Three in a row

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

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

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

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

From Model to Wife

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

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

A pivotal point in time

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

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

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

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

Father's Day

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

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

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

20th Century Lyrics and 16th Century Poetry

Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, USVI

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

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

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

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

Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, USVI

Missing a muse

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

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

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

Sheila Hyndman

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

Alice Matthews

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

To Christopher Gable with thanks

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

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

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

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

Ballet Black

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

Ballet Class at the Dominica Institute for the Arts 

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

You must believe in Spring

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

  

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

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

            When lonely feeling fills the meadows of your mind,

            Just think when winter comes can spring be far behind.

 Beneath the deepest snows

 The secret of a rose

 Is that it merely knows,

 You must believe in spring.

Just as a tree is sure its leaves will reappear,

It knows its emptiness is just the time of year.

The frozen mountain streams

Of April’s melted dreams,

How crystal clear it seems,

You must believe in spring.

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

Just as the sleeping rose awaits the kiss of May.

So in a world of snow,

Of things that come and go,

Where what you think you know

You can’t be certain of.

You must believe in spring and love.

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

At the back of my mind

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

Jean Rhys

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

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

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

Billie Holiday

From Sensual to Shame

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

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

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

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

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

Enough is enough and a plea for models

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

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

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

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

Running on empty

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

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

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

Sculpture possibilities

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

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

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

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

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

That beautiful frontier between drawing and sculpture

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

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

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

Anonymity

Over the last couple of weeks I've been following - at a safe distance - an anonymous on-line art competition on the theme of the Corona Virus. But whereas the fifteen participants hid behind a cloak of secrecy those casting a vote or comment were revealed by name. Moreover, first place went to an artist painting under a pseudonym! 

I'm still trying to head my head around this. I suspect the reasoning is that you vote for the painting, not the person. In other words: the message, not the messenger. But surely, in all art forms the person and the performance are inextricably linked. I would hate for this to catch on to the extent that on visiting the National Gallery I would have to guess who painted what.

For example, many of us would know who painted this:

But I doubt if we'd know who painted this:

As different as they are, Paul Gauguin (1842-1903) painted both.

I talked away most of it

James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1843-1903) had this to say about his sparse and impressionistic pastels of Venice: I thought away most of it and put down what was left.

What was left were masterpieces, as the one above.

Today I did it the other way around: I talked away most of it until there was nothing left!

This came about through trying to reassure a first time model. I have known Francess for many years but was taken by surprise when she told me she wanted to try modelling. It was a tough assignment for both of us. On one hand, her hesitancy and on the other our combined determination to give it a try. I never turn away potential models for I never know where I might find my next muse.

Below is my initial three minute sketch on a sheet of newsprint. The colour effect is due to my camera struggling to find the white balance. For once my camera's difficulties contributed to the creative process, so I let it be.  

Where I usually fail with a first time model is giving the face the same freedom as the figure. The face has to be put down in seconds with a loaded No.12 brush so as not to distract from the painting as a whole. In size it covers an area of less than two square inches. This time around I came close to succeeding with the face but failing miserably with the figure.   

At the end of the morning's session I asked Francess why she had put herself though the ordeal. Her answer echoed that of many of my models: I wanted to increase my self confidence and learn to feel comfortable in myself. If today's session helped towards that end it was well worthwhile.

I wrote my book Notes on the Nude specifically with models in mind.

A potential controversy

My brother alerted me today of a Twitter suggesting that a sculpture should be commissioned to celebrate the life of Anne Lister (1791-1840), a lesbian who in the 19th Century challenged misogynistic conventions and sexual norms.

Anne Lister lived on the outskirts of the Yorkshire village where I spent my childhood and I would welcome the challenge of commemorating that courageous lady in bronze. 

Perhaps one of my rejected controversial nude for the NHS could be resurrected to fulfill the commission. 

Below is a portrait of Anne Lister by Joshua Horner c.1830. Could it be that Ganeen, the model for my NHS sculpture, bares an uncanny resemblance. 

This commission would be more in my line than a recent request for 14 statues 5 feet in height representing the Stations of the Cross plus a life-size statue of our Lady of La Salette and children. I doubt if I'd live long enough to fulfill that one even if I wanted to!  

In desperation

Due to the Corona Virus restrictions it has been weeks since I painted from the live model, or for that matter, since I painted at all. Today, in desperation, I picked up my sketching bag and went outdoors in search of life, regardless of subject. Today's painting of what I call "purple grass" is the end result. The grass grows as tall as I am and I use it for paper making. The painting took my usual fifteen minutes from start to finish.

Here in Dominica we've gone weeks with no rainfall and temperatures well into the nineties. Landscapes that are normally "too much green" are beginning to take on the burnt brown, purple and ocher shades of my models; a colour scheme much more to my liking. 

Perhaps fate looked kindly on my attempt to carrying on regardless, for no sooner had I completed the painting than I received an email from a potential Daughter of the Caribbean Sun suggesting a Friday session.  

From Reality to the Virtual

The above picture shows the dramatic interior of my studio during the years 1995-2005 when I temporary deserted my adopted Caribbean for the North of England, the place of my birth. In those days I opened to visitors every Saturday afternoon. The record attendance was two hundred real life visitors in the space of three hours on a day that you wouldn't have turned a dog out.

Below is my present studio in Dominica. The picture shows a corner of the gallery. In addition there are separate spaces for sculpture, painting, mold making, craft work, paper making, metal work and teaching. It ranks as the largest and most diverse studio space in the Caribbean.

The difference between the two in terms of visitors, is the difference between reality and virtual. They now visit on-line from over seventy-two countries around the world. 

My few real life visitors are flabbergasted. They say it's a rare find!

In a roundabout way

Continuing from my post How it all began published on the 12th of April...

After the canals of France we spent a year sailing the inland waterways of Southern Ireland. The account of that journey is recorded in my book Voyage into Ireland. Then followed a year sketching street scenes in the Norfolk town of Kings Lynn. The paintings and sketches from that period became the subject of my first one man show, Lynn and Locality. 

On the morning of the opening of the exhibition my wife and I had to attend a wedding. The friend we left in charge asked what he should do if anything sells. We told him in that unlikely event to write down the contact information of the potential buyer. When we returned at mid-day, almost all of the paintings had sold, one of which resulted in my first royal patronage. 

The painting below is typical of my style of work in those early days.

In a roundabout way it was the Kings Lynn exhibition that brought me to the Caribbean. The sculptor Enzo Plazzotta was also exhibiting at the festival and his sculpture Jamaican Girl so infatuated me that I eventually followed the temptress to the land of her birth. This in turn led me to begin my paintings and sculptures in the series Daughters of the Caribbean Sun. And here I am, fifty years later on the island of Dominica, still adding sculptures and paintings to the series.

Below is a sketch I made of Enzo Plazzotta's sculpture at the time of the exhibition. 

Speak no English

Above is the final clay sketch of my current sculpture and below is work in progress on the wax mold. I had to force myself from going on and on: enough is enough. My objective was to portray the down to earth beauty of the nude rather than an idealised image. 

In readiness for slightly softening the wax to aid releasing of the final plaster cast, I went to town today in search of a hair drying. In Dominica we have a multitude of Chinese shops that sell cheap electronic gadgets. But alas, the assistants "Speak no English". On miming my requirement, and what I took to be a promising "ah" in response, the first shop came up with an electric hair clipper, the second with a lady's purple synthetic hair piece and the third with a restorative hair shampoo. 

From a snicket in Yorkshire to the scandalous doings of the Merry Wives of Windsor

My brother's most recent post on his blog News from Nowhere reawakens the debate on the title of one of the photographs that Bill Brandt took of my native town of Halifax, Yorkshire. His 1937 photograph is shown below, along with one that my brother took of the same scene forty years ago. Both photographs are masterful. However, the controversy lies not in the scene, but in Bill Brandt's title: Snicket in Halifax. In Yorkshire terminology, is it a snicket or a ginnel? 


Bill Bran Brandt's Snicket in Halifax 1937.          

     

     Alan Burnett's photograph taken 40 years later.

As an apprentice engineer in the 1960's I climbed those cobbles many times over. In Halifax there are some streets so steep that it is hard work working down them and this is one of them. I cannot remember it being referred to by any particular name. 

It was the debate "Is it a Snicket or a Ginnel that led me to the scandalous doings in Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor. I am grateful to John Thompson for the following insight.

Contrary to the other answers posted here, the two terms are only tangentially related:

A ‘Ginnel’, in modern parlance, is any receptacle or device carried on one’s person for the purpose of smuggling liquor. However, classically, it had a much more specific meaning and referred to the small funnel one used to pour gin into a hidden liquor receptacle. Quite often, this would be a long cylindrical container sewn into the leather of one’s boots, but other more creative devices have been employed. Indeed, in the early 19th century, curved tubes of pewter or tin were inserted in the rectum by theater goers, and these were filled with gin (or rum) using a ‘ginnel’ for later consumption during the performance. Generally, a friend would be needed to help drain off small measures of liquor into a cup and the practice was widely known as ‘milking the bum’.

A ‘Snicket’ in contrast has always referred to a small amount of any food or drink that one indulges in secretly, and, in the case of alcoholic beverages, would have much the same meaning as a ‘nip’ of brandy, where taken surreptitiously. Although ‘snicket’ has wide application, it is obviously suited to situations such as the enjoyment of ‘bum milkings’, mentioned above… Probably the earliest recorded use of the term in that specific context is in Act 2 scene 3 of Shakespeare’s lesser known ‘Dirty Wives of Windsor’ where Amelia, feeling faint, is offered a ‘snicket o’ whisky’ from the small goatskin sack secreted in Balderstaff’s outsize cod-piece. Much hilarity was occasioned in the groundlings when Balderstaff’s wife enters (stage left) to find Amelia on her knees, taking a wee ‘snicket’ directly from the ginnel refill nipple protruding from the codpiece.

The above then led me on a merry search of the internet to find an artist brave enough to illustrate Shakespeare's more erotic scenes. Other than this illustration by Eric Gill (1882-1940) that illustrates an edition of All the Love Poems of Shakespeare, I drew a blank. 

Incidentally, Corona Virus restrictions have left me desperate for reading matter. New books cannot be shipped in and those on my bookshelves I have read many times over. That is, with the exception of an edition of The Complete Works of Shakespeare that I purchased over forty years ago. Now that I have learnt to crack Shakespeare's code, I'm hooked!