I have not seen as others saw

As a painter it is necessary for me to have a different way of seeing. My task is to see beauty where it has not been seen before. But in doing so, I make life difficult for myself and difficult for others to patronise what I create.

Artists have to create their own following and very often recognition comes long after their time on earth. In the process of seeking for the unknown I am rarely sure of the value of what I have created at the time of creation. As with public recognition, it comes in retrospect. 

Today's painting is a case in point. It was painted four years ago and at the time I doubted that I had put down on paper what I was searching for. I now realise that I had come close to my objective. It's not a painting that will attract "how sweet" comments from the Face Book Community but it might appeal to the cognoscenti in search of the endless beauty of the nude. 

I have taken the title of today's post from a poem by Edgar Allan Poe. It is a poem that I choose for the Memorial Service of Virgin Island poet Sheila Hyndman Wheatley (1958-1991). It could be equally fitting for mine.

From childhood’s hour I have not been

As others were; I have not seen

As others saw; I could not bring

My passions from a common spring.

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow; nor could I awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone;

And all I loved, I loved alone.          

State of the Art (Part Two: Photocopies)

When photography came along in the mid-nineteenth century one would have assumed that it would have freed the artist of the need to exactly copy the subject. The camera can better define individual strands of hair and every leaf on a tree. But one hundred and fifty years on it has ironically worked the other way around. In reviewing the current state of the art I find that most aspiring artists copy from photographs down to the last hair follicle and blade of grass. Furthermore, whereas once it was the artist that worked from the live model, it is now the photographer and the artist is content to minutely copy from the photograph. How boring can life get!

Granted, working from life can be an difficult business: the wind blows, the rain falls and the model wilts. Once, when I had set up my stall for painting a market scene on the Caribbean island of Grenada, a dog came along and drank the water from my containers. At least on that occasion, my onlookers were friendly enough to replenish my supply. But the same support wasn't forthcoming when I was painting the dark satanic mills in my native industrial north of England. On that bleak winter afternoon, a group of young boys took delight in raining stones down on me. In comparison, painting from the nude figure in the warmth of a tropical afternoon sounds idyllic, and it is - until ants and mosquitoes begin eating my model.

Nevertheless, against all those set backs, the only way that I can convincingly capture life is to work from life. Although life-classes have begun to proliferate, the lessons learnt appear to go no further than the classroom door. To find out how different are the life-classes that I teach from my studio from the normal run of things, turn to page 26 in my book Notes on the Nude.

The opening and closing sketches are demonstrations that I did for my life class students. Both were made in less than a minute and the first is on a 16" x 20" sheet of newsprint. 

State of the Art (Part One)

Over the last few weeks, in an effort to understand the current state of the visual arts, I have surfed my way through countless internet sites that attract amateur and professional artists. With a few exceptions it has been a depressing business. 

The sites fall into two main categories: Face Book Groups and On-Line Art Galleries. From these can be found links to the websites of individual artists. To gauge reaction to my own work I have joined and contributed to some of the sites. I thank those sites for having me on board, albeit that my responses may be deemed critical. But bear in mind, criticism - and in particular self criticism - is an essential component in art.

The numerous Face Book groups are generally focused to those working in a specific medium (pencil, pastel, watercolour, etc.) or location. They mostly attract aspiring amateurs and the groups administrator(s) rules the roost. Portraits and landscapes are the most popular subjects. A large percentage of the work submitted is meticulously copied from photographs. The nude figure - the bedrock of art through the ages - is for the most part absent and banned from some groups. 

In essence Face Book groups serve as mutual admiration societies. Typical comments include: Very Nice...Amazing...So Beautiful...How Lovely...Wonderful...So Sweet.

Apart from being "blocked" from two sites my own work fared reasonably well in terms of feedback. Today's opening picture is one that I submitted and - a rarity for responses in these groups - I had some "constructive" criticism.

...personally, I would do two things differently, use a much smaller brush and much less water. It seems like the dampness is giving you problems...A very fine brush will give you much better control of the medium. And yes, it will require patience.

I will try to heed the above advice. Who knows, with less water, a smaller brush and patience, I may improve.

Brian Tai's painting, shown below. is at the upper end of the scale. But he also attracted a similar comment:

Nice painting, but not enough painting (I assume that to mean, smaller brush and more patience needed over detail)!

It's a good job that Face Book Groups were not around in Van Gogh's time as otherwise he might have been persuaded to use a smaller brush, less paint and more patience!

I will have more to say about the state of the art in forthcoming posts. 

Erotic implications

In the latest extract from my forthcoming book Notes on the Nude I speak of the delicate balancing act between sexual desire and erotic implications. Working from the nude figure demands passion tempered with integrity and daring tempered with restraint.

Today I came across the very first sketch that I made of my model Annabelle. It was the beginning of an inspirational working relationship that lasted six years. 

Here she is again, just before she left to attend medical school in the States. 

  

Love's labour's lost

The two paintings below are of the same model. The first was thrown down in a matter of seconds direct from the life, whereas the second was laboured over after the event. The first captures the passion of the fleeting moment; a moment that was lost in the labours of the second painting.

Given the choice, I know that most viewers would dismiss the first as being unfathomable and go for the second. But for me, the mood of the moment is captured in the gay and abandoned suggestive washes of the first rather than in the "correctness" of the second.

Too shy to ask

In my early years of painting the figure I missed the chance of many good models through being too shy to ask. I have since learnt that many of those who I would have liked to model for me would have willing done so if only I had asked! 

Now that I am into my final quarter century I take more chances for there is no time to waste. I have dedicated my book Notes on the Nude to my models. They give body and soul to my work and without their contribution to the creative process my paintings and sculptures would not exist.

Today's painting was made in the final fifteen minutes of Collean's last modelling session. As with most of my watercolours, it was painted with a Number 14 Sable Brush on a 18" x 24" sheet of paper. I feel restricted with anything less...and without a model I'm lost. 

Hurricane Dorian

If Hurricane Dorian had arrived in the Bahamas forty-three years ago it is very likely that I would not be alive today. In 1976 we spent a year sailing the Abaco Islands aboard our thirty foot ketch Sarah Hannah. During that time we spent two months anchored at Little Harbour while looking after the house and studio of the sculptor Randolph Johnson. Pride of place on my bookshelf is a signed copy of Randolph's book Artist on his Island.

Those who have lived on small boats know the pleasure of occasionally being able to spread out on shore and to catch up on washing. The painting below is of our backlog of laundry hung out to dry in Randolph's and Margot's backyard. 

For the hurricane season we anchored at Man-O-War Cay and the diary extract below dates from those days. I will always remember the Abaco Islands as the most tranquil place on earth and my heart goes out to the islanders in their present plight. 

Laments to a flea, a greenfly and a mosquito

Troublesome insects have been lamented by poets for centuries. Over four hundred years ago John Donne wrote his erotic love poem The Flea and more recently A P Herbert lamented The Greenfly. Poets from D H Lawrence down have attempted to wax lyrical about the mosquito but to no avail. 

Yesterday, one of those troublesome insects played havoc with my modelling session. As with A P Herbert's Greenfly I find it difficult to understand how God who made the beauty of the female form then conceived the bothersome mosquito. 

Greenfly, it's difficult to see
Why God, who made the rose, made thee. 

I give credit to my model for willingly working through mosquito bites and stifling temperatures in the 90's. I'm normally envious of my model's comfortable nakedness on sultry tropical afternoons. But with the ground to hot to stand on in bare feet and with the full force of the afternoon sun belting down on her, for the above sketch she sweated a bucket full...and another bucket full could have been wrung out of my shirt!

The painting is testimony to my brave model. Thank you Collean.

Too much green

Much of the action in Jean Rhys's literary masterpiece Wild Sargasso Sea is set on the Island of Dominica and not far from my studio. She describes the countryside as:

...too much...too much blue, too much purple, too much green.

As a painter I know the feeling, for these colours are the most difficult to depict. I prefer earth colours. It gets easier on days like today. We're now in the hurricane season and the first of this year's storms has brought torrential rain. I made the painting below from my studio window in a frustrated five minutes of not being able to do anything else. It's not the kind of scene that would induce tourists but better for me than too much green.

By this afternoon the sky had begun to brighten and the view looking down from the same window was returning to too much green after being flooded out with too much rain.

Technicalities

As I get very little in the way of feedback to my posts, I am unsure what my followers are after. Is it my paintings, sculptures or the technicalities of work in progress? 

Just in case it's the latter here is a picture of the first stage in taking a mold from my base relief. 

Fine casting plaster mixed to the consistency of cream is flicked over the clay figure. It is a technique that has remained unchanged since the time of Michelangelo. There is no other way; and believe it or not the plaster can pick up every finger print on the clay. Once this first layer has hardened a thicker coat of plaster is troweled on to strengthen the mold. 

This is the first stage of making a "waste mold". An apt term because if it goes wrong everything is lost!

I'll let you be the judge

Comments to my posts are few and far between. That's a pity because working in isolation on a small island in the Caribbean I get very little in the way of feedback. Below is my standing figure at today's close of play. Those who regularly follow my work know what I'm after. I am reluctant to go further - to add more would be less. But as I am too close to judge, I'll let you be the judge. 

While you're pondering on that, by way of a diversion, below is a painting that I made this afternoon of a stand of palms just outside my studio door. 

The  sculptor Jacob Epstein (1880-1959) claimed that he had earned more from painting flowers than what he had earned from his monumental sculptures. If I could have been content to continue painting palm fringed beaches, as I did forty years ago, I would very likely be a millionaire by now.

Lead me not into temptation

In the context of this post, the temptation being to overly work my clay sketch of the standing figure. Clay has similar accidental and suggestive qualities to water colour. It is best when put down in the heat of the moment and then left alone. Details distract and strangle the very life out of the subject. 

The above picture is a detail from the initial clay sketch of my life-size bathing figure from five years ago. Below are the same breasts in the final master plaster cast. More accurate but cold and less inviting. 

I am trying not to be led into temptation with my current work in progress. Here she is  as the last rays of the Caribbean sun embrace her at the end of the day.

Simply sensuous

The hundreds of paintings and the sculptures featured in my book Notes on the Nude for the most part depict the model twisting and turning. Even my reclining nudes are contorted in order to explore new visual dimensions. While this is all well and good for painting, I am beginning to learn that sculpture is best when simply sensuous. 

In my last post I alluded to the possibility of developing my sketch of Naomi's standing figure into a bas relief. That possibility has become a reality. Nothing fancy, just the innocent beauty of my model. My suggestion to Naomi was that she should stand relaxed with her arms by her side. Below is a preliminary sketch and the beginnings of the 1/3rd life-size sculpture.

Thwart with difficulties

As if attempting to capture the subtle nuances of the female nude in water colours is not enough, the very business of getting down to work can in itself be thwart with difficulties.

Tropical downpours earlier in the week meant cancelling a modelling session. Then, when the weather improved the model I had in mind couldn't make it but her best friend (who is also one of my models) offered to take her place. I prepared the studio well ahead of time, walked down to the river to bathe and mentally prepare myself for the challenge that lay ahead. 

But on my return to the studio I caught a whiff of something that didn't smell right. Thirty minutes before the start of the session, the whiff became the stench. Opening all the doors and shutters only made matters worse. Whatever had died was somewhere in thick undergrowth outside. 

It was too late to cancel the session as my model was already on her way. Actually two models were on their way for the one that couldn't make it finally could. As best friends, Collean and Naomi are inseparable. As there was no way we could work in those conditions we frantically began relocating all that I need for painting to the studio I use for sculpture. 

For my mind to be free and to work at the speed of light, I need everything around me to be in its place. Now everything was in disarray. The painting below is as muddled and stressed out as I was. 

This lightening sketch of the standing figure is closure to the mark.

It was that sketch led me to consider a sculpture rather than painting. I straightaway put down my paints brushes and began taken the key measurements, not for a sculpture in the round but for a bas relief. The relief shown below was destroyed by the hurricane that devastated Dominica two years ago. Perhaps I can now replace it with a new piece of work. If so, the difficulties that frustrated my painting session will not have been in vain.

Naomi more than earned her fee for modelling under such circumstances and Collean was happy with a bag of sawdust for her hamster. If only I could pay all my models in sawdust I could afford to keep them working seven days a week! 

But this post doesn't end there. While I was taking Naomi's key measurements I noticed Collean was intent on scribbling something down on one of my work tables. I know that poetry is one of her passions and after she left curiosity got the better of me. I can only make out the odd word here and there. But therein lies its attraction. Poetry like art should not reveal all of its secrets at a first glance. 

The Sad State of the Art

Photography is an art form in its own right but alas, when it comes to the nude, the censorious Facebook does not recognise it as such and even the painted nude is frowned upon. This sad state of the affairs was brought home to me when browsing through images on the "Face Book Art Gallery" (sic).

A follower of that site had posted a female nude, in all its innocence, by the masterful Ukrainian photographer David Dubnitsky. How sad that the nipple is considered obscene and hence obliterated. In doing so the missionary zeal of the censors has defaced a beautiful work of art - and moreover, attracted attention to the very thing it attempts to conceal.

In earlier times painters were adept at giving a tantalising glimpse of the nude in the most innocent of subjects. In Ruben’s painting Christ and the Penitent Sinners Mary Magdalene’s left hand demurely covers her right breast. However, her fore and middle fingers are parted to reveal the delicate beauty of the nipple.

Below is another of  David Dubnitsky's photographs...this time uncensored.

Tain't what you do, it's the way that you do it

The title of today's post is taken from a 1939 composition by jazz musicians Sy Oliver and Trummy Young. The verse that reads: "You can try hard, it don't mean a thing...take it easy, greasy, then your jive will swing" could well apply to painting in watercolour. In other words, it's not what you put in but what you leave out that matters.

In my book Notes on the Nude I have this to say about leaving out.

When asked what I first look for in a model, without hesitation I can answer, it is the face that attracts my attention. This holds true even though in my paintings the face is secondary to the figure and sometimes it is not shown at all. Nevertheless, the spirit of my muse is personified in her fleeting glance. Here lie her subtle moods and changes.

The above picture is a detail from a painting I made of Naomi and which was featured in my last post. Had I have left out more face there wouldn't be any face at all. Nevertheless, what's there is enough to capture her likeness - and I might add, her fetching beauty and charm. To add more would be less.

Beyond the face it is the hands of a potential model that attracts my attention. They speak volumes. When painting I put the hand and arm down at a glance and leave others to interpret it as they see best. The secrete of a successful painting is not how much you can put in but how much you can leave out.

The detail below is taken from the second painting of Naomi that was featured in my last post.

Making love and making art

In my book Notes on the Nude I refer to the similarities between making love and making art. Passion and creativity are the key ingredients of both. If the task is belaboured you screw up. 

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)

Like true love, the creative endeavours of artist and model are thwarted with difficulties and success verges on impossibility. Inspiration is dependent on the united body and soul of both. Trying too hard induces failure more often than not trying at all. Our shared muse "laughs and flies when pressed and bidden".

You can add that both endevours demand one's full attention. After seventy-six years I thought that I could paint my model (Naomi) and tutor my model/aspiring art student (Collean) both at the same time. Well, to a degree I can, but not to the nth degree. And it takes the nth degree to pull off a successful painting when working from the live model at the speed of light and to give my student the attention she deserves.

Poor light and mosquitoes that were intent on eating Naomi alive, didn't help matters.

I failed on two attempts but came close on the painting above and the one below. Thank you Naomi and Collean. Without my models my work would not exist. I can't get passionate about a photograph. And while I am still in this world I remain committed to enthuse the next generation of artists.

My initial despondency that followed yesterday's session was dispelled when I was shopping in town this morning. Two of my followers begged me not to give up...your passion and paintings make life so much more worth living.

Going back to go forward

If Michelangelo and scores of Renaissance painters and sculptors from the past were to visit my workshops and studio, here on a small island in the Caribbean, they would find that my materials and techniques have changed very little since their time. Because my nearest art shop is thousands of miles away I make many of my own materials - just as artists did centuries ago.

Today's picture is of a sketch made on pastel paper of my own making. It has taken no end of trail batches to find the colour and texture best suited to my requirements. Toulouse Lautrec  and other artists from his period found that brown wrapping paper or cardboard suited their needs. This led me to experiment with pulping heavy duty brown paper bags and adding them to my paper making mix. 

Now that I have succeeded in getting the paper to my liking I need to begin making my own pastels in colours that reflect the skin tones of my models and to a degree of hardness that suits my technique.

Incidentally, many of Toulouse Lautrec's oil sketches were painted on cardboard, as shown below.

Working from Life

It's not often you find me in the picture, and even rarer to find me and my model in the same picture. At least it gives you an idea of our working arrangement. 

My model is seated on a large revolving turntable with a neutral canvas backdrop. I keep my materials to the bare minimum: no more than a dozen tubes of colour, a No.12 sable brush and a 20" x 16" sheet of paper. A heavy duty photographer's tripod serves as my easel and allows the drawing board to be tilted in all directions - just as the turntable allows me to turn my model in all directions.  

I don't have the time or inclination to stretch my paper beforehand. I work rapidly and leave my washes to take care of themselves. Seldom do more than twenty minutes pass from start to finish of a painting and all the better if I can catch my subject in ten!

You can learn more about my painting techniques in the serialization of my book Notes on the Nude.

Painting, poetry and prose

Many artists claim that words are superfluous and that their paintings say it all. Perhaps for some it is so. However, in my attempt to portray the sensuous beauty of the nude I often resort to adding poetry and prose. 

Some years ago one of my models expressed the relationship of all three in a poem that began:  

When the painter and the poet combine,
Each searching for that illusive line,
That only a true lover can define,
Tis then they find their hearts entwine.

I might add that a similar synergy exists between painter and model. It is one that I was conscious of today as I worked on the following three paintings of Collean. 

Thank you Collean. You were inspirational!

Tuning Up

Just as musicians tune up their instruments before a performance and athletes limber up before a race, as a watercolourist I put down trial lines and throw down washes of colour on a scrap of paper before beginning the real thing - as you can see in the above picture. These initial preparations are all the more necessary when I've spent over a year writing rather than painting. 

This week Naomi and Collean came to my studio together, just as they did when they first modelled for me over five years ago. If you go to page 41 in the serialization of my book Notes on the Nude you will see across the bottom of the page an early painting of Naomi. Collean's first painting will be featured later in my book. The one I did of her this week is shown below.

The intervening five years have seen the blossoming of Collean. She is no longer the shy and reserved young lady that I first knew but a charming and confident model with considerable potential. She has an interest and talent for art and I invited her to watch me as I worked on my painting of Naomi. 

I am sometimes at my best when demonstrating my technique and this painting is a case in point. Collean followed my every line and brush stroke with rapped attention. I often talk to myself when painting but it is better when there is someone looking over my shoulder and benefiting from what I am saying...

...Before I begin I'm looking for one line with which I can tie the figure together. I'm going for the line that runs along the left leg, outlines the sensuous contour of the pudendum and terminates with the rhythmic curves of the breasts . From this line I can then add the rest. I am keeping the initial drawing to the bare minimum and, working with a No 14 brush, allowing the colour washes freedom to fill out the form. First, we will find the lights in the skin tones and then work our way back towards the dark. One brush stroke suggests the left arm and hand. We are not counting fingers. Let's stop right there. We've said all that needs to be said. The viewer can add the rest...

The paintings measure 20" x 24" and from start to finish each one was completed in less than thirty minutes. Or more accurately I should say that each one took me over sixty years!