Letting nature take its course

Detail from "Meditation". 

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

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

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

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

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

Will there ever be another?

One of my many paintings of Annabelle from times past.

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

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

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

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

Dear Nikon

My troublesome 2020 Nikon Coolpix B500 

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

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

Kodak Vigilant 620 roll film bellows camera.

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

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

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

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

Painting by eye and playing by ear

Imperceptible variations between colours together with a suggestive line says 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       

A fleeting moment in time

A fleeting glance captured at a nutmeg factory in Grenada.

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

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

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

You must believe in spring...

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

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

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

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

Just as a tree is sure its leaves will reappear, it knows its emptiness is just the time of year...

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

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

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

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

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

Who is Sylvia? What is she

That all her swains commend her?

Lovely, fair and wise is she,

The heaven such grace should render

That ador-ed she might be,

That ador-ed she might be

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The artist as a sitting duck

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rochdale Canal.  Watercolour 18" x 28"

Capturing the elements

 

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

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

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

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

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

On the spur of the moment

Leinster Bay, St John, USVI

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

How can I hope to be popular?

Bermuda 1992. Water Colour 15" x 20"

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

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

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

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

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

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

One splash leads to another

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

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

Jackson Pollock (1912-1956)

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

The sensuous suggestiveness of draperie mouillée

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

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

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

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

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

The indignity of being sold

 My wife Denise with a red lace chemise thrown over her shoulders. (Watercolour 18' x 25")

Four months ago my post What price can be placed on a love affair touched upon my reluctance to part with paintings. The painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler had a similar evasion and referred to it as: "The indignity of being sold".

The painting that opens this post may have avoided the same indignity. I am always at a loss when the first thing a visitor asks on viewing a painting, is the price. In recent years so few of my paintings have sold that I haven't paid attention to prices. In the days when my studio was based in the Virgin Island, virtually all of my paintings sold. Since then, I consider that my work has developed immeasurably. My run-of-the-mill palm fringed beach scenes have been replaced with the subtle beauty of my Daughters of the Caribbean Sun. You might add, as I'll soon reach octogenarian status the adage: "No artist can earn a living until he is dead." may begin to attract speculative buyers.

But be that as it may, I took the average price of a painting from my Virgin Island days in the 1980's and adjusted it for inflation; no more, no less. Perhaps the figure, albeit reasonable, took the potential buyer aback! 

But there are occasions when I do take pleasure in selling a painting. My first one-man show in the 1970's was a sellout, but it was the love of the paintings rather than the price tag that motivated sales. One elderly couple asked if I could reserve the painting they liked until they returned the next day. They did return carrying the price of the painting in a shopping bag. The money had been saved over the years beneath their mattress for "something special".

A painting from my 1971 exhibition Lynn and Locality.

 

Transmuting banality into beauty

A detail from the painting shown below.

John White, in his book on the jazz singer Billie Holiday (Billie Holiday, Her Life and Times) writes in reference to her interpretation of the hackneyed lyrics of songs: 

Her supreme achievement was to transmute banality into beauty, the trite into the profound.

Here she is singing, Fine and Mellow.

My watercolours of the nude attempt the same: they express the challenges and passions involved when working from the live model.  The laboured definitive is replaced by capturing in seconds what I see at fleeting glance. Risk is involved and risk may become risqué, but never repetitive and dull, as I find are so many paintings and photographs of the nude.

Annabelle. (16" x 24" and captured from life 20 minutes)

Improvising in A2 sharp

The derilict organ in All Souls Church, Halifax, Yorkshire.

The organ dates from 1868 and my sketch was made in 2001.

Work on the piano that I began restoring over two months ago is nearing completion. It entered my workshop in a similar depressed state as the church organ in the opening sketch. Had I known in advance the extent of the damage caused by rats, woodworm and ravages of the Caribbean climate, I doubt that I would have attempted the task. Thankfully, the invaders stopped short at the sound board, otherwise all would have been lost, and neither could they get their teeth into the cast iron frame.

The following pictures give an indication of what I was up against.

The original guide and balance pin rails. 

This I remade from scratch with pins spaced to a tolerance of 0.010".

Guide pin rail eaten away by woodworm. 

Keys eaten away by rats.

There are no replacement piano parts available on a small island in the Caribbean. To that I might add: "period". Importing items from overseas is expensive and time comsuming, hence the need for self sufficiency, skill and improvisation. These requirements included making a machine for winding replacement single and double wound bass strings. The inner steel piano wire I had to import but the copper windings were recycled from the old strings and electric motor armatures. A disused two speed washing motor provided the exact copper wire diameter for A2 sharp. My "Made in Dominica" strings tune to a "good enough" tone and pitch.

Below is the piano with work on restoration almost complete. 

Faded Photographs

Photographic prints from long ago fade faster than the memories they captured. Nevertheless, they survive better than those saved on crashed computer hard drives. While sorting through boxes of survivals I came across one the launching of my boat Born Free in 1980 and another of a portrait bust from the year 2000.

The building of Born Free was every bit a work of art as the sculpting of the portrait bust. 

Age need not rob thee of thy beauty

The Helmet Maker's Wife (August Rodin 1840-1917)

August Rodin's sculpture The Helmet Maker's Wife is testimony to the fact that age need not rob thee of thy beauty. Likewise, age need not rob you of resilience and a zest for life. Testimony to this is 102 year old Veronica Elsina Burton. Last month her own natural immune system enabled her to defy the odds and beat the Covid-19 virus.

My Caribbean island of Dominica holds the world record for centenarians. The score currently stands at twenty. This says a lot for our healthy climate and a generation that worked hard and lived off the fat of the land.

Centenarian Veronica Elsina Burton.

For crying out loud!

Exhibits at the Dominica Pavilion, Dubai 2020

I began life as an angry young man and I'm ending it as an angry old man. One reason being the pictures that illustrate this post. They were taking at the Dubai Expo and the mannequins are meant to depict Dominicans wearing national dress. This would be all well and good were it not for the fact that 99.9% of Dominicans are of African or Kalinargo descent, therefore black rather than white!

The response from many Dominicans is: "Does it matter"? Well, to my mind it certainly does. Without pride of identity all is lost. 

As I was ranting, raving and crying out load about this to a Dominican friend calmed me with the following massage:

"No need to end life as an angry old man, you've ensured that you left your mark here. Even after your passing you will still exist through your legacy. And this my friend is definitely not a reason to end life angry. As always it’s a pleasure to hear from you. And from the tone of your email I can tell that you’re in good spirits, just disappointed yet again by the foolishness which surrounds you."

Thank you Kamarsha. The painting I made of you some years ago, reassures me that being black and beautiful is something to be proud of.

Kamarsha

When the world was young

Unveiling of the Dancing Girls at the Allen Gallery, Hampshire.

The opening photograph was taken in the year 2000 at the unveiling of my sculpture Dancing Girls. My daughters Tania and Trina were the models. They can be seen standing besides me; Trina to the left, Tania to the right. 

Fast forward 21 years....Tania's passion for sport has resulted in her working fulltime for the Dominica Olympic Committee and she now has a bouncing son of her own. 

Tania

Trina is now working as a banking computer consultant and busy renovating her house in the UK. In addition to rooting out tree stumps she has learnt to put her hand to carpentry, plastering, plumbing, painting, electrical wiring and brick laying. This is what the "useful arts" are all about.

Trina

Twenty-one years ago sculpture dominated my days but now my creative interests cover a broader field. As with my daughters, the pandemic has not slowed me down. Within the confines of my studio, workshops and three acres I happily live the life of a recluse. Hence, I rely on my God-given immune system, regardless of persuasive efforts otherwise. 

The title of today's post is taken from Jonny Mercer's English lyrics to the original French song  "Le chevalier de Paris" composed by Philippe-Gerard and Angele Vannier.

Here is Jonny Mercer's version sung by Earth Kitt. 

Musical Chairs

 

My piano restoration has involved dismantling and re-assembling the 1,200 parts that make up the action that transfer the depressed keys to the strings. It's intricate work that can be best done from a stable sitting position. The processes move from one position to another and one workshop to another. In all I found myself shifting between six different stools - all of my own manufacture. Four of the stools, along with work in progress, are shown into today's picture. The brown paper bags contain the various pieces from each section of the action.

If it should happen that I'm reincarnated I've always wished to come back as a jazz pianist. When I once mentioned this to a visiting musician, his response was: stick to your paintings. He bemoaned the fact that some nights he plays his best to the dinner crowd but no one's listening. 

My rare LP collection contained recordings of all the great jazz pianists but alas the termites thought better of it. Fortunately YouTube has enabled me to discover some of their worthy successors. Here is Cecile McLorin Salvant with a trio that features the pianist Aaron Dielhi.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G99FfalLFWQ

The Useful Arts

Detail from "In the Carpenter's Shop"

A painting by the Swedish artist Carl Larsson (1853-1919)

The term "Useful Arts" went out of fashion over a hundred years ago, along with the skills that it encompassed. Engineering and carpentry are two of those skills, and they are the ones that I practice along with my work as a painter and sculptor.

You will not find a college or art school offering a course in the useful arts. Their remit falls under the titles, Fine Arts, Visual Arts, Applied Arts, Decorative Arts, etc. That's a pity, because only one in a thousand students with a degree in the arts end up actually working as artists. At best they finish up teaching something they cannot do themselves. Had they acquired a skill their lives would have been more productive and rewarding.  

But skills are learnt via apprenticeships and alas they went out of fashion along with the concept of useful arts. It was by virtue of my apprenticeships in engineering and carpentry that yesterday I was able to make a tuning hammer (wrench for the uninitiated) for the piano I'm restoring. I doubt if there's an art student in the world able to fashion the 1/4" square hole in the head of the hammer.

Be careful what you wish for

I keep reminding myself to be careful what I wish for. As an engineering apprentice in the 1950's I was envious of the inventive engineers of earlier times who had to put their hands to all things. Both my grandfathers worked as engineers at the tail end of the 19th century. I have inherited many of their tools and their skills are in my genes. Enoch, the city of Bradford's factotum, was as adept at repairing clocks and restoring musical instruments as he was at winning war medals for efficiency at the forge.

But it was not until I located my studio and workshop to the small Caribbean island of Dominica sixteen years ago that I got what I wished for. My machine tools - some of which are as old as I am - make the replacement parts that keep the island going. Moreover, the income the work generates keeps me going. 

On the other hand, it means my paintings and sculptures have to be put on hold, so I have to be careful what I wish for.

 

My grandfather Enoch Burnett

It's been a while

A message from one of my models begins: "It's been a while". For the rest of the world life was put on hold with the beginning of the pandemic over eighteen months ago. But for those of us on the Caribbean island of Dominica our life change came about four years ago with the worst hurricane on record. Since then it's been one thing after another and my models are now scattered far and wide.

These diary pages began in the 1990's, before the days of blogs, with the intent of setting down in words and images the trials and tribulations that are the lot of those who toil upon the forge of art. It has been said that, however much skill an artist may develop in later life, it cannot result in great work if, by that time, he has settled down to a measure of contentment. Regardless of a degree of success along the way, as I approach eighty, I have not yet arrived at a state of complacency. 

The opening picture is what remains of my first life-size figure. The cast now languishes in a corner of my workshop. The subject is my wife Denise and the picture below shows work in progress twenty-five years ago. I had a lot to learn...and still do.

Sensual pleasures

As with Rodin, it has been said the sculptor Ralph Brown (1928-2013) sort ways to express sensual pleasure. He also had an obsession for the veiled face and today's face masks may have held a curious fascination for him. 

Girl with Knee Raised Ralph Brown 1977

Cache-Cache Ralph Brown 1983 

Ralph Brown came to prominence in the 1950's with his public sculpture Meat Porters and figures in an earthier style.

Mother and Child  Ralph Brown 1954