River

I've been regularly enjoying playing the piano.  Taught myself to play to a reasonable standard over the last year.  I already know how to read music, so it wasn't like I was starting from scratch.  The knock-on effect has been that my sight-reading has improved too - I know the bass clef well enough now, I don't to have to look up what the notes are anymore :)

I'm an avid charity shop scavenger of piano tidbits these days, as well as recently discovering the joys of digital downloads.   I have to watch out for song arrangements that carry the tune in the piano treble clef as well as provide the vocal line.  I think it's unnecessary if you sing along.  I prefer to have the piano provide the harmony alone and not the tune as well.  I like to think I can sing that part myself!

I decided that this winter I would learn pieces that mark the season, so aside from xmas carols, I'm studying Winter by Tori Amos, What Are You Doing This New Year's Eve by Frank Loesser and River by Joni Mitchell.

River is the first one I'm tackling, 'cause I love Joni Mitchell's music so much.  I've already had a go at Rainy Night House.  Bought a book of her music, entitled Anthology, but this was disappointing as all the glorious piano introductions are truncated AND each piece carries the tune in the piano accompaniment (tsk...).  Thankfully, I bought it from Amazon for £5, so it's no financial loss.

Downloaded better arrangements from Music Notes, though there are still segues from verse to verse that don't follow the recording.  I've been pasting portions of blank manuscript over these and correcting the piano part to what I hear on the album.  Reading the blurb on the digital manuscript, this action is illegal. Hmmm...

SS - a sketch

I was working with clients on their Cotswolds holiday last week and on one particular day, a visit to Worcester Cathedral, I forgot to pack the camera.  However, 'cause I carry my sketchbook everywhere, I attempted a quick portrait.  I think it's kosher to do that, right?  I'm not broadcasting his identity, I'm not breaking confidentiality, am I?  If I am, tell me so.  Anyway, here it is.  I'm proud of this sketch.

Magpie - Natural History Museum, London

I travelled by train to London on 5th September, specifically to go see a play Up4AMeet in Waterloo.  I also thought I'd visit the Natural History Museum for the FIRST TIME in my life and check out their magpie exhibit.

On the train, I tried to draw a stylised dandelion head.  Work in progress, it looks a bit like an allium...

I don't know how to convey what a thrill it was to enter the building.  Its already impressive red stone façade doesn't prepare you for the delights inside.  I couldn't wipe the smile off my face, taking in its vaulted ceilings, carved wooden interiors.  I sat eating my lunch in the café, gazing up at the ceiling of plant genuses.  A beautiful, magical place.

I followed the signs to the bird exhibits and the first reference to a magpie was a tail in a cabinet of bird portions (how else would you describe it?): heads, wings, claws and this tail section.

I took out my sketch book and pencil, dropped my bag to the floor between my feet and began to sketch those feathers.  Can I say at this juncture - the cabinet was bathed in natural light, no poking around in the dark here, thank you very much (take note, Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery).

Halfway through drawing that magpie tail, tiny stroke after tiny stroke, studying the light, I shed a tear. I was overcome with the concentration and the reward of seeing what I was creating come to life.  I surprised myself, truly I did. Around me the chatter of passing people became almost rhythmic - thanks to movie influences - as penguins, owls and parrots were routinely pointed out to young children...

A few people stopped to chat or to compliment my work, which was nice.  I had a lovely chat with a spanish student who asked me intelligent questions and conveyed her own interest in drawing people and fabric folds.  She looked through my sketchbook and it was one of those moments you feel understood.  Yeah, understood.

A surprise was to bump into Michelle Cioccoloni, whom I knew from Bristol Drawing Club. I didn't know she'd moved to London - and there we were together!

After drawing non-stop for TWO AND A HALF HOURS (I hadn't noticed the passage of time, so engrossed I had become) I packed up my stuff and stepped outside into brilliant sunshine.  It was there that I burst into tears.  It took a while to compose myself. I must have looked an idiot, leant over the wall sobbing into my hands.  Something in that period of time had moved me.  Some process other than drawing had occurred and I couldn't work it out.

Finally pulled myself together to order a coffee and a cake and sat in the sunshine.  Michelle found me again.  She told me a bit about the exhibition she'd been to - the one with plastinated, stripped down animals (Gunther Von Hagen).  I tried to explain the effect drawing the magpie tail had had one me.  I'm not religious, but it was a spiritual experience, in a way it fed my soul to immerse myself in studying and sketching for that period of time.  For the second time that day, it was so good to talk with someone who understands where you're coming from.

Ok, here's the sketch.

I'm definitely going back to the Natural History Museum.

More daisy duty

The following day, Sunday 19th August, I sketched more of the same daisies, this time from my own garden.

A couple of weeks later, I visited the scene of the crime, looking at architectural features I could include in the background of 'Minnie'.  Time wasn't on my side, so I'll have to revisit the gardens another time.

See No Evil & Magpie

I spent quite a bit of Saturday 18th August engaged in art.  First of all, I visited this year's See No Evil in Nelson Street.  It's not all new stuff, some of the superior pieces have been saved, while the new ones continue their quality, raising the overall calibre of art from last year - in my opinion.

I left there to climb Park Street and visit the stuffed animals in Bristol's Museum and Art Gallery.  I was seeking a magpie to sketch, to understand its structure more, but what I found was a bit disappointing.  The light is dreadfully low around the exhibits, so it was impossible to capture much detail.  It was hard work to focus in such low light conditions,  I suppose it's to protect the specimens (though, visiting London's Natural History museum later in the year, I had cause to question that as the reason...)

Flowers - Daisies

I was visiting Dad three days later and entered the garden to sketch flowers.  The garden holds very much Mum's choice of plants.  I sketched the daisies, trying to grasp a stylised version of them, rather than be slavishly true to their construction. It is difficult, though I've seen many artists render daisies very simply and effectively - you know that you're looking at daisies!

I surrounded them with thick lines, throwing the off white petals into relief.  I think it's a throwback from creating linocuts :)  I experimented with a little watercolour.

Flowers will form a frame around Mum and me, claustrophobic, symbolic.

Minnie the Moocher

I had my first idea for the format of the painting on 9th August.  Mum is reaching for the poppy head, her handbag poised to conceal her treasure.  Initially I was blindfolded, but at the time I was shocked by her action and fearful of getting caught, so I need to communicate that.

Joey Arias

The main event for my day in London, August 8th, was to finally see the New York cabaret artist Joey Arias perform his Billie Holiday act as an invited guest at Antony Hegarty's Southbank Meltdown.

I first witnessed his mannered impersonation of the black american jazz singer a long time ago, during one music segment of GaytimeTV on BBC2 (early 90s?) - Good Morning Heartache was the song and his delivery was spot on and SPOOKY.

So, twenty years (and then some) down the line, I'm no longer the young guy getting a buzz from having gay topics broadcast on national tv, I'm fifty-something, drunk on two (or three) large glasses of white wine, and I'm sat in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, with Lou Reed and Kim Cattrall almost breathing down my neck in the row behind me (stop looking back at them).

The lights go down after Antony takes his seat in my row (stop looking over at him) and the trio of drums, piano and upright bass stir us up for Joey's arrival on stage.  He walks on in a black, extremely close-fitting fish-tailed gown - a more statuesque figure I've never seen - a gives a bravura performance.  Well worth the wait.  The only concession to more modern material is to include The Beatles(!), but he excels in reviving the Lady in Satin's back catalogue.

He got a very warm reception.  Obviously some queens got a bit out of hand shouting how much they love him, but then - who hasn't done that?

Joey Arias has pedigree, there is no doubt when you see him perform.  He even has, in the past, sung back up vocals for David Bowie - in the company of Klaus Nomi, no less.  Unfortunately the entire Saturday Night Live performance has disappeared from YouTube and we're left with this snippet.

BP Portrait Award 2012

Earlier that day, I went to the National Portrait gallery to see the finalists and prize-winners of the BP Portraits Award.

There were a lot of photo-realistic portraits, as usual on enormous canvasses.  Some too clever for their own good - there's a point when you can no longer 'ooh...' each moist eye, short depth of field image.  I am continually swinging between favouring loose interpretations of a subject and pin-sharp representations.

I will say I liked 'The skateboarder' by Erik Olson for its broad bold execution and that it is a piece broken down by zones of light and shadow.

Ben Ashton's 'Lindsay Lohan' has delicate detail and fine brushwork to produce a small, but photo-realistic self-portrait.

Ian Cumberland's unsettling portrait (of domestic abuse?) 'Today You Were Far Away'.

Lastly, Jean-Paul Tibbles 'Self-Portrait'

This was one of several paintings that was accompanied by a description of the process of creating a piece from drawings, preliminary sketches, photographs and sittings before the final painting is attempted.  As a novice I found that really helpful information.  Naive to think they'd sit down and rattle off a self-portrait without research and preparation...

I am struggling with the concept of using photos.  Where do you draw the line between letting a photo influence your creativity?  I suspect the photo-realistic paintings go too far, for my taste.  Or am I jealous of the skill that result requires?

Edvard Munch at Tate Modern

I also visited the Edvard Munch exhibition, the same day as the Hirst exhibition.  A great deal of self portraits charting a lifetime preoccupation of his, and the development of a handful of other works that became repetitious and led to my boredom.  Lots of things to take in, too much as usual.  Of the few paintings in the exhibition I saw style and colour similarities with the impressionist movement and specifically Van Gogh.  Other than that, I found myself ploughing through.  This skimming was exacerbated by desire to remove myself from the intrusion of people taking photos where they were requested not to - I found this enormously distracting and frustrating.

Tate Modern and a bit more about Hirst

I took a day trip to London on 8th August, specifically to see Joey Arias perform at Antony Hegarty's Southbank Meltdown (more of that later) and to visit Tate Modern.  I've mentioned Damien Hirst already, but I have to say something about the exhibition sizes at Tate Modern.

Quite often I find the major exhibitions at the Modern too much to take in.  They are immense and the stimulation is too great.  I stop seeing when my eyes have had enough.  It happened with the Paul Gaugain exhibition, amongst others.  The Damien Hirst was no exception.

I went into the exhibition expecting to understand Hirst better.  After I had visited the Francis Bacon exhibition at Tate Britain, I felt I was more familiar with Bacon's expressive style, felt more in tune, felt able to let him in, make contact with what he was presenting.  I didn't get that impression by the end of the Hirst exhibition.  For a start there was a sense of progress in what Bacon was achieving through his art.  I wasn't aware of that at the Hirst exhibition.  In addition, art that is the arrangement of items produced by others leaves me cold.

Oh, the loose threads

I'm working on another catch-up for the blog today, which will be useful in documenting recent exposure to other people's activities and those of my own.  Forgive the back-pedalling, but I think it'll be useful for moving on.