I had a discussion the other day about the fact that people often pay good money to have something look like it has rusted with age, the fashionable use of Corten steel being an example. I have a love of letting sculptures develop as they will over the years, with minimal interference and restoration. Wooden ones sometimes need more attention but I love the way the metal ones change. Different metals have different characteristics and alloying and oxidisation processes affect that. I think the sculptures have a better feel and texture if left to evolve, with minimal interference, though lately I have been using a weak oil paint and linseed oil mix on parts of them to slow and subtly alter the changes.
I’ve just hired time in David Mayne’s sculpture studio to realise a dream I didn’t really know I had. I’ve often told visitors to Yorkshire Sculpture Park about people metaphorically patting me on the head for sculpture I made when I was 16 and then looking around at the professional SCULPTURES. I couldn’t see how I could move into that world and moved on.
Sculpture by a sixteen year old
After making a few metal sculptures in recent years, I had a vision of making up a group and decided to indulge myself.
I’d recently made two butterflies based on the Ringlet and they seemed to please others as well. One of them was left by its new owner to quietly oxidise by itself which will look more like the Ringlet, which is brown. After installing the second and looking at the way the light worked on it, I decided to experiment with putting a weak mixture of yellow ochre and linseed oil on the butterfly and sap green in the case of the leaf. That has worked well, changing the subtle effects of the heat worked markings and slowing the ageing process but not stopping it and not having an enameled surface that will later flake.
I decided to do a set of ten based on the Ringlet again and also the Comma. Here is the result grouped in the corridor at The Sculpture Lounge.
The stands allow them to be displayed on a flat surface, where they can be bolted down if required. Equally they can stand on soil and the rod goes through the stand to anchor further into the soil. Tent pegs can also be used with the cross pieces (we live in a windy garden).
Here is a shorter one in the flower bed by our kitchen. The leaf is temporarily yellow with some oil paint and the sun. It will slowly change colour.
Unlike the Ringlet, the Comma is quite bright yellow or orange on the upper side of the wing. The lower side is dull and brown, so that they look like a dead leaf when the wings are closed. Clever eh? I have started patination experiments on the same lines to give a gentle aging and earlier colour indication.
Chimp keeping up with the craze for grass in the ear decoration
That picture is serious. Scientists have discovered that chimps adopt self decoration fads and crazes like grass in the ear.
This first bit of our art history covers a nice vague stretch from ‘the beginning’ to some time over three thousand years ago. As the latest indications are that hominids and probably Home Sapiens have been making tools since around 2.7 million years ago, that is a long time. Indications are also that different types of hominids overlapped, and in some cases, interbred for a lot longer than previously thought, so the history isn’t limited to Homo Sapiens.
Those early tools were made for over 300,000 years in the area around Kenya ( even since I first wrote this the date has been put back further). That means that there was a consistent culture passing on ideas and skills. As animals use gestures props to impress others, it is highly likely that humanoid groups did the same. Unfortunately evidence is slim. Apart from rare preservation of specimens (like Ötzi, the Alpine hunter preserved in ice from around 5,000 years ago), most artifacts made by early people are hard to find. The most commonly preserved things are hard materials like bone, stone and metal. Metal items particularly can be associated with richer individuals. Even large objects, such as canoes, are rare. The earliest so far, 10,000 years ago, is quite likely not the first. Items used by everyday people may not be as long lasting.
The earliest known musical instrument is a flute from around 50,000 years ago but even before that there may have been less robust noise makers and alongside that people will have vocalised and danced. They will almost certainly also have decorated themselves in some way.
In Australia indigenous art dates back beyond 20,000 years and that is from a people who had to migrate over millennia before they got to Australia. Discoveries are still being made using better dating techniques and both in Australia and Indonesia it is thought that examples may date from over 50,000 years ago.
When talking to people about art, I often mischieviosly refer to larger artworks and buildings as Totalitarian art. By this I mean work where someone has so much power and ego that they can commision art that is grandiose. Even today bigger scale art is given more respect than that of more modest size. Unfortunately people often admire this sort of art without thinking too much about the conditions involved in its production. I think all forms of craft and art have value. Some just grab you visually or emotionally and this effect varies from person to person. Some have more intellectual content or more subtle emotional effect than others and these often benefit from more study. No matter what the artist puts into the work, or intends us to think about it, it can sometimes be completely at odds with what people take from it. Interpretation is a personal and difficult thing. The further back in time we go, and the further from our own cultural assumptions, the more we need to take care before judging the work.
This post is a work in progress and I will add some visual examples of work and more detailed discussion to it over time.
Below is a list of selected early artifacts by date. The obvious, non building, art is in bold, but there will be art in later buildings, such as Knossos.
Ignoring the lists, categories, reviews and other opinions
I once heard a Blackbird imitating the ‘Captain Pugwash’ theme music, because it had been played so often on on a friend’s personal pirate radio station. The Blackbird didn’t call it Art, but many humans would have no hesitation in calling their own efforts at such imitation Art. Other birds create what many high minded artists would call Installations, to make courtship displays. Who amongst us that do art isn’t partly trying to impress others in the same way?
Mischievously, I have taken to saying about human art that it all went wrong when we stopped painting on rock walls. In the history of rock and wall paintings we have work that is observational, has elements of positioning and design, depicts heroism and teamwork, invokes spirits and memory, employs abstraction and symbolism and is also simply, stunningly, beautiful and skillful.
Just like Evolution has constantly kept re-inventing the crab, because it works, humans have reinvented ways of making art. To some extent this is often because part of showing off can involve denigrating previous efforts but there also exist a set of humans who don’t make their name by creating art but by listing, categorising, championing and judging it. One of our key historical sources on renaissance art is Vasari’s ‘Lives of the Artists’. It does all of those things and also gossips, passes on myths and has always to be taken with a pinch of salt. Incidentally Vasari does mention some women artists but makes the usual assumptions about their art being less philosophical or heroic. As another aside, for those of you interested in the renaissance, if you look hard enough you can find the tax records of Florencians on line. They are full of fascinating pleas to pay less tax because life has been so hard recently.
When I was at school and first thinking about art as something I did and should know more about, I won the Biology prize and asked for The Story of Art by E.H. Gombrich. It was the first of many opinions and lists that I have studied over the years. What has become clearer to me with each thing I read is that a good degree of scepticism is required with all opinions (including mine of course). During years talking to people about art at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, I’ve had some wonderful discussions and received interesting insights from others. I’ve also seen the light come on in people’s eyes when I give them an insight and permission to have an opinion, as long as they recognise that others might not agree and that better understanding often enriches experience.
The aim of what I am writing here is to help you see things more clearly with the aid of my lifetime’s experience of designing, creating, looking at and reading about, all forms of art and craft. Over time I hope to add to this post by highlighting some bits of the history to pass on some of that experience and knowledge to anyone reading. It will not be a long and specific list of art works. I want to widen the dialogue to include groups who are often left out of the story and to open our minds to let us do things without having to pay homage to particular ways of looking at the world. I have come to believe that we should respect what and who are around us and do our best to create what shows that respect and also tries to add our own perspectives and feelings to whatever we produce.
I’ve been to the Sculpture lounge before to make sculptures with Mick Kirkby Geddes and David Mayne but this last weekend highlighted just how good they are as guides through this creative process.
Four people with different levels of experience and all of us guided through the choices very capably and skilfully. On the second day I was having a particularly trying day and making mistakes. Even though I don’t usually require large amounts of help, their joint radar was working all the time and gentle advice would appear at the right time.
I was making a design change to a previous mobile piece, then moving on to a butterfly on a garden obelisk for a friend. Both of these went well and were finished by the end of the first day. Ruth loved the butterfly and asked for on to go on top of one of our obelisks. Next day I got busy, but was tired and kept making mistakes. Cue David and Mick spotting my slips and digging me out of them.
The one above and immediately below is the one in our garden. I’ve added a transparent layer of green oil paint to the leaf since I first put it up, to tone it down a bit in bright light.
Sadly one of our cherry trees had become dangerously likely to split because of bark inclusion. It generated a lot of wood of one sort or another and a pile of wood chip for the garden paths. In amongst that I’m managing to find a toad and lily pads inside the tree remains. To be continued, as the wood dries.
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.
After several years of problems with Arthritis, I’ve been having to reassess some of my creative activities. I’ve given up chair-making, I’m less physical in the garden and sculpture may tail off from now on. I’ve been concentrating on painting but until I joined https://www.shelleyartgroup.com/ I’d been a drifting a bit. Here’s one on Fungi that has been well received:
Here’s one on our obsession with cars that is still ongoing:
I’ve also come to a decision about my involvement with Yorkshire Sculpture Park. I’ve been talking to people about creativity informally at YSP for around 40 years, but around 15 years ago I started taking tours round there, doing the same. Apart from hip replacements I have been doing that ever since till last year. I have tried other roles there but have not been comfortable with them. You have to know your own limitations. So farewell and thanks to all the people who have helped me at YSP over the years. You may see me wandering around chatting to random people or sitting sketching. I still have my own series on trees to fill up and and my very rapid sketch of the herons could do with more care and attention. Sayonara.
