Inheritance

 

Zeke

My daughter Trina lives in the UK and her two year old son Zeke, has recently started attending pre-school. A couple of weeks ago the school expressed concern about his speech, or rather his inability to speak. I told my daughter not to worry. 

I didn't start talking until I was five. (My brother says I've made up for it since!) I couldn't even pronounce my own name. The closest I could get to Roger was "Ory", and until their dying day my parents always referred to me as "our Ory". Perhaps, like me, he's dyslexic. If so, we have another creative person in the family.

Trina took my advice, and instead of worrying bought him a box of paints and sat him down in front of my latest video. The paints and video held him spellbound. But that isn't all. Yesterday, when she collected him from school, the teachers told her of a strange happening. At playtime, when the other children in his group played on bikes, slides and swings, he saw some of the older children painting. He promptly went over to them, picked up a pad and paint box, and very contentedly sat down in the playground and started to paint. My daughter was overjoyed. Just like his grandfather, he had found his individual place in life. 

But that isn't all. A similar story recently repeated itself in the British Virgin Islands. My son Karl is an accomplished potter. After watching my video "Releasing Your Creative Potential" his ten year old son Kem, came up with the drawing below.

If the current work of Zeke and Kem is anything to go buy, I can rest assured that my creative genes have been inherited by my grandchildren.

The secret contents of my sketch bag

Click on the image to view the secret contents of my sketch bag.

I am forever being asked about the materials I use as a watercolourist. To put the matter to rest, my latest video reveals the secret contents of my sketch bag. In amongst what you'd expect to find, there are two essential items that you would never have guessed. 

The revelation came about by way of demonstrating my way of painting landscapes; not from a sterile photograph, but from life. 

If you click on the opening image, all will be revealed - from a five dollar bill to a bottle of 1001 Carpet Cleaner.

 

Exposing the Upper Extremities

Denise

The opening painting is of my wife Denise. The photo below is of eleven year old Zendaya Robinson, who to her credit - and that of her parents - is a young author featured in a book titled, Stories by Children.

Zendaya Robinson

The title of this post comes from a comment to the news feature that highlighted Zendaya's accomplishment. It reads: 

That  how parents are dressing their little girls? Just as grownups. No good examples whatsoever. What a shame to dress a little child with bare upper extremities. 

In polite sexual terms, "Bare Upper Extremities" ranks with "Private Parts".

The painting of my wife and the photo of Zendaya speak of innocence. Both relate to dress code and the Christian horror of nakedness. Cultural dress in the Caribbean labours under the same misconceptions, as illustrated below.

The result of a competition for the design of a 

Cultural Dress for the British Virgin Islands. 

(front view left, back view right) 

This again brought its share of readers comments to the associated news item. I added to the debate as to the appropriateness of the design:

Curiously, I have found that nowhere in the Caribbean, does the traditional/cultural dress reflect the African roots of the people. For the most part it reflects the dress of their past colonial masters. Culture isn't something that can be made up. It's not a promotional product. If it's not entrenched in the belly of the people, it counts for naught.

Readers responded as follows:

What you say is partly true, but Africa has thousands of different cultures, which are hugely varied, so unless all BVI Islanders can trace their roots back to one village, then it’s laughable to focus on one culture from that continent and copy it over to the BVI.

We should leave Africa out of this, we are Caribbean people, mix every which way and that. The current national wear reflects the Caribbean, which is suited to all who live here.

When my granny used to walk with basket on her head she didn't dress like that.

Perhaps it's time for me to reopen the portfolio of my Bare Minimum fashion designs.

A Radical Rethink

 Roseau, the capital of Dominica, as seen from outer space.

The comments in response to a recent news item, “City Facelift to Begin Later This Year” were in agreement that something needs to be done, but they questioned, what should be done and how it should be done. The only thing we know for certain is that the answer to the problem will not be found in a computer-generated preview of Great George Street shown below.  

More to real life is the sketch I made of the same street, and from the same vantage point, thirty-five years ago.

 

Townscapes are my passion, both planning them and sketching them, and my commentary to the news item reads as follows.

 

Noisy, dirty, smelly, sweltering, congested, nowhere to safely walk and nowhere to park!

These are the impressions that Roseau imparts in the minds of residents and visitors. The grandiose title of city – which under British rule may have been earned by virtue of its diocesan cathedral – is misleading. In reality, Roseau is a market town, the layout of which has not significantly changed since the 19th century. Its streets and narrow lanes were laid out for horse and handcarts, not motorcars. If fever had not ravaged Portsmouth in earlier times, Roseau would not have become the capital of Dominica. Valid reasons can now be made for the capital to revert back to Portsmouth, but until that day arrives, we need to radically rethink Roseau.

Over the last fifty years, Roseau has degenerated into being a blot on the landscape and without a visionary all-embracing master plan, no amount of piecemeal enhancement will halt the decline.  

May I suggest, that before the US$41 Million loan from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia burns a hole in our pockets, we should bear in mind that the key operative clause in the brief for the UK’s most ambitious regeneration projects reads: VISION LED, NOT FUNDING FED!

The vision for Roseau cannot be conceived on an architect’s drawing board in Barbados or at an office desk in Dubai. Vernacular comes from within, not from without. A town plan that may be fitting for elsewhere in the world, is not necessarily fitting for Dominica.

To restructure a town, and yet preserve what remains of its identity, is an art form in itself. Coincidentally, the man who wrote the definitive book on the subject began his working life as a town planner in the Caribbean. The book, The Concise Townscape by Gordon Cullen, should be required reading by all involved in this initiative.

Out of all the historic town regeneration projects that I have been involved with, Roseau presents the greatest challenge. The elements of Roseau’s townscape are confused and conflicting. I cannot accept Discover Dominica’s vision of “a quaint town that has a picturesque array of 18th-century French architecture”. That image might have been true when I first knew the town fifty years ago, but not now. A glance at the satellite image of Roseau illustrates what we are up against.

Widening the streets will not solve Roseau’s traffic problem, but making the town pedestrian friendly could. The town has the advantage of being located on flat land; there are no steep hills to climb and it only takes five minutes to walk from one end of town to the other. In terms of shade, the narrower the streets the better. Without the hazard of broken pavements and open drains, walking would be a pleasure. Shops and restaurants would benefit by being able to open up their frontage, as is done in many countries with a favourable climate.

With a radical rearrangement of what goes where, ample provision for parking can be created around the perimeter of the town centre. Large cities overcome their parking problems by “park and ride” initiatives, whereas our small scale offers the better alternative of “park and walk”. Through traffic should not pass through the town centre, nor should it pass along the Bay Front or by way of the Botanic Gardens. There is an alternative route staring us in the face, but no one has tumbled to it.

We urgently need an up-to-date comprehensive development plan. Such a plan would protect buildings of historical worth, encourage regeneration and guard against the piecemeal development that is blighting the townscape. In 2005 Baptiste & Associates Ltd., a local company, produced a 383-page development plan. But a lot has happened since the plan was first drafted.

In remaking the old town, we need to solicit the understanding of the public at large and engage them in the planning process.  We need to facilitate dialogue and to open up the creative processes, so as to bring together contributors from a diverse spectrum of backgrounds. This cannot be done solely by way of architect’s drawings and artist’s impressions. For the aforementioned UK regeneration project I initiated town walkabouts, held countless community meetings, made interactive models, took thousands of photographs and hours of video footage. 

 

Specialization hampers creative solutions. Innovation requires diverse experience and knowledge. It is achieved by questioning everything that has gone before and at the same time, utilizing what has gone before. It can sometimes be achieved by putting two diverse thoughts together. On the UK regeneration initiative, the solution to a major traffic problem came, not from the town planner with a Master’s Degree, but from a housewife standing next to me in the queue at the Post Office.

One of the benefits of creating a new town out of the old, could be the revival of skills. Technicalities alone will not produce a townscape that is pleasing to the eye and fit for its purpose. And a college degree will not necessarily solve the problem. Up to a hundred years ago, it was the master craftsman that determined good design and from his workbench beauty and function unselfconsciously equated. An adherence to those skills, together with a respect for the vernacular, will guard against the town becoming a Disney Theme Park. 

 

Unless a far reaching and innovative development plan is formulated and implemented, Roseau will sink further into urban decay. And remember, the identity of places reflects the identity of ourselves. Roseau is a small town on a small island. It is not a second Dubai. 

Practicing to be a painter

The Hen House

The next video in my series Notes for Art Students will focus on my past work as a painter of landscapes. I say past work, because for the last thirty-five years, it has been the figure that has commanded my attention. But today, as a means of keeping the series up to date, I went out, and painting a picture of my wife's hen house. 

In my early days as a painter of landscapes, an onlooker asked, if I was practicing to be a painter. If asked the same question today, I would confess that I am still practicing. No matter what the art form, as artist never stops practicing.

The reason for my choice of what might be perceived as a mundane subject, is to drum home to art students and aspiring artists that anything is painters' fodder. It's better to make a lot out of a common and garden little, than to make a little out of an idyllic lot. 

Links to all my videos can be found on my YouTube Channel Homepage. 

Notes for Art Students, Part Two

Click on image to view.

Hot on the heels of my last post is Part Two in my series Notes for Art Students. 

My climb up the documentary video steep learning curve continues. As with climbing a mountain, just when you think you're nearing the top, another steep slope awaits. With my son helping me along, we spent yesterday working on sound quality; partly due to recording technicalities, which he can put right, and partly due to my dyslexic miss pronunciations and hesitancies, which the more we try, the worse they get.

The introduction to each video begins with relevant autobiographical images. My painting demonstrations are in real time, which means I'm eligible for the Guiness Book of Records in terms of speed of execution. Where others take an hour, I take five minutes.

I welcome your feedback on the series.

The ugliness of beautification

 

Municipal Rustic. An illustration from Ian Nairn's book Outrage.

In the realms of the urban environment, “beautification” is not creating beauty, but cleaning up the mess that disfigured that which was beautiful before we made a mess of it.

Ian Nairn highlighted the problem in his book "Outrage". That was seventy years ago, and in the meantime the roots of beautification have multiplied and termites have eaten their way through my cherished copy his book. 

Rural beautification is even worse. On my island the verges of a road that passes through the rain forest have been beautified with crotons.

Focusing the eye towards telling detail.

 

The opening pictures illustrate what the moving image can do best; that is, zooming out from a detail to the picture as a whole. This is what the eye does when viewing a picture. But by way of the camera, I have the advantage of selecting the viewer's starting point. When left to their own devices, viewers invariably begin by convertly focusing on the body parts that are deemed forbidden. 

I only wish that I could free my videos from the excessively wide horizontal format of today's screens - be it the cinema, television or handheld device. Paintings in the wide horizontal are a rarity. The format of my reclining nudes is only moderately horizontal, whereas my standing figures demand the vertical.

My most recent video is seen as source of inspiration to art students and aspiring artists who had almost given up. 

Realising Creative Potential

 

Click on the image to view.

 

The first video, in my series of Notes for Art Students, is titled Realising Creative Potential. The content is relevant, as we are all born with 98% the creative potential of genius, but by the time we reach adulthood, conformity has reduced it to less than 2%. 

The video is supplemented by my books on the same theme. 

My collection of videos on art can be found at my Video Channel Home Page.

Sound, vision and the written word

Today's image is the header of a blog that has had just two brief spurts of life over the last ten years. I am now in the process of resurrecting the notes with sound, vision and the written word: that being a series of art tutorials videos together with a book on the same subject.

It will serve as an antidote for those who have suffered an overdose of insipid tutorial art videos. My intention is to put the passion back into art. So be warned, viewing and reading will not be for the faint hearted. I can already hear the scratching of censorous pens.

By getting the message across by different means, I may find, as J B Priestley found of his wartime broadcasts:

I have been hard at it getting through to the public mind, one way or another, for about twenty years, but as a medium of communication broadcasting makes everything seem like the method of a secret society.

If the author found that to be true of a five minute talk on the radio over 80 years ago, I wonder what he'd make of today's social media.

Injecting life into a still life

Still life by the 17th century Flemish painter Artus Claessens.

Still life by Paul Cezanne (1839-1906)

The video that I am now working on is about injecting life into still life. But whether it be a still life, landscape or figure, encouraging the majority of artists that post on facebook forums to inject life into their paintings is like trying to resurrect the dead. It is slavishly copying from photographs that puts the nail in the coffin.

Working from life is a messy business and the result is not likely to win accolades to the tune of "how sweet". In my real life life-classes, erasing is forbidden. In my book Notes on the Nude I have this to say:

I only enforce one rule for those attending my life class: no erasers! In sketching, as in life, every moment counts, mistakes and all. There’s no turning the clock back. One of my mature students put it nicely when she told the class she had earned every line on her face. Hidden in a confusion of wrong lines is the right line. When I find it, I firm it up and the wrong lines remain to emphasise that I have figured it out. Sometimes I leave the viewer to determine which line is the right line. By these means I invite the viewer to have a say in the creative process. A multitude of lines gives testimony to the struggle one faces when working from the live model.  The model is alive, and the artist must somehow put the very breath of life down on paper.  Right lines and wrong lines all count: there’s no rubbing out.

A passion that never dies.

Click on the image to view.

My latest video traces work in progress on sculptures in my series Daughters of the Caribbean Sun. It is the story of a love affair began over fifty years ago when I was seduced by Enzo Plazzotta's sculpture Jamaican Girl and it continues to this day.

 

Your clothes conceal much of your beauty...

 In his book The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran has this to say about clothes:

And the weaver said, Speak to us of Clothes.

     And he answered:

     Your clothes conceal much of your beauty,

yet they hide not the unbeautiful.

     And though you seek in garments the

freedom of privacy you may find in them

a harness and a chain.

     Would that you could meet the sun

and the wind with more of your skin and less

of your raiment,

     For the breath of life is in the sunlight

and the hand of life is in the wind.

 

     Some of you say, “It is the north wind

who has woven the clothes we wear.”

     And I say, Ay, it was the north wind,

     But shame was his loom, and the soften-

ing of the sinews was his thread.

     And when his work was done he laughed

in the forest.

     Forget not that modesty is for a shield

against the eye of the unclean.

     And when the unclean shall be no more,

what were modesty but a fetter and a fouling

of the mind?

     And forget not that the earth delights to

feel your bare feet and the winds long to

play with your hair.

The quandary of depicting the nude.

Three years ago I opened my post tilted As a matter of Fact with the following health warning:

The images that follow have been recently banned by Social Media's Keeper's of Public Decency. 

The censor's message reads: This post was flagged because it contains adult content which violates our Community Guidelines. THIS DECISION CANNOT BE APPEALED. It appears that social media in general wants us to be more comfortable with war, violence and foul language than with innocent paintings of the nude.

I trust that Edouard Danton's paintings will not shock or offend followers of this blog. 

The video I am now working on delves into the issue of depicting the nude with reference to the live model. In all of the instructional videos that I've seen on working from the nude model, the camera acts as a fig leaf and discreetly masks what you should not see. And that's far removed from life. I feel compelled to do otherwise and risk censorship.

I take courage in the fact that my recent released video Working from Life has won praise from the cognoscenti.

My Father's Studio Edouard Danton (1848-1897)

 

The painter Edouard Danton (1848-1897) came from a family of sculptors and the paintings he made in his father's studio to my mind perfectly capture the matter of fact business of working from the nude model. I stress "to my mind" because one critic from the world of art academia - having I'm sure, never worked from the nude - considers his paintings mere titillation. 

In my book Notes on the Nude I delve deeper into the working relationship between artist and model. In particular the titillation of the provocatively dressed model as against the natural beauty of the undressed:

The human body is less sexually alluring nude than when it is dressed. If one of my regular models had posed in the fetching 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 matter of fact working relationship.

As with the model depicted in the painting, my models are likewise fascinated by the work in progress and at the end of a session I can sense my model's reluctance to exchange the freedom of the nude for the restrictions of being clothed.

Below are two more of Edouard Danton's masterly paintings. As a sculptor I can recognise every detail, from the tools on his workbench, to the temporary rail alongside the modelling stand, and the calm composure of the model.

Casting from Life

Coin d atelier

 

Artist and Model

This demonstration video supplements my book Notes on the Nude. I hope it encourage a new generation of artists to pursue the challenge of working from the nude model and inspire a new generation of models. In recent times artists have resorted to working from photographs, rather than from life. 

To quote from my book:

I cannot walk around a photograph of my subject, neither can I touch, feel, sense or talk to it.  It can be troublesome working outdoors; you get burnt by the sun, drenched by the rain, bitten by ants and easels get bowled over in the wind.  In the studio, models cannot be expected to retain the freshness of a pose for longer than a couple of minutes. Nevertheless, the rewards of working from life are worth the effort.  Between the torn up false starts, the exploratory lines and the dashed down runs of colour, there on paper, is a trace of the truth! 

You can view the video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFBxxmBNsDU

An accolade that hopefully I will never receive

 

Trudy

My five minute charcoal sketch of Trudy, will never receive the accolade: It looks so real that it could almost be a photo! But many post of paintings on facebook art sites do. This I have realised after a week of scanning facebook posts. Most certainly, if it was a painting of the nude that looks so real that it could almost be a photo, social media censors would banish it forthwith. 

Curiously, my brother, an accomplished photographer, occasionally does it the other way about, by photoshopping his photos to make them look like a painting. 

On the cutting room floor

Detail from the painting featured in a forthcoming demonstration video titled 

Working from Life. 

In the pre-digital days of film making discarded footage ended up on the cutting room floor. Now superfluous clips are deleted at the click of a mouse. But what might be discarded as worthless today might be considered gems tomorrow. Today's picture is a case in point. It is a still from a demonstration video I'm making that illustrates my way of painting in watercolour. Yesterday it was edited out, today it's back in. 

It is the same with my paintings. I restrain myself from destroying those that on the spur of the moment I consider worthless. On reassessment, I sometimes find positive features that had eluded me.

The video shows the creation of a painting in my series Daughters of the Caribbean Sun, from start to finish. The timespan is 14 minutes. Speed is of the essence.

Only angles and babies need apply

 

My wife Denise in the eighth month of her pregnancy with our daughter Trina. 

Following the theory: if you can't beat them, join them, I have been trolling through scores of art group sites on Facebook in view of introducing my book Notes on the Nude to their members. In the process I have been reminded of Facebook's horror of the nude, hence on many sites my paintings and sculptures are persona non grata. 

Granted, one group makes the exception of angles and babies. But alas, the painting of my wife Denise in the eighth month of her pregnancy with our daughter Trina, still falls foul of their censors; albeit that it embodies both exceptions in one painting. 

Years ago, when one of my sculptures was being cast by the Morris Singer Foundry, I caught sight two angels. They had been commissioned to stand each side of a church alter. Gossamer drapery served to accentuate their God given beauty. I learnt from the sculptor that the model for one was a young lady of impeccable breeding and for the other, a prostitute.

My book dwells at length on censorship of the nude in art.

Townscapes

The opening picture is a page from my book Townscapes. The sketch is one of thousands I've made from the pavements of towns and cities during the course of my life. It was a life that began in the darkest days of WW2. The townscapes that escaped the bombs in the 1940's were demolished by developers in the 1960's, thus my passion for recording buildings individually and collectively. 

The book can be accessed at: https://www.studiopublications.org/

Let there be life

 

 

My message to my fellow artists for the New Year is, Let there be life! 

Let there be no slavishly copying from photographs. 

Let there be no social media censoring of the nude.

Let there be no carefully contrived compositions.

Let there be no constraints. 

Let there be no erasing. 

The painting above was made at 3.00am in a Leeds night club, and the painting below was made from life on a beach in the Virgin Islands. It is one of hundreds of illustrations in my book Notes on the Nude. No photograph, no censoring, no constraints.

A Christmas Story from the Caribbean

 

Thirty-five years ago, the only way I could get a Christmas message to my three children was to pay for the following to be published in the island’s newspaper.

I have just spent a day searching for Christmas presents for my three children. The burden of the task has been on my mind for weeks. As I feared, it was a fruitless day and I came home empty-handed. Money was not the restraint, nor the selection of toys. The problem was one of circumstances.

My children are aged three, five and six, against their wish, are separated from me through a marriage that ended in divorce. Father Christmas, no matter how laden with toys, cannot substitute my children’s right to a real father. Even the toys lovingly created for them by my own hand - as they always used to be - cannot fill the void needlessly created in their lives.

But against overwhelming odds, some measure of justice prevailed. A few months ago, the court awarded them what was to have been their real Christmas present - a better deal. But the order was never allowed to take effect. The present was taken from them before they had a chance to experience it.

A child's fairy-tale world demands miracles, especially at Christmas. They expect immediate results, with angels and bright, shining lights. Their reasoning takes no account of court orders, the mischief of lawyers and the conniving of government ministers. All they know is that, for some unaccountable reason, love for them manifests itself in restrictions, resentment and revenge.

“I wish you a Merry Christmas..." in the circumstances, even the message on the cards is a fallacy. They cannot honestly be sent. My children can do better. On the card my son made at school for Father's Day, he drew a picture of an exploding volcano!

Perhaps for Christmas, they will show similar insight. The story of Jesus, if honestly told, would do quite well. Beneath the façade of romanticized stables, cute nativity plays and comforting carol services, nothing has changed.

I'm so sorry my sweethearts...Love Daddy

The story of my fight for access is told in my book: For the Sake of the Children.  

The book is my personal account of parental alienation. There are millions of similar cases worldwide, but mine has the distinction of being one of the worst. My story begins on an island in the Caribbean forty years ago and continues up to the present. My fight for the right of my children to have access to their father was fought under the most difficult circumstances. Other than to attend court hearings, I was for the most part forbidden to set foot on the island that was their home, and which had previously been my home. By fighting for a basic human right, I was deemed an undesirable person and a menace to the public good. For a period of five years, I had to wage my campaign from the cabin of a small boat while sailing from island to island. The term parental alienation had only just been coined when my problems began. There were no books on the subject and no guidance for those expected to advise and judge.  

Following in the footsteps of Laurie Lee

 

Road Town, British Virgin Islands

What began over fifty years ago out of dire necessity became one of things that I've enjoyed doing most in life. That being, sketching and selling on the pavements of the places my travels have taken me to. 

To pluck up courage and declare myself an artist on the pavements of France wasn't easy. Laurie Lee in his book, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning expresses what he felt in similar circumstances.

Presently I got up and dressed, stuck my violin under my jacket and went out into the streets to try my luck. It was now or never. I must face it now, or pack up and go home. I wandered about for an hour looking for a likely spot, feeling as though I was about to commit a crime. Then I stopped at last under a bridge by the station and decided to have a go. 

I felt tense and shaky. It was the first time, after all. I drew the violin from my coat like a gun. It was here, in Southampton, with trains rattling overhead, that I declared myself. One moment I was part of the hurrying crowds, the next moment I stood nakedly apart, my back to the wall, my hat on the pavement before me, the violin stuck under my chin. 

When I'd finished the first tune there was over a shilling in my hat: it seemed too easy, like a confidence trick. But I was elated now; I felt that wherever I went from here, this was a trick I could always live by.

To this day I am never happier than when on the pavements practicing that trick. It has taught me far more than what I would have learnt had I gone to art school. 

This video of a walk through the back streets of Havana has me longing to pick up my sketching bag and practice it again.

The books that contain sketches I've made from pavements in the Caribbean can be found at Studio Publications.

The Art of Making Love

The painting and following note is taken from my book Notes on the Nude.

If artists make love with the same restraint that many of them paint pictures, it must be a boring business. Making art, like making love, is 99% passion. Tie it down to a set formula and you screw up. 

Notes on the Nude is available as an eBook and can be viewed and purchased at: https://www.studiopublications.org/