Sometimes while procrastinating I watch videos on art techniques, I am fascinated by the Japanese art of Kintsugi. Where broken porcelain is repaired, the repair is enhanced with gold.
I find the whole process mesmerising but am both self aware enough to know that I don’t have enough broken china in my life or the the tolerance for this meticulous craft. But knowledge can always be adapted.
This Christmas I was gifted a female torso vase. She had rather pneumatic breasts, if she were real I think she would almost certainly have ‘had some work done’
For some time I have felt the urge to depict the curious sensation of swimming in really cold water with a shortie wetsuit on.
Pneumatic Nancy is now officially a bobbing woman. Modified Kintsugi shows exactly the sensation of water finding it’s way into the openings of a wetsuit and then rivuleting over mounds and crevasses as it streams downwards. To be completely accurate the gilding should be done in ice cold silver. A project for another day, and another torso.
Procrastination creates gaps where serendipity can flourish.
Morning dog walks are full of unexpected surprises. Sometimes when we stop for the ritual of the poo, I stare into nothing for the time it takes to sniff out the exact spot, spin to geolocate and then eliminate. Yesterday there was a bright flash of blue. Not an urban Kingfisher but some lovely old wrought iron, showing it’s provenance, over 200 years of being weather beaten. Two dogs equals two stops,the second one on a beach where this tiny piece of old tile was my gem of the moment.
My day was all about tiny gems, the studio needs to be de-Christmassed. It has remnants of twinkle from pre-Christmas gilding left on the work bench.
Having cleared that up I was left with a pristine surface to work on, almost as delicious as clean bedding, I decided to take some time out from tidying and give a new sketch book and latex tools a little try out.
The exhibitions of last year inspired me to explore some different aspects of drawing, painting and printing. The one genre that can be fitted into a small box and just an hour or so of time is charcoal sketching. My new sketchbook is going to be dedicated to drawing in charcoal with a bit of water colour thrown in.
Coffee this morning in a local coffee shop and gallery. There were some amazing prints on the walls by local Primary School children. I’m not someone who loves the naivete of children’s’ art, much of it is unremarkable and some could only be appreciated by parents and grandparents but this stuff was gorgeous. Each little creation printed on a square of paper about 14 cms square.
There is magic in the air when teachers can conjure such interesting images from the hands of small people, simply by teaching them a new technique.
Wouldn’t it be fabulous if in the world of work instead of team building with physical or mental challenges. Colleagues could be set loose in a print room, given some instructions and then allowed to let their imaginations run wild with colour and shape.
So sad that the end of Primary School is the beginning of the end of most peoples regular engagement with creative processes. Art and music slip from the grasp of most people by the time they are 14.
That is a sombre old thought for Advent+ 2022 but if children under 11 can produce such lovely work what would happen if everyone remained creative in some way throughout life. The world might be a better place .
I’ve had a bit of painterly block recently, since visiting Dublin to be completely specific. The weather in Dublin was wonderful, even though the evenings were dark we walked through the city enjoying the historical layers of architecture untroubled by German bombs. There are many secretive back lanes that service the busy bars and nightclubs that give Dublin it’s famed nightime economy. These back streets have seen 300 years or more of the grubby underbelly of Irish nightlife. These would have been the places of sexual liaisons in less permissive times, now the back streets are left to inebriated gents emptying their booze filled bladders and resting chefs, their faces eerily illuminated by their mobile phones as they take a few minutes off their feet. We stumbled on this nocturnal pairing so often that I felt impelled to draw a scene showing the characters isolated in their own activities. Timeless, almost and separated from a vivid, contemporary nightlife that was happening just out of sight. The live music is muffled by closed doors and windows. Illumination is incidental, and the smells of booze, urine and cooking blend to create a fragrance that is both intimate and universal.
Drawing anything quite so figurative is unusual unless I am in a drawing class, but I know that once an image sets itself in my head, nothing else can be done until it is out on paper or canvas. There can be no gloriously colourful abstracts until this dark and dirty image, drawn in charcoal, is finished to my satisfaction. That moment is finally here after a week of sneaking into the studio and scraping away with stubby, brittle sticks of charcoal. Frantic dashes to the bathroom to grab the hairspray needed to seal the details on each session’s layer before they smudge and blur. More leisurely trips to the bathroom to clean my face and fingers of the sooty smuts of obsessive creating.
All because twenty-first-century men, unintentionally captured my imagination in 17th-century back streets.
River Liffey in Dublin looking towards Temple Bar.
I suppose the picture above would be fairly typical of a night scene in Dublin. We only visited the infamous Temple Bar once, always preferring less busy options. This was the view from our airbnb. The illuminated Viking ship was quite a draw for ultra late night shenanigans. Friday night was packed with working people celebrating the weekend to the max they were only chased away at dawn by road sweeping vehicles and street cleaners. Saturday night bustled with jubilant Irish rugby supporters celebrating a win over Australia, trumpeters at 4 in the morning was both jubilant and joyful, curiously melodic when leading happy chanting. Sunday night was calm. Every daybreak marked by the sound of road sweepers making the city pristine.
All this is a bit of waffle to make our night tours of back streets more interesting. Dublin has so many historic back streets, untouched by redevelopment that it is like walking in a city 300 years ago. The streets felt safe but there was a recurring theme that I felt compelled to sketch from memory.
Nearly all back streets held the same night time characters. Chefs on their phones, taking a break from cooking with a cigarette and a sit down. An inebriated man taking a piss in a pool of light. I decided to do my first sketch with Charcoal, a messy few hours later. I had the beginning of something that had the flavour of all the back streets we visited. I just need to find a way of getting more colour in.
The chefs face needs to be blue and the peeing man needs to look more drunk and there should be some essence of coloured lights just reflected on the brick work. A project for next week.
There are many different ways of marking time with a new baby. The traditional ones of time, meals or sleep, slip their responsibilities and shape-shift into tiny fragments of moments or infinitely extended versions of themselves. From the generosity of others there are new markers like flower arranging or cake eating and tea making. Gifts to be unpacked and WhatsApp groups to be kept informed, photographs to be taken and shared. The familiar world takes on a temporary and unusual shape. Bewilderingly everything looks the same and yet feels very different.
We do still have one unchanged routine; dog walking, which was done yesterday in Canizzaro Park where this sculpture is the centrepiece of a fountain, commissioned to mark the millennium. I’m not aware of the brief for the sculptor when this was commissioned, but in our break-out from the baby bubble, it seemed like a great metaphor for our days. The soft shape and multi handled, multi spouted form really resonates with our current daily routine. Punctuated as they are by the need to rehydrate, welcome, comfort or recover with a cup of tea (other drinks are available )
As luck would have it a fresh cup of coffee is just being served to me, and I am in no position to do anything useful.
I can research the sculptors motivation and vision for his Millennial Fountain. For me though it is about these, current, shape shifting sensations of newborn baby days. Welcoming, homely and slightly surreal.
There will be a PS later in the day…
Here is the somewhat disappointing PS. It seems impossible to find the original brief for the Richard Hope sculpture in Canizzaro Park. Costing £50,000 pounds in 2001 it attracted mixed reviews, of course it did!
What it had failed to do on Google is attract any half decent photos of it with the water turned on that isn’t copyrighted. I will go back on a sunny day and do one myself. Below is one from the Guardian and some links for further reading.
Sharing the care of a newborn gives plenty of time for pondering, not so much out and about, but lovely Facebook Timehop provides substance to ponder over. 5 years ago on the 8th October I was at Devils Point, taking the picture above. Nothing in my life at that time would suggest that in five years time I would be a Stonehouse local, living 5 minutes away from the tidal pool.
Art is always busy in October. 8 years ago I was exhibiting an abstract inspired by Cornish tin mines at Dulwich Picture Gallery.
I love that painting, it lives in North London now. At this time living by the sea could not have been further from my thoughts. Living and arting in Dulwich Village was brilliant fun.
But 5 years ago I was a little closer and living on the shores of the Tamar Valley, watching a steam train cross into Cornwall.
October is also a time for visiting Art Galleries, a couple of years ago I chanced upon this brilliant piece of art/prose. Right up my street.
Since then life has taken more than a few twists and turns. For us, but also for the world. We have washed up on the shores of the Atlantic at Stonehouse. Currently I am looking at Stonehouse from a distance and loving the Stonehouse Sunrise from a distance, courtesy of a fellow sea swimmer, who long ago was a work colleague.
However wonderful Wimbledon is I miss my nearly daily dips. A trip to the Ladies Pond on Hampstead Heath it will have to be, or failing that the nudist beach at Brighton because even the most organised Nana does not pack a swimming costume for a birth.
Yesterday was National Book Reading Day, but because I was behind with artwork my book reading was the standard half hour before bed. Hugo however had plenty of time to get his teeth into the Nick Cave Exhibition book that I had ordered after our visit to the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art. By a strange twist of timings my time at The Box, Plymouths museum and art gallery will not be fully utilised today as many of the galleries are in transition. Plenty of time and cozy corners to read an arty book but I left it at home with the dogs.
In truth I wish I were back in Chicago to revisit the exhibition with only two chapters of enlightenment from the book. So many layers of everything is my initial opinion, just so much to learn.
A good excuse to share more pictures and encourage anyone who can to get themselves to Chicago and see the real thing before it closes on October 2 nd.
Back in the ( time) zone. A day of homecoming chores. Getting our composite door serviced and a new handle fitted. Prescriptions collected and electricians contacted. Honestly the Tim Horton coffee was an unplanned Canadian throwback. As it happens, Hugo and Lola, who will never visit Canada, rather like a small portion of traditional ‘timbits’
In other throwbacks of the day I visited the trusty Abebooks, secondhand book store to catch up on two book purchases which travelling with only hand luggage had made conpletely impossible during our travels. First up the Chicago Diner Cook Book.
And secondly the book published to accompany the Nick Cave exhibition that we went to at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.
Our Toronto catch up purchases were supplied by John Lewis who sell the brand Atheleta, even better all items were in the sale. So now we have compression leggings which would have stopped our feet getting plump and puffy on our flights. Back to normal now.
Back to Chicago, in the blog, for a fabulous blast of unexpected Contemporary Art. The Museum of Contemporary Art was showing a major retrospective of Nick Cave an artist completely unknown to me.
Nick Cave is an American sculptor, dancer, performance artist, and professor. He is best known for his Soundsuit series: wearable assemblage fabric sculptures that are bright, whimsical, and other-worldly, often made with found objects. Born: February 4, 1959 (age 63 years), Fulton, Missouri, United States
His Soundsuits are phenomenal. A garment that disguises everything about a person. Wearing one makes a person larger than life and yet invisible, culturally and ethnically unreadable and genderless.
I need to read loads more about this artist, but a hand luggage holiday does not permit buying the weighty tome that I need to fully digest his work.
The works that really connected with me were his assemblages of domestic objects. My responses were not as complex as his motivations but that is often the point of Contemporary Art. It is made to make you think. I know that once I get home and can give this artist plenty of reading time my reactions will be different but for now I thought I would share my thoughts.
I am not an ornament person, my father was not an ornament person, in consequence my mum chose to moderate her ornament ownership. When they died I kept one ornament as a memento mori. My dad, an entirely liberal person with no special requirements of life could not visit over ornamented homes, they set off something in him which he couldn’t tolerate. I am the same, but living a generation later the problem is not as acute. Nick Cave is the same age as me and creates assemblages of the over ornamentation of his parents generation. My immediate reaction was an almost physical dislike and yet they are things of unsettling beauty.
As an aside one of my recurring dreams is in an ornament shop. Lladro brand. In the dream, I break up everything to virtual powder and feel jolly proud of myself once the ornaments are rendered down. A similar feeling of discomfort settled on me during parts of this exhibition.
Caves other work that hit a nerve with me was his Spinner Forest. Garden Spinners are another personal dislike. Three videos show this form of ornamentation in such vast numbers and out of context. Another form of a nightmare dreamscape.
Beyond his nerve jangling, concsience pricking art there are also some quieter pieces. Still hugely thought provoking.
And that, until I am better read about Nick Cave,is that. Knowing that once I have read deeply I will wish I could walk back and enjoy the whole thing more deeply and with greater understanding.
theoldmortuary.design 