FURTHER WELSHNESS

I've been wholly taken up with finishing something which has to be delivered early next week (more on this when I've heard results) so the Blaug has been neglected, again. And comments have vanished since the commenting service Haloscan/JSKit ceased to operate from 1st October. 

Now I have to figure out how to set up the Disqus comments service but until I do, please leave some words here just so I know I still have a few cyber-friends!

Herewith a few more sketches of Wales on cloudier days. 

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MORE WELSH WONDERS

I stayed near Crickhowell, a beautiful part of the Brecon Beacons, in a tiny, cozy two-room cottage, which was fine since I'm only four feet eleven inches high and not very wide but even so, the steep and narrow spiral staircase to the bedroom required some careful contortions. When I wasn't walking and sketching in the countryside or visiting nearby towns, I'd sit indoors and draw. 

 

The found-object frame around the mirror is one of the thoughtful touches around the cottage.

Even when - especially when - the sky is cloudy, at this time of year the greens are of almost neon brightness while the blackness of the hills is streaked with purples, browns, reds and patches of emerald. I was particularly spellbound by reflections in the river Usk and by the copper-coloured water of the Brecon canal. Narrow boats silently glide by as you walk along the tree-lined banks. Some of the boats are manned by amateur skippers, worriedly looking straight ahead, expecting trouble. 

And there were sheep of course. Plump and peaceful, eating and resting, resting and eating, dutifully taking care of their woolliness.

I spent a few hours in Abergavenny on a day packed with crowds for the Food Festival, which was fun. But what I liked best were the side-streets and the people at the bus queue going home.

Some teddies in this shop are very old, very rare and very expensive.

On my next to last day, I was privileged to be invited to tea at the home of friends of Clive Hicks-Jenkins: William Gibbs and his civil partner Sonthaya. By happy coincidence they live very near the village where I was staying and Clive suggested I look them up. Due to a stupid (my stupidity) dental mishap, I nearly cancelled the appointment but fortunately I was persuaded to ignore vanity and come anyway. It was a memorable afternoon with this most interesting and hospitable couple, a marvellous house and garden, and an art collection that so stunned and inspired me that I quite forgot to take photos. Besides the achievements mentioned at the above link, William is a patron of the arts, collector, critic, lecturer and chairman of various Arts Trusts. With all this activity he still manages to appear relaxed and at ease. Enthusiasm for life and art and a discerning sensibility is evident in every corner of the home that William and Sonthaya share and I'm so grateful that I didn't miss this opportunity to meet them. 

Still seeing the week in Wales in my mind's eye and long may it linger. I took a lot more photos and might post them on Flickr later on. A few more drawings also to come.

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WONDERFUL WALES

Back from a beautiful week in the greenest of green places on this planet. Will just post some of my sketches tonight and add words and more pictures tomorow.

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UNEXPLAINED ANGELIC ACTIVITY

Time for blogging seems harder to find these days but that's just a lame excuse: truth is I've been reluctant to sit at the computer, don't know why. Anyway I have been busy working on a new project, of which more when the deadline is met, and I've also been playing around with more recycling of some of the stencils from the accordion book. 

As I'm off for a week in the countryside (computer-free) later today, here are some examples to try and keep you from giving up on me  altogether. Will post pictures of my away-days when I return.

First, here's the collagraph block made from left-over stencils. They are pasted over paper which is mounted on canvas. The metallic look is not metal but gold paint I applied over the pasted stencils.

The title of this collagraph is Unexplained Angelic Activity. Of course!

Here is a first intaglio print taken from the above. I inked up the block in the normal way you ink any intaglio plate, wiped it and printed it on damp paper in my etching press. Later I'll work on this print with hand colouring.

Below is a colour version of a second print of the above. I used soft pastels and other media for colouring.

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NOT SAILING BUT SIGNING

A boat that does not touch water but looks down on the Thames from a great height. A boat designed to remain forever anchored in a famous work of literature. A boat temporarily moored on the roof of the Queen Elizabeth Concert Hall. What is it? 

It's Le Roi des Belges, from Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness, AKA A Room for London. I was among a few of Teju Cole's friends privileged to visit the Boat last week during his short residency in this eccentric and beautifully crafted fantasy vessel with a panoramic view of London at its most dazzling. At the above link you can listen to Teju's illuminating podcast recorded on the boat. 

A wonderful time-lapse video of how the Room/Boat was built is here .

The London Review of Books bookshop near the British Museum was host to Teju Cole's reading from Open City, his acclaimed prizewinning novel, and the queue for his signature was long and animated.

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HOMAGE TO BLANCHE

Today it is exactly eleven years since my mother Blanche died. I've written about her before and some of you may also remember a slideshow I posted of a few of her paintings. 

It seems that the universe too wants her to be remembered since I recently heard from Henry Boxer, a dealer in naive and outsider art, who had shown interest in her work about three years ago. He has finally included her on his website - you can see the page on her here (he says extra images, titles and dimensions will be added later). Of course I'm delighted that her presence on the internet now extends beyond my site and I'm hoping it might lead to recognition of her late-life blossoming as a painter. 

It was only in the last four or five years of her life (she was 97 when she died) that she took up painting with a verve and talent I'm still in awe of. But in the mid-eighties she came for a short time to the etching classes I was teaching at the City Lit Institute and produced a few images that, objectively, I consider to be as good as some created by modern masters. I could never convince her that what she saw as her 'failings' were qualities which many highly-schooled and sophisticated artists struggle to achieve. Here are two examples of her first etchings/aquatints.

For Denise  Etching/aquatint by Blanche d'Arbeloff 1984 . Image size: 29cm x 29cm 

Napoleon   Etching/aquatint by Blanche d'Arbeloff 1984. Image size: 30cm x 23cm 

 And here's a sketch I drew of her a long time ago, when my parents were living in Putney, Vermont. 

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NEARLY BORN AGAIN

It's today, midnight, the seventh of August, as it is every year, and I'm glad I'm still here. But sometimes I wish that all records of my birth date had somehow been lost and nobody would know when or where the event actually took place. That way I could make up a new birthday every year, in whatever month or country I chose, and decide what age I wanted to be each time. Obviously there would be a limit to how inventive I could be but give or take ten or fifteen years and continents either way, I could probably manage it. 

Anyway something must be done to mark the unavoidable so I've chosen a snapshot taken in New York, in Central Park. I'm about ten and ecstatically playing. The two boys are my cousins, Alex and Dimitri. This is how I still feel, at least on the inside. In the second photo the eye of my Mac caught me trying to replicate the childhood pose.

 

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THE BELLS WERE RINGING

At precisely 8:12 yesterday morning I was on the street where I live, ringing a bell. I only got this bell last week and would have settled for anything but bells are surprisingly hard to find. I had almost given up when, in a charity shop, I chanced upon the unusual leaf-bedecked glass object you see below. 

  

I was part of a small crowd gathered at the junction of two roads, all swinging and happily banging their own bell-like things.

 

I hope people don't mind my posting photos of them; everyone was snapping so I guess it's okay.

Encouraging the performance was Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery. He lives in the neighbourhood and was the one who exhorted us all to play our part in Martin Creed's Work No. 1197   welcoming the Olympics to London. Here he is holding up a radio so we can hear Big Ben joining the nation-wide artistic cacophony for three whole minutes. 

It was a wonderfully simple and effective community-enhancing moment. 

This spectator was wondering about the meaning of life, noise and everything.

 

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NEW PAGES for MY LIFE UNFOLDS

I've gathered together, starting here all the photos of images from the accordion book and notes about the process, making it much easier to see as a whole. Amazing how much time such cyber house-cleaning takes - much longer than pushing the vacuum cleaner around.

It would be nice if you'd tell me whether you think it was worth the effort?

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SERIOUSLY...SORRY MUNCH

Sometimes I wonder if I am a serious artist or even a serious person. 

On Saturday I went to see the Munch exhibition at Tate Modern and I was thinking about it as I walked back to London Bridge underground station along the embankment. It was another of these cloudy windy any-minute-it-will-rain days but quite mild and my raincoat was too much. I had spent a long time in the exhibition and even longer in the bookshop and now I was tired and wanted to get home. 

I entered Borough Market, that enticing assemblage of sights, smells and sounds, and slowly made my way around crowded stalls offering an infinite variety of cheeses, wines, spices, pastries, pies, cakes, pasta, roasted meats, exotic cooked dishes from around the world - I wanted to taste and buy all of them but couldn't  choose so I followed the sound of music coming from the central piazza. 

Bingo! All tiredness, ruminations on art, Munch and all the rest of them evaporated as I surrendered mind, body and soul to the rhythm of J'Attendrai  played in the style of the Hot Club de France by a great band celebrating Le Quatorze Juillet. Leaning against a conveniently parked car, I let my feet pound the beat while I switched my camera to movie mode and pointed it. Gradually a few people moved into the centre and started to dance and I kept filming but didn't notice that my battery had run out so this movie fragment is the only bit that was recorded: two guys too drunk on love and booze to be graceful but certainly having a ball. 

Later a young man dressed as a French waiter pulled me onto the floor and I danced my socks off. The crowd applauded - no doubt because an Oldie dancing like that is an oddity. Several mobile phones were filming the incident - I hope none of them were bloggers. But a Japanese tourist asked me if I was a professional dancer so I was flattered and considered joining the band to sing my Piaf numbers. Fortunately the band took a break at that moment and I decided it was time to go. 

Back home in high spirits, whatever serious thoughts I may have had earlier about tragic, talented, tortured Munch were gone with the wind and I'm not in the mood to try and recapture them. If you can't see the exhibition itself, get hold of this terrific film by Peter Watkins, a docudrama in which much of the narration is from Munch's own diaries. I bought the DVD in the Tate Modern bookshop.

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