The Surrey Dreamtime

An Unfinished World

2012-02-11T14:49:00.000-08:00

This is a stunning exhibition of Graham Sutherland early work and later work mainly from Pembrokeshire. It is nearly 12 hours since I saw and I am still highly excited. The exhibition at the Oxford Museum of Modern Art curated by George Shaw is well worth the detour that I did down the M40.

There are all manner of pieces not only finished pieces, but large sketches, small studies and some rough notes in sketchbooks. All showing his versatility of the landscapes and in looking at the work from his time as a war artist. There were some images from 1946 to 49, that show the development to his work that was later produced in Menton, the south of France.

There was so much to admire in the sheer quality of the work. I was stunned to see that there were 4 rooms filled with his work.

Unfortunately, I did not have enough time to have a more leisurely time to wander through the show as I was on the ridiculous car parking costs, but for show, I would have been happy to pay for 2 hours. Also the gallery had run out of catalogues, so I am going to have to wait to see more of these stunning images.

If you can, then it is a definite must see exhibition.

Starting Over

2011-11-07T08:17:00.000-08:00

Today is the first day of a new sketchbook and it is always a scary thing. Even though, I have learn to avoid being too precious about a sketch book. This is always a nervous feel as the pen hits the page. I decide to start with a typical tree picture. What drew my attention was the bulky circular trunk of the tree, probably where it had been pollard.

The previous sketch book was a good 200pp A5 and so it has taken some time to get through. A change of tack is moving up to a A4 size, which is exactly the size of the scanner. This is to avoid black line through the spine. Half the number of pages probably 96pp and on slightly heavier cartridge paper rather than the smoother calendared paper that is less opaque.

Another layout, I have changed from using all the pages, to using the right hand page for the main sketch and then use the left hand page to play around with the image or quickly sketch what I felt should be the main form of the image.

Stone and Wood

2011-10-30T02:58:00.000-07:00

I was told that Malham Cove is more spectacular that Newbiggin Crags and in some ways it is, but I went to Newbiggin first , when I was at my foundation college and the place is special. The limestone pavements is split and runs like a river at times across the top of the hill. The twisted trees stand out in such a landscape and when the weather is good, made another contrast against the blue sky.

A couple of quick sketches that I did using a brush pen, which I am still getting use too. What was also fascinating was the comparison that I had with the exhibition of Clare Woods exhibition at the Hepworth Wakefield.

Morecambe Winter Gardens

2011-10-29T10:08:00.000-07:00

The Morecambe Winter Gardens is a old theatre that has been closed a good few years, but it doesn't deserve to wither away and die. We had visited Morecambe as my Grandma and Great Auntie were residents in the past and some times it doesn't pay to revisit old childhood haunts. Morecambe is not now the most glamorus of sea side towns, but does have some gems.

Unfortunately, the centre of the town has been split by some large supermarkets, lying by the side of the railway line. Opposite the Midlands Hotel, a famous Art Deco building seen in many Poirot TV series. The old Marine land sea aquarium has gone as has the old lido. The town reminds me of Brighton in the early 90s, down on its luck and waiting for some thing to happen. It suffered the indignantly of being one of the top five places not to live.

Just like the theatre, Morecambe might find its way to surviving and re-inventing itself to a wider British audience.This is definitely a project that needs supporting as you can imagine how wonderful a performance would be in this theatre,even its current state. I look forward to going back and seeing it revive.

The Singing Line

2011-10-02T08:44:00.000-07:00

The view from Box Hill looking down toward Dorking. These are meant to be for series of big block print on a large size. I have been thinking A0 (840 x 1,188mm). So using my large brush pen and changing tack from just wanting to use only colour and no black.

The view from Box Hill towards Denbies Vineyard with Ranmore church and common on the hill top.

This is another view that used a portrait and wanted to exaggerate the central shape. The idea being have the centre part folding in on itself.

One of the changes to I did was to listening to music, whilst I was at work. I usually do when in my studio, but I decided on trying it out and started with the album, Lungs by Florence and the Machine. It was the track the Drumming Song that grab my mind and led to the next series of sketches.

Out of Australia

2011-08-15T13:26:00.000-07:00

The British Museum has a small print room, wait up on the third floor. You have to know where you are going or you would get distracted on the way up. I was there to see the Out of Australia - prints and drawings from Sydney Nolan to Rover Thomas.

Previously, the rains in London at 'flooded' out the museum with tourists and I could not get in. So I was determined to go. It proved well worth while and I wish I had gone sooner especially as there were connecting events that I had missed.

There was a wide range of work starting with the Angry Penguins through to the present including aboriginal prints. I was able to see some of Fred Williams work, whose work I knew from one or two paintings. These images were just as impressive, impressionist in their view of the landscape. The marks were stripped back to just squiggles, yet shimmering in the overall image is a landscape, muted colours might indicate where it is geographical.

As with a lot of Australian art, the styles and themes have taken time to travel. The cubism and surrealism of Albert Tucker. Yet, these artists do not slavish copy what has emerged from Europe or later the States, but used it as references to show their own Australian landscapes in this new style.

Running along side this exhibition was another called Basket and Belonging. Looking at aboriginal use of traditional skills of basket waving and how it relates to the culture of these people.

New Cartographies

2011-06-06T13:02:00.000-07:00

This exhibition at the Cornerhouse in Manchester has finished. Even though it dominated all three of the floors, overall the number of exhibits on show felt light.

The theme of New Cartography was the line between Algeria, France and the UK. The galleries were split into three parts - movement, place and memory. The first dealt with migration both from and to Algeria and what it meant to be a person on the seas of the 20th century histories and tides. Place looked at what Algerian landscape is whether it is desert or urban.

There were three stunning large, colour and black & white photos of the Saharan landscape. You had a stony landscape, then a caravan of camels almost lost in the bleakness of white sand and the last, a typical desert theme of sands with rocky mountains dominating these shifting sea of sands.

Memory considered the places with unusual video and interviews discussing migrating back to Algeria or looking at container ships moving across the harbour. A witty comment on how trade historically would have been across the desert sands.

This exhibition was a subtle one and appearing slight. It still gives me reasons to think a bit more about it and find out about the artists who participated in this show. They are on my fringe of vision and give me, the opportunity to look into another world, but also out back into mine.

Barbara Hepworth

2011-05-30T13:50:00.000-07:00

Barbara Hpeworth is one of the main pillar of British Sculpture during the mid part of the 20th century. The other being Henry Moore, both were born in Yorkshire and this shows in their work. The strange rocky outcrops and crags that litter the moors are ingrained in their pieces. Both these sculptors were compared and contrasted now and then. Whereas Moore's reputation has suffered as some of the other mainstream British artists, I would suggest that Barbara Hepworth's is growing stronger.

One of the results is the new art gallery in Wakefield dedicated to her work. I visited the new building this weekend, which was only its third week of opening and has already, it seemed that there was a large flow of people coming to view both the art and the gallery. This could be seen by the way all the car parks had been closed and buses laid on for a park and ride. The building is a series of blocks linked together and not very warming. The inside is better, maybe a little too harsh minimalist, but I rather liked the shape of the rooms. One of the odd things was the windows have been blocked off, so you had to walk around these obstructions to see the views, across the river.

There were two rooms dedicated to Wakefield's own collection of historical pictures and some of the town own artwork of the same period. I gave a wry smile where there was catalogue proclaiming an exhibition by Henry Moore was packing them in. This was to set the seen of art in the 30s and 40s with some of the other sculptors work who were contemporaries. There were a couple of 'lost' artists who had were working at the same time, but never developed as 'bigger names' or nor any little gems, but people who would have influenced her and Moore with their beginnings in Yorkshire.

Another room was dedicated to the marquettes that Hepworth worked on, uusually, I had only know the small pieces that had been worked on like Moore's or even some of the small Rodin ones. However, she usually worked in a full size and it was odd seeing some of these bronzes worked out in plaster. The rougher, yest white surfaces. The large winged form was pinned to the wall and another more horizontal, rectangular pieces looking like a 3d Mondrian painting.

Besides and other room showing more polished pieces of her work there were room showing a current sculptor called Eva Rothschild with a show called Hot Touch. Her work is fascinating, both clever and witting with its use of space and usual materials. Someone whose work I will be more interested in finding out about.

All in all another gallery to show of the work of both one of the UK's major artist and some of the contemporary works as well. Definitely worth another visit.

Going to Gauguin

2011-01-03T11:08:00.000-08:00

At last, I managed to get to the Tate Modern major Gauguin exhibition and it was absolutely stunning. The rooms were laid out in thematic order, but also tried to show the chronolgy between the pieces, how ideas recurred or were altered. This is really a must see exhibition as it has been a good few years since any previous Gauguin exhibition, I think there was a Post Impressionist exhibition around 79/80s, when I was at college; one I missed as I was 'up north'.

Starting with self portraits, this was to show that Gauguin almost created this idea of a mystical artist shaman. Yet, this has been debunked by Waldemar Januszczak's documentary about Gauguin's life. There were some fantastic paintings, Gauguin's use of perspective to add people of objects in unusual viewpoints, showing his love of Japonisme that effected the majority of French and European paintings at the time.

I was impressed that there was two rooms putting Gauguin in context with the historical events and the places that he visited. Posters of the exhibitions, that he would of visited that fed the imagination. Some sketches showing how ideas developed or how he perceived of his own work, Christ in the garden of Gethsemane.

What always impresses is finding pictures that have not been reproduced or printed as iconic images. There were several in this exhibition, and then by placing them in context with more well known images. It made you re-consider these works. You can see how the images are worked, the shapes that carry a lot of the paintings, yet the differences in painting are not that great. It is simple. You can see the use of complimentary colours to offset the ideas and how they played through.

This exhibition is going to Washington this year and if you can go, then you must. As it shows a one of the greats in context of his own times and with his own pieces.

The Art of Cornwall

2010-12-05T09:59:00.000-08:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00wbn80/The_Art_of_Cornwall/

A good BBC programme giving a clear overview of how St Ives became the centre for Modernism in the UK over three decades. Some fascinating facts came out about the struggle between artists for dominance in the Artist exhibitions. I have only recently re-discovered Peter Lanyon, although I remember going to see some of his works in a private house in Newlyn. Little realising he had wandered over the same area of the Penwith peninsula I had been whilst down there.

Lanyon flying to see the landscape as a wholly different view and being able to synthesise all the elements to create an image of a 'place' rather than a 'landscape'. A picture needs to have elements that is not only a vivid image, but one underpinned by deeper roots. The presenter used one of Lanyon's famous pieces to show how it can be looked at several ways.

One of the other good things was that when Barbara Hepworth was mentioned, there was no reference to Henry Moore. As they are usually mentioned in the same breath.

Paul Gaugin

2010-09-29T12:36:00.000-07:00

Paul Gauguin is one of the great artist of the 19th century and the harbinger of the 20th century. I am lucky that there is to be a large retrospective of his work at the Tate Modern this autumn and I expect to be going some time. Due to the nature of this exhibition, it has generated several programmes and critical discussion about his work and of course, his life and times.

The BBC had a superb programme by Waldemar Januszczak- Gauguin -the Full Story. Originally, broadcast in 2003, it was a 2 hour tour-de-force covering from his early life in Peru through to Gauguin's grave in the South Pacific. By going through his life with the places he lived and showing paintings of his world. You gained a sense of the context for his paintings. The shift of colour from his more northern landscapes to the Breton and then beyond to the Pacific. Januszczak is a very good presenter and gives an enthusiasm to each work as well as informing and uncovering things that had been 'lost'.

Alastair Smart's article in the Telegraph puts the case for and against Gauguin. Both as an artist and as a person. The problem is that if you view history from your own period then you are judging by the criteria in some ways shaped by that point of history. The TV programme brought out this outsider's view of Gauguin being both outside of family, friends and culture. A French man brought up in Peru and then a global traveller. The case against him looks very strong from his own family and personal relationships viewpoint. Is this a case of his artistic passion superseding his other commitments, creating a narrative of the penniless creator who struggles until he is 'discovered'. Usually, after his death, so creating a myth of the lone prophet, the voice in the wilderness and whether he then became trapped in this myth partially of his own creation?

St David's Head

2010-09-14T13:02:00.000-07:00

This photograph has been taken from Whitesands Bay, just below St David's head. It has been a place I have always come to, when visiting Pembrokeshire, whether researching Sutherland or a family holiday. I have always had it in my mind that that there is a picture here and have tried composite images to create the idea and picture, which looked OK and felt OK, but......

So I was some what amazed that this time, I quickly produced three sketches of the hill. First, a traditional - more interest in the composition of the picture, then a differing colouring, secondly, more an emotional response to the land. Thirdly, a sharper image in a large sketch book as I keep on being told not to draw across two pages, but A5 sketchbooks are easy to carry. On all of the images, I decided to leave out the sky colour as the white background left the image feeling more open.

War Artists in World War Two

2010-09-13T12:18:00.000-07:00

There was a section on the Culture Show on BBC 2 about British War Artists during World War Two, a tradition that began in the First World War and continues today. Possibly, unique in the world?

There was a section on Graham Sutherland's work during the Blitz as well as some old film footage of Pembrokeshire and its relationship to some of this landscape work. I did make me re-consider this work as it viewing it looks scratchy as if he is knows there is something there, but not sure how to organise yet. I will be watching again and looking for others, besides Henry Moore, Paul Nash - who painted the iconic Battle of Britain image, John Piper.

Returning to Pembrokeshire

2010-09-12T12:21:00.000-07:00

This summer, I went back to Pembrokeshire, staying in some places I had been too. I knew it was going to be exciting as I walked over a lot of the area in my research about Graham Sutherland and his work in the 80's. Picton Castle had created a gallery to show some of his later work there, but due to poor construction, the paintings deteriorated over time and the gallery was closed. These pieces of work were taken under the control of the National Museum of Wales and disappeared from view.

There was talk to of opening a new gallery on the A40 to make it more accessible to the general public and the possibility of opening another gallery at St Davids (the smallest city in the UK). Latterly, I discovered that this new gallery had been opened and had some of Sutherland's work on display beside other artists who had lived and worked in the area.

Having been away from this part of Wales for a decade or more, I had knew what to expect, but when you get there. It was like discovering the whole place over again. If I was on my own, I would have come back with a lot more work, but time dictated that I was busy in other areas. As has been mentioned before this part of Wales is very similar to Cornwall. This article appeared a month or two ago, and I would pick West Wales over Cornwall any day. The difference across the landscape is staggering moving from the rugged moor like landscape to the intimate coast rivers with hidden stretches of the river bank.

On a trip to Skomer Island, a small island off the coast of the Marloes area of the Pembrokeshire coast, which was a bird sanctuary as well with only the wardens living on it. I was surprised that there was wings of birds with the carcasses gone. Later found that there was a peregrine falcon that haunted the island as well preying on the rabbits as there were some skeletons lying around. The birds' wings reminded me of shorn wings by angels in stepping down to earth. Islands had a mystical quality in Celtic mythology being associated with the 'otherworld'. The placed did have a unique atmosphere to it.

Sutherland had become to incorporate both animals and people into this work and seeing this lost wings, made me wonder if these remains had started the process.

The Lost Romantic - Paul Nash

2010-04-25T13:26:00.001-07:00

Today, I threaded my way through the labyrinth of the South Circular to go to Dulwich Picture gallery to see the Paul Nash exhibition. Besides getting lost and I needed to go this weekend as time was against me. I had nearly given up in going, mainly because of the travel as that part of London is difficult to get too. Not proper arterial road, so it requires a lot of single roads and stop & starting.

The strange thing that kept on popping into my mind was the novel by Stella Duffy called The Room of Lost Things, set in part in South London. A part of the world that I venture across now and again, but never stay long enough to see all the places or get to know the scenery. Today, I found that there was a Dulwich Park and I wonder what is there? Is it like Greenwich park with the entrances into flat plain with a steep drop?

The Gallery is set in Dulwich Village, one of those oasis of village life in the metropolis. The area was set out in yellow aged brick, within a Georgian setting. Originally designed by Sir John Soanes - it looks odd without any windows on the buildings side. The main light comes from the roof, so giving an even 'spread' to the viewer as they look at the paintings.

Paul Nash is one of those artist who impact is more under stated. His work is has a deep power, but at times, it is delicate like a watercolour painting. Yet, here there were several paintings that I had not seen before. Some which I found intrigued me.

Pyramids of the Sea and Combat, both early work and remind me of that other great English artist, William Blake. Especially, Combat with angel and demon, and its setting on a hill near Uxbridge - some where I use to live. You got to see more of his use of surrealism, by use of opposite element. In one a port was merged into a room, you are both inside and outside at the same time.

There were do interesting pictures from his time at Dymchurch near Romney Marsh, another place on my list to go and visit. There was one of the Great Dyke, which focused on the dyke with two figures in the right corner and a fence in the left corner. This reminded me of a series of illustrations based on the Pilgrim's Progress that I had seen in Liverpool in 1980. A lot of these Romney Marsh pictures were long and flat with large areas of space. I wonder how this landscape will look when I visit, again on the list of places to go.

Need to go and check how much of this more to the wilds of Kent/Sussex helped with his interest in surrealism. The juxtaposition of images to combine and create different forms. In the room were b&w photos of his collection and how these led him on. The long furrows of a ploughing, giving texture across the whole space. His use of trees to cut out and create new creatures and the starting point, The Monster Field. It is echoed in a Sutherland picture of the early 50's. Large open spaces with objects scattered across the scene are reminiscence of sea-scapes. The strangeness of the flotsam and jetsam washed up on the shores can throw up just such opposites.

In his later paintings, I noticed that he rarely used strong outlines, something that I have done, although, I having been trying to work with just colour and rarely use black or the dark, deep brown. The shape of the paint helps to define the shape of the image. Landscape of the Vernal Equinox (III) is a good example of this style of his work.

There at the end of the exhibition was a picture that solved a problem that I have encounted in 1983 and still lies buried in my mind that there was a picture waiting to come out, but I had a good stab at the time. You have frames within frames. A pool with trees on either side, so you have a U-shape. Nash's have branches linking across the sky and then merging in with the pool below in a riot of grey, white and paler greens. It was fantastic. It has made me think that I can solve the problem of linking the areas. I can't really say why the image was flat, but I think it was that there was not enough 'tangling' elements to catch and bind the various parts of the image together. Time to dig it out again.

Francis Bacon: In Camera at Compton Verney.

2010-04-05T13:45:00.000-07:00

I spotted this exhibition in the listings and having been an admirer of Bacon's since my student days. I wanted to see how the photographs would relate to his work. The show was at Compton Verney - a gallery I had kept on passing on the M40 and thinking I would stop at, but one thing and another I had not. The gallery is a little off the beaten track and I prefer to stop at the place coming back to London from Up North, but the right junction you can not turn off going south. This time I was going to make the effort as I no pressing need to get back and a day spare.

Compton Verney is set in the heart of English countryside, that is Warwickshire. Getting off the junction was not too difficult and was sign posted off the motorway. The building was a small country house that had been in the hands of the Verney family for a few centuries until it was sold in the 19th century. Passing through several owners and then falling into semi-neglect. The place has been re-build and the grounds are going through a renewal process. The whole places seems perfectly formed on a small scale with two amazing bridges.

I went to the Bacon exhibition first as I was unsure about how many people might be there and how long it would take. There seemed to be more cars than people, so the whole exhibition was easy to get round without clashing with other viewers. There were a lot of reference shots from the work of Eadweard Muybridge, who produced images showing the movement of people and animals in the later part of the 19th Century. We had photos of various people in Bacon's circle and showing some of the many photos that were found in his studio. Images had been crumpled and broken up. There were one or two paintings, but the exhibition lacked depth.

Another set of rooms had an adjoining exhibition called Deconstructing Bacon and contained other works. Intriguingly, there were some cut canvas that Bacon had 'destroyed' as he became unhappy with them. These two had been exhibited and therefore photographic reproduction was available so you could see the whole image. It was similar to another Bacon with vegetation. It was strange seeing a canvas displayed with mutilation of areas cut out. Reminds me now of the Lord Leverhulme portrait by August John, which was cut up by the owner and of course, Churchill's portrait by Sutherland that was destroyed.

There was a resource center where you could manipulate your own images either in photo booth or by crumpling up magazine pages; along with some of the publications and comments by visitors.

One the other floors, where some examples of British Folk Art, which was one of the first I have seen. There were some typical native pictures but one that interested me was one depicting A Midsummer Night's Dream from the 1860s. This image looked like an Indian Mughal painting, very flat colour with a central couple and puck below at the edge of the canvas.

There were galleries for Chinese statues and objects, 17th-18th Century baroque with some of pictures of Volcanoes and some Tudor & Stuart portraits. My other find was a catalogue of Peter Greenaway exhibition Tusle Luper's 92 Suitcases, which I some how missed in 2004. I was worth a visit, but the Bacon show was disappointing, but this was due to the lack of further works to show the theme better. I look forward to an exhibition that will do the gallery justice.

Little Gems - 3

2010-03-29T14:07:00.000-07:00

I visited the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge recently and this was one of the 'little gems' that I found. It is a George Stubbs' painting - Una and the Lion Isabella Saltonstall as Una in Spensers Faerie Queene, 1782.

I have never seen a Stubbs based on a typical Georgian actor or actress portrait as you might see other painters of the period. So it was great surprise especially as I had been recently looking at Stubbs horse painting. Further thinking I can not remember many other pictures based on the Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queen. I only knew of the book because of Michael Moorcock's novel Glorianna or the Unfilled Queen. This used some familiar Moorcockian themes and a homage to one of his influences - Mervyn Peake - Gormeghast Trilogy.

The Kiss

2010-03-28T23:23:00.001-07:00

This is the second entry into an open exhibition on the theme of A Book About Death. The success of this first exhibition has spun off with an exhibition in Brazil and another one in Wales. It is this one that I have send my second submission.

I have decided to keep the same format off the black edged front and the white border reverse. I had been thinking that I might change the stamp on the reverse, but decided against it. One of the reasons is that the stamp might come from the same place or from the person who might or might not be death.

Again the image is from my Highgate Heads suite. The theme is of lovers in the wood and how trees can look like figures amongst the vegetation. The colour is slightly more muted and was down to a light use of washes as well as not wanting to 'overload too much' vivid colours into the image. The use of slightly lighter marking with pen to make a more delicate picture.

Hibernation

2010-03-20T00:10:00.000-07:00

I have been quiet on the blogging front as I have been focused on my new job for the last few months. My own output has slowed to an almost a halt, but the ideas have been ticking over or growing from one to the other and not stopping. Also practicing with new software and getting to grips in how it is used in the new part of the print industry, where I work.

I have found myself going back to my interest in comics and graphic novels. Starting to work on some drawings for some of my gaming friends and developing cover ideas. One of the big projects, is to work on a graphic novel or more likely novella. More a case of doing it rather than creating a great bit of literature or drawing. Again it has paused, so my writing about it inception, I am hoping to begin to up the current pace.

After my 'lost year' I have trying to control costs, so have not been out much or into London to see many new exhibitions. I am looking for to go and see the Paul Nash at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. Nash is one those Neo-Romantic painters of the mid-century British artists, who has had to be defined by this grouping. I would say that this grouping is a short hand for critical studies. These painters - Paul Nash, John Nash, Graham Sutherland, Vaughan, Armitage, Ayrton are not a cohesive grouping as others or whether they would claim such an idea.

Another exhibition I am looking forward to seeing is Henry Moore at the Tate Britain. Like Graham Sutherland, Moore's reputation has suffered since his death. It has been fashionable to consider Barbara Hepworth more important than Moore, but in my Art College days Moore was like a giant on the landscape. One of the reasons, I feel I can relate to his work is the relationship to the northern landscape. Rocky crags staggered onto the horizon line, not complete ranges or outcrops dug into the hillside half finished or abandoned villages from the industrial age.

This year, I hope to get to some museums and galleries that I have not seen. So watch this space!

Tadahiro Uesugi

2010-01-01T02:29:00.000-08:00

Finally, I got round to watching the film, Coraline having read both the book and the graphic novel - Craig P. Russell's illustrations are gorgeous.Yet, tucked away in the special features the animators talked about the work of Tadahiro Uesugi. Some one I have never heard of, but the illustrations just knocked me sideways.

It reminds me of my early discovery of Paul Hogarth's illustrations with pen and ink. Uesugi combines both this 'scratch-like' pen manship, but harks by to a 50s style. I can see how it might have been used for the silk screen with the stuck fantastic colour. The colour is subtle, but it also pulls your eye to it. Sometimes you think the clash of colour, but it works.

I hesitate to be cliched to say how different the perspective to a western eye and reminds me of the prints of the 'Floating World'. The use of white space within the image is fantastic.

Note From An Exhibition

2009-11-29T06:34:00.000-08:00

Today I went to the Anish Kapoor at the Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly.

The exhibition was a riotous explosion of noise and exuberance with the entrance filled with a wide metal riveted construction that filled the whole room. As you entered the exhibition, you were faced with this sculpture. You were pinned up against the door, looking into the empty hollow, that was black, but as you looked, light penetrated into the depths of the piece. It was very, a very female piece as you were looking between the legs into the depths of her womb.

As you walked to the sides, you found that the metal was shaped like a sycamore seed. It was a burnt orange, riveted with bands of darkening brown. Almost protective, the shape of the room, an octagon also helped that it forced you to go round in one or two ways. Like me some people bent themselves up and slip under the arch of the sycamore to escape into other rooms.

In the next room, there were several pieces of highly polished mirrors . These were almost typical fairground as you looked at the sculptures, you could see the distorted images as you wandered through the gallery. Yet, with all the works around the room, it created multiple images that reflected off one another.

The next room was one large yellow wall, but in the centre was a hollowed out sphere in yellow. Then the room was empty, so the yellow wall had false space, that you could look at both an embossed or debossed image. The size was massive and it dominated the whole room, even as you sat opposite the hole in the wall.

There were some smaller pieces on floor and high up on the ceiling. I remember seeing these pieces before at the Liverpool Tate, where my mother had offered a view that the colours were religious in one context. To my current eyes, they looked playful and reminded me of some surrealist works or Miro in a 3-D shape.

The room everyone had come to see was the cannon that fired cylinders of red wax into a room. This was the small gallery in the corner, by now the room had filled and the red wax looked like a river opening out of the room. Although, I had thought it, an unusual idea and just something for show. It was a more engaging work, when viewed. The excitement of the viewers as the canon was about to be fired, the reaction as the wax landed and added to the whole cascade out the room.

Kapoor had taken over three rooms with a moving slide of red wax that fitted the door way. This moved ever so slowly through the halls on a sliding mechanism. It was strange to see this slab moving along a track that you could not cross. Long lines of movement were laid out in the wax. Another gigantic piece that dominated, you could only view it from certain entrances or rooms. You also had to be told not to put it on your hands as it could damaged clothes.

Another room had a similar pieces to the main entrance, but this time the ovaloid entrance looked like lips or a flower and from it flowed a meandering line. This wiggled through the room, but you could only walk around it, not through it or climb over it. It felt like a ‘line going for a walk’.

The last room had a series of clay roundels scattered in the gallery. There were on pallet tops and filled the area. You had to pick your way through these manquettes as they were grey and unfinished, in as much they had not been fired. So they still look malleable and waiting to be finished. What this a reply to the Anthony Gormley piece, The Field?

Besides the riotous noise and the joyous laughter of the people with their children that tended to dominate the exhibition. The whole exhibition was an exercise in space; how and when to use it and it was very successful. The large pieces tended to demand respect, but the moving wax was a good idea and seems to work. However, I am not sure that these pieces will be effective over years or have greater depth.

The yellow wall was stunning and you could fall into it, but the moving wax was an event and maybe you have to be there for the anticipation as the wax moves and where it falls. Overall the exhibition was fun and I thought use of space superb. Making me think about space for sculpture and its absence can define work.

Walkabout

2009-11-07T08:02:00.000-08:00

I got a copy of this book in the last few days as I had a Library copy out for the last few months. This Library edition was fantastic, but this new updated book is stunning. The paper back book has flaps and printed end papers with a map showing the main regions of the artists.

At some point, I will be re-reading it again as even with just flicking through it. There is a lot more stunning paintings and it has been re-designed so you can identify the artists with the regions using the map at the front.

This book is a great introduction to Aboriginal Art and beg, borrow or steal a copy as it a brilliant book. One for the permanent collection.

Digging in the Dirt

2009-10-19T10:41:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I got out my old degree portfolio as I had been worried that it had been damaged by a little flood damage in the garage as I had run out of space to keep these previous drawings and prints safely. Inside the portfolio was five sketch books that go back into my early days, the sketch book for Deep Root Down. When I went to Exmoor in my second year at art college. Little did I know that this visit would provide me with the materials for my litho prints in the third year.

These litho print gave me the confidence to use use print making and still I would have liked to have a few more years, if I had made it to postgrad to work further. Also one of my prints got me to win a competition and have the print exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts for the Stowells sponsored show. Little did I know that my involvement would take me.

Digging out these sketch books was in some ways walking over my grave as it was work that had been done some time ago, a long time ago and I could see the faults in it. Yet, within those sketches, I knew there was something that I could take away from it. One of my tutors told me that sometimes you don't need to go from A to B to C, but you can leap ahead and this is how I look at these sketches. I have leaped ahead both mentally as well as artistically. There is the thread that links all of this work up from the future to the present and back to the past.

Seeing all the pictures that I had worked on and there were other sketch books that I had thrown away as there is only so many you can keep over the years. Looking at these pieces, I begin to wonder if I have kept the right ones? Some of these sketches did become proper prints and have survived. The portfolio was not damaged and so I can let it go. Yet deep in side it is still a part of me.

Back to Unkown Seas

2009-10-16T22:47:00.001-07:00

I have finished my 'old' sketch book. It has only taken some 3 years to do. Originally began when on holiday in Dorset, next another holiday in Brittany and then continuously, when I was at work, I would try and go out at lunch for a break to find something to draw. Usually, I would be looking for a landscape or a certain tree or shapes to draw.

Each sketch would aim to be about 1/2 hour or shorter. So there could not be any messing around. My original thought was to restrict myself to now using black and just use colour felts to put down it down.

Yet I now find that in working through previous and this latest sketch book that I have begun to change. I went back to using rotring nibs and drawing intricate architectural pictures, something that I would not normally considered. Gradually, people have crept in, but not as good as I would like, possibly down to the speed and use of pens. My preference is for a slow and steady buildup of an image. Going back to buildings is easy as they are static, the colour might change slightly, but essentially it is there.

Another surprise was the discovery of a liking for drawing the horses at the nearby stables. Maybe the idea had been buried for some while living so close and just being close with some spare time. I sat and drew. It was step into the unknown.

This is why when you start a new sketch book is scary. As this is new page literally, I want it to be a perfect, but I know that it is now always going to be true. Earlier in my life, the way I found to get the trap of having to have the perfect notebook was to use loose leaf files, so you could take out what you don't want, but I missed the feel, shape of having a 'solid board case' as it gives you some stability, when working.

The other technique was deciding to paper over the piece I didn't like and give you an new page. It has the benefit that it would create layers of contrasting depth, so you could 'cut' into the paper below by working the paper with an eraser.

When I know that I getting close to finishing a sketch book, I am already on the look out for a new one that I can use. The book itself has to be plain with good paper - a smooth cartridge, usually calendared or with a small layer of coating is used for the felt pens, but I do have some standard uncoated cartridge for pencils and other media. I like to use mixed media, I have to be careful not to use pens that will bleed into the paper or sink through to the image below.

With each sketch book you are hoping that it will be perfect and my just pulling a mark in it. You are committing yourself to new ideas and thoughts waiting out in the unknown to be discovered.

Off the Tracks

2009-10-13T01:31:00.001-07:00

I was out walking nearby to where I live and have been determined to finish off my current sketch book as there are only a few empty pages left. Then I will be left with prospect of starting a new sketch book, always a terrifying as it is a blank book and I would like every image to be a knockout; which I know can't happen every time.

In the past, I have now worked away round this situation, but there is still a thrill and a worrying in starting a new book. The picture I wanted to draw is shown above and I had attended to repeat with a drawing tomorrow in the same place or move further along the track. I always think of Sutherland's Entrance to Lane, when I look up a track or a covered road.

As I was drawing, several horse riders passed me as they use the track. It is safer than walking on the road with cars passing by. Whilst I looked on, I noticed in the field opposite, a rather gorgeous tawny horse. I had been thinking about getting my daughters to go and draw their horses as it is good practice, besides their interest in horses. Nothing had happened, so with some spare time, I decided to give it a go.

Limiting myself to orange and dark brown pens as this was going to be fast. The lighter colour to give a highlight and then filling in with the brown. I found the drawings exciting as the horse moved slowly, so I was able to do the following sketches.

Then as I sketched I remember Henry Moore's Sheep Sketch book and use a similar technique to draw the anatomy of this horse. Moore used a biro bic pen and this is where my use of this cheap throwaway pen without a top. That gives a lovely black line with just the right thickness. Now I am interested in doing some more sketches and will be consulting with Stubbs and Degas for ideas. Might mean a trip up to Epsom race track on a racing day.

Awakening the Seed 1.0

2009-10-07T14:02:00.000-07:00

Second image being worked on in Artrage, just to see what would happen. Neither good or bad, but I am finding how to use the layers and then various types of pencils, chalks and pens. The sky is OK, but originally I was thinking of just drawing in pencil and a very dark colour to see how I would cope. I found the shift of colour awkward , but now realise that the tint/shade should be moved by the colour wheel.

Grandville

2009-10-03T03:39:00.000-07:00

Grandville is the latest graphic novel by Bryan Talbot. An anamorphic steam punk graphic novel, looking like a grittier Rupert the Bear with a twist of Tarantino. What interested me was the way how youtube has been used to create its own trailer. Reminded me of the early TV animation of Noggin the Nog or Jackanory by focusing on a part of an image and then changing the camera angles.

It is cross-fertilising of media, also Marvel comics are using a similar technique called Digi-comics for new tales of Spidewoman. Is this a new media being created due to technology being available and accessible to all?

Up, Up and Away

2009-10-03T03:36:00.000-07:00

I have recently discovered that my postcard for A Book About Death has been acquired for the collection of the Museum Of Modern Art in New York. A copy of the book is being exhibited at another show by the Mobius Group.

I am staggered how this exhibition has developed a life of its own. From just following a little link on the blogging links, I have achieved something that I never would of dreamed of. It has given me heart in making my own work. As I work in some thing of a vacuum on my own, in my room working and sending messages out into unknown seas.

It has made me very happy in getting my work seen, but using some of the skills that I should be using to keep me in the printing and graphics industry.

Eggs

2009-09-27T10:01:00.001-07:00

These are some photos that I took in the last few weeks and I know that there are pictures are waiting to come out. This is one of Box Hill and although, I have a landscape photo in roughly the same area. A portrait format seems right, but I can see how the elements are split up with sky, hill, then the tree branches in a circular spin and finally we have a light element with a deeper green shadow stretching out from the foreground.

Marlow church, which I had been asked about doing a picture for some one. However, I did not have the time to do one of my rotring pens and I felt that I need to some prep work with a sketch. The bridge across the Thames is a suspension design, very much like the Brunel one in Bristol that I would cycle across. I can see how the church will make a good image to draw and will be a 'realistic' picture. So this image (below) is intriguing for the layout with the reflecting image on the water and as a future reference.

Below is the photo of Box Hill, this was the starting point of the sketch and then the digital art work that became the first piece for Surrey Dreamtime. I did truncate the landscape to include more of the left hand side of the image.

Over the Top

2009-09-23T12:41:00.001-07:00

This is the latest piece of the Surrey Dreamtime Box Hill (1.3), which I had printed out for some one. I think I learn a lot in producing this art work on the Mac. The layering needs to better controlled as I found that I was mixing different colours on differing layers; probably need to focus as if I was doing a woodcut print.

The size of the above image does not do justice to the marks. Putting the red layer as a background colour has definitely helped me break into another world. I keep on wondering if I need to push it further, but have decided to leave it for the moment as I have other projects to concentrate on.

Looking Down the Hill

2009-09-15T05:59:00.001-07:00

I have been working on my digital artwork, using the paint software program to create the piece. The original sketch book was in the house and I opened it up to have a look. Comparing and contrast. I found myself greatly stunned by the differences between the two.

If I had done what I consider a standard picture, it would have a stronger structure, usually overloaded with black. So this first attempt with paint software has been a revelation and a big leap into the unknown. When I look a bit harder, I can see bits from the original sketch, yet it does not look like any picture that I would produce.

Divine Sparks

2009-09-13T06:38:00.000-07:00

In the depths of a cupboard were some old photographs of family from a range of years, but tucked in away in an envelope of photos were these two pictures. The first is from a summer house at Wrest Park and the other is a tree from behind this house.

I have been casting my mind for some time, it must said, for a picture for the local vineyard, open art exhibition called Bacchus and has a theme, that is open to board interpretation. The next one next year in early January 2010 is titled, ' Awakening'. I have let this roll round in my mind for some time and tried to bring it forward to think what I could do. Having missed the last few exhibitions, for a lack of an idea or time. The dreaded 'T' word again. I am making a purposeful resolution to try and do some thing. So finding these two photos was a great boon.

The theme that has been waiting is something with seeds, but my first picture, I presented was a deep shadow tree called Circling the Year.

The idea was on a connection between the shadow roots and the tree as itself with the idea of a circular movement as the colour changes throughout the year. Lots of white to give a sharper edge to the roots and knocking back the high horizontal to go into the background. The image is big and so is the frame. a good 720 x 1020mm plus size. I had used a previous frame and the person framing the piece tutted as he felt it was not big enough. In the guideline for the exhibition the frame can not be bigger than 800 x 800mm. So I will reduce the size to something more manageable as well as cut down the cost.

The seed idea has been germinating and I had thought of using my book of days piece and use one of the massive (and I do mean massive) pine cones to have that centred in the 'lost' book, but it did not work or I was not happy with it. It did not look right and I played around with several pine cones and one stone. I might show these photos later or just leave them somewhere 'deep' as the photos above were to reappear fortunatiously.

The framing device of the 'lost' book, I feel is replicated in the open door of the first picture. It show a certain 'deep' depth to the image as you gaze is cast back to the stone ornament and then on to the house via long lake. It reminds me slightly with the layout of the magnificent Castle Howard in Yorkshire by Vanburgh. It was used for the setting of the TV series of Brideshead Revisited, but the place is truly fantastic. The landscape is semi-formal with obelisks, a mausoleum, odd ornaments laid out in a grand design. If you have never been, it is a place that must be on your itinerary at some point in your life.

The tree, I like has it has a 'flat aspect', the horizontal canal with reflection, the almost circular round branches sprouting from a layer of green, then we have more horizontals and finally the whiteness of a 'dead' branch, almost lightning like falling from the heavens.

How can I combine the imagine into a single piece?

Learning Lessons

2009-09-12T14:15:00.000-07:00

I have finally managed to re-work by artwork for the exhibition A Book About Death. I arranged for it to be printed in the States and then shipped to New York via Web-to-print. My first experience of attempting, so lets hope it is not famous last words and I am late, but at the moment finding a job is more important in my life.

I found that I had to revise the size and originally I had intended to do 4.25 x 6" postcard as this was close to a A6 size, but I had to download a template in PDF format. Export my InDesign as a PDF and then insert into the PDF file. I always found it difficult to follow the help in the software, so took my friend's advice and 'google' for the answer. This worked and I was able to re-work the image.

Unfortunately, I had to change it several times as the file was not quite right for either web for print site. So some of the learning I have done at College, I was able to use and look to develop this further. So I learnt a lot and now need to speed up on my processing of artwork for print.

It was reported recently that to become an expert requires 10,000 hours. So it is a small step, but I do have a bit of a start being involved in the graphic and printing industry, even if it is on the admin side. Even though you become an expert, you still must keep on learning, although I am wondering how I could have speed up my current learning process up.

Now to do my website.

Soon.

At last!

2009-09-10T12:49:00.000-07:00

This blog was titled after the idea of two split ideas 'mashed' (if that is now a technical term) together to create some thing else. This is my first attempt to use a paint software programme that I was given with my pen and tablet. One of my desires to use a pen rather than a mouse as it would give me a better control over the mark-making.

So the image above marks the beginning of trying the theory out. I found that I had to lay a ground and decided on a reddy-brown and then add green on top to signify the woods. Trying to keep the colour simple and not too sophiscated. I found that the pen on the tablet did give me pressure control. As I originally intended to keep a certain consistency of dots, but finding that the dots could change with pressure. It gradually changed to a wide selection of marks.

It is a gradually changing my mind how to use this new process. I like the idea of being able to use a short cut to put down a lot of consistent colour as it in the background and using a single pen to replicate a range of differing media.

Memories of the Past

2009-09-06T01:21:00.000-07:00

I have been fascinated with legends and mythology since my childhood. This article comments that folklore is a lot older than we would think. I remember my father telling me the legend of Troy and how the German, Schliemann went and excavated the city (or several cities).

Our paper ran a series of comic strips, one was a factual one and there was one about the legend of Atlantis. It might have been at the time, when the BBC Chronicle TV programme was investigating various period of history, Silbury Hill and Stonehenge featured, so it might have been one of these programmes and looking at the theory that Thera in the Aegean was the original basis of the legends.

However, the flood myth seems an universal myth with every culture having a variant on the legend. Climate change has played apart over the period and this might be the reason for this universal appeal. This BBC radio programme considers how the landscape around the British Islands changed over the period and these survivors carried tales of the flooding down in their stories. The commentator recalls how a trawler first brought up some remains that humans had lived in this part of the world, before it became a sea.

I had always thought of the stone ages as a 'boring' period of history, but several articles over time have changed my mind. The recent series by Michelle Paver called The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness is a very good read and has some excellent comments. Also there have been odd finds that have appeared, The Bronze Disk of Sanger and this has led to some wild theories about the past. The idea that there is a starting point for civilization is a fascinating one as researchers try and discovered the truth about the past.

I wonder what stories the future will tell of this age?

Cookham - Stanley Spencer's country

2009-09-04T12:35:00.000-07:00

The Village of Cookham is by the river Thames and was home to another great eccentric artist, Sir Stanley Spencer. The place is a typical village, not quite is aseptic, but it has the quaint old collages and the stone towered church at it's heart. Further on is the a long meadow common now owned by the National Trust.

Spencer's work is both figurative, but not full on realism. It is a personal iconography linked to biblical imagery and his own village world. A lost world of between the wars, even after World War 2, one thinks of those very British period TV shows of Poirot and Marple. The paintings harks back to a 'golden' era.

I believe that Spencer is in a long line of 'eccentric' British artist who are not define by an 'ism'. William Blake is a fore-runner of Spencer with his linking of the real world with the world of the ethereal. Francis Bacon was an usual individual and his work, did not lead to a 'genre'. In some ways, Graham Sutherland's work were adrift from the mainstream. Although, Sutherland has been credited with the forming what is now called 'Neo-romanticism' as art historians try to shape the shifting seas of art ideas and work of the period.

When you walk around places where artists worked, you can feel the imagery reflected in the landscape. It makes me think of my own village and if I could create work using my village as a backdrop. Could I do 'The Ressurection at Bookham' or a historical painting 'Jane Asuten inspired by Bok Hill', etc.

This takes us back to the idea of this blog of Surrey Dreamtime. How could I combined the two elements from the title. I have a copy of Contemporary Aboringal paintings bookthat is an inspiration. This looking at inner space, rather than the visual 'realistic' one that our eyes are training to view.

Messing About in Boats

2009-09-04T10:44:00.000-07:00

Looking towards Cookham

Up towards Marlow (a long way in the distance).

Last weekend, was taken out on boating on the Thames by family relations. It was wonderful sailing up from Cookham to Marlow and back again, we moored up on the river and had lunch. Whilst the rest of the family watched a DVD, I got out the sketch pad and sat drawing looking up to Cookham and then up towards Marlow.

I found that I had very little time to drawn as you might think the river as a quiet and slow place, but it much more lively and boisterous place. Maybe it was the big Canoe event, but it was probably the water drawing out people to go out and mess around in boats; as the sailing dingies did around the motor boats. So I was surprised how fast everyone moved and found I had to re-act quickly and some times wait for the sailing boats to return to fill in the starting sketch. In fact the picture contains two images of the boat at differing points on the river.

I wanted to create an impressionist feel with the duck and swans on the side of the boat only appearing as a rough coloured marks to add to the feeling of movement. Again, I tried to create a flowing line that represented the flowing of the river, but I wanted to keep the white space and leave it empty as well. Not sure how to resolve the situation, either one or the other?

Highgate Cemetery

2009-08-25T00:29:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-24T13:36:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-09T06:42:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-07T07:35:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-08-07T00:11:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-06T13:21:00.000-07:00

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.

Cartography - Stage 1

2009-07-19T12:58:00.000-07:00

Cartography - Stage 1 - This has been playing in my mind for some time and just decided to get on with it. The 3 x 3 grid was already lay down for another picture, the graph paper was first and I was using a page from Pericles - where the hero was placed in a chest and put on the sea.

This idea of the lone helmsman on his own in a story, back to the Dreams of Deucalion ideas. The framing an image within its own frame, then again with border and finally the wooden frame. Again working with the book of hours and watching that change. I wanted to do something that would have a wider effect in combination.

Stacked away in a cupboard are some books waiting to be used. They are very old, discredited (?) books - Dictionary of Architecture, Geography, Guide to London, Old A-Z London atlas in Black and White. At the RAA summer exhibition, I saw a picture that was on graph paper with the archaeological dig drawing in an area of white paper (not graph). So using graph paper has been in the back of the mind.

By messing around with some titles, I came across one called The Mariner's Tale - a reference to Chaucer and Powell & Pressburger film, The Canterbury Tale as well. I might have mentioned how the Nave of a church came from a nautical term. Further thinking might me think of the village church, St Nicolas - the Saint from whom Saint Nick/Santa Claus/Father Christmas comes from. The idea of the a church as a ship on a sea of green in Surrey, which is a land locked county. Taking bits of places, words, drawing and putting them on the graph in a random order.

Trying to avoid being too specific and structured. I decided to just dive on in. Started with the central part. I was going to have the page at an angle, but instead I tore the page up down the sides and in thirds. Laid them out randomly and then framed with a heavy line.

I like the idea of a torn page and took the graph paper apart. Finding some old images, I wanted to use somewhere. I cut them out and added them in. I started to copy one in the corner, this led to the pine cones that I have collected as random seeds scattered on the paths or roads. This develop into the idea of cutting a hole into the page of the London guide. Should I put on squares from the London A-Z?

I preferred the idea to draw a round pine cone into the space. Then I went to down to bring in some other pine cones in and draw them into some of the area. Besides the pine cones, I have brought in the stone, another random object that I found, but it is split in half like a peach with a white rim.

Further drawing required.

Meeting Your Heroes - Part 2

2009-07-07T12:12:00.000-07:00

The meeting with Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore and Iain Sinclair was recorded and is available through Moorcock Miscellany web site. The links are below.

Conversation

Questions and Answers

Also an article in the Financial Times about London and its memories.

Meeting Your Heroes

2009-07-03T12:24:00.000-07:00

Monday 29th June

Discussion at the British Library about London with Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore and Iain Sinclair.

I have been a Michael Moorcock fan since discovering the Hawkmoon books of the Eternal champion. I have been reading Edgar Rice Burroughs' Martian series. Why oh why has there not been an great adaption of these books, so influential for a lot of science fiction. There has been chatter about it, but only Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill's Book 2 of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen has come close.

Currently, working my way through London Orbital and fascinated by the area around Epsom, having a hospital for the mentally ill and how this can be 'lost'. So the grounds have been sold on for housing. Some thing to investigate and go to view. London surrounded by a chain of mad hospitals before the M25, but now threaded together by the tarmac link.

The evening was fantastic. I was sat on the front row. So they were sat about 3 or 4 meters away from me. It was like being part of a conversation as they chatted for hour. I had to hold myself back and wanting to comment to be part of the conversation.

It was a discussion on how all these layer of cultural reference could be picked up and used to create fiction. They felt the point really were the Beatles appearance and how the cultural elite had to give way. Lots of insults hurtled at Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim. They had a go at a lot of early sci-fi, as when MM became editor of New Worlds. How he went to buy a stack of America SF magazine and only found 2 or 3 stories he liked.

They had a diversion on how people picked up things to 'old' for them. Alan Moore mentioned the New Worlds magazine and how he could of become a stalker fan of MM when he was a teenager! AM gave an example of one his Swamp Thing stories which was pretty horrific and was one of the comics to have the Comics Code Authority stamp taken off because of the content. One of AM's fans came up to him and told him that the comic had been given to him by his Dad at the age of 8 for a coach journey gave him nightmares for a long time afterwards.

Having read a couple of New Worlds, I am not sure of the context. They talked about Williams Burroughs and his style, which I had come to via Philip Jose Farmer rewriting Tarzan by William rather than Edgar. Then I got a copy of the Nova Express and it definitely was beyond me at that point. A film of 'The Naked Lunch' was just plain weird.

So the question is should I give my daughter (12) a copy of 'From Hell' by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell. I remember watching the Softly Softly team of Barlow and Watts discuss the Ripper investigation. This was where I found out about Duke of Clarence theory. Typically, when she found out about Jack the Ripper, she googled it and found the background. (Too clever by half at times).

MM talked about his friend J G Ballard and his writing in suburbia of Shepperton of how he would take the children to school (after his wife had died) and go back with a glass and bottle of whisky. Then just write and how it would words, ideas would float out, some would be good and some probably bad. Iain Sinclair chipped in here, pointing out that Shepperton was were the Martian had crossed the River Thames in HG Wells' War of the Worlds.

It is intriguing that MM was born in 1939 and how his attitude shaped the decade of the 1960's. As my father was born in 1930 and his distaste for the 1960's. Both my dad and MM, I think had a great time during the war as John Boorman did in his film of the period. This was set in South London where MM was born and I remember watching it with my mum; who at first hated it, but then changed her mind and told my sisters to go and see it. Seeing the world through a child's eyes and how different the world can appear.

This suggests there was a change and my parent were on the wrong side of the tide. My father was very anti 1960s, yet there was only 9 years that separate him and Michael Moorcock. I wonder how close were there childhoods?

I am looking for to reading Alan Moore's book, Jerusalem about the relationship of Northampton and London. The psycho-geographic links between the two. Moore talked about King John (who might or not been a bad king), Richard the Third and Cromwell. All people who create strong opinions with readers and historians. This is a text novel, so will prove intriguing of how he works.

Michael talked about Notting Hill and how he used it as a back drop for the Jerry Cornelius stories. Where he met another local who told him that under the old convent was a portal to another parallel world. Something that he, MM, had believed he had written about in one of his books, maybe Cure for Cancer?

It was a great evening and I got my copies of Mother London and The Entropy Tango signed by MM. He was very graceful through out the whole evening and I was very happy to have met him.

Entangled and Trapped........

2009-06-28T14:03:00.000-07:00

Some Bic Biro line drawing from my Silbury Hill surrounding bushes photos. In the past the last image would be converted into a perpex engraving.

First stage playing with the image.

Looking at the composition of the original photograph and trying to line up the layers.

The main drawing, which is not quite right, bottom left corner needs to given more depth. The back ground needs to be brought out, but the linear line make this difficult as I would want a hazy background. Probably a sandpapered surface to give it a different texture.

Title, I like the word Entangled as it gives a feeling of a complex mess and Trapped, am I repeating myself?

Painting the Strands

2009-06-22T01:40:00.001-07:00

The BBC had a good, short TV series about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. This was a great show as it was concise and enjoyable showing how radical these painters were at the time and tackling issues e.g. the effects of industrialisation and social understanding that were not the standard art fare, which I remember as being held up as one of the main points of the French Impressions.

This stood out again, when I watched another programme about Edouard Manet. Another figure from my past as Manet along with another series of lectures about the development of Modern American Art were the first lectures of my Degree years. This was one of the first times, that I had people instructing about art face to face. As we usually had a TV programme to discuss rather than seeing some one stood up in front of us.

Manet too looked to the past and the art of Spain rather than the academic classicism of French painting. Yet, there has always been links to the previous artists, Turner's work is obliviously impressionistic, but he has been looked on as a separate part of art history and not some part of the chain.

This painting by Holman Hunt of the Lady of Shalott is in the Manchester Art Gallery. It is a fantastic picture, but is much smaller than than you would think. I remember my father reciting part of the poem to me before I ever saw this picture. I like the way the body is twisting and the hair swirling high into the air.

These painters have been a more prominent part of my artistic heritage that I seem to be aware. It was the article about Martin Scorsese restoration of the film of the Red Shoes in the paper on Saturday that again set my thoughts weaving the past together. One of the reasons is the main character of Moira Shearer with her red hair reminds me of the various red haired models in the PRB's paintings.

Powell & Pressburger who made the film is one of my favourite, even though I found ballet difficult to enjoy. This film is fantastic as it shows the extend that art can drive you and the choices you have to make at times. It is both ravishing in colour and a great story told with simplicity.

The title was used for a Kate Bush album, which links the story back to to the original Hans Christian Anderson's tale and the film. Kate Bush's work is unusual and looking back avant garde or what might be termed 'Art Rock', although, this is subject to debate. Musically, I have always like the idea of the concept album with a group of songs linking together to create a 'bigger' piece of work.

One of the lessons I learnt was how PRB and later 19 th Century painters placed symbols into the image and layered the meanings. As the North West has a lot of Art Galleries as the benefits of rich industrialists during the Victorian age donated a lot of art to these galleries and imbibe the mind with their genre. It is only later that I feel the links of the chains back into the past and how it has affect my own ideas and vision.

Tangled Heart

2009-05-22T09:13:00.000-07:00

This is one of my Big Wood drawings, these are large pictures of paper 640 x 900mm. In the past these drawings would be then taken in to fine print either etching or perspex engraving.

Looking at the piece, the reproduction is poor as the image is blacker with more depth in the 'gaps' between the branches. The black on some of the black has been too deep and become lost. It required the use of an eraser to cut into the pencil marks.

The main focus is meant to be on a part of the bush, where there is a circular black object with the branches stream out to make a connection with other limbs. Everything else is fenced the object or heart of the image. This is how the image finds its title or sometimes it can happen in reverse, where I have a title and want to illustrate it. The words of 'tangled heart' evokes a certain struggle or sense of entrapment. Why should it be entangled? What is the situation? It provokes a 'train' of thought.

Fever - Out with Paints

2009-05-03T06:45:00.000-07:00

Last week, I went to Barbara Rae at the Richmond Gallery, on the road that goes up to the side of Richmond Hill. This has to be one of the greatest views in England, looking out across the Thames towards Twickenham and Hampton Court, especially in the autumn with the changes in colour.

Barbara Rae is a fantastic artist, her work is landscape and full of colour, but also with the structure and the ambiguity that I love. It combines with a sense of the place, but also make it more that just a response to the colour. It imbibes the place with an almost mystical feel. So the following day, I had to get out with my own paints and to start the buidling the sketch book that will be about a walk along the North Downs, which I wrote about in Fever.

Started with gouache paintings, that still need reviewing at this point. I had to wait for the paint to dry and so got out my other smaller A5 sketch book to draw with felt pens. At the time, I was not so sure about this piece, I had wanted to show the stark red of the tree in the front as my gouache picture, but the way there was a round 'clump' of trees straight ahead caught my interest. Instead of the cut of the hedge and the resultant smooth lawn in front. I lefthe the trees in the foreground to breakup the image.

The yellow was a vivid green, but here the sky was sunny and it was a good way to light the whole image, without layering too much green. I liked the way the shadows underneath these 'clumps' cut away the ground.

This was the fourth picture of the day, I still feel ambivalent to the orange, but I didn't want to leave the picture empty with white. I have done that before and when I put down the the purple into the top tree line. Although, the trees at the bottom of the picture is more problematically, perhaps a more flatter layer would have been better rather than rapid marks.

The attempt here was to have the circular objects lined up, so the shape would run from the tree line to the foot. Having found the purple successful in the tree line, I felt the orange was required to give it a complimentary colour. As I wanted to have a magenta for the topmost tree, again successful in the other picture.

I should have tried to spread the orange colour with a wash of water as I had plenty, sometimes I have added spit to an image. A technique of using the elements to hand when we went out sketching from college of using the materials to hand e.g. earth, mud, rubbing grass direct on the page to give it a 'real' sense of colour.

Shepherds' Crooks. Sticks and Stones. Step Insides. Kings and Queens. These are some of the titles I have come up with for the games that maybe used in creating this sketch book. If by chance again, I picked up this book called Collage Journeys at the library; that was giving me ideas of what I was attempting to do.

A further idea of two points that can be traverse during the day, but then returning at night. The link here is in Egyptian Mythology with the god Ra guiding the Sun back through the Underworld to raise again in the East. This leads to ideas of geometric shapes, with have the sun raising to it highest point and then during the night to lowest point. Here we have square or rectangle or by linking the points coming up with a circular movement. The elements are starting to be formed and organically various ideas are being found.

Another idea, that has occurred, whilst typing this piece, is the way a book moves from a starting point and goes towards the end point like a journey.

Book of Days - Icarus

2009-04-09T07:09:00.001-07:00

The book looks battered and torn. It reminds me of a dead pigeon that had been attacked by a either a cat or the sparrowhawk. The feathers and part of a wing were scattered across the garden. How much will be left by the end of year. I can see the plants greening the area over and the skeletons remains become lost.

At present, I have fallen into a fallow period and not touched a pencil to a large pieced of paper. In a way, I see this book as a metaphor of myself, something that is lost, but also a seed waiting to spring forth. Perhaps I need some rest and bit more time to just wander and draw.

Little Gems - 2

2009-04-09T05:23:00.000-07:00

Traveling up to Norwich for an interview was not what I expected to be doing in late March, but circumstances dictated that I had to go. As I woke up early and found it difficult to get back to sleep. I realised that I would get cheap rate on the QE2 bridge for this time in the morning, so I was on the road at 5.30am. The toll was free and the radio played all the way through the tunnel. No hold ups, so it was turn right at the M11 and then straight on till morning.

It was a little strange seeing the dawn break across the flat lands of the East Anglia. I have never been a great fan of Constable or Gainsborough who lived and worked in this part of the England. I wrote previous of Peter Greenaway's film, Drowning by Numbers and how it used the painterly qualities to emphasise the film's visual look. There was something eerie as you cross the long stretch from the Duxford junction across there flat country. As you go through Breckland Forest, it is only by having heard a radio programme about the work in the 1930's that you realise this is a transplanted forest and to give people work. The name, King's Warren is also significant as it points to a time, when rabbits were a prized animal as it was imported into the country in Medieval times. Now they watch by the wayside as the cars rush by.

After the afternoon interview, I discovered that Sainsbury Visual Arts Centre in the University of East Anglia have a late evening opening on Wednesday. So I was able to go unhampered with having to drag truculent children round. It proved a little tricky to find wandering through the student campus. It had an ubiquitous Henry Moore outside.

The centre was also unusual in that it had lots of space up to the roof; giving it an airport feel. It reminded me of the engine gallery in the Tate Modern, but where that was cold harsh and industrial. This space was cool and warm, being placed on the outside of the campus with the countryside on three sides and on a slight hill, so you got a good view across the tree tops. The sun was starting to faded and the sky was that bleached blue that was drifting into night.

The gallery had various layers with the permanent collection to one side, the reserve collection below and the temporary exhibition is to the side and below as well. The collection is based around the collectors, Robert and Lisa Sainsbury who collected modern art from the 1930s through to the 1960s as well as ethnic items from across the global. There was some interesting pieces of ceramics.

The pieces of sculpture and ceramics were in display cases and as they were given a lot of space, whereas in the past, a lot of ethnic displays crammed so much together in a jumble. This creates something different with being placed in a case, the image below shows some small pieces, offering statues for devotees. Each piece might be from a different date and a area, but here they are related inside a box. You as the viewer can not help but link pieces together in some form.

The juxtaposition of some pieces create some interesting elements. I could not resist the Henry Moore's drawing and the mask that were placed in close proximity. The Moore drawing was interesting as it had some unusual techniques and looks like the Leonardo in the National Gallery as looking at it again as I type, a red Greek vase with the strong reddy orange background.

I found myself wandering around the exhibits and did not have time for the temporary exhibition called China China China. The piece that did dominate was a large globe made up of lights that lit the surrounding area and could be seen from the main entrance and rest of the collection. One of the strongest images I have of the place with this round circle in a rectangle.
Definitely worth another visit and look forward to going again.

Kuniyoshi at the RAA

2009-03-23T12:30:00.000-07:00

This was a stunning exhibition that had been set up in the Sackler Gallery on the top floor of the Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly. The exhibition was just jam packed, usually, this gallery has the smaller show, but each room was crammed with Japanese prints. It was so big, that I wanted to stop half way and come back again.

I great admire Japanese prints from my earliest days as 16 years old at Art College. There were a really good series on Japanese print artists and I still have my copies of Hiroshige and Hokusai bookcase downstairs. Hokusai has been mentioned as the precursor of the comic form of Manga, again you could rarely find examples here in the west until the American reprints of Lone Wolf and Cub came out. Usually, you had to wait and set Kurosawa's Samurai films to get a similar feelings. Then we had the the Manga explosion here in the UK and it seems quite settled. However, I have rarely found Manga as good as Lone Wolf, the only one that comes close, IMO, is Doll with stories just as good.

Kuniyoshi lived and worked during this period of Ukiyo-e across the 18th/19th century. His main oeuvre was warrior prints, these are usually dynamic portraits of heroes or in some cased diptychs or triptychs. This was because the cherry trees wooden printing blocks would be 36 x 25cm in size, due to the tree trunks size. These blocks would be printed in usually five colours and using a black keyline block to pull the colour elements together with any wording that was required.

These warriors are laid out with strong, structure, but then have the most gorgeous clothes with elaborate designs, that seem so far beyond any of the colour or black & white prints of the western world. Kuniyoshi was able to extend this single prints and combine them to achieve a larger image that can be seen overall or on their own.

What struck me in going round this exhibition was the colour. It is the structure and the composition that draws my eye first. Yet in this exhibition it was the delicate colours that were printed. The way they used vignette or graduated tone as a background, as I spent a lot of time trying to replicate on my own printmaking course. Some of the colours are very subtle and not primary colours or using strong bold colours to create statements. This is particularly shown with the image Yorimasa Killing the Nue with the lightning in a strong, bold colour and the black background emphasise this.

The other great thing was so see a couple of preliminary drawing sketches that I can not recall in seeing any of these sketches before. They were fascinating in how they were used on the wooden blocks and how Kuniyoshi was working his ideas, the rough use of a brush rather than a pencil or charcoal. I will be going again to see this wonderful exhibition again.

Early Days

2009-03-20T02:47:00.001-07:00

It has been some time since I shown some images of the Book of Days, that has been laying out in my garden over the last few months. The book has changed dramatically over the period of the last fes weeks, from the frosty part of February and the snow (once in 20 years in this part of the world).

Buried in a white winding sheet across the ground.

Now buried with fallen leaves as there had been a lot of rain, the book has been bent by the water.

Now, it looks as if some animal has attached the book after all this time in the garden. Now more pages are exposed and can the book survive the year? Should I get another one ready to replace it? I do like the way the pages have opened or is it another flower rather than a carcase?

Watching the Watchmen

2009-03-19T14:56:00.000-07:00

I saw the film on Tuesday and still trying to make a decision. The best so far was that visually is that it is superb, but...There is something wrong. Yes, the tweak at the end is OK. The Martian scenes were great and yet.

Two things stood out today as one of my friends said, 'Why do a film, when the graphic novel is so good - Does it add anything to the story'. Answer is no. I remembered that there was a re-make of Hitchcock's Psycho frame by frame and this is what I think happened to the film. It was shot almost like for like, but why? It is a different medium and therefore, it must add some that it unique to the story that either text in a novel or in this case, comic art could not do.

One of the innovations that the graphic novel showed to great effect was the use of colour in the storytelling. Yet I can not remember anything in this film that suggested that. Peter Greenaway's film, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, the colour did show the difference from the various places in the film.

I thought the cinema cost was not worth the wait and the DVD might have more on it from the various articles I have read. So you might be worth waiting for the DVD.

Tertal - Bare Bones Part 3

2009-03-17T12:52:00.000-07:00

This is the last stage of the first piece. In a way, it looks like a typical piece of my work and this is perhaps what disappoints me the most. The leaf of the book has been lost in the overall tangle of the trees' branches. Yet, you can not see the textural qualities of the as I drew and drew on the picture, the paper broke down. I had to glue a second piece of paper to the back of the first to give it some support.

This allowed me to continue working on the picture. Again the medium ground of the red soil has been taken back by working on the areas. Firstly in pencil, then with water to merge the soluble pencils into a 'solid' background. Again using an eraser to cut into this area, using the water to scourge back the colour and give it the harsh feeling of soil cut open.

As I look on it, I feel it should go on, but then not. I think, I would prefer to put it away and start again. Sky looks OK, but not brilliant, could do with some further work here, but what of the lost leaf, that I was trying to emphasise in this series.

Little Gems

2009-03-10T13:59:00.000-07:00

I love going to the art galleries in the towns as you never know what you will find. Normally, there are a lot of Victorian paintings, sub PRB, but then tucked away. Some thing sparks your interest. When I visited Brighton recently, the gallery there had an exhibition called Paintings Unwrapped, which was a compare and contrast of paintings from the collection. It used paintings that could be described as minor pieces and used then to co-ordinate the audience's eye to uncover new ideas. Points that might be lost.

This was a wonderful way to use these paintings that are likely to be hidden in the vaults somewhere waiting to come out for display. Some times the pictures were war time realsim compared to classical Victorian melodrama. Yet just going into their is some thing waiting to be discovered, it might not necessarily spark interest in you, but it might be some one else who is inspireed.

Fever

2009-03-04T10:40:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, when I was in the library. I took out a copy of a book about the North Downs Way, that runs from Farnham to Canterbury, so see what I might find in the way of research. Richard Long has using walking as part of his sculptural performance (?) and I have my father's interest in the green roads that criss-cross the UK. So it occurred to me to go and walk following this route.

Then reading the introduction, there is a mention of Graham Sutherland, who I usually associate with west Wales. Again, half bits of memory stream out and I know he produced some Palmeresque images in the early 30's before he moved towards semi-abstraction. Some one else who I am reading about is Iain Sinclair and his walk around the M25 in his book called London Orbital. This kind of walk with the layers of history and mythology, obviously, appeals to me. So a walk along the North Downs Way again, is gaining ground. Realising that I can not do the whole thing in one go, so I can use the book to take little steps on this journey.

Thinking of it as a walk from left to right, I could see that a landscape book would be a good way to record the images and ideas that I saw. Taking small steps, I could split the book up in sections of the various walks that I could follow. The landscape format follows the route, but should I start at Farnham or Canterbury. Should I start inland to work my way towards the sea or go from the inside out, beginning in Canterbury to Farnham?

Each walk becomes an episode, do I need to structure it literally? One of the book I read using a splinter layered/fractured technique was Fugue for a Darkening Isle, which has a lot of flashbacks and is disjointed in the narrative. Maddeningly confusing, until you reach the end as you as the reader start to weave all the pieces together. Again, it does not really matter for my record. The journey can start anywhere, even the mid point and it might only need me to start where I start collecting my walks from.

The title of this blog is amalgam of Surrey, England and the Dreamtime from Australia, too opposite points. I have wondered if I could use classical Greek and Roman mythology similarly, yet we have the 18th century gardens that where created as an idea classical landscape. As a student, it was suggested to me that I should look at Claude's landscapes whom I was told, Turner greatly admired. Again, the BBC2 series' Chronicle, a TV history first popularised Rennes-Le-Chateau and its mysterious as well as introducing me to the painter Poussin. Secret codes hidden in pictures and sacred geometry, fascinating to a child.

In a lot of children's saying and games, we have the survival of some of the pagan past. When a cousin mentioned Jenny Greenteeth, an old cannibal that lived in some water lodges near home, I felt it was a surviving spirit transformed from a lost goddess to a weak demon on the fringes of the world kept alive by the thoughts and fear you have as child. So when I got the North Down Way book, I found another about children's games. As I have written about the link to Cricket, often minefield of rules and laws that have to be follow. It was another piece in the research that was firing me up.

So I bought a A3 (approx. 11 x 16" for those in imperial) landscape cased sketchbook, as this can give me a long thin piece of paper. It represents the journey across the country and giving me the room to add images in two across one page. Now I am itching to begin.....

Sowing the Seeds

2009-03-01T07:48:00.000-08:00

Where do ideas come from. This note is about some ideas that have swirled around, but never come out in a coherent way, but with some planning might.

One of my favourite Peter Greenaway's films is Drowning by Numbers. The idea of a count through the pictures reminds me of turning the pages in the book as you read through the story, yet you don't see them until you look at where you are in the book to stop or want to say where you are in the story without spoiling it for someone else. It must have been the first film of Greenaway's I saw, having missed the earlier ones of A Draughtsman's Contract and Zed and Two Noughts.

In a sequence of panels, you see numbers linking the frames one to another, but in a film. You should watch a film as a straight story, but when I saw this if taught me some thing. That you could add elements to the image and suggest more, by developing layers. You look at the story, which is simple, but yet gets more complex has you review it or watch it again, but why watch it again. Greenaway's talks about how the photography on the film was devised to match 18th century painters such as Constable and Gainsborough.

Both of whom, I could say, at the time was not impressed with and the flatness of East Anglia counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex. Constable's Haywain was from the area of Flatford mill, where I can remember a rowing bow trip down the river and an argumentative trip later to Aldeburgh on the coast. The film opened my eyes to their work and understanding of the paintings. When I read the book, Fear of Drowning that linked a lot of the story as a set of 100 pieces, this idea of overlaying a series of images strongly influenced. My series, the Dreams of Deucalion was based on the idea of walking through an alphabet.

I rather like the idea of including games and Drowning by Numbers have a series of games, which can be used to described the action that is happening in the film. Hangman's Cricket played on the beach with a multitude of players has always fascinated me. Cricket is the archetypal English game and has a long history throughout the ages. It laws had to be written early to allow everyone to agree on how to play and give results to the amount of betting that took place. George the third's father is supposed to have died, when a cricket ball hit his face and caused an abscess in his jaw.

So I was rather intrigued when I saw this article about how Cricket was imported by weavers from Flanders. What also stuck me was the comment about cricket near Guildford. How it links into the north downs and the Pilgrim's Way. This one runs from Winchester to Canterbury, and yet, there is another path that runs to Stonehenge and called the Harrow way. Again we have Chaucer's pilgrims leaving from London, so there are layers waiting to be explored.

Having been recently to St Martha's church near Albury. A small church that has probably existed since Saxon times on a hill dominating the countryside. Being a Saxon church, it might have been possibly a pagan place of worship and it is unusal for a church to be sighted on a hill. St Michael's on Glstonbury Tor is another chapel, only a tower reamins. This Church at Albury is on one of the stages of the North Downs way, a route that seeks to follow the old pilgrims way. If games can be called a metaphor for life, either you are a player, a winner or a loser or just some one to leave the table. There is a game which surrounds or affects you in some ways.

Again the article mention is made of the idea of using shepherd's crooks as bats to defend the wicket. The idea of the sheepfold reminds me of the Andy Goldsworthy, Sheepfold project, which if I will endeavour to visit on a journey up north. So I will start to look at walking the route to see what I can find and what might develop further.

All these ideas are swirling around inside of me, waiting to make the links and join in creating work. I wonder where I will go.........

Who is Watching?

2009-02-22T07:51:00.000-08:00

The day is nearly upon us as the Watchmen film arrives in the cinema. I feel a lot of trepidation in waiting to see this film as we doubtless about to be swamped with a lot hype. There is a tendency to forget how despised comics were before the break through of the Watchmen, Dark Knight, Hernandez Brothers' Love & Rockets and Maus. We have had Batman done twice from Miller's Dark Knight, but all the Alan Moore projects have proved 'too comprised' to the graphic format.

League of Extradordinary Gentlemen was hideous. From Hell didn't have the time to do justice to layers of the story. One of the best bits was when Gull rode round the London explaining the psychogeography to his accomplice. V for Vendetta was a terrible ending and the fight scene, why oh why.

The Watchmen is part of my history as I was there at the British Comic con, where Messrs Moore and Gibbons talked about the beginnings of the Watchmen and some of the up & coming story lines. One of the issues to look out was the Rorschach origin, which has identical panels from the centre pages (like a rorschach card) or the fantastic colouring, where a lamp's strobe effect lights and then darkens the next panel, before lighting up in the next. These little touches with great design and layout, alongside Alan's writing and dense plotting, made it truly great at the time as still does.

There are points in history that seem so strange looking back and although they can be described as epic changing, you sometimes wonder what all the fuss was about or why should that personage be so special. I find it difficult to describe the waiting for the next issue or the twists and turns of the story. It was like the serialisations of Dicken's work and the ships bringing the news of Little Nell (from the Old Curiosity Shop) to the States as readers waited to find out the next part of the story.

At the time, the comics audience (in the UK/USA, I should say) were waiting the great leap forward, but I think we have seen incremental increases over the period (of 20 years) and most shops have a graphic novel section. My libraries have a section as well and I can remember the thrill of finding it there for the first time. Although, I still have arguments with my family over the validity of comics and how it is 'not real art or childish'. One of the few things that will press the red button and stand well back.

Can the Watchmen be unwound from its comics beginnings and be re-imagined for a different auidence without unsettling the original fans? I think we will have just to wait and see.

All in the Round

2009-02-19T23:01:00.000-08:00

Recently, I have been to Wimbledon Art College's gallery. On display was work of a theatre designer, Richard Negri, who was active between 1952 to 1996. Although, I have worked in the theatre, when I was at Bolton art college and performed in the Kingsdown 250th celebratory community play in Bristol, The Nine Trees' Shade. This application for creativity and the arts, is something that I have never looked at closely. It is a specialised subject and in someways, I would see the play rather than the world it was set in.

The exhibition was pictures of the characters in the play and layout for set design. The style of how the characters would fit within an overall production was laid out across these portraits. Depending on the production it was 7 or 8, but on the larger production 20 or so characters. There were some small figurines that would be used for modelling on a miniature stage, allowing for the practical details to be worked out first.

One of the things, I found out was Mr Negri had designed the Royal Exchange theatre in Manchester. One of the most impressive and unusual theatres in the country. The theatre building was placed into an old Victorian building,

There were several marquette's showing the various ideas and designs of how the theatre should be laid out. What is unique in this professional theatre is that the stage is surrounded by the audience. There is no back drop, all the props and stage setting has to be brought in and laid out.

Richard Negri was shown on an audio-visual display talking about how he wanted to put actors
in the centre of the stage. This creates a seamless space between the audience and the actors, you feel as those you are part of the action. Even if you are looking down from the gallery seats, the audience is seeing a spot light on a scene and looking like gods down on the play.

Negri used the phrase, picture frame theatres having only been a 'recent' invention during the 18th century, whereas Greek, Medieval and Tudor-Stuart staging was usually in the round. The Globe theatre on the Thames, which every one should go too, if they get the chance to visit London. Standing in the 'pit' you are drawn into the action on to the stage jutting out into the audience.

The comment about a picture frame has started me thinking about the flat plane of an image and how by being included in the frame, your perception can change. The differences between pictures and sculpture, maybe a obvious comment and one that I should see, but sometimes as an artist you become wrapped up in your own views and need just the odd reminder to 'jump the tracks' now and again.

Byzantium Endures

2009-01-30T13:42:00.000-08:00

A few days ago, I went with a friend to the Royal Academy of Arts to see the exhibition of Byzantium treasures that were on display. The time frame was the start of the split of the Roman Empire into East and West halves. The western side succumbing to the various invading migrating tribes, but the eastern half surviving into the 15th century before falling to the Ottoman Turks and a some non help from the west.

It was one of those exhibitions that tried to raise your awareness of the past. The large chandelier that hung in the first room and showed a timeline of the period. It was wrought iron work, looking delicate, but heavy as well. The show developed in a chronological time line. The first few rooms showed how the world of Eastern half of the Roman Empire developed out of the Romans' culture and developed over the period. I was taken with how the paintings of the earlier period began to change from a stylise portraits to more realistic, yet would then veer into icon images.

It was like watching western art grow up, but then follow an entirely different line from the perspective of the Renaissance. Was Byzantium a dead end? Maybe history suggests that it was, but is that more political than artistic? Looking at some painting that had been surrounded by riveting pieces. I was unusual and I would have liked to have know more about it. Seeing a painting on the door, which was surrounded by metal pieces, in a way it was using the metal as they might have used gold leaf around icons or the marvellous books that were presented.

Travelling around the exhibition with my friend, our minds were not focused on what we were seeing, but what we had experienced lately with all our trials and tribulations in the book industry. We looked at the books created during this long period, using our experience to think how we would produce them now, using our expertise.

I like this image of the ladder to heaven with people progressing up or being tempted or fought over by devils. I think it is the black lay down of the ladder crossing the image frame and the strong diagonal going from corner to corner that effects the way you look at this picture. The two halves are split between heaven above and hell below.

This reminds me of a Francis Bacon picture at Bolton Art Gallery, I saw on my foundation course, that at first looked like a human figure. We were asked to consider the the black pillars either side and how the arms looked as if it stretched across the frame, linking black to blackness, is this all life is? Yep, a typically bleak Bacon, but it was the first time that I was shown how a painting that at first was just a straight forward nude could have something more read into the image.

Concert

2009-01-24T03:03:00.000-08:00

This sketch I did at my daughter's concert has caused ripples outside of my own limited audience. It has started a process of re-assessment of what I should be doing whether for good or bad. In the pass, when I have been to concerts, it has been usually 'bonus' reading time and listening to music, whilst reading in just another form of multi-tasking. Nevertheless, I knew I was not going to get away with that at this concert, so I took my sketch pad along. I was pleased that I didn't take a book to read as the hall was filled with parents and pupils who sat at the back.

When I decided to sketch, I decided on using 'rotring felt tips' and I focus on the back of the hall with the marvellous organ pipes. I will layout a light pencil guide for proportion before starting. Then using a thin point, before gradually using heavier tips as I moved across the page. If I am unsure about an area, again I will work from light to heavy.

This takes me back to my printmaking days at college where the plate or Perspex engraving would start with a light line layout just to see how the print would look. Then I would add details and proof up in several stages. This I found would give me control over the medium and I could correct a defect or incorporate it. Putting a blowtorch to a Perspex plastic engraving nearly knocked me out with the fumes. Yet, it gave me a wonderful textured pockmarked surface. Then it cracked going through the etching press and made a wonderful white line throughout the image. I was at the time influenced by the wonderful Arthur Boyd etchings.

My concert drawing was not the first rotring one I had recently done. In some ways, it was because one of my ipals liked a street scene that I had original drew in broader felt tips as I wanted to 'do something' that day. Less than 20 minutes, stood in a crowded the High Street and at the time, it felt average. Yet it got a great response and made me reconsider the drawing and pushed me into doing more street scenes around where I work.

Bryan Talbot's The Adventure of Luther Arkwright is a forerunner to the Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' ground breaking graphic novel, The Watchmen. It is a stunning sequence of black and white imaginary and the use of 60's progressive film techniques in a comics form. Bryan's technique of using rotring pens to draw the story held my imagination ever since and it is to this graphic story that inspired early attempts with rotring pens. I will return to this graphic novel in a later post as Bryan Talbot and his work.

The concert drawing took over hour and quarter and although there was a change of pupils during it. I was able to get eldest daughter in the picture. What surprised me the most the joy I had drawing the musicians and wish it was something that I done soon. At one time, I had hoped to draw theatre productions, but I never followed through with it.

I was v. pleased with the concert drawing, scanning and jpegging it to daughter. She then forwarded it onto her house mistress, who in turn sends it on to the Music department. So when we were at parents' evening, it was a case of, 'Hi, we are H's parents', then in reply, 'Are you the Artistic one?' She then called the head of the department who was engaged in another parents' conversation over and we had a brief couple of words. Both were v. impressed, the head of music said how the jpeg was printed off and now displayed in the music department.

I was later praised from elsewhere for the sketch and told this might be my forte. So that one day I picked up a copy of Near Myths with the cover featuring the Prussian Helicarrier in St Petersburg from the Luther Arkwright serial as echoed down through the years. I am thinking of how to do more 'polished' work with these rotring felts.

Book of Day Continued......

2009-01-17T06:33:00.001-08:00

This is from the 10th January after the snow and frost have gone. Unfortuantely, I did not get any images with the snow or frost, there is a little on the ground. I was trying to get a half way shot of the snow and the earth speckling each other.

This image is from today, 17th January. Again, we have heavy rain this morning and I had thought that I might get a pool from the let over rain. Some of the leaves have moved either blown down or slivered over in the wet. The leaves create a dilemmas as the place I have chosen is in the sheltered position and it is likely that the book will gradually bury it self under a blanket of leaves.

Do I remove them or should I leave them?

My instinct is to leave them there; then wait and see what happens. How much should I intervene? Again when you draw, which parts should you take out or put in. It took me a while to realise that the pictures or sketches in the past. Where not necessary a true of a certain point of view or that the artist had altered them to give the image, a dramatic feeling.

This leaves open the question of how realistic pictures should be.

Tertal - Tangled Heart - Part 1

2009-01-16T13:41:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, when I sit and start work, the lines flow. I have scoured the Bare Bones (post to follow) and I need to go on. This is the second image from the series and for some reason, my eye is draw to the small black mass that looks like a comet. At first, the curvy right angled court my attention. Yet as I drew, this small round spot snared me.

The branches of the bush, look like separate part, but tangled as a whole. One of the other elements is the very strong horizontals and the two halves of green between the brown-red threaded with tangled lines. Who is trapped in this tangled weave? Two words combined to suggest a phrase. Do we have the start of something . Bare Bones, Tangled Heart.

Some how I worry that I have used this phrase, Tangled Heart, before and am I repeat myself. This worries me that I get stuck in a groove and can not jump tracks. Yet, sports people are striving to reproduce the same feat again and again. Maybe better, if it can be achieved. Do artists strive to repeat the same picture again and again? Or is it some new within the same element like a child's prism with the shift in kaleidoscopic changes that may look like repetition, yet to their maker there is something different.

Tertal - Bare Bones Part 2

2009-01-12T12:01:00.000-08:00

The picture has added a lot of colour and reminds me of Blood Red Soil, one of my very first successful lithograph. This is a strong link between blood and the earth. One of the first lessons in colour was of the complimentary colour between red and green. Of course, green is used for vegetation. The blue of the sky is only been filled in slowly and will be lightly added to as the main ground is the point of concentration.

I have 'lost' the page in the thicket of the left hand tree, but I want to bring it back into the image. This I will do, by having using charcoal on the trunk part and then 'carving' into the page with a rubber and then pulling the paper away. If I change my mind, I can add more text pages on top of the and then re-carve into the trunk. This I hope will give it some texture on the page and will probably concentrate with the eye toward this part. By adding white pencil, although I prefer white Conte crayon to cut into the image and tear at the charcoal.

The alternative as I look at it might be to have a layer of pages across the page and these pages lost in the back ground detail of the earth. Hmmmm. Something to consider later.

There are six of these photos from this place, each is slightly different in their lay out and the remaining five will be reviewed. Now I have a set of photos, I will let my ideas flow along how a sequence might work. As I wrong in an earlier post Tertal Part 1, the idea of bones in a landscape and we are quiet close to the Uffington White Horse, one of the majestic chalk figures that are etched into the landscape. There are various theories on the whys and wherefores. The other ones chalk figures, e.g. The Cerne Abbas Giant, The Long Man of Wilmington are not as old as people originally believed, but the horse at Uffington does appear genuine.

Peter Greenaway's film The Draughtsman's Contract is a firm favourite of mine. It uses a series of drawings by an artist view to put clues into the picture about the mysterious goings on at the country estate. Part murder mystery and part mediation on the nature of view an image. It showed me that film can use an artist eye to create a mood with imagery and the stylisation of work. I have the start of the piece with Bare Bones and will look at using anatomy of the bushes as a prompt for this series.

Shorten Days

2009-01-06T11:46:00.000-08:00

Monday was the arrival of snow in our village. This is highly unusual as we have had three or four incidences of snow over the decade plus years, we have been living here. This made me excited to go down and photo the buried book. Would it be sticking out of a layered blanket or fully covered?

As I work long hours, up at early and back late. I realised that the darkness might make it too dark for photo, as I don't have a flash. I was had a quick check and felt I might get something. I trudged gingerly round to the back garden. There is always something special about stepping across new snow. In a way, it is a blank page, waiting for the world to emerge from the wrapping.

I found the book, partially covered and hope that there might be enough light being reflected off the snow to get something. Unfortunately, nothing registered, so I am going to have to wait for the weekend to get an image. I am wondering what will happen to it and how the snow, frosty ice and water will affect it.

This finished off a frustrating weekend, when I with daughter in tow, tried to visit the Francis Bacon exhibition at Tate Britain. Having to go the long way round via Hamleys and the South Bank. Then losing my travel card and getting caught in a jam, probably due to a protest march. Arriving late, tickets were booking at least 3 hours ahead, so it was just too much time to wait.

My only consolation was picking up the Bacon catalogue from the Library, which is sat waiting for me to turn a page after reading the latest choice of Belle De Jour Book Club . Last year, I found in the Tate Modern a very early Bacon picture from before the Second World War, this had not been included the exhibition rather oddly. What intrigued me was the image was a landscape and ran parallel to one of my inspiration, Graham Sutherland. Bacon also did a series of paintings based on Van Gogh, similar to the Velázquez and the Screaming Pope.

I have only heard Robert Hughes link these painters, Van Gogh, Bacon and Sutherland in his programme, The Shock of the New. There might have been a comment in the Roger Berthoud's biography of Sutherland, but I do not have a comment to check.

Tertal - Bare Bones Part 1

2008-12-27T13:02:00.001-08:00

As an artist, I find looking at other people's sketch books and working notes at time more interesting to look at than the final piece, which can look too refined and polished. It is fascinating to see how the ideas swirl around, the roads not necessarily taken by the person. Do you see something in an image that is the hook, but when you come to work on it. It defies you?

You reorder and re-do the drawing. You stop put it to one side and start again. Repetition in drawing an image has worked for me. Looking and changing certain aspects of the image. Taking it as far as it will go and then starting again, maybe using a different technique, either a charcoal mix media or a lot of pen and ink. You don't see much ink being used in pictures now. I used to use a lot of dipped nibs into 'proper' ink pots; they sit down in blue art tool box, buried at the bottom, properly dried and dusted. Waiting, waiting.....

Black ink was to give me a solid black line (which I thought) would straighten the image overall. Possibly I was too scared to let the image sit on its own without support. Something that comes from a personality trait and has taken a long time to shake off.

One of the things in this blog is to look at my work and I have started on a piece. This is meant to be one of the pieces for the Library of Metaphors. The starting point was taking one of the photos I have of a landscape taken near to Silbury Hill in Wiltshire. Silbury Hill is a man made hill, situated near to other prehistory monuments as the West Kennett Long Barrow and Avebury Stone circle. I had stopped to have a look at the 'hill', which you can not climb up any more, due to erosion by the walkers.

At that point I was fascinated by the interlinking of branches in a chain. A dance across the page, from side to side. There was an idea to have a series to link each image from one picture to another. This idea for these images never really took off. Perhaps it was where I was or the photos were buried in box somewhere. I have to retrieve them from the garden shed used for storage as I did not want any small creatures deciding to eat them or use them for making nests; as one was trying to do some letters I still had in the same place.

I took a page from an old copy of The Winter's Tale. I had kept saving this book for nearly 14 years waiting for the right time to use it. I felt that if I didn't do something with it, then nothing was going to happen, I had already used one book previous on other drawings as frames and texture within the image. I decide to paste the page straight into the image, as a reference back to my series of Dreams of Deucalion. These 26 images were based on a physical walk through a landscape and the alphabet. Yet they were framed within a frame, all the same size, same mount and same image area.

The page was to form one of the two central columns of the bush. This was why it was positioned on the left hand side (as you view the image) on the image. I will normally lay my images out using the paper sizes of the SRA or B sizes as they have been based on the Fibonacci numbers sequence. Then cutting both the verticals and horizontal into quarters and thirds. This gives me a framework to position pieces within my image, notice the green foreground and how that lies in below the line. If something needs to be changed then it should lie within the framework, only when I want to break the boundaries of a frame to emphasise an idea.

Yet this picture has a broken page on it a frame within a frame. That turn of phase, 'a broken page', is part of a duality that often features in my work. Perhaps 'torn' would be better word to describe the glued text page, but I like broken better as it signifies something lost or smashed. Can a page be broken from a book; you can break the spine of the book. It can link back to this title of Bare Bones as you might find broken bones in a burial site, but Silbury Hill was not a burial site.

The Book of Days

2008-12-25T07:27:00.000-08:00

I have an idea for some time. It is to place a page out in the day and let the weather have it is way with the paper. I would place a page out for every day and collected them over the whole year. Each one would be then bound in a book and become a book of days. Not quite an illuminated manuscript as the typical Book of Hours of the Medieval ages. What you would have is a page that has been cracked and weathered over the time.

Instead I have decided to do is to leave my old book that had been used for a Library of Metaphors instead and leave it out. Seeing how the garden reacts to it. This follows a little in the foot steps of an ipal and how we first met with sharing a love of re-structuring books to create new pieces.

The idea of the a frame, seems to go back throughout my work. This is when I learnt of the golden ratio and the need to place the image in a structural composition. Yet a frame can be a coffin or a building, the idea of a burial service surfaced via the poem, The Wasteland. The first part of the poem is named, The Burial of the Dead and I use the term to be both the losing of something or its remembrance.

This book is half buried and I expect to see the book change with the weather, the plants and maybe the wildlife will effect the development of this piece. So I will be taking photos and adding them into a layout. The question is what format should it take? 7 days to a page of 7 images and how to lay them out on a page. Or squeeze them into a month on a page? Should I start the structure now? Or let it gradually develope as I build up the pages?

Earth Works

2008-12-24T00:23:00.001-08:00

When I was 7 or 8, my father took me Green Road trail riding. Was it the first trip, probably, but in a way it was an early influence. Green roads are road than have not been macadamized, but you do have a right of way. Usually, these roads are old drover roads that have fallen in to disuse over the years. The green road we drove on was the Ridgeway, this is an old track that starts in Norfolk and runs down through the Home Counties to the depths of Wiltshire. Whilst others took their motorbikes, my father and I drove in a small four wheeled truck, made by Puch. I was on gate opening duty, having to close the gates behind us to stop cattle roaming.

It was always sunny and I can't remember any rain. I am sure if was more grey than blue. We went pass some of the greatest prehistoric monuments of the Uffington White Horse, the castle beside the chalk figure and Weyland Smithy. Stopping at Marlborough overnight, in the morning we went to Avebury stone circle, the West Kennett Long barrow and Silbury Hill. I was fascinated by these ancient earth works.

They sit in the landscape as part of the landscape, yet as a viewer. These man made hills stand out with later walls or hedges circular the barrow or cairn, rather than disturb. Recently on the South Downs, walking by a Tumulus as marked on the Ordnance Survey. I had the same sort of feeling. It was pieces of farmland, but the farmer had worked around the mound. How long had it been there, it just was there. Standing like a watchtower, perhaps, with a burial underneath signifying a long dead warrior who would protect his prehistoric tribe. If you looked north across the weald up to the North Downs and south to the coast, where any potential invasion was likely to come from.

We can make assumptions about what they were for, but never really know really know the complete story. This makes them mysterious to us as we come across them. A ruined building is something similar, why was it there, who built it and why was it ruined. We do have records and so it would be possible to trace these buildings. Yet, it is an aspect of lost and the many people that might have lived through this landscape.

This is one of the reasons, I admire, Andy Goldsworthy's work. His sculptures are placed in the landscape setting that is natural and yet unnatural. Man-made and organic. He is refining nature and distilling common elements down to make 'supernatural' objects. These can be weathered by the countryside, so that they decompose over a short or long period of time.

His recent show at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park http://www.ysp.co.uk/view.aspx?id=3 had several gigantic pieces. A wonderful log walled room that reminded me of the West Kennett Long barrow. Rather than a vertical chambers, it was circular and when should in a half light as there was no lighting. You had the impression of reverence. The logs were laid in such a way that you had a swirling effect around you, not a giddy dizziness, but gentle and uplifting. The giant slate cairn shaped as a pine was harking back to the large monolith stone from prehistory, but this has been made from dry stone wall techniques, so it was not a great slab stone.

One of my previous companies printed a catalogue for his Leaves exhibition at the Natural History Museum, using duotone of black and purple to reproduce his pieces. This was an exhibition organised by the charity, Common Ground. http://www.commonground.org.uk. Taking dropped leaves and then using then to make shapes of delicate complexity. These pieces are shown in a museum, so this added gravitas to the whole exhibition.

The Sum on My Past

2008-12-18T10:38:00.000-08:00

When did I begin to draw? How did I begin to draw? Why do I draw?

I have an old photo showing me as a child in the back garden of my very first home. It goes back to the 60's and shows me looking at a desk with a pencil in hand on a pad. Am I drawing? I suspect that I am. In our school draft books, there were lots of doodles. One time, when my mother (who was a supply teacher at the time) taught my infant class for a few weeks. She was marking our class work about Christopher Columbus. Recently, I had got a wall poster of the voyages of exploration and marked with the Viking discovery of Vinland fascinated me. Why shouldn't the Viking get the credit they deserve? When she came to my work, I got a below average mark, so obviously, I asked why? The answer was, you have done too much drawing and not enough writing. Perhaps my fate was seal at that point, but they were some great pictures of ships.

Looking back over the years at school at my art lessons, I don't remember having much structure in drawing and painting. There might have been a curriculum, but it passed me by or perhaps the past is becoming a strange country. I struggled with paint and lacked a good colour sense; there was no theory in my lessons. The secondary school class never had any formal lessons about famous artists and their work. This was a mistake, I feel now. It would have given the pupils, a better idea of what to look for in a picture, composition, colour and ideas. This would have helped with their own work. At the beginning of the forth year, we were told that we would have to our own ideas, if we were going to get a good grade rather than an average.

My own work at the time was heavily influenced by fantasy and science fiction. Is this a phase all boys go through. I think I started early, when I discovered Marvel Comics. As children we were allowed one comic a week. I can remember the British ones of Victor, Valiant, but the memory of getting my first copy of the Mighty World of Marvel no 28 at the Watford Gap Motorway Services on the M1 is fixed in my mind. This event has fueled my passion for comics and collected in decent cased and paperback books, now called graphic novels. It interested me in the art of fantasy and coupled with my reading habits.

Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom series had me hooked, and then I read Michael Moorcock's Runestaff history and others in his Eternal Champion sequence. Rodney Marsh was my favourite artist at this point as he illustrated MM's work and I have several posters on my wall. This is what my artwork aspired too with pictures of mysterious and adventure. I managed one or two paintings for my CSE art show, but I found that my use of a paintbrush was poor. One would think that painting should come naturally, but it took a long time to get to grips with brushes and still does today. I rarely paint. Cunning in the final exam piece for secondary school, I avoid having to paint by using coloured pencils and a strong image based on silhouette and a figure from a Rodney Marsh poster. In one of my old school reports, I found my art teacher advising that I need to practice my painting, so no wonder a set of gouache paints appeared one Christmas.

It was not until I got to Art College, that I had any formal art history lessons. These were on Friday afternoon; usually it was watching a film about an artist and then talking about it. Unfortunately, we weren't a very talkative bunch and after one or two remarks. The room lapsed into silence and we waited to dash out to catch the bus home. The one thing that was useful was the repeats of Robert Hughes' The Shock of the New TV series that were being shown on TV. It was a great introduction all the history of modern art and has stayed with me over the period.

Looking back, it seems I struggled between structure and too much freedom. I can see the relationship between my art, technique and personality coming through. Yet the needs to make marks and describe the world round me. Nevertheless, it does answer the question, why?

A Blank Page

2008-12-11T23:47:00.000-08:00

If you have a sketch book, where do you start? At the beginning? I might write my details at the start of the book, but then I have to start not on page one. I had a dreadful habit of wanting to alwys produce the perfect sketch book. Each image would have knock you sideways and be ones that you wanted in your own folio to show.

The way round I discovered, this fear of 'perfect sketch book syndrome' was to start further in and work non-linear by mixing up drawings & sketches. This allowed me to not worry about the previous picture or the one I was going to do next. At some point, I knew I would be filling in the spaces inbetween the sketches. Then it became a point of trying to link the chain, but this prove easier to accept.

Ways of working, a straight linear perspective of one drawing or idea leading to the next. I suspect that m general working practices were shaped by working in printmaking. You have to step from one point to another point. You can not build a create a multi layered image and in somecases, b & w work without this stepped approach. One of my foundation tutor, told me that sometimes, you need to leap into the dark to the next three or four stages ahead. This blog is one of those leaps for me.