Nostalgia, A Day With The ROI, Streatley Lock

Nostalgia.  I am all for a bit of nostalgia: in life definitely and sometimes in paintings.  In 2 weeks time I will be meeting up with other members of 'Rhine 35', our platoon at Sandhurst.  It will be 50 years since we went there as 18-year-old hopefuls.  Rummaging through my records I found this shot of 6 of us after we had completed the 'Teddy Bear' parachute course - exclusive to Sandhurst cadets and designed to give us a taste of what it would be like to serve in Airborne Forces.  I am top right and Edward Bear himself (the course mascot) is centre stage with his parachute.

Kevin flew Army helicopters; Mike left the Durhams after the Borneo campaign and made millions on the NY stock Exchange; Brian became a successful businessman but died of cancer a few years ago; Rick became a Tankie but then took up flying and still runs his own outfit in the USA; Ian left the Royal Signals to become a specialist in auditing and rescuing failed businesses. I was the only one who ended up as a parachute soldier and I count it a great privilege to have been part of the 'Maroon Machine'. There were 24 of us in the platoon and well over half of us are able to come to the re-union, together with our partners.

ROI.  On 4 September 8 of us met up at the Winsor and Newton HQ for a ROI Friends day: three full ROI members, 2 Associate members and three of us who are 'Friends of the ROI'.  We had a lot of fun but I felt decidedly rusty.  As well as five sessions painting each other (we ran out of time for all 8 of us to 'sit') we had a very interesting - and impressive - tour of the labs from W&N's chief chemist.

I was able to paint four of the others but then had to 'sit' myself, so the following 30-minute sketches are of Tim Benson VPROI, Ian Cryer PROI, Adebanji Alade AROI and Pauline Hazlewood.  The others painting were David Pilgrim ROI, Tony Merrick AROI and Ric Holmes (Wapping Group):

Tim  - 30 mins

Ian - 30 mins

Adebanji - 30 mins

Pauline - 30 mins

Poor Pauline said I made her look like a witch and it's true but 30 minutes is no time at all for major adjustments - you just slap the stuff on and hope that you are seeing things right.  I was tired by then and not concentrating but one has to be honest about failures.  If you want a cracking portrait of Pauline then look no further than 'Camisa a Quadros' - her self-portrait that was selected for the 2008 BP Award show at the National Portrait Gallery: it is superb.

Of these I think my best effort was actually Ian, with his typical Winston Churchill 'we will fight them on the beaches' look.

Streatley.  The following day was light relief.  Mike Worthington and I drove to Streatley to try finding a bit of the Thames worth painting.  After much faffing - absolutely necessary when no previous reconnaissance has been done - we settled on a view of the North side of Streatley Lock:

Streatley Lock 7x10

Contre jour so a little 'bleached out'.

Then after a very pleasant pint of Holt's in the local pub we went round to the South side:

Streatley Lock 10x7 

I wish I had taken the trouble to put some of the visitors in - it looks a bit deserted and in fact was bustling with life. It is a lovely area and now we have had a good look round it will be on our 'hit list'.

Westonbirt

We go to Westonbirt School every year for the Armed Forces Christian Union houseparty, taking my schizophrenic brother-in-law, Charlie, with us.  After a heart operation and a new hip Charlie was in better shape than he has been for many a year.  The school grounds are one half of the old Holford family estate - the other being the now-famous arboretum across the main road.  I love painting in the peaceful surroundings of Westonbirt School.  The Italian Garden is a particular favourite and this time almost all my paintings were made there.

On Monday 26th August I caught Pat Warwood against the dark background of the East Pavilion:

Pat In The Italianate Garden

11x7 inches

Much of the stonework in the garden needs extensive renovation.  The lily pond with its two 'fish fountains' will get some tlc soon but for the time being one fountain is dry and the other just dribbles:

Fish Fountain, Westonbirt

10x7

As always it seems, some of my best work is done on very small panels.  In this one I caught the evening sun on the East Pavilion:

East Pavilion, Late Afternoon

7x5 inches

My camera does not take greens well - the greens just aren't that violent in the actual painting.  This one suffers from the same problem:

 West Pavilion with Ghastly Green Lawn

11x7

This one of the school building in the early morning does not suffer in the same way:

Early Morning, Westonbirt

10x7

There is a large round pond with an old fountain in another part of the grounds.   Again the camera seems to have done something odd with the dark passages.

:

Old Pond, Westonbirt

10x7

I did a lot of sketching - mostly pen and brush-pen on primed card such as this one:

Rear Facade from the East

Pen and brush-pen

On the last day I did one more of the Italianate Garden - a general view  'just for the record':

The Italianate Garden, Afternoon

10x7

I gave Pat the one of her but will perhaps keep the image so that I can work up something more resolved in the studio.  

Mid-week we went to have lunch with Valérie Pirlot in Bath.  It was lovely to see her looking so well and once the baby (girl) is born I am sure she will be back at the easel with re-doubled enthusiasm! 

Hook Norton

Two days after our return from Canada, Michael Worthington bundled me into his car and we set off for North Oxfordshire.  The weather was brilliant at first and we chose a spot above Swerford for our first painting:

Fields Above Swerford

11x7 inches

After lunch we did a lot of walking, trying to get a good angle on the Hook Norton brewery.  I think this might go well in winter as there is rather a lot of green in the scene at this time of year:

Hook Norton Brewery

7x10

This sketch supports my belief that on some days you should stop after the first painting!  Still it did give us a feel for what was in the area and I think we will return there.  It was nice to be back on familiar ground - all those lodgepole pines in Canada were beginning to bug me!

Canada

My Canadian nephew Thomas was marrying Allison, from a Ukranian Orthodox family.  Five of us went over to Edmonton in late July to join in.  Pat Galbraith, who is the founding president of the Alberta Society of Sculptors, offered to put us up.  It would be hard to think of anyone kinder than Pat.  She lives in the Belgravia part of Old Strathcona - across the North Saskatchewan River from downtown Edmonton. Her house is huge and like an art gallery inside so we were very happy there!

In between all the wedding events, including a fascinating Orthodox wedding (I had never witnessed one before) I would sneak up to 82nd Avenue and paint small oil sketches.  82nd - or Whyte - Avenue is the oldest and most 'alternative' district, with very different shops and restaurants from the steel and glass monstrosities of downtown.  I did half a dozen paintings there and here are 2 of them:

 'Divine' 82nd Avenue 

10x7 inches

Sidewalk Closed, 104th Street

 7x10inches

The river divides Edmonton so is always a presence:

The North Saskatchewan River at Edmonton

5x7 inches

The back alley at Pat's house also provided the subject for a couple of quick sketches.  This is one of them: 

Back Alley, 72nd Ave, Edmonton

10x7 inches

 On 29th July, after the last wedding social was over, we headed out to the Rockies, to Lake Louise - me, Maddy, Ben, Fran and Robert.  We did a lot of walking and climbing in the following two weeks, including climbing Mt Niblock and Eiffel Peak and a great day's rock-climbing on the huge crag at the back of Lake Louise.  Leading the last climb I did actually wonder if I should still be risking my neck in that way (I nearly took a long fall on the final 20 feet) but I get such a buzz from it and the rock there is perfect.  We also toured around doing all the usual touristy things, including revisiting our favourite restaurant in Banff - The Coyote - and going to an exhibition entitled 'Pleinairism' in Banff's Walter Phillips Gallery.  Anything less to do with our idea of en plein air would be hard to imagine - I was deeply underwhelmed except for the token presence of three superb Walter Phillips watercolours.

When I was not brewing water on the Kelly Kettle (my camp job) or sitting sipping coffee in Laggans Bakery I painted.  I did 15 small oils in the Lake Louise area so here is a selection.  First the inevitable ones of the Lake itself.

Lake Louise From The Boathouse

11x7 inches

While I was painting this and Maddy relaxed in the sun we met Bruce Bembridge, a heritage guide who is a bit of a legend in these parts and happened also to be a friend of Pat.

This one was done after a day on the rock.  You can see the 'Back-Of-The-Lake' crag on the right.  On a good day it is swarming with climbers.

Mt Aberdeen and BOL Crag

11x7 inches

The official photographer for the Boathouse very kindly took a picture of me painting there.  I used an old fashioned tripod with swivel head and yet another homemade 'palette-easel' with 7 inch wide boards.  The boards were stored in two foamboard-balsawood-gaffer tape boxes copied from a Mike Richardson design.  The tripod-easel assembly weighed just over a kilo and all my kit fitted easily into a small rucksac.  The boards were rag board, triple-primed front back and sides and light enough to be stuck to the easel with double-sided tape (actually masking tape wrapped round itself):

Down at the camp ground, regularly visited by a pair of young Grizzlies so we had to keep a lookout, I did several sketches of the Bow River:

Bow River from beneath the Campground Bridge 

7x10

Bow River from the Campground Bridge

10x7

Including this tiny one:

Fishing The Bow River

5x7 inches

One morning I got up early and caught Mount Temple in sunshine - a rare sight at the start of our stay although on the last few days we had brilliant weather:

Mt Temple from Lake Louise Village

7x10 inches

Mt Temple is a big beast (11,200 feet a.s.l) that Fran and I climbed 4 years ago but like most Rockies peaks it is incredibly loose and the vertical interval from Moraine Lake (15,000 feet up and down) makes it a very long day.  Some of my best efforts were the tiny ones.  This one of the railway tracks near the campground was done in minutes and with just a few strokes but I think I caught the scene better than many of the more 'finished' sketches: 

Railway Tracks, Lake Louise Village

5x7 inches

Well, that is probably enough to give you an idea of what we did.  I also filled a sketchbook and  took photographs so I hope to work up some of the sketches into larger studio paintings in due course.  The Edmonton Bookstore sold me enough books on Fred Varley, AY Jackson and the rest of the Group of Seven to warrant buying an extra baggage allowance on the flight home so I have a lot of reading to do too!  We returned on 15th August.

Gold And Blue

I love the Wilton Diptych - not quite as much as the Lippi Annunciation in the National Gallery but you go past one to get to the other.  It is the blue and gold combination that gets me I think.  I tried it on two pieces I did for our contemporary show 'Out of Line' at the Mall Galleries last week: part of the Armed Forces Art Society's double act (the regular show and Out of Line were on together).

I was inspired by the work of one of our finest poets, Pauline Stainer.  Here is the first piece, called The Wound-dresser's Dream in artificial light:  It contains small quotes from Keats and Pauline's poem with that title.

The Wound-dresser's Dream 

15x15 inches, oil and gold leaf.

It looks different in daylight:

My other piece is The Ice Pilot Speaks.  This time I added some acrylic image transfers, some from book illustrations, in the under-painting, then painted into them:

The Ice Pilot Speaks

15x15 inches, oil and gold leaf

I had to produce a statement about the pieces and here is an extract:

The starting point for The Wound-dresser’s Dream is the poet John Keats’ wish to become a naval surgeon.  In those days the Royal Navy was the principal explorer of the Polar Regions and I imagine that Pauline, with her deep knowledge of things at the edge of human experience, has chosen ‘arctic’ imagery for that reason.  As someone who has led exploring expeditions to the Arctic and indeed had the privilege of naming parts of it, I felt a great connection to this poem and a need to explore my own reaction to it.

The Ice-pilot Speaks also connected to me through its polar references.  Captain Bob Bartlett, who is taking a sun shot in my painting, was one of the most famous and accomplished ice-pilots of the Arctic region - alongside Parry, Sverdrup and Rasmussen.   On these men explorers like Nansen and Peary depended utterly for safe passage.  Those who have been to Ultima Thule and beyond will be familiar with the precarious balance between life and death in the Polar Regions that Pauline describes.  I wanted to capture something of that.  I also enjoyed incorporating some of the other ideas in this long poem – hence the Klimt-like reference to love-making, St Brendan sailing through the ‘O’ and other references.  

This week I have been trying to finish a portrait commission and I feel that I am beginning to get there.  It is of Michael El Kassir, a Lebanese gentleman who passed away a few years ago.  I have done my best with it from a small photograph but would much rather have had a 'sitter'!

Michael El Kassir

24x20 inches, oil on board

As at 22 Jul 13

I have now left it, framed, with Michael's son to see if the family can live with it.  Then I will finish it.

Pintar Rapido

Chelsea on Saturday 13 July was full of artists - nearly 400 of us registered for this event and I think at least 150 turned up - from UK and all over Europe it seems.  I met some delightful people from Norway, Latvia and Germany on my patch.

I dithered about using oils or acrylics.  I asked Adebanji Alade and he said he was probably taking acrylics but I reckon that the painting he did that won the main prize was done in oils - I will have to ask!  I took Atelier acrylics - big mistake.  It was such a hot day that I spent all my time trying to re-open partially dried paint.  No matter how much I sprayed the stuff I was constantly having to remix paint and apply it to layers already 'sticky-dry'.  In a way it was worse than traditional acrylics because for them I would have taken my Staywet palette (rather than a sheet of plastic) and probably managed to keep mixes moist.  One lives and learns.

The other lesson I re-learned was that the Thames is tidal.  Of course I know that very well but in the heat of the moment I forgot.  On my last painting I kept adjusting my preliminary work (thinking what a bad drawing it had been) until I realised that the boats were all rising against the background of the bridge and I should have just stuck with the original design!

We could paint as many pictures as we liked but only one would be allowed in Sunday's show.  I managed three small panels and when I went to collect the one I submitted it had been sold, so I only have a thumbnail of the design in my sketchbook:

That was my second one.  The first was painted looking North down the road to the Albert Bridge.  Roger Dellar also painted this scene from further back:

Towards the Albert Bridge

My last picture was done near the bridge:

Boats and The Albert Bridge

I noticed a few gems at the show.  The ones I remember were by Marion Wilcox, Adebanji, Roger, Rob Adams and my favourite - a shopfront by Roy Connelly.  There were also some good watercolours including an impressive and large painting of the long view down the Thames but we all had fun and it was great to see what everyone had been up to during the day.  I hope they run it again.

New Tubes For Old

Aladdin for Artists? Maybe.  I need some very small quantities of infrequently used oil colours to take with me on the Canadian Rockies trip in early August.  I have some big empty tubes but no tiny ones.  Here is how I tackled the problem.

I had some old Reeves small tubes of watercolour - so old that they were beginning to harden inside the tube.  I cut them in half so that I had the cap, top and about 1 or 2 centimetres of the body left  (I pressed the remaining colour into homemade pans). It was an easy matter to clean out the tube and cap with a penknife and warm water.  I then got some 60mm wide sticky aluminium tape - I think I bought mine for repairing a gutter - and cut off a short length.  I peeled off the backing but left enough so that when the tape was rolled round the remains of the tube, the backing acted as a lining.  Then I rolled the tape round the old tube and used the body of an old biro to help re-shape the tube to roundness.  Now I had an empty tube.

With the cap on I filled the new tube body, using a piece of doweling to push the oil paint firmly into the tube so that there were no air gaps (you can take the cap off to allow some of the paint to escape thus ensuring a good fill).  I folded the end of the tube in the normal manner and labelled it.

The following picture shows, from left to right: sawn off and cleaned old tubes, Aluminium tape, new empty tubes and new full tube.  The whole operation takes about 20 minutes and you waste some paint but if weight and bulk are an issue then it is worth it.

You can use just about any old tube that can be cleaned out: I have recently used balsa cement tubes.  The full tube in the picture is one from a watercolour set I bought in Hong Kong in 1975!  I don't suppose that the paint will last forever in these makeshift tubes but they will be very convenient when I am carrying everything up a mountain.