To begin at the beginning

My love affair with the nude dates back to 1971. In that year I was seduced by Enzo Plazzotta’s sculpture Jamaican Girl. The infatuation was such that I followed my temptress to the land of her birth. Thereafter, the Caribbean became my adopted home and the islanders, my subject matter. 

Enzo Plazzotta’s sculpture Jamaican Girl.

My book Notes on the Nude traces my work as a painter and sculptor of the female nude figure. The images that illustrate the book are from my series: Daughters of the Caribbean Sun.

The title of the series is taken from a poem by the Virgin Island poet Sheila Hyndman (1958-1991). Sheila gave me the courage to explore the sensuous. I timidly began in the 1980’s from my studio in the British Virgin Islands. A Portrait of Alice is collection of red chalk drawings that depicted the beauty of the Afro-Caribbean woman. Alice is discreetly veiled in my drawings, for I had not then the courage to work with the nude.

The above illustration is taken from my book and shows Alice with one of my first tentative drawings. In advance of publishing a large format collector's limited edition of the book I will be serializing the contents week by week, page by page, over the next few months. To access the pages to date click on the sidebar image for this book or go to: notesonthenude.blogspot.com.

The best of both worlds

As you'll on the sidebar, I have begun serializing Notes on the Nude in advance of publishing a large format, high quality, limited print edition. This gives my followers the best of both worlds. First: it makes the contents available on-line for art students in every corner of the world and second: for collector's, a hard copy, the details of which will follow. 

I will be serializing the book week by week, page by page, over the next few months. To access the pages click on the sidebar image for this book or go to: notesonthenude.blogspot.com.

To quote the reviewer of a draft copy:

Roger Burnett’s account of his life-time’s work as a painter and sculptor depicting the nude figure will forever put traditional life classes in the shade. The pages radiate with passion, both from the artist’s and model’s standpoint. I know of no other book on this subject that comes close. It is brave and beautiful…

What have we done wrong?

Today's sketch might well express the dejected feelings of my models whose paintings and sculptures are featured in my book Notes on the Nude. I share their dismay: what have we done wrong to have our work "blocked" by the publisher of our choice. My models gave their body and soul and together we worked in all innocence to elevate the beauty and profundity of the nude.

The thousands of artists and art students that follow these post from every corner of the world do so in order to develop their understanding of working from the live model, and in doing so continue a practice that has been on going for centuries. 

Notes on the Nude is unique in giving an insight into the creative process from both the artist's and model's perspective. Moreover - and relevant to what we are presently up against - it records the battle of censorship in the arts since the time of Michelangelo. 

But one way or the other we will publish and be damned. One option is to publish the book on this blog in serial form, together with a high quality, limited edition print version. 

We're working on it!

It beggars believe...or does it

My last post ended with a reviewer's comment:

It is artists like Schiele who blaze a trail for future generations of artists to create work without constraints limiting what they can do.

It would be wonderful if that were so. But alas, in today’s world it is the likes of Facebook that have set themselves up as the guardians of morality, and it seems that all others meekly follow suit. The “F” and “C” words pass muster, as does violence and hatred, but the innocent beauty of the nude is censored. 

The content of my forthcoming book Notes on the Nude is presently suffering a similar fate and has been BLOCKED by my first choice of publisher. 

It is somewhat ironic that, in a society where sex appeal is used to sell everything from perfume to cars, artistic representations of the nude are regularly banned from being shown in public places. But this is not a new development: notwithstanding the fact that, historically, the nude has been one of the central subjects of art, it has been subjected to regular censorship attempts.

On its unveiling in Florence in 1501, onlookers stoned Michelangelo’s “David,” breaking off an arm.  More recently, in California the penis on a reproduction of “David” was masked with a fig leaf - as it was in London at the time of Queen Victoria - and in Florida, a replica of David was dressed with a loincloth after community complaints.

I give credit to The National Coalition Against Censorship for serving as the US watchdog on these issues.

My loss was my gain

Thank goodness I did not go to art school or seriously study the work of past masters until, by way of my roving lifestyle; I had developed my own way of seeing. Had this not been so, I would have discovered the work of Egon Schiele earlier than I did, and hence been tempted to imitate his unique way of seeing.

The opening sketch is one that I made before I knew that Egon Schiele had ever existed, and the painting below is by the master himself.

A recently published book: Egon Schiele. The Complete Paintings 1909–1918 is high on my wish list. The following is quoted from the publisher’s press release.

After Egon Schiele (1890-1918) freed himself from the shadow of his mentor and role model Gustav Klimt, he had just ten years to inscribe his signature style into the annals of modernity before the Spanish flu claimed his life. Being a child prodigy quite aware of his own genius and a passionate provocateur, this didn’t prove to be too big a challenge.

His haggard, overstretched figures, drastic depiction of sexuality, and self-portraits in which he staged himself with emaciated facial expressions bordering between brilliance and madness, had none of the decorative quality of Klimt's hymns of love, sexuality, and yearning devotion. Instead, Schiele’s work spoke of a brutal honesty, one that would upset and irreversibly change Viennese society.

Although his works were later defamed as “degenerate” and for a time were almost forgotten altogether, they influenced generations of artists – from Günter Brus and Francis Bacon to Tracey Emin. Today, his then-misunderstood oeuvre continues to fetch exorbitant prices on the international art market.

Presented in a voluminous format that captures all of the intensity and emotional truth of his work, Egon Schiele. All paintings from 1909-1918 features 221 paintings and 146 drawings that retrace the fertile last decade of Schiele’s life. With many pieces newly photographed for this edition, these works are paired with excerpts from his countless writings and poems, as well as essays introducing his life and oeuvre, to situate the Austrian master in the context of European Expressionism and trace his extraordinary legacy.

 As one reviewer has said:

I am obsessed with Schiele’s work. I love the boldness of his paintings and drawings particularly in a time of real censorship. It is artists like Schiele who blaze a trail for future generations of artists to create work without constraints limiting what they can do.

I can’t sit around doing nothing

While waiting for corrections to my book Notes on the Nude to be accepted, I can’t sit around doing nothing. My hands and mind have to be busy at something. Today’s picture shows what has kept me occupied.

The history of the three stools is as follows:

The small stool is one that I made a few years ago as a replica of a family heirloom that ended its days by being eaten away by wood-worm.

The stool to the left is well over a hundred years old and began its life as a weaver’s stool in a Yorkshire mill. I rescued it some years ago and it has since served as a favourite stool in my studio.

The high stool to the right is one I made last week in order to keep me from going bonkers while my darling daughter resolved errors in Notes in the Nude page layouts – patience is not one of my virtues! The stool is made from two contrasting Dominican hardwoods and will have a lifespan of hundreds of years after my time on earth.

I designed the stool specifically for one of my models to perch upon. Just as the sculptor Enzo Plazzotta’s Jamaican Girl perched almost fifty years ago when I made this sketch.

And coincidentally, who should I bump into in town this morning but Verlena, the very model I had in mind!

   

Doodling is good for you

This post was originally intended for my Notes for Art Students blog. But despite my attempts at resurrection, that blog fails to catch on. Perhaps my art student followers resent being demoted to a secondary site. From now on I'll stick to these pages.

The doodle that illustrates this post came about as I was trying out a box of crayons and felt tips that cost me no more than a few dollars. Many artists of the past worked with whatever materials came to hand and I tend to do the same.

Many years ago, George Prince (1918-2009), the world's acknowledge expert on creative thinking, was my next door neighbour. Entering his house was a mind boggling experience. Every inch of wall space was covered with page after page of random thoughts and doodles. 

Doodles are the outlet for spontaneous and unconscious creativity. Like water colours, they resent being controlled.  

One skill leads to another

This week I found myself using my grandfather’s clock making tools, but not for the kind of clock mechanism that he would have known, it was quartz rather than clockwork.

There was no way that I could bear looking at the quartz clock that I had bought for a few dollars, so I set about modifying its appearance. In place of the horrid plastic case I mounted the mechanism on a brass and mahogany stand of my own making. All went well until the hollow shaft that turns the minute hand broke within the shaft that turn the hour hand. To make a repair I had to turn and bore a brass insert no larger than the head of a match – hence my grandfather’s clock making tools and his critical eye looking down on me from the next world!

The picture is of the modified clock on the shelf in my studio with the plastic case of its predecessor shown as an insert.

Why, you may ask, do I need to tell the time while painting? The answer being that I work from the model for no more than one and a half hours and in that time I attempt three paintings. The clock tells me when enough is enough. To paint more would be to achieve less.

Reinventing the (potter’s) wheel

After fifteen years of earning his living in other spheres, my son Karl has courageously declared himself a potter and his recently opened pottery is the first of its kind in the British Virgin Islands.

My children’s careers range from Chartered Accountant, Sport, Environment Management, Music and Computer Programming. But Karl is the first one to follow in his father’s footsteps and risk toiling on the forge of art.

Yet there may be another. The picture below is of his son (my grandson) and I understand they claim: “He’s just like his grandfather”. If that is so, he will certainly give them something to think about! On the strength of that I am keeping him in mind as my future apprentice. 

 

The word "apprentice" relates to the word "reinventing" in the title of this post. Apprenticeships have sadly become a thing of the past. Without the benefit of an apprenticeship those now wishing to learn a craft have to reinvent the wheel. Text books, on-line instruction and college courses come nowhere near to learning a trade at the workbench of a master craftsman. 

Photocopying

Portrait by Vaughn Anslyn

Two portraits: the first doubtless copied from a photograph and the second, undoubtedly drawn from life. They illustrate the difference between precision and passion.

Without a photograph to copy from, most of today’s artists would be at a complete loss. The work of the copyist may be technically perfect, but the work of the artist that draws from life is genius. I stress to my students: no copying and no rubbing out…every line counts.

But it takes an artist of the calibre of Feliks Topolski to spontaneously capture the mood of Hastings Banda from life.

PS If my DGS students turn to my Notes for Art Students there is a posting for your eyes only...no one else is allowed to see!

In art there is no right or wrong answer

This morning I hosted a studio session for eleven students from the Dominica Grammar School who this year will be the sitting CXC exam in Visual Art. The school deserves credit for rounding up eleven students. For the remainder of Secondary Schools in Dominica the tally is virtually nil. Creative Arts are low on the Ministry of Education’s agenda. Sport is compulsory, but art is not. It is perceived as non-essential - something you can do in your spare time, a bit like playing dominoes. 

No matter how hard the students try at this late hour, they have a difficult task ahead of them. In previous years, the results from Dominican students sitting the exam have been abysmally low - and it’s not the fault of the students. Without a culture that is not steeped in art, it is difficult to relate to the subject. For the sake of these students I am resurrecting my blog: notesforartstudents.blogspot.com.  You will find the link in the sidebar.

I began this morning’s session by telling the students that in art, unlike other subjects, there is no right or wrong answer: creativity is different.

Here are my eleven brave students and a quick water-colour sketch that I made of one of them. 

Shayla is not studying art but was standing in for a student that was absent. Pity, because her interest in art was aroused and I feel sure that she has potential.

Working on it

While waiting impatiently for my computer to complete a task, I get a message on the screen that says: working on it. For those impatiently waiting for the release of my book Notes on the Nude I promise, we’re working on it.

When I started collecting and assembling the notes and images for Notes on the Nude last October, I had in mind printing the book in landscape format. Most of my images are of the reclining nude, and it stands to reason that my models recline horizontal. However, to keep to the printer’s preferred format, I switched to portrait, but portrait with a twist. The twist being, you turn the book through 90˚ to view the right-hand full-page images. The notes are on the left hand pages and are viewed upright. We tested the arrangement out on a proof copy and it worked. Moreover, it left space at the bottom of the text pages into which I could add more images. I’ve lost count, but we are looking at 150 full colour images in all.

While I worked on the content, my ever faithful daughter Tania worked on the computer page set ups. A week without internet access (the joys of living on a small Caribbean island) and other emergencies, further slowed down the process. But we’re working on it and we are nearly there.

Today’s picture shows the revised book cover.

Did I do that!

…Rick looked at Smoke Jordan’s black face shinning above a magnificent collection of white-skinned drums, and he saw how much the same he was. Same one that used to do the hot sweeping at Gandy’s, only that one wore yellow cords and this one wore a white tuxedo…His eyes were turned obliquely upward and he chewed his lower lip all the while he played; then he’d knock out a beauty and turn his eyes down, startled, as if he’d surprised even himself with that one…

The above passage is from Young Man with a Horn, Dorothy Baker’s 1930’s classic novel on the jazz age.

But whether it be jazz, poetry or theater, the creative feeling when things go well is the same. It is the feeling I get when I succeed in capturing the subtle beauty of the nude in watercolour. Did I do that!

My dad can draw better than that

Today's title is a quip that a boy made to his mate as they watched me make the sketch that illustrates today's post.

The sketch, along with fifty others in a similar style, illustrate my forthcoming book titled Townscapes. The book comprises of a collection of fifty street scenes and commentary that range from England, to France, to Portugal, to the Caribbean, and back again. I will tell you more about work in progress on this book in future posts.

In the meantime, my book Notes on the Nude is almost in print and hopefully by this time next week it will be available on Amazon and their associate outlets.

Unfinished Business

At the age of seventy-six I have by no means reached the stage of contentment in relation to my paintings and sculptures. Try as I may, I cannot bring myself to want to control the uncontrollable media of watercolour and to forsake the challenge of the nude figure.  

I have tried to revert back to the landscape, but from a different viewpoint to the tame and slick watercolours that you'll see if you Goggle "watercolour landscape paintings". Today's painting shows my most recent attempt. I leave it to you to sort out the wood from the trees.

Leonardo da Vinci: Notes to Painters

Like the subjects that I touch upon in these diary pages, Leonardo da Vinci’s copious writings are in no specific order, and his notes to painters are scattered at random among a host of other subjects. One of his notes came to mind this week as I cleaned behind a cabinet that holds samples of my hand-made paper. It reads as follows:

I shall not refrain from including among these precepts a new and speculative idea, which although it may seem trivial and almost laughable, is none the less of great value in quickening the spirit of invention. It is this: that you should look at certain walls stained with damp or at stones of an uneven colour…You will be able to see in these the likeness of divine landscapes…strange figures in violent action, expressive faces…

Some years ago, in the aftermath of termites devouring my collection of jazz records, I titled one of my posts Termites Have Taste. I can now add that termites have vision. Leonardo would have been as taken aback as I was at their creativity. Their masterly rendition, directly applied to a white plaster wall, measures 30” x 12”.

Perhaps these particular termites have been observing my modelling sessions for I can detect, both in colour and form, a group of my reclining nudes.

Confronting the Real Thing

Feliks Topolski (1907-1989) painter and illustrator, claimed that abstract art is a means of avoiding confronting the real thing. I tend to agree. Along with the conceptual art, it is a handy device for many who would like to draw and paint the real thing but lack the ability. 

My abstract art (if that is what it could be called) is a fragment of the struggle with the real thing. The images below are fragments from my paintings of the nude figure. I stress the word “fragment” rather than detail, for my endeavour is to suggest rather than define.

Footnote: To celebrate being re-connected to broadband, my regular followers will notice that I've added a new image to the title of my blog. 

When least expected

Sometimes a breakthrough with my work comes when least expected, especially when seeking inspirational models for my series, Daughters of the Caribbean Sun. 

Dionne came to me a couple of weeks ago as an aspiring art student.  But as is often the case, those with no prior intention of modelling become some of my best models. Modelling serves as a masterclass in understanding the trials and triumphs of an artist’s work and moreover, to being part of the creative process.

Below are my first three hurried sketches of Dionne. Just when I thought I had exhausted the nuances of the female nude, my model’s twists and turns showed me otherwise.

Despite initial reservations, Dionne’s emailed response to her first modelling session reads: Today was terrific…I’m looking forward to our next session.

Ireland's Inland Waterways from Fifty Years Ago

The book that records a voyage I made through the canals and rivers of Southern Ireland fifty years ago is finally in print and available through Amazon.

As I mentioned in an earlier diary page:

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.

Practicing What I Preach

On occasions - and against all odds on a small island in the Caribbean - I meet a young person with a passion and potential for art. Six years ago I tried to introduce a one year foundation course in the visual arts for school levers but there was little interest. This is because art hardly figures at all in the secondary school curriculum and is therefore unknown. Through the Ministry of Education I have offered free introductory workshops but to no response. The island's State College offers nothing at all in Visual Art.

To get around this dilemma, I keep on open studio door for those interested in pursuing art and give ad hoc help and encouragement on a one to one basis. With me they don't learn how to mix colour but how to see colour; rather than copying from photographs I give them courage to draw from life; I don't watch them paint, they watch me paint. It is the absence of demonstrating that most art teaching falls down flat. There is not one art teacher in a thousand that dares to stand before their students and paint. 

Today's picture is a  fifteen minute portrait that I painted as a demonstration for Dionne, my latest prodigy. The sitter is her sister Danielle. Dionne desperately wanted to study art on leaving school but as no courses are available she's studying Law Enforcement. I am sure that there are many potential law enforcers in this world but few young ladies with the Dionne's passion and potential for art.

The same holds true for my equally talented model Verlena. There are thousands of Human Resource Managers, but very few talented calligraphers.

  

The emotional impact of colour

Abstract art has nothing on nature, particularly when it come to design and the emotional impact of colour. In comparison, the painterly daubs that so often pass as abstract art are a feeble thing.

Today's picture is an off-cut from the tree that demolished the roof of my life-class teaching studio during hurricane Maria. On my wood lathe, I am now busy turning segments of the tree into bowls that retain the tree's colour and grain pattern. The colours are so similar to the skin tones of my models that it seems nature herself benefited from observing the subtle beauty of the nude. 

Below is a partly turned bowl from the same tree. I now need to allow the moisture content to reduce further before finishing.

Below is the finished bowl.

In all innocence

In creating paintings and sculptures that express the beauty of the nude figure, my models and I work in all innocence. 

In addition to this blog, a small selection of my work is posted on Tumblr, the reason being that I follow the work of others on tumblr who have a similar interest. True, some of their postings may be deemed pornographic, but even at 75 I keep on open mind. I have a greater issue with the foul language that is often found on Facebook postings. Like D H Lawrence, I have no problem with the powerful single syllable "F" and "C" words providing their meaning is kept in their truer context of sexual intercourse and the vagina. I denounce them as curse words.

A few days ago I was alerted to Tumblr's out of the blue crack down on what their censors deem as "adult content"; and "adult" applies, not just to children, but to viewers of all ages. I thought my work would be except, but on checking I found that many of my posts had been deleted. Curiously, the posts that one might class as being on the borderline were left intact and the more innocent ones deleted. It seems that I can paint and sculpt breasts providing that I omit nipples!

I appealed their decision in relation to my work and, to the credit of tumblr, my appeal has been granted.

Below, in all innocence, is one of the paintings titled Jessica Reading that they initially deemed as phonographic. The adage still holds true: he who thinks evil sees evil.

My forthcoming book Notes on the Nude deals with these issues at greater length.

Who, where and when?

It  becomes confusing. My past portfolios contain thousands and paintings and sketches. You can add to that hundreds more that were started but never finished, as with today's pictures.

I can vaguely recollect making these sketches but what eludes me is: who, where and when. Moreover, after a promising start why did I not see them through to completion.

I stress that these sketches are unfinished and worse for wear after being battered by two hurricanes. They are therefore to be viewed in the context of this post. I say this because of a recent unfortunate experience where one of my paintings was used, without my approval, and re-published out of context. May I remind the unscrupulous, that both text and images are subject to copyright. 

A Note of Thanks

My forthcoming book Notes on the Nude begins with a dedication to my models - for without their contribution to the creative process my work would not exist; and ends with an acknowledgement to my daughter Tania for her help in formatting the text and illustrations.

Below is one of my faithful models, followed by my equally faithful daughter Tania.

Footnote:

Two days ago we were reconnected to broadband after the major hurricane that devastated Dominica of over a year ago. For these posts and my work in general, it is a huge step forward. My thanks to Cable and Wireless, our service provider.