"A touch of red"

If you saw the movie Mr Turner you probably remember him adding a blob of red to a painting. (This is what that was about.)

Not this much, though

When you look at almost any painting by Constable, you'll see a bit of red ... put your thumb over it to "remove" it, and something vital is missing.

Hadleigh Castle (via)

The White Horse (via)

In Julia Caprara's embroidery classes I learned that a touch of red - or turquoise, her favourite - both draws your eye and sends it to other parts of the work.

By Julia Caprara (via)

What "touches" do you use to enliven your work? 

Old glass in the British Museum

This mosaic glass plate has fascinated me ever since I drew it in a sketchbook some 10 or 15 years ago, enjoying the contrast of spirals and solid areas. (The shadow is from an object on the shelf above.)

Another view - the light shining through shows up the patterning -

The bowl in front has gold sandwiched in between two layers of glass - think of the skill it took to make those bowls fit each other so closely -

The vessels are from a group of ten that were found in a tomb in southern Italy. They come from the eastern Mediterranean and were made about 225-200 BC, a time of new developments in glass making.

Another mosaic plate, one with slightly more patina -

Also in the case, this bowl of "network" or "lacework" mosaic glass -

It is formed of two spirally twisted threads of clear glass laid side by side, but wound in opposite directions, starting in the centre.

Information on Hellenistic glass is here, here, and elsewhere.

The green line

Thursday provided a chance to take some photos of the green line that starts at Old Street station -

Rather unexciting, nonetheless...

Outside, the line goes up the stairs, sunlit in the mid-afternoon cold clear weather at just the right angle for shadows -

The line goes to Moorfields Eye Hospital ... and I'm not sure where this project might go. 

A pair of cranes

Iranian, 15th and 16th centuries - Islamic gallery, British Museum.

While looking for information on pottery in Iran, I found these delightful quails, which are in the Ashmolean in Oxford -

Blue and white wares from China reached the Middle East from the 14th century onwards, and were, of course, imitated - steadily produced until the 18th century - "Close imitations of Chinese originals were produced alongside more inventive interpretations, bringing together Chinese and Islamic patterns and shapes."

What's all this then?

"Then" is when it was made - at least 20 years ago, as one of those exercises that help us get clarity on our life goals, or put things in perspective, or remind ourselves of what we'd like to get out of life.

How you do it is - take half a dozen magazines of various titles, and look through them for photos that appeal to you and tear out those pages. (You may want to discard the rest of the magazine immediately, lest it haunt your life as clutter.) Then glue "your" photos onto a big sheet of paper.

I found the exercise very ... clarifying. It brought what was important to me at the time, and what remains important to me now, though some small details have changed - the comfortable shoes now need to be somewhat stylish (and accommodate bunions - totally incompatible aims perhaps, but the search goes on), and that little black dress ... 20 years later and 20 lbs lighter, I'd rather wear little black jeans!

The minimal, hospitable rooms speak to an ongoing aspiration, but at the time had a deeper meaning - I was living in a shabby shared house and not happy with the situation, yet felt I was stuck there and could never afford my own place. But sometimes circumstances change; I don't remember exactly what happened, but being mugged outside my own gate certainly had something to do with it, and after a bit of hard negotiation I was out of there, moving 5 minutes down the road and into a very different life.

The dream-spaces are two dining rooms, or maybe three, at least one with a french door into the garden; a bathroom (with art on the wall!); and an airy library-gallery. Not to overlook the summerhouse/shed/studio in the garden.

Ah, garden ... flowering plants, and trees ... there are many in my dream-life. On the left is a paved courtyard garden with luscious clusters in great variety planted among the stones - a model for my own paved area out front, which is almost ready to plant (some dreams come true, but probably not quite as you imagined them).

Art supplies; birds; a fireplace. Keeping busy; observing nature; being warm.

Scenery - the sun breaking through clouds over gentle hills and long-cultivated valleys, how very English. The gloomier road beside the sea, and a snow scene elsewhere - these are about living in a place with seasons, and enjoying those seasons in their changeableness.

There's a painting of a family scene, but nothing about the importance of friends - that was an interesting omission but would definitely be there now. Maybe the fireworks - an explosion of joy - represent friendships and relationships?

To go with the many dining rooms, there are cakes. Cakes aren't quite so important to me now, but remain an important link with the past and my mother's effortless master-baker shining example, and her generous hospitality.

Last but not least - coffee, and an elegant coffee maker.

Poetry Thursday - flashback to 1966

Hindsight (via)

Photograph, Art Student, Female, Working Class

Her hair is cut into that perfect slant
– An innovation circa ‘64 by Vidal Sassoon.
She’s wearing C&A’s best effort at Quant
Ending just below the knicker-line, daisy-strewn.
Keeping herself in tights could blow her grant
Entirely, so each precious pair is soon
Spattered with nail-varnish dots that stop each run.
She’s a girl, eighteen – just wants to have fun.

She’s not 'a chick'. Not yet. Besides, by then
She’ll find the term 'offensive'. 'Dollybird', to quote
Her favourite mags, is what she aspires to when
Her head’s still full of Honey and Petticoat.
It’s almost the last year that, quite this blithely, men
Up ladders or on building sites wolf-whistle to note
The approval they’re sure she will appreciate.
Why not? She did it for their benefit, looks great.

Nor does she object. Wouldn’t think she has the right.
Though when that lech of a lecturer comments on her tits
To a male classmate, openly, she might
Feel – quick as a run in nylon – that it’s
Not what ought to happen, is not polite,
She’ll burn, but smile, have no word that fits
The insult, can’t subject it to language’s prism.
In sixty-six there’s plenty sex, but not 'sexism'.

Soon: The Female Eunuch and enough
Will be enough. Thanks to newfound feminism and Greer,
Women’ll have the words for all this stuff,
What already rankles, but confuses her, will seem clear
And she’ll (consciously) be no one’s 'bit of fluff'
Or 'skirt' or 'crumpet'. She’ll know the rule is 'gay' not 'queer',
'Ms' not 'Miss' or 'Mrs' – she’ll happily obey it
And, sure as the Pill in her pocket, that’s how she’ll say it.

This photo’s saying nothing, is black and white, opaque.
A frozen moment, not a memory.
The boyfriend with the Pentax took it for the sake
Of taking it, a shot among many others, randomly,
To see how it would develop. Didn’t imagine it’d make
An image so typical it’d capture time so perfectly.
How does she feel? Hey, girl, did it feel strange
To be waiting for the a-changing times to change?

Liz Lochhead


From Jubilee Lines - 60 Poets for 60 Years (Faber), edited by Carol Ann Duffy (via)

Recognise that girl? Perhaps like me you were 18 in 1966 - ah, what a time that was ... and what a time there was to come, what a change in attitudes, in language, in expectations (even for some of us, a change of continents), had we but known it...

The poem was written in 2012, in response to Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy's request for 60 poems in celebration of the Diamond Jubilee.

Liz Lochhead, born in 1947, attended Glasgow School of Art, where she was part of a creative writing group. She stood out as a rare female presence among Scottish writers of the 1970s, which was enabling and inspiring for the generation that followed. "The female voices that Lochhead has deployed in her monologues and many of her poems undoubtedly draw on a Scottish oral tradition that goes right back to the ballads, is subverted by the music-hall, and takes pleasure in a distinctive West of Scotland tradition of storytelling and humour" says one biography. She was named the second Scots Makar, national poet, in 2011.

A day without internet

...is a day of frustration! Yesterday the "new internet" was installed, fibreoptic, fast and of course wireless. Lots of furniture had to be moved, revealing the need to clean seldom-revealed areas of floor and, because full drawers are heavy and best removed before the furniture is moved, providing the opportunity to sort their contents.

But those domestic delights were to come. First the engineer spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get the wireless in a state that my computer would receive it. In the end we needed to use an ethernet cable; not ideal.

But "for that money it should work" said my son - and spent an inordinate amount of time on the internet (via his phone, which had no problem connecting, as was the case for my phone and ipad, and his laptop) trying to figure out why it wasn't working for my laptop. This seems to be the problem that even the techy forums don't discuss ........... because there seems to be no answer.

Now a stretch of cable connects this computer to the net. At least the furniture is back in place, hidden areas of floor are squeaky-clean, and lots of paper has gone into recycling.

Just one drawer left to sort. Note the blue cable!

Even before that saga started, some clangy noises on the street at 8am signalled that the road repair team had arrived to fill the pothole that makes the house quiver and shake. Or rather, the admirably-frequent buses, travelling at speed late at night and hitting the pothole, do that. Kudos to Islington Council, who responded the very next day to my email about the situation!

Patch upon patch upon patch

The eyes have it

Painted shard in the Islamic Gallery, British Museum

Art supplies in flux

No sooner do you release a few supplies and tools, others rush in to take their place - the technical term might be horror vacui - or it might be insecurity, or false hope, or just greed. Or all three! (Interesting that the link given, which is about horror vacui in art rather than in "life", says: "there is an inverse relationship between horror vacui and value perception" - in "life" terms, this translates to "the more you have, the less you value it". Think Primark and everything disposable ... but I digress.

On Sunday, having much enjoyed the current shows at Camden Arts Centre (till 29 March), we dropped in to London Art nearby to get a roll of  magic tape and see what water-brushes they had. This is my favourite art supplies shop because in a small space they have a great variety and range of materials. For instance, two kinds of water brushes in addition to the "usual" japanese ones. And watersoluble graphite in various hardnesses, or rather, softnesses - of course I had to get one of each to compare them -

2B, 6B, 9B - at £1.25 a stick, that's a lot of drawing and shading potential! The waterbrush I chose is Caran d'ache (£5.90, eek) and all the bits can be undone, unlike my faulty Pentel, which has been so annoying lately. However that is a Pentel pocket brush pen at the left, which I have coveted since seeing one and vowed to buy if ever one was in my direct line of sight and within grasp. They are jolly expensive, even with the shop's 15% discount card, and how long will those two cartridges of ink last? Cheaper via amazon, which I won't supply a link to here - I feel very strongly that it's worth supporting your local shops and keeping them alive. The water-brush, interestingly, is more expensive on amazon.

Drawing Tuesday - the Spirit Collection at the Natural History Museum

You had to get up close to the jars, and we didn't find any sketching stools, so it was a matter of either standing or sitting on the floor. The contents of the jars could be somewhat ambiguous ... just what are we looking at here? -

Initially the groupings of the jars, and their individual shapes, attracted me -

 ... then I needed to look more closely at the contents, such as the four frogs in this one

or the single frog in a larger jar -

No restriction on charcoal here, it seems, so I could use the prepared page. The drawing seemed to impress a group of schoolchildren, who clustered round to look before being told to form a queue and head off to the mammals section.

There was time for a soluble-graphite snake and then off to the caf -

Nathalia had started with these spiky echinoderms, and went on to others with interesting shapes. She discovered why the labels were now kept inside the jars ... just look at what's happening on the left -

She was using a brush-pen and had other red-browns as well as black and white in a handy box -

 Sue found an amazing octopus -

 ...and then ran out of lead in her mechanical pencil, so had to incorporate colour to finish the drawing -

Below, some octopuses, including one that hides in nautilis shells, that she drew earlier.

Later I had a quick look at the Minerals section of the museum, which has delightfully old-fashioned cases and ornate pillars and walls -

and includes this enormous meteorite that was found in the Campo del Cielo, Argentina, in 1803 and came to the museum in 1826. It was part of a meteoritic impact that, from carbon-14 analysis of charred wood under some of the smaller meteors, occurred between 2700 and 2200BC. The Otumpa mass is solid iron and in some places has been rubbed shiny by touching over the years -

So many different minerals in the cases! Such shapes and textures -- and such wonderful colours! Here are some of the forms of haematite (iron), including the red ochre that is used as a pigment -

Outside the gallery in a dim corner is a case of fluorescent minerals -

and nearby are some dioramas made in 1957 by B.Newman and C.Sheppard. Captain Scott's ill-fated expedition to the South Pole collected stones, 35 kg of them, and carried them to the end -

The story of the pebbles from a penguin's stomach is a reminder that not so long ago the continent of Antarctica wasn't known to exist (click on the text to enlarge) -

Lots to draw in the Minerals gallery - a session there is scheduled for 24 February. Bring colour....

Paintbrush discovery

While musing on the topic of "using up supplies" I decided to photograph some of the hidey-holes for supplies and tools in the studio.

The paintbrush drawer

The cabinet with the paintbrush drawer is in a dark corner, so it needed to be brought nearer the window for photographing. And a bit of stock-taking - it includes no fewer than 13 (unused) brushes for chinese painting, including this lovely set -

Rummaging around a bit, I found yet another old toothbrush ... and something that looked like evidence of ... moths ... frass ... moth droppings.

Sure enough, one of the neglected brushes was about half eaten, others less so.

It makes sense - clothes moths like to be in dark places, like rarely-opened drawers, and they eat protein fibres, which include the bristles used in brushes.

All the loose brushes are now in a plastic bag in the freezer. The drawer was emptied and thoroughly cleaned, and the wrapped and boxed brushes checked for damage and frass, just in case.

Protected and inedible items

How many paintbrushes does one person need? During my little fling with daily painting a while back, I found some favourite brushes ... spending time painting every day was fun and made me more comfortable with the medium and its tools, but at heart I'm not a painter, nor hope to be. True, a few brushes of different sizes are useful for this and that, but once they've been de-mothed, most of my brushes will leave the building.

For completeness, one more photo - the container holds the brushes that I've actually been using -

Clothes moths (Tineola bisselliella) hate the light; the the larvae like to be dark and undisturbed while munching on sweaty fabrics and food stains, so these brushes, which sit on the shelf and get regular washing, are safe from them.

Disappointing, but not entirely wasted effort

Gone Shopping, 2015

A friend told me about a call for entry from Canada that sounded right up my street - art created on public transit. So, I created some art on public transit, making "travel lines" (aka travel-writing and journey lines) on tubes and buses and the Overground, like I've been doing for about five years now (intermittently). I experimented with different kinds of paper, pre-treated in different ways, and thought some more about What Does It All Mean. All good fun.

My images were ready before the deadline. I put them on a website, as requested in the submission rules (as sent to me by the friend) - and while re-reading those rules, suddenly noticed the link to a website with more information. Ah. Looking at the website, it was immediately apparent that  my work wasn't quite right, in fact it was totally off the wall ... they want faces of commuters, basically - art that will be interesting to other commuters when shown on screens on subway platforms.

I'm so glad I didn't look at the website earlier - or else I wouldn't have made the work. Now, something exists that surprises me and is a "development" - I'm interested in the  travel lines theme again. Perhaps it can go even further, who knows, in the next five years.

Plus, links on the website led to other artwork that's being made (and commissioned) to adorn public transit systems. http://vimeo.com/69673716 is a trailer for "Advice for the Living" - people over 70 and under 7 give us nuggets of wisdom: "Eat breakfast after ... bedtime" says one young sweetie.

The "The things we lose" project looks good too (http://vimeo.com/106426256?from=outro-local).

Here in the UK, we have occasional uprisings of multitudinous public art, usually on public transit - Many of the "art is everywhere" posters supplied by the Art Fund were in train stations around the country. London has Poetry on the Underground ... and every now and then a new Art on the Underground project ...

Obviously there's no chance, with this submission, of being given a second look, but I sent my link and statement along anyway. The aim of the exercise, its mark of completion, was to submit the work, and in order to do that, to make work. Tick that box.

Another insight was discovering, after the work was made, a great lump of reluctance to make the small further effort of checking the guidelines and doing the actual submitting. Usually I'm right up against the deadline, so there's simply no time to be reluctant - do it now or miss the boat. This time, with a week in hand, I kept putting it off - the "oh I'll do it tomorrow first thing" promise that keeps getting broken. Shocking behaviour in an adult, don't you think? What would your advice be?

1600 chairs

Or maybe only 1550. The place: Istanbul. The artist: Doris Salcedo. Her theme: Art as repair.

" In 2002, Salcedo placed 280 chairs at the Palace of Justice in Bogotá "to pay homage to those killed here in a failed guerrilla coup seventeen years earlier." In 2003, she filled the Istanbul Biennial space between two buildings with 1,550 chairs "evoking the masses of faceless migrants who underpin our globalised economy."

"Salcedo's work provokes many questions after a first look, but she does provide answers to the mystery. The approach she takes to portraying these messages are unique and bold although she is using everyday objects like chairs."

Image via pinterest, text via mymodernmet.