture. My on going campaign for the restoration of Dominica's historic Carnegie Library and for the townscape of the island's capital in general, brought the above postage stamp designs to mind. 

In contrast to the vernacular, the present government has become enamored with foreign concepts of architecture. What is right for Dubai isn’t necessarily right for a small island in the Caribbean. Alas, I cannot wax lyrical about the most recent alien addition to Roseau's townscape shown below. 

Roseau riverside apartment blocks.

It beggars belief

 

With others, I am currently fighting for the preservation of one of Dominica's most important historical buildings: The Roseau Carnegie Public Library. It beggars belief that the government was planning to replace it with the alien monstrosity pictured below. 

Body and Soul

 

Seven years ago I put together a collection of paintings from my series Daughters of the Caribbean Sun as a short video. I have now updated the video and posted it on YouTube. 

The new version contains many recent images. What stays the same is the Duke Ellington/Harry Carney soundtrack and gratitude to my models. Without their contribution to the creative process my work would simply not exist.

Go, lovely rose...

Go, lovely rose...

Tell her that's young,
And shuns to have her graces spied,
That hadst thou sprung
In deserts where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died.

Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retired:
Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desired,
And not blush so to be admired.

Extracts from "Go, lovely rose" by Edmund Waller (1606 - 1687)

 

Between rain showers, I had just two minutes to capture today's tangle of tropical flowers that bloom outside my studio. If only models for my paintings and sculptures were as readily available, at all times and in all weathers.

 As with Edmund Waller's mistress, Small is the worth of beauty from the light retired.

The element of surprise

My studios have always doubled as an exhibition space for my work. Just as my paintings and sculptures have an element of surprise, the same holds true for the space in which they are created and displayed. When is comes to the "wow" factor, my previous studio in the North of England (Above) takes some beating. It was built on a steep hillside as a Church Assembly Hall. On entering by way of its classical façade (Below) visitors descended a confined flight of stairs that gave no indication of the dramatic space within. 

Although my present studio on the Caribbean island of Dominica is approached by way of an avenue of Royal Palms, the narrow corridor that leads from the entrance likewise gives no indication of the element of surprise that awaits within. 

 

The future's bright, the future's orange.

This isn't about mobile phones but about boosting trade and investment in the orange economy. In case - like me - you didn't know, the orange economy is the "in term" for the creative economy. The boosting will be done by way of: Web 3, Blockchain Networks, Smart Contracts, Non-fungible tokens, Metaverse and Asset Tokenization, et all! 

I was alerted to this impending revolution in the arts a few days ago by way of this article. 

If there's a way of screwing the arts, the economists and academics are sure to find it. 

Letting nature take its course

Detail from "Meditation". 

A life-size seated nude in my series "Daughters of the Caribbean Sun".

The sculptures in my series Daughters of the Caribbean Sun begin life in clay. I work from the live model and the process involves weeks of work. From the clay image a plaster cast is made as a preliminary to casting the figure in bronze. Until a bronze cast is commissioned, the plaster image is remains as the final form. Plaster casts are permanent for indoors but unsuited for outdoors. 

On occasions I have experimented with a polymer additive to plaster as a means of enabling a sculpture to withstand the elements. My sculpture titled "Meditation" is a case in point. For over twelve years this life-size figure has survived all that the elements could throw at it - and not least, a major hurricane.

The surface of an unblemished plaster cast is deathly white. Sculptors in past times had a saying: clay is the life, plaster the death and bronze the resurrection. In this case mother nature gave life by applying her own masterful patina. 

The picture below shows the sculpture in its original pristine state.

Will there ever be another?

One of my many paintings of Annabelle from times past.

Somerset Maugham, in the preface of his third and final collection of short stories, writes: I do not expect ever to write another.

With the limitations posed by the pandemic in terms of working from the live model, I am beginning to feel that I may never paint another. If that proves to be so it would be unfinished business. For while I can never recapture the Caribbean landscape and townscape as it was fifty years ago, there is more that I need to unrestrainedly say about the beauty of The Daughters of the Caribbean Sun. 

My means of expression is not the repetitive posed photograph of the nude but the of the unguarded moment captured in a matter a minutes by way of the suggestive subtlety of watercolours. 

It's difficult to do that from behind facemasks and at a social distance of six feet.

Dear Nikon

My troublesome 2020 Nikon Coolpix B500 

(Plus two springs from the action of my 60 year old piano that are needed to make it work)

My cameras have ranged from a classic 1939 Kodak bellows to a 2020 digital Nikon. The Kodak, shown below, was one of the best and the Nikon shown above, one of the worst. 

Kodak Vigilant 620 roll film bellows camera.

Between the two I've owned a much loved 35mm Kodak Retinette 1A and a dubious Soviet SLR. My association with digital cameras began with the earliest one made by Kodak - simple and dependable - followed by a superb but less dependable Olympus 5.1 megapixel Camedia. I replaced the Olympus with a marvelous Canon Power Shot A2500. Most of the pictures on this blog were taken with that little camera.

The problem with the Nikon is not picture quality but the brittle stainless steel strip contacts for its 4 AA batteries. And four AA batteries are its only mode of power. Nikon tell me that the reason for battery power is that many users will be travelling to remote regions that lack mains electricity, whereas suitable AA batteries are always available wherever you are. I stress "suitable" as the camera is fussy on what it accepts. Alas, on my "remote" island in the Caribbean compatible batteries are seldom available. 

However, by replacing the broken contacts with two redundant springs from piano, hey-presto, the camera works!  

Dear Nikon, I have a further 86 surplus old piano springs. Let me know if you need them. 

Painting by eye and playing by ear

Imperceptible variations between colours together with a suggestive line says 

all that needs to be said about the subtle beauty of the female breast. 

Detail from a 20" x 30" watercolour of the reclining nude.

The painter James Whistler (1834-1903) on looking at the work of an aspiring artist asked, whom she had studied with. Apologetically, she answered that she had never studied under anybody. Whistler unhesitatingly replied, "You couldn't have done better".

If sixty years ago I had attended art school, instead of learning my trade and earning my living with a sketch book on the pavements of France, my work would be indistinguishable from tens of thousands of others. I would have been taught formulas for mixing colours instead of finding out for myself by experimentation. 

Many of the best musicians in jazz are similarly self-taught. The renowned saxophonist Charlie Parker gave this advice: "You must know your instrument; practice, practice, practice...and then forget all you have learnt". 

In painting I have put in over fifty years of practice. I instinctively know my colours and how they interact. Of late, my evenings have been spent at the piano learning by trial and error how one note interacts with another. If only I had another fifty years I might gain the same creative proficiency in music as I have done in painting. 

The colour wheel for artists and the cord wheel for musicians are contrary to my dyslexic way of learning and my passionate approach to painting and music. 

       

A fleeting moment in time

A fleeting glance captured at a nutmeg factory in Grenada.

A sketch is all I need to remind me of a brief moment in time. It is a note to myself that no one else can read or fathom. I gathered them by the hundred while travelling the Caribbean thirty-five years ago in search of life as it was then lived in the islands. I stress "was" for nothing stays the same. My book Caribbean Sketches is a record of those earlier times.

In recent times the camera shutter has made the lightening sketch for most artists a thing of the past. They have become reluctant to set down the fleeting life of a subject in what might be considered an imperfect form. Laboured finish is the order of the day, whereas the sketch that says all that needs to be said in a few hurried lines. 

Having said that; the prerequisite for a sketch is a subject that inspires rather than a contrived art class exercise. 

You must believe in spring...

A detail from one of my sculptures in the series You Must Believe In Spring.

Living on a small island in the Caribbean, together with trust in my natural immune system, has so far enabled me to escape the Covid virus. But try as I may, I cannot avoid the blues brought about by the pandemic restrictions. An absence of models has brought my paintings and sculptures to a halt. And the same goes for work on my Bare Minimum fashion designs. For both I need freedom to work from the unmasked live model.

This week I found hope for these frustrating times when glancing through the social media posts of a past pupil, friend and fellow artist. For Nirvana, rock bottom became a solid foundation on which to build her life.  

It then dawned on me, that it was only by reaching rock bottom in past times that I was able to rebuild my life and move on. This brings me back to a line from the haunting lyrics of "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...

These lyrics, sung here by Cleo Laine, were my starting point for a series of sculptures intended to give hope to patients in cancer care. The story of this controversial commission is given in my equally controversial book Notes on the Nude.

In the spirit of carpe diem, I must create anew.

FOOTNOTE: I have tried sharing this post on a friend's facebook site. However, it has been blocked by Facebook Admin as being contrary to their community guide lines and hence unsuited for the innocent eyes of their users. If I cover the offending nipples they may reconsider! 

This video clip  is the only way to respond to their Christian horror of nakedness.   

If music be the food of love, play on...

Who is Sylvia? What is she

That all her swains commend her?

Lovely, fair and wise is she,

The heaven such grace should render

That ador-ed she might be,

That ador-ed she might be

Sylvia is not the young lady in my painting, but the girl that Shakespeare's Gentlemen of Verona waxed lyrical about and Schubert set to music. Nevertheless, my models can claim similar attributes. 

In the context of this post Sylvia takes me back to school music lessons in the 1950's. There was a problem with my class's rendition and I was the culprit. I was singing out of tune and out of time and the music teacher told me to stand silently to one side. My fledgling interest in music was quelled there and then. And it may have remained unfulfilled for the rest of my life had I not discovered jazz in my teens - a music in which key changes and timing are judged differently. 

Fortunately a teacher in my primary school days encouraged my flair for art. Rather than putting me down for not painting the subject the way the class had been instructed, she declared the result brilliant and prophesized that one day I would be an artist.

As I said in my blog post "On the spur of the moment" there are similarities between my kind of jazz and my way of painting. In his book The Making of Jazz, James Lincoln Collier has this to say on the subject of key changes and time schemes:

If it seems complicated, it is. Jazz is not a simple music. It is the necessity for reproducing the effects as the ones I have described that makes it so difficult to teach, so difficult to learn. Of the tens of thousands who have attempted to play it, not one in a hundred or so have ever done it supremely well. It is a demanding art form indeed.

Returning to Shakespeare; jazz singer Cleo Laine made an album in 1964 titled Shakespeare and all that Jazz. Here she is on the track from that LP, If Music be the Food of Love.

And music being the food of love brings me to a question recently asked by one of my daughters: which has meant most to you in life, romance or painting? My answer: They are one of the same.

The artist as a sitting duck

Tuel Lane Lock Under Construction, Rochdale Canal, Sowerby Bridge.  Watercolour 18" x 28"

I paint from life, whether it be the model indoors or a townscape outdoors. It is the only way I can capture the living moment. 

When outdoors I am a sitting duck for mischievous children. My painting of Tuel Lane Lock was made under a hail of pelted stones. In the Caribbean I have had sand thrown my way when painting beach scenes. If not children, biting ants run a close second. The photographer can click his shutter and run, I can't.

In the tropics, shade is another factor. If, a hundred years from now, some critic gives a learned opinion as to why I chose a particular vantage point, I doubt that my need to find shade would come into it.

When working indoors from the nude figure, it is the model that becomes the sitting duck to troublesome mosquitos or sculptural techniques that go wrong. On one occasion when taking a life cast, my model was covered in plaster that refused to set and later encased in a plaster cast that stubbornly resisted being removed. Fortunately my models are made of tough stuff and have a good sense of humour. 

But working from life can have its idyllic undisturbed moments. My painting of the Rochdale Canal passing through rural countryside is a case in point.  

Rochdale Canal.  Watercolour 18" x 28"

Capturing the elements

 

A preliminary sketch for a series of Virgin Island paintings made 30 years ago. 

A lightening sketch reminds me more about the subject than a photograph can ever do. The lines that I put down in those few seconds are a brain scan of what I want to portray. 

A note in my diary relates to the above sketch and reads:

And now back to the landscape and a need to escape from the limitations of the past. 

The painting below is from the same period and proves that I made my escape!

On the spur of the moment

Leinster Bay, St John, USVI

My recently rekindled passion for jazz has made me again realise the similarities that exist between that art form and my paintings. Both rely on spur of the moment spontaneity and for both the end result can be fleeting. For the jazz musician it is the unrecorded impromptu improvisation and for me, the hundreds of past paintings that were made within the timeframe of a passionate fifteen minutes and then whisked away by an equally passionate buyer. 

In those days there were no cellphones or digital cameras by which the memory of a painting could be quickly saved. Luckily the for above painting my 35mm camera had one frame left on a roll of colour slide film. The image is less than perfect: film deteriorates quickly in the tropics.

Over the years jazz has benefitted from the perceptive writing of its reviewers and critics, the best of which verges on prose and reads as an art form in itself. Good examples being James Lincoln Collier's definitive The Making Of Jazz and Philip Larkin's All What Jazz. 

NB. My copy of All What Jazz has been out on loan for almost forty years. Perhaps a closely related regular reader of this blog could look to see if by chance it can be found languishing on his bookshelf.  

Unfortunately, writers and reviewers of the visual arts run a poor second. A rare exception being how Camille Lemonnier (1844-1913), Belgian, writer, poet and journalist, described one of Rodin’s sculptures:

At the Maison d’Art there is a torso that seems to have been spewed out from the furnaces of Gomorrah. It has been savagely torn and splayed the way a fissure in the earth cracks open, as though a crucible were exploding in its depths...

 

How can I hope to be popular?

Bermuda 1992. Water Colour 15" x 20"

My art flatters nobody by imitation, it courts nobody by smoothness, nobody by petitelieness, it is without either fal-de-lal or fiddle-de-dee; how then can I hope to be popular?   

(John Constable. English Landscape Painter. 1776-1837)

My landscape painting of a Bermuda might have won popular approval had I followed the advice that was once given to me:

"You need to work more carefully...use a smaller brush...avoid getting your colours too wet."

In the 1970's, while building my boat in a Suffolk farmyard, I lived in a house that is included in one of Constable's paintings. My eighty year old neighbour lived in an18th century timber-framed thatched cottage. The entrance passage was dark and Harry wanted to put a glass pane in the front door to let in some light. But like many buildings in "Constable Country" his house was listed by English Heritage and as such he was not even allowed to paint his door a different colour. 

Harry's carping comment was: Bloody Constable. I wish he'd been born in Liverpool!

One splash leads to another

The secret of painting in water colour is to allow accidents to happen: a painting can't go right until it has gone wrong. And the same holds true for fabric designs. 

Today's opening picture of a recent design for my Bare Minimum fashion label. The first splash of dye was accidental and I was cursing myself for having ruined a length of my precious cotton lawn fabric. But one splash led to another. Perhaps this is how Jackson Pollock's abstract impressionist paintings first came about. 

Jackson Pollock (1912-1956)

Cotton lawn is semi-sheer but with a closer weave than cotton voile. Its smoother texture helps to prevent the dye from bleeding and hence allows for crisper outlines. The picture below shows the same length of splashed fabric hurriedly thrown around my mannequin as a wrap-round skirt. Oh for the return of my real life models when one day this pandemic comes to an end.

The sensuous suggestiveness of draperie mouillée

One of Jan Sandek's works on the theme of draperie mouillée

Over a year ago my post titled, Weird or not weird featured the work of Jan Saudek, a Czechoslovakia  born artist whose work represents a unique technique of combining photography and painting.  No other artist or photographer comes close to Jan Saudek's ability to daringly capture the human form in all its moods and changes. 

Rarely has the sensuous suggestiveness of draperie mouillée been explored since sculptors used the device in the 2nd century BC. For photographers it has the potential of adding an extra dimension to the limited repertoire of the nude. My own interest was aroused through using semi- sheer cotton viole for items in my Bare Minimum fashion designs. The material fulfills my objective of allowing a fleeting glance of the figure beneath.

 Cotton voile hand painted with fabric dyes allows a tantalizing glance of what lies beneath.

How it all began: Venus Genetrix (2nd Century BC)