Getting it wrong to get it right

 

Throughout history discoveries have been made unintentionally. The English metallurgist Harry Brearley discovered stainless steel by accident and Alexander Flemming's accidental discovery of penicillin change the course of medicine.

On a more humble level my experiments in colouring fabric have led, by accident, to the discovery of an amazingly resilient colourant. To mark out a pattern on white voile I used a stick of yellow pastel in the belief that it would wash out afterwards. After all, pastel is the most difficult of all artists' media to preserve. But try as I may, my yellow lines would not wash out. This led me to try working designs directly in pastel. 

The opening picture is a selection of attempts ranging from batik to painting with the dyes you see on the pallet. The picture below is of a design first sketched with a  permanent black marker and then coloured with pastel.

The final image shows the effect of light penetrating the semi-transparent fabric.

Before my time

I have to thank my brother for for this version of the photograph of my grandmother Catherine (Kate) Beanland (1877-1960). You can find out more about how he transformed the 1890's sepia image to subtle colour on his blog News from Nowhere.

I can remember my grandmother as a spindly little old lady. But before my time she was an attractive young woman who in her younger days worked as a barmaid. She could well have served with distinction as the model of the barmaid in Edward Manet's (1832-1883) painting of the bar at the Folies-Bergere. But rather than serving champagne in Paris, Kate was pulling pints in Yorkshire.

Trials & tribulations

 

If you think this is a watercolour, your wrong! What you're seeing is the first of my experiments of painting with dye on the white voile that I'm using for dress making. There are possibilities of adding text, as in the detail below.

There is then a whole new world for me to explore with hand-painted batik. I spent this morning working on the first sample with outstanding results: my signature blazing against a crimson background. But alas, in my enthusiasm to complete and photograph it for this post, I attempted to boil the wax out before the dye had set. When I removed the fabric from the boiling pan all that was left was the white voile that I started with. Such is vanity!

But what I can proudly show you is the tjanting tool that I made in my engineering workshop for applying the wax. The heat is supplied from my soldering iron and a light dimmer serves as to rheostat for temperature control. The tip is a plunger that retracts on contact with the fabric and allows the molten wax to flow.

You have me intrigued

A few days ago I shared some ideas I have for my fashion label Bare Minimum with my daughter Trina. Her response was, "You have me intrigued". When I told her that my material was voile (a cotton fabric that's light as a feather and semi-sheer) she added, "Now you've got me very intrigued!". 

I keep giving up on my concept of fashion for the tropics, but when I see the dreary state of what's out there, I go back to my sewing machine. 

My love affair with voile started a year ago. My body can't take the restrictions of clothing when the thermometer soars into the eighties and nineties. In desperation I made myself a pair of "bare minimum" shorts in voile. Those shorts are still going strong and the more tattered and torn they get, the more I like them. 

This led me to my tattered and torn dress designs.

 

The above dress was made from scrap pieces of voile that I had used for separating sheets of my hand-made papers. The seams are visible on the outside rather than hidden on the inside.

The dress below was intentionally ripped. Ripped jeans leave me cold, but to my incurably romantic mind a torn dress is appealing. 

Semi-sheer is semi-see-through. If one layer of white voile is set against dark skin you see the silhouette of the figure but not the detail, hence tantalizing!

Because voile is so light it can be a difficult fabric to sew, but I'm getting there.

The clothes we wear, like the houses we live in, the furniture we sit on and the plates we eat off, should represent art in our everyday lives. And the more daringly creative the better.

As I told my daughter, you could have got a father who had spent his life securely sat behind an office desk...and instead you got me!

In Memory of David Curran

 

David Curran, who modelled for the lock-keeper in my award winning sculpture for the town of Sowerby Bridge, died recently of cancer. In the above picture of the unveiling David is the one in front wearing the red neck tie. He was the very best of models and I have fond memories of our time together. 

My stories of his time modelling are classics.

For the initial nude figure David posed in my unheated cavernous studio in the dead of winter. He never complained but one day admitted that it was a bit cold. And no wonder! A window had blown open and a gale of wind was sending snow flurries onto the modelling stand.

At the beginning of one week's modelling I made coloured chalk marks on his ample belly to aid my measurements. On Friday he asked if I'd be needing the reference points the following week. I told him no, I only needed them for the one day. Why do you ask? Well Rog, I could do with a bath.

At one stage his doctor said he to needed to perform minor surgery to remove his belly button. David asked the doctor if he'd ever consider robbing Noami Campbell of her belly button. The doctor said that was different, she's a model. David's response was, and so am I.

A few days after the unveiling he came to ask for a bucket of water. He said a pigeon had shit on him. It took me a while to realise that he was referring to the sculpture.

Dave once told me that working with me was the best job he ever had. I can truly say, likewise.

David, death cannot take you away. Your sculpture will forever remain in Sowerby Bridge. 

And they all look the same

The Caribbean is not immune from the blight of little boxes that Pete Seeger sang about in the 1960's.

Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky tacky, Little boxes all the same...

The ticky tacky now includes plastic doors and windows and the little boxes extend to food kiosks alongside the city of Roseau's riverside in my island of Dominica.

By way of contrast below is my painting of Roseau's Old Market Place. 

In terms of housing, let me hasten to add that Dominica recently suffered two devastating natural disasters. Many lives were lost and 80% of the island's buildings and infrastructure severely damaged. As a matter of urgency it was necessary for the Government to rebuild. The "expertise" for this huge undertaking was trusted to overseas sources and led to the transplanting of a foreign concept of community, housing and infrastructure. 

My book Townscapes delves deeper into my concern for the identity of places.

The beauty of the plaster cast

Reflections

After the life of the initial clay sketch the intermediate plaster cast is invariably a disappointment. It takes the sheen of bronze cast to bring back the vibrancy of the original. 

But given time, as in the case of Reflections, the plaster cast develops a restrained patina and beauty of its own. The same is true of its accompanying sculpture You Must Believe in Spring. Both were commissioned for a new NHS hospital in the North of England.

You Must Believe in Spring

You can learn about the uproar that these innocent figures caused with the hospital's trustees in my book Notes on the Nude.

Sculpture Symbolism

On June 7^th a statue of Edward Colston (1636-1721) a merchant and slave trader was toppled from its plinth by Black Lives Matter protesters and dumped in Bristol Harbour. 

On  July 15^th a statue depicting one of the protesters was, without permission, put in its place. It was subsequently removed by the authorities.

To bring attention to a cause by way of Civil Disobedience is not easy, as those of us who have taken this route well know. Very often it is left to an individual to draw attention to an injustice. It cannot be done in disguise or under the protection of a pseudonym.  Most prefer the safer option of patiently waiting for change. But if Rosa Parks had patiently waited, public transport in Montgomery might still be segregated.

The Bristol episode has not only served to bring home the message of the protesters, but also to illustrate that art in general, and public sculpture in particular, has a role to play in social commentary.  A work of art may be perceived as controversial, but therein lies its significance. 

The techniques and materials used by Marc Quinn are far removed from those handed down by sculptors through the centuries. However, to make the statement in record time I accept that it was the only way possible. I give credit the artist and Jen Reid, his model, for seizing the opportunity. As Marc Quinn stated, the computer generated black resin statue was meant to be a temporary installation. Its purpose was to continue the conversation about racism.

In terms of that conversation, it comes as a surprise that Thomas Price, a black British sculptor, who has recently been commissioned to create a sculpture dedicated the Windrush Generation, has accused Marc Quinn of creating a “votive statue to appropriation”.  He goes on to state: “I think it would be far more useful if white artists confronted whiteness as opposed to using the lack of black representation in art to find relevance for themselves.”

From that perspective it might be argued that 130 years ago Paul Gauguin should have stayed in France and not sailed to Tahiti and that 55 years ago I should have stayed in my native West Riding of Yorkshire and not sailed to the Caribbean.  

A different interpretation of the nude figure

My followers tell me that it is my interpretation of the nude that attracts them. As against pornographic nudes by the millions and fine art photographic nudes by the tens of thousands, my approach is altogether different. 

Nothing is predetermined; there are no set poses. My models lead, I follow. And what comes naturally comes and goes in a matter of seconds. Without a lifetime of working and speed with line and watercolour there is no way that I would be able to capture that fleeting moment. The result is set down against the purity of a virgin white sheet of paper: there are no distractions.

My interpretation leaves you the viewer to enter the creative process. I paint 70% of the painting, you do the rest.

Bare Minimum

Alterations by Will Wilson (1957 - )

Will Wilson is an American artist whose style might be described as New Classicism. His painting titled Alterations is in a similar vein to the paintings that the artist Edouard Danton made in his father's sculpture studio.

Casting from Life by Edouard Danton (1848 - 1897)

Both paintings perfectly capture the matter-of-fact attention that an artist gives to the work in progress as against, as some might suspect, day dreaming on the charms of his nude model.

In my book Notes on the Nude I delve deeper into the working relationship between artist and model. The human body is less alluring nude than when dressed. If one of my regular models had posed in the flimsy white dress she wore on arrival, I would have been lost beyond recall. But as soon as she took it off we were back to our work-a-day relationship. 

As a sculptor I can recognize every detail in Edouard Danton's painting and those who have taken a life cast from the model will relate to the concentrated effort involved. 

The same goes for Will Wilson's painting, especially as at the moment I'm working on ideas for my Caribbean fashion label Bare Minimum. The label's objective is keeping cool in the tropics and my material of choice is 100% cotton voile; a fabric that is light as a feather and semi-sheer. As a natural fiber it lends itself to dying. The gathered samples shown pinned to my dress maker's mannequin were dyed from the clay I use for my sculpture. 

From a different vantage point

I can best judge the worth of a painting or sculpture when I catch a glimpse of it from a different vantage point. The torso that I made from banana paper gave me a pleasant surprise yesterday when, instead of seeing it head-on, I caught a glimpse of it from below.

While the glimpse from below came about by chance, lying on the flat of my back was very much intended. I am forever bemoaning the fact that these days potential models have added too many inches around the waist, only to find when attempting to fasten a pair of pants, I had done the same. Clearly, my twice daily climbs to and from the river are not enough now that I have entered my seventy-eighth year. Henceforth, I will forego my pastry raising slices, cut back on rum and coke and do waist reduction exercises - lying on the flat of my back. 

Pandemic Poverty

 

A recent collection of paintings on the theme of the Corona Virus approached the subject from all angles but omitted the poverty that it has brought about. 

To fill the void, my pastel sketch is of the long queues for money sent to and from family members overseas. It is an everyday scene just across the road from one of the island's lavishly stocked supermarkets.  

The 14" x 16" pastel paper from a range of papers I make from my island's natural resources.

Self Sufficiency

One thing that the Corona Virus Pandemic may impress upon the world is the value of self sufficiency. I believe we may see a revival of crafts and a demise in office pursuits. As a craftsman I work alone with the unpolluted tropical trade winds and my island's rugged terrain and pure rivers for company. Not only do I make my own art materials, make my own furniture and sew my own clothes, I also make many other of life's less obvious necessities. 

When I was a child in the North of England gypsies came around selling handmade clothes pegs. They were sold as a bundle, bound together with elastic bands made out of discarded bicycle tire inner tubes. Nowadays clothes pegs are made from plastic; a poor substitute that breaks in next to no time. Except, that is, for mine! 

The ones in the picture are made from a Dominica hardwood that does nor easily split and, unlike some hardwoods, does not leave a stain when wet. An hour's satisfying work that will peg clothes out for a lifetime. 

Perhaps I should hawk them door to door and tell fortunes into the bargain.

One other love

Yesterday afternoon, while viewing equipment in a remote rum distillery, I was reminded by a friend that I had omitted one protracted love affair from my last post: that being my lifelong love affair with machinery - the older the better. It is firmly lodged in my genes and inherited from my father and grandfather. 

The opening painting is one of the first I painted after making a landfall on Antigua and the picture below is the gearing of the relatively small sugar cane crushing mill that I visited yesterday. Over the years I've been called in to advise on machinery in many of the remaining rum factories in the Caribbean, the most memorable being the River Antione works in Grenada which is still powered by a huge waterwheel. The owner was worried about the condition of the bearings. After inspection I was able to assure him that they were good for another 200 years.

A bonus that is part and parcel of this work is sampling the end product. Yesterday's rum was one of the best I've ever tasted! 

One love affair after another

After spending the last few days reading through old diaries I realise that my life has been one love affair after another, whether it be the girl in my arms, the boat beneath my feet or the painting before me. A romantic life is invariably an uncomfortable one but the discomforts that condemn such a life for many are the attractions that attract it to the few. My life has been fated towards those attractions.

The photograph was taken in 1973 at the start of a voyage from the Canary Island to the Caribbean. Nothing could appear more idyllic: Blue sky, a gentle trade wind and my five year old daughter waving to the boat astern. It says nothing of storms in the Bay of Biscay, a north-east gale off Portugal and an Atlantic crossing that lasted five weeks.

The girls in my arms have likewise brought their share of happiness and pain. And to that you can add seven children from my three marriages. Thomas Campbell (1777-1844) says it all in his poem "Freedom and Love". It begins:

How delicious is the winning of a kiss at love's beginning...

But by the second verse he warns:

Yet remember, 'midst your wooing, love has bliss but love has ruing...

As one endearing love and muse was fond of telling me: 'tis true Roger, 'tis true.

Making art, like making love, is 99% passion. 

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)  

                                   

Drawing from my series A Portrait of Alice

Digging deep into paintings from my past

If nothing else, the corona pandemic has sent me digging deep into my archives for paintings from my past; if not the original then at least in the form of a faded photograph.

Today's picture is taken from a photograph of a painting that dates from a series I made twenty-five years ago of Halifax, Yorkshire: the town of my youth. As I remember, the original was purchased by a young couple as a wedding present to themselves. 

The sketches for this series of paintings can be found in my book Townscapes.

I'm thinking

Whenever I go silent, whether it be while resolving an engineering problem or how best to take the mold from a piece of sculpture, I tell those looking on: I'm thinking. 

Some may have difficulty accepting that I'm ever silent. But the fact is that due to dyslexia I couldn't say a word until I was five. My brother claims I've made up for it since.

My current silent mode is connected with unfinished business. I'm rapidly approaching my eightieth year and there are some things I want to say in connection with the campaigns I've fought before leaving it be. Just as my grandfather Enoch made clear to my grandmother when they were arguing as to whether the lightening overhead was sheet or fork. My grandmother insisted it was sheet, whereas Enoch claimed it was fork. This went backwards and forwards until my grandfather, stamping from the living room said: enough is enough, let's leave it be...but it was fork!

Enoch Burnett (1879-1950)

If I gave trouble when I was growing up, my mother would throw her hands up in despair and say: you're just like your grandfather. I now take that as a compliment! His war medals were for "Work at the Forge".

To calm those who are disturbed

A child playing on the beach. One of hundreds of sketches I have made on this theme.

My mission as an artist is to calm those who are disturbed and to disturb those who are calm. The latter task is by far the more difficult one of the two. It seems that nothing is sufficiently disturbing to banish the apathy that pervades the lives of many people. 

Robert Henri opens his book "The Art Spirit" with these words:

When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressing creature...He disturbs, upsets, enlightens... 

This week has been one of controversy in connection with one of my earlier blog posts. I therefore choose today's opening sketch and closing painting with the intention of calming rather than disturbing. 

A rare painting of my wife Denise dating from 1992.
It was painted on the same Virgin Island beach as the opening sketch.

From different perspectives

The above watercolour is one that I made in the 1970's of Halifax, the West Yorkshire town of my youth. The photograph below is one hundreds that my brother made of the same town between the early 1960's and the late 1970's. What I attempted to capture in colour, my brother captured in reels of black and white film. His photographs are masterly and a unique historical record. 

 

For the subject of this photograph he has this to say:

I come from Halifax, and my West Yorkshire genes are programmed to find beauty in muck and grime. In the grey sky being reflected on stone cobbles. In black chimneys punctuating flat clouds. In mischievous curves creeping into twisted railway lines. A sack-load of art on the back of an old wagon parked in the shade of North Bridge. I took this photograph fifty years ago. It's all been knocked down now and they have built a nice new Leisure Centre in its place. There are probably inspirational pictures inside the Leisure Centre of mountain paths and bright green fields.

You can find more of his work at: https://newsfromnowhere1948.blogspot.com/

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