libertà corsica.

I was in Corsica in November 2017 for a conference. I retain very few memories of the conference itself.

Getting away from where I was supposed to be, exploring the Corsican landscape, having long conversations with the local people about their history, their language and their culture made a lasting impression on me. I don’t remember ever visiting a place which was so visually exciting and stirred such strong emotions.

Extraordinary beauty, vibrant autumn colours, warmth of summer one day, biting cold rain and winter atmosphere the next, deep contrasts between darkness and light, signs of violent struggle for freedom tagged on the walls and in the silence of people when I asked the wrong question contrasting with the incredibly generous hospitality of others.

Rather than concentrate on my presentation, I escaped to go for a walk up to the Capitole of Corte.

Every few feet, I was stopped in my tracks.

The sound of the river flowing in the valley bottom.

A cinema billboard announcing a Hollywood blockbuster next to an ancient tree.

The winding path cut into the rocky hillside which led up to the Capitole.

A traffic sign indicating that I was on the road to Calvary.

The rays of sunlight which lit up the path, as I climbed higher, gave the walk a quasi mystical signifcance.

Five years on, I still return to that walk, that time, you can find a few of the many images drawn and painted from that trip in the Further afield collection.

I have many stories that I wanted to tell which remain untold for the moment.

These few lines are just an introduction.

Libertà Corsica!

drawn to abstraction.

“All art is an abstraction to some degree.” – Henry Moore

What I love about life-drawing are the rhythms of the poses, the observations, the mark-making, the unspoken dialogue between artists and models. With each pose, I find myself working through a progressively enlarged repertoire of ways of seeing, of orienting myself, as regards the page and the tools.

The greatest challenge is to find simplicity in complexity and to attempt to express the essence of a human form.

Over the past few weeks, I have preferred to use light tones of Conté dry pastels to rapidly sketch out poses. I love to work with bold strokes and often start with light colours. I have the impression that somehow I can get more movement into the gestures. It’s almost as if I was drawing a shadow figure.

The material environment, the platform, the furniture, the drapes of material are taking on a more prominent place. in what are becoming compositions.

The shapes and lines go beyond the figure and the frame of the page as I look for the angles of the poses, the space between the limbs, for simple geometric forms. I find that the model’s body becomes an invitation to appreciate the sensuality of drawing sweeping lines and curves. I particularly love using large blocks of colour both as a means of grounding the body in a material space and to draw poses from the outside in.

That is something that I am discovering, the ability to go from inside the body towards the outside and from outside the body inwards. I have to admit that I am getting hooked on these moments of dialogue, of exploration, of mindfulness.

suspend disbelief…

The passage of time… the wonder, the playfulness and the terror of a very young child, the joy of youthful exuberance, the devastating grief on burying a parent is captured here in a stream of consciousness first published in touches of sense…in 2014 .

All the episodes described are tied to places in Britain: lying in a summer field, cloud-gazing as a four or five year old, lying in bed and being afraid of a monster revealed in the shadows of curtains, careering down the Lakeland fells as a youth on holiday, inviting you to discover the tree in the garden - my best friend as a young child, standing in a hillside cemetery, as a 40 year old, in Somerset, looking up across the levels towards Glastonbury Tor.

The eyes of this child, his contemplative, imaginative way of making connections with nature remains in the adult. If I was asked to express how I see the world, what emotions are present in my meaning-making, my mark-making, my art-making then I would perhaps offer you these words.

If I remain an atheist, I have a strong sense of spirituality.

If I don’t believe in life after death, those who are dead remain alive for me.

I am an artist exploring the ephemeral nature of life via figuration and abstraction, flow and scribble, intention and serendipity.

When I am dead but not buried, maybe someone will feel some sense in what I have done and be touched.

The sky an epiphany in blue, the back of my scalp is rested and given form by wirily-summered meadow. I am bathed in foetus warmth.

Way above us, our gaze is lost amid an unfolding story of the clouds. I am in wonder, I am four or perhaps five years old....and now you lie beside me.

Who would believe us now, when we recount the fluid sense that was there, that instant, speaking to us?

Lambs aleaping.

Youthful momentum rebounds from rock to rock, I go careering down the hillside. With each bound I am flying, I am part of all and electron libre.

Freedom, you can see me now.

Mid-way down the slope, I am in flow, joy, exhilaration. The summer sun is ecstatic, the mountain laughs but lets me live.

I inspire, sheep bleating echoes from the valley.

You are far behind me, less carefree, more calculating perhaps, but witness to grace.

One breathless leap...you are there.

We are together.

A secret to keep.

It was mine. It was my friend, the tree in the garden. We enjoyed so many adventures together. Even felled, he lives on in these leaves.

Seeing as you're here, I shall let you share my branch, just this instant. Shh.. make no noise for fear that the giants break our hide.

Tread carefully, the passage over the wall was my secret.

Not even my brother knew about it...before you came.

If you dare, you can follow me, your foot there, your hand here.

Let yourself slip.

Noone can see you, now.

That my friend is the secret tunnel away from the wall.

Don't worry, I've been here loads of times.

Keep your head down.

Oops.

Ha ha ha ha...

Rewind for fear.

I can't swear, I don't have permission. I am way too young now.

Thank goodness you are there.

The curtains are moving.

The monster, the wolf is here in the shadows.

Making meaning, making terrible meaning the breeze from the window ajar.

I am convinced, I am afraid, I am its prey...

if it weren't for your presence, downstairs in the kitchen.

The wolf is kept at bay by cutlery clattering in the sink.

My grief is standing on a slope.

His frame is boxed rudely. The weight is taken by Dickensian extras dressed for typhoid victims.

Death is so bloody unmodern.

The weight of the earth was stacked up around the rectangular drop, disguised for the occasion by red velveted carpet.

Wind-swept rain pricks and veils my tears, standing lopsidely on a shallow slope.

This is how it happens, to those one loves.

No denying the brutal melodrama of an absurd separation.

Unable to bare the enormity of the scene, I look around, across to the Tor anchored away on the levels.

Defiantly a child-drawn rainbow appears.

It gives me closure and hope.

He lives with me now. He is not gone, his gouache is etched in my soul.

I shall bear grief with joy.

We don't end my friend, we become particles for a child's studious science.

one more time with feeling…

Art has always been a means of escape for me, from myself, from my surroundings, from a page, whether from a boring Sunday afternoon or from classes as a child, from meetings or conferences as an adult.

In my blog, touches of sense… this search for freedom is constant.

While what is most important for me is to recapture the sensations that I have always had since my childhood when making art, I have come to accept that working on my craft is necessary.

I find myself a little perplexed when I think about this issue.

Perhaps thought isn’t the answer, I shall follow my instincts.

I am suddenly reminded of a quotation of Leo Van Lier:

“To perceive we must act; to act we must perceive. Activity in one’s environment brings forth the affordances in those environments.”

Dreams drawn

Engraved on a corner of scrap, the drawing takes form.

Escaping from dutiful participation, I am engrossed in crude line, simple colour, unplanned sketch.

This art is still alive to me.

Resistant to academic form, I make do with child-informed imagery. It has a keen edge.

I brandish it now.

It remains stubbornly ignorant of rigour, it appears quite oblivious to science.

From, a sunlit window-sill, a dull page opens up distant horizons to us....alone.

I am there again, revisiting a forgotten encampment. There is warmth, there is fire, there are a thousand stories to be heard. She was always there for me.

How can one explain that however far one goes from oneself one always returns to one's imperturbable essence, one's dreams...

Wherever my path shall lead, I am, as ever, prepared for uncertain journey. I will need little luggage.

Left with the memory of some beaten up biro, a last pencil stub, and a sunlit window-sill; I will be free.

Dreams-drawn will know no bounds.

touches of sense…2014

Any scrap of paper will do.

(The scrap above, on which the image of an old man is drawn, is an example.)

This class has got nothing to do with me.

I shall be elsewhere.

touches of sense…2015

Shriek

So those were my conference notes. I had almost forgotten. They appeared in disorder, on my desk.

I focused my attention on drawing escape.

It appeared in the bottom right hand corner.

Shriek.

I know it when I feel it... There is a starting point. It isn't a photographic image.

More than an image there is an urge. First strokes of a brush pen. I am taken up, defined in a curve.

First angles, first volumes of the body. Whose body? Whose body will it be? Verticality. Crosshatching.

Lettering, familiar scribbled lettering.

EXHAUSTED.

Change implement. Where's that red BIC pen? I need that red BIC pen.

I need it's cut into the paper. I need it's disresepect.

I had some time, some peace, some desire.

Going back to school.

I had been working on my drawing technique, academically, like I used to do at school. I hated it.

There are moments when my soul erupts in revolt at constraints which I have accepted being imposed on myself. There are moments when I feel the need to return to basics.

I feel reassured learning more about the voices of artists behind their work.

Picasso would altenate between "studies" - careful "drawing" and apparent flourishes of revolt.

A man who at times fell into despair when thinking of the appearance of photography.

What should an artist do when faced with "photorealism"?

"I might as well kill myself"... he thought.

Picasso decided to paint what he felt not what he saw.

touches of sense… 2018