Dedicated to the dreamer/doers such as David Mayne, Mick Kirkby Geddes and Helaina Sharpley. This post was also inspired by my sister-in-law Jo asking me to do a painting of one of my sculptures. It has a free idea for any of the above artists to use.
About 67 years ago when I was around 7, I was wandering through the hectic school playground and one lad was sat on the hard ground, next to the wall with railings on the top, sketching a Cowboys and Indians scene. I never quite understood the fascination with the topic but the picture of the sense of movement and activity has stayed with me ever since. I now realise that I’ve been trying to capture some of that all my life. All those attempts over all those years have only ever felt partially successful but I keep trying. Other people have more attention to detail, a better inner vision and less shaky hands. I do often look back and think that something is better than I originally thought and people often say they like what I’ve produced. I try hard to ignore the look of those just don’t get it or see only the rough edges.
This is a recent painting of mine. I hope you can see the similarity to what I’ve described.
This is a sculpture I did first for our garden. This one, that Jo wants me to paint, is down in their garden in Bristol.
It was as I thought about how best to capture it in a painting that the clarity of the sketch/movement theme came to mind. Added to that is light. Below are a couple of David Mayne’s sculptures, which we have instinctively put against the light. Excuse the cobwebs. David plays with both light and movement.
Helaina describes her sculpture as drawing with wire and she attempts to capture the everyday using just wire. She also plays with light by putting the result in a white box. A theme of Helaina’s is also the delight in the everyday. I’ll let you look at here website but here are some that I did at a workshop she ran.
I hope you are picking up the threads here. My paintings have also been likened to Stanley Spencer and Lowry. Not in quality I hasten to add.
So what is the idea? Well the kite sculpture is against a sunset, as is the Dunraven painting. I recently did one of Morris dancers dancing up the dawn as well. So I’ll go back to trying to work out how best to paint the kite and I leave it for David and Helaina. or anyone else, to produce moving, living sculptures of the everyday by backlighting them with a subtle sky line and light. If you can capture for me skylarks and their noise as you walk across the moors then even better.