I have to thank a secondary school English teacher (Mrs Martin?), for introducing me to Kurt Vonnegut. Truth be told it was her sex appeal – a bright and beautiful young woman, with a fascinating looking book – as much as the literary appeal that first took me. Ah, Mrs Martin, where are you now?
The edition Mrs Martin had.
Well, today, on FB, he was quoted by one of those weirdly intrusive ‘you might like this’ meme-things. I reproduce the quote below, keeping the bit about homosexuality that they omitted:
‘If you want to really hurt you parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.’
According to online sources this quote comes from Man Without A Country. I must get/read that!
Mention of Caravaggio in a recent post set me to poring over a couple of art books we have on this incredible artist. I recently mentioned in another post having sketched a pencil version of The Conversion of St Paul years ago. But I’d like to try and paint it, as well.
But whilst perusing Gilles Lambert’s Taschen 25th title on Caravaggio just now, it was Saint Matthew and The Angel that really clocked me one upside the head. What an incredible composition! Flat and empty to the point of being almost frieze like. Yet rich with light, shade, colour and volume.
The rendering has the strength of sculpture. And yet is richly vibrantly colourfully alive. Caravaggio’s eye and aesthetic sensibility imbue his art with an intensity that I can only reach for poetically: chestnuts, leather, velvet, red wine, red meat, incense, lace or muslin, the scent of candle wax and smoke.
Incredibly dramatic!
In both St Matt and The Conversion the pictorial space, whilst rendered with surreal photo-realist clarity, remains so shallow as to be effectively flat. I love that! It’s simultaneously modern, and timeless. It lives in the present.
As many have said, including my hero, Picasso, the best art of any era is most potently alive in whatever ‘present’ the viewer sees it. Great art loosens the shackles of short-lived fads, or era-specific parochialism/opacity, and rises above time!
Details of Victorious Cupid, 1602.
Some of Caravaggio’s stuff looks, to my eyes, very blatantly homo-erotic. Check St Paul’s torso in the painter’s two versions of The Conversion. When the subjects are young male nudes of a childlike appearance, that can sit rather awkwardly with current social mores, and indeed laws.
Victorious Cupid is a bit icky, to me. I call it Cupid Scratching His Arse! But it’s still an amazing artwork. And just look at the detail in the lower part of the painting. The musical instruments, armour, and textiles, are like a somber symphony in paint!
Anyway, it’s great to be nourished by fabulous art. I am very grateful for the luxury of being able to indulge in such a hedonistic yet refined pursuit!
When I found these two art works recently, whilst putting yet more stuff into our attic, I brought them down, to have a fresh look at ‘em. And I’m pleased with how they look.
The pencil drawing was my first look at reproducing Dirck van Baburen’s The Procuress. I actually chose to leave the Procuress herself out of the picture, which also changed the overall format of the piece (from off square to a portrait type rectangle). Instead we have just the young dandy and his lute-plucking lady.
A terrific book! And the source of this project.
I found van Baburen’s The Procuress in this rather lovely book. It’s an old’un, but a good’un! My mum had a copy back when’s he did her degree. I think I’ve posted about this book here before? But I’ve not found that post, so can’t link to it yet!
16-18th, April, 2014.
Here they are individually, for a bit of a closer look. The pencil drawing is finished. But the oil stalled before completion. So I need to finish that off.
These two pieces are both for sale, should anyone want either. The pencil drawing for £89, and the oil painting for £239. That’s unframed. I can frame them as well, if required. Or a buyer could do it themselves.
Woman Holding Scales, Vermeer, 1664.
I’m planning to do more in this line, as I enjoy it, and it teaches me a lot. I have a few favourite paintings I’ve long wanted to reproduce, such as Vermeer’s Woman Holding Balance, and Caravaggio’s very theatrical St Paul.
Caravaggio’s dramatic vision of St Paul.Together again. Indoors this time.
The first three pics of my efforts, further up this post, were taken outside in the sunshine. These last were shot indoors. But all the pics in this (and almost all my blog posts) are taken on my iPhone. So, hardly pro/ideal! But hopefully they get the idea across?
I posted about this dude and his passion for Picasso quite a while ago (read that here if interested). And I find myself wanting to post about this pairing again.
Here they are together.
As per my previous post, I have three of the four ‘whoppers’ i Fabre published. And I really want to get hold of any more there might be. I’m aware of just one more, as things stand. Which, alas, seems both rarer, and consequently more expensive.
This is one version of the book I don’t yet have.
I’ve learned, thanks to my search for the cheapest way to buy this book, that it can be bought brand new, for €150! From Poligrafa, the Spanish publishers responsible for all these fabulous books. And in English (or Catalan!), as well as Spanish.
Here’s another.
Second-hand editions of this title are all more expensive. But sadly anything at all, let alone say £20-30 (roughly what I paid for the third volume in this series), is way too expensive for me right now.
I exchanged some emails with a chap called Carlos at Poligrafa today, thereby learning of the newer/cheaper buying option. But thanks to me not speaking Spanish, or quite following all his English, I’m none the wiser as to whether any more posthumous (to i Fabre’s passing, that is) volumes are in the pipeline.
Looking exceedingly cool!Nice wheels, Josep! What a dude.
Today I’m mostly confined to bed. By my own decree. Teresa’s at work. And I am on Easter break. Although it may be a bigger hiatus? That’s partly why I’m in bed!
I woke when Teresa got up, at 5.30am (mad!). But most of the time between about 9am and 3pm I’ve been in a 50/50 mix of resting/dozing, and outright sleeping. Snooker, with Kieran Wilson thrashing Ali Carter, on the Tour Championship, is helping on all fronts with rest and sleep!
An ornery mule, with an artist’s soul.
But around 2pm, after a second long chat with the alphabet soup brigade (the bouillabaisse of acronyms for mental-health organisations), I felt I needed an injection of culture and inspiration. So I hoyked a few art books off the shelves.
Angst meets beauty, in mixed media on canvas.
Having resumed a long derelict interest in making art, I thought I’d also resume the act of feeding on the soul food that art can be. Hence getting these tomes offa the shelves. Turner and The Sea, Guston, and de Kooning. Endless hours of fun and nourishment!
Not so eyebrow, n’est ce pas!?
And to keep my furrowed brows at the correct elevation, something a bit ‘Felix’ lighter!
No-brow? Love the Tintin style cover!
And of course, Viz. Thanks to the Viz Team I nearly died laughing last night.
Without checking back, I think this little series of sketches, again from a decade ago, started with looking at an El Greco painting.
He distorted his subjects a fair bit, in a series of ever more stylised manners, as his style evolved. Taking his distortions as a starting point, I have, from the get go, been distorting further.
Manolo, Spread #2.
In the second spread, at left, I went back to the source again, but this time with a slightly more cartoonish feel. The one on the right is devoted solely to the background, in particular the cloudy sky; extrapolating shapes and colours. The yellow in this image is lost a bit in the photograph.
Manolo, Spread #3.
The third spread combines further abstraction of ‘Manolo’, at left, and an homage to (or poss’ even a straight copy of) either Picasso or Braque. Picasso’s my main man. Braque much less so. Though having said that, I do like the latter’s work. Just not as much as Picasso’s!
This little series of miniature abstracts was born of spell of mental ill health. I hate that phrase, and I don’t think it really accurately captures what I was going through. But anyway, whatevs, as they say these days!
I was, rather amazingly, prescribed a short series of therapeutic art classes. As is so often the way with me, ornery curmudgeon that I am, I didn’t play by the rules – adopts Saxondale manner – this lone wolf rides to the tune of a different drummer (face-slap!).
My raison-ing was that, given I’m already a trained, even professional (occasionally!) artist, I didn’t need to do the ABC type stuff my group was doing. I just needed a quiet corner in which to pursue already established trajectories. Fortunately I was allowed to do just that.
The net results were this little serious of four mini-abstractions. They began life as an evolution from sketches of a stained glass window. In fact somewhere I’ve got an image I really like, showing how these little artworks evolved. I’ll stick that up here if I can find it!
To those with a bit of art or art history knowledge, some of my influences might be discernible? Perhaps ironically the single greatest influence on my own art isn’t really obvious in these series. That’d be Picasso. More on his influence to follow!
Some of the major influences on this approach, however, are Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, and to a much lesser extent, some of Brice Marden’s linear stuff. There’s even a bit of Georg Baselitz in there (thanks to the influence of an old – and much missed – pal, Ben Carter). And then there are less obvious folk, like Turner, and even Caspar David Friedrich.
These aren’t the best photos. You can see the shadow of my head on them! It’d be nice to have much better lit and positioned photographs, but these’ll have to do for now!
Whilst doing the initial sketches for this recent commission from Abbie and Dan, yesterday, I came across some black and white ink drawings, or sketches, that are, rather shockingly, now a decade old. That’s what this post is comprised of.
The first spread is two images that I think are actually derived from the same source. The left hand one is, I think, better/stronger, compositionally. And I’ll come back to it later in the series. The right hand one is further explored in the next spread.
2nd Spread.
I’m not sure what’s going on with the left hand image, in this second spread I think it’s still derived from the same source, but possibly, flipped or rotated? Either way, it takes the whole thing in another direction.
Both of these belong to the more diffuse all over abstraction I’ve struggled with for years now. I somehow feel they have something. Something I like and don’t want to lose. But something I can’t quite put my finger on, and that’s all too easily lost amidst ‘too much information’.
3rd Spread.
Spread three sees two ‘new’ things: the left is inspired by the drawings of Tove ‘Moomin’ Jansson, whose work I love. And it’s much more obviously representational. The right hand image, on the udder hand, sees me successfully distilling some of the preceding stuff into a stronger more succinct image/composition.
I love the sixth image of this series, and intend to do a series of prints, using it as a starting point. It’s the most reductive and simplified image to have come out of a number of related series of ideas, some of which are black and white, others (to feature in another post soon) are full colour ‘miniature’ paintings.
4th Spread.
The fourth and final spread in this series is an exploration of a different source image. This one comes from the painting below, which belongs to but is also separate from the series alluded to above, that I’ll be posting about next.
These two share an imagery antecedent that is part head and shoulders ‘portrait’, part tree, part mountains, and simultaneously wholly abstract (pictured below). Once again, I think there might be grounds for or mileage in a print series coming out of this?
This one’s up on a wall at home.
For absolutely yonks – about ten years! – I’ve thought all this stuff was ok as ‘research’, but not good enough to share. Teresa has consistently said I ought to share it. I’m finally coming around to her way of thinking. So here it is!
Some of this stuff would up framed and on display, albeit only in our home(s). As of right now, only the image above is currently adorning our walls. Though I do plant I put up more original art around the house.
My sister Abbie and her husband Dan have commissioned me to paint an artwork for their home. That’s so lovely! Thanks, guys.
I’ve been given some photographic reference. I won’t say what that is, nor will I show it. For me the idea with the abstract side of my work is to work from the real world away, into something more dreamlike, and poetic; evocative yet imprecise, difficult to pin down.
Sketch#2, 1/4/23.
Sketch#1 was a first overall reaction to the photographic image. Whilst a lot is left out, it’s still quite dense and busy. So the next three sketches unpack certain elements.
Sketch#2 catches some of the organic green growth, a very small but visually potent or significant element in the overall scene.
Sketch#3, 1/4/23.
Sketch#3 is the lighter stuff, the air and the water, the sun making strange reflections. This view is probably a second layer, to be rendered over Sketch#4.
It seems odd in retrospect that I’m ending where one might have thought I should start, with the hard, solid architectural stuff; the landscape itself, and the straight lines of the man-made stuff.
So it is that Sketch#4 might well constitute the basal architecture of this painting? It might be the first layer?
Sketch#4, 1/4/23.
Here are the same four images as two double-spreads…
Sketches #1 and #2 …… and #t3 and #4!
I like seeing these four images together… or should I be saying juxtaposed, for the cognoscenti? They are, after all, derived from the same source.
What might prove tricky – and it ought to be, frankly – is amalgamating (what a word that is!) all these extractions. Can it be done? Should it be done?
Anyway, these sketches are a first draft response to a recent commission. I’m hoping that this process will bring my art practice back to life. It felt good to be sketching again today!
I’ve described myself to some folk, over the years, as a misanthrope. I’ve always done so out of a vague notion of what that means. So I decided to look it up today.
I find that the Wikipedia entry on Misanthropy resonates with me in many, albeit not all, particulars.
One typically assumes that most folk would view misanthropy with scorn and disdain, as it’s not an obviously positive or helpful outlook. And that’s the kind of view of the outlook or philosophy portrayed by the Brueghel painting above.
One of the chief areas in which I might not be a misanthrope is in relation to sex; apparently many misanthropes are antinatalist. Well, I can see that humanity is somewhat overstocked, which appears to adversely effecting the planet and everything in it (inc. ironically, humanity itself!).
But like nice wine, sex – whether for reproduction or just plain fun – is one of our few solaces. So I’m all for lots of it, whether it produces offspring or not. Though I feel compelled to confess that the misanthrope in me does wish that there were a lot less humans on the planet.
And now, having read most of the Wikipedia entry on Misanthropy? I actually feel more not less inclined to self identify in that manner.
PS – The inscription at the bottom of Brueghel’s painting reads (acc. to Wikipedia):
Om dat de werelt is soe ongetru, Daer om gha ic in den ru
‘Because the world is perfidious, I am going into mourning’
Brueghel’s painting suggests this makes the misanthrope a fool. He’s having his purse pinched by a figure representing vanity, and is blindly walking into some ‘caltrops’ (little spiky things humans invented, with which to hurt each other, lame horses with, etc. *). Meanwhile a shepherd in the background contrasts with the misanthrope by humbly going about his business.
