Highgate Cemetery

Some photos from Highgate Cemetery that would be the starting point for further work. I would normally sketch a scene first then take a photo to fix the point. Then back at my studio, I would combined the images to extract the image I had seen waiting to emerge.

282 - A Book about Death

I have entered a postcard in the exhibition called A Book About Death. This is the first in some while, so it feels exciting, new and wonderful. It is giving me a bit more confidence to find time to sit down and do some real artwork for exhibitions. I have another local exhibition to aim for and now trying to build some momentum to do this piece of work.


The image is from a series I did from some photos I took of Highgate Cemetery in North London, the one opposite where Karl Marx's is buried. I visited in cemetery in 1990/1, when restoration was underway. I found out about the cemetery from this book, Highgate Cemetery: Victorian Valhalla (I have used the USA site as there is no image on the UK site) and living in Western London, I decided to go.

It was a fantastic place as the vegetation had started to dominate the area and had nearly hidden all the graves, statues and buildings that were built for graves. The cemetery had been used in Hammer Horror films in the 1960's and there are legends of Vampires haunting the place (surely an urban myth?). As a visitor, you were taken round in groups and shown some of the more famous graves, e.g. Lizzie Siddal, wife of Gabriel Dante Rossetti - and it was here that he dug the grave to 'resurrect' his poems that were put in the coffin with her.

The pictures come from the photos I took when I visited and on a subsequent visit a year later. A lot of the trees had wide foliage and looked like people starting proud in the sharp blue sky, but then you had the debris of death creeping through. Or the other way of life resurrecting itself out of these cold, harsh yet beautiful monuments. This image is one that looks like a figures and I highlighted the branches to look like a skeleton build into the greenery.

One of the other things in creating this postcard was to use some of the Adobe CS skills that I had learnt to create a printable image. I have already done this with my business cards. So I wanted to have a Victorian funeral card with black edging that I had recently found about and the image centred almost like a loved one. The rest was to be the opposite with a white border with a black centre and white out type.

The post card uses the idea of framing that I have used in other pieces. I used the address part of the post card to give the title of the exhibition and the final strap line is based on Bryan Talbot's Luther Arkwright as the centre of his parallel world used the notation, 000.000.000 to indicate its position. A final destination.

The stamp I took from a packet that I intended to use on some other ideas, I was thinking about. Something, I saw at the Victorian & Albert - China Design show last year. Where a poster had a large object and then a stamp had been added to indicate where the show was. I over-extravagated the colour of the flower to counter the impending gloom on the reverse with brightness, harking back to the front of the postcard and therefore, a return to life.

Strategy Follows Structure

I have been re-discovering one of my favourite authors early works, The English Assassin and The Condition of Muzak by the future literature genius to be, Michael Moorcock. Looked down on as being too science fiction orientated, he produces both science fantasy that was genre breaking from all those Conan characters of the past. As well as producing social satire given a veneer of science-fiction, giving shape to the genre Steam Punk with The Warlord of the Air and The Land Leviathan and writing some of the bleakest novels of man inhumanity man, with the Between The Wars tetralogy.

What struck me as I read his interviews with Colin Greenland on his various works in Death Is No Obstacle (publisher Savoy Books, 1992) is how novels can be structured. He points out how a novel would follow a diamond structure, starting with a point, widening to its furtherest point in the book and then contract to a resolution.

Moorcock illustrated one of his own novels, A Cure For Cancer (I would say a difficult read) as turning around the diamond as two triangles and them starting from a wide point, meeting in the centre and then widening again. He then doubled the shape, by putting two of these shapes together. He also described how the novels could be reflected in music and mentioned how his novel, Glorianna followed Vivaldi's The Four Seasons.

Although, I had heard of setting down timelines, so that the characters can be laid out so they cross in the scenes where the author wants them to be. This idea of changing the narrative structure is new and is helping me look at my own work. I have used the golden section of laying down where parts of the image would be. It is inspiring my idea of The Mariners' Tales of how I can built the ideas of landscape with some of my book work.

Strange but true

I found this on the Telegraph web site about a painter who paints a different style with differing personalities. You can find out more at her web site.

No Sex Please, We are PRB!

The BBC has done a six part series called Desperate Romantics based on the founding, rise and fall of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. It is a weekly series and covers a period from the later 1840s up to 1860s. The production values are good, although I kept looking at some of the scenes and thinking is that Greenwich college? Having been to quite a lot of historical places, you start to see the same places.

My overall impression is the attempt to spice up the story, but what gets lost is the main part of the story are the paintings. Having seen an earlier programme about the PRB, only half hour, it told you why these paintings were shocking at the time. Milliais' Christ in the house of his parents was the main example in the first programme, a painting I have walked passed often and not really look at closely.


Exploring the BBC website about the series, I found that there was an art historian discussing this picture as well as others highlighting a painting per an episode. I found these vignettes more interesting that the programme.

I found the acting good and the production values well done, but do we need all this romping? A little more why these painting were revolutionary and maybe a little more historical context as well. Whenever Rosetti is wandering around I keep wondering where the rest of the family are? Also Millais trip to the highlands with the Ruskins was distorted, only Ruskin going 'up north' to Scotland.

This leads to the question of how the story distorts the events, this article discusses how Hollywood distorts the facts for entertainment. Of course, Hollywood is not the only place, where this has or is still taking place. Are the facts more important story?

Words of Wisdom

Henry Moore comments, ' Drawing is everything. If somebody comes to me and says There is a young sculptor and he's going to be very good - would you like to see his work? I say, What's his drawing like? Oh, he doesn't draw. Well then, I know he's no good. All sculptors who have been great draughtsmen.

Drawing is enough if you do it well. Lots of great artists do nothing but draw. I started drawing - unlike sculpting - when I was five or six. Nowadays, I do nothing but draw. What I'm not content about that they are not always good drawings. It is always a struggle.'

I am great believer in what Henry Moore says about drawing. At times have become obsessed with drawing and drawing the same image with slight variations to see if the images will change or become better. It is intriguing that although Francis Bacon said that he never did preparatory studies for his work, gradually sketches have come out showing his work.