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MAY

2023

Tuesday 2.5.23 Start a new Shapeshifter painting for my forthcoming show, I’ve decided on Actaeon. Wasn’t sure if I was going to do the whole figure of the deer but when confronted with the frame and panel feel compelled to make it the head and shoulders instead. Wednesday 3.5.23 Work late into the early hours trying to form a plausible composition on Actaeon. Thursday 4.5.23 John comes with two beautiful frames that he has just made for me - a larger one for the coronation newspaper canvas and a smaller one for an as yet undecided theme. As usual they are so perfectly made and we enjoy our conversation over a cup of tea. Richard goes for a blood test then comes back to change and we drive down to vote in the local elections en route to Owlpen Manor. Interestingly, although we hadn’t discussed it beforehand on our journey we discover that we both put crosses on both the parish council and the county council forms against exactly the same candidates. Although it rained down the motorway we arrive at Owlpen and the sun is shining. We enter into the new hall admiring the magnificently planted huge pots outside full of enormous double tulips that look (like the ones in our garden) like peonies. This beautiful space is full of a myriad of drawings laid in sections across the floor and some on tables others propped against the wall. It’s the exhibition of work created over the past four days by the ten artists who were selected to come and do this residential life drawing course in the grounds of Owlpen. We’re greeted by Nicky and Karin who have hosted this event organised by Claire (their daughter in law) who founded an arts organisation called The CoLAB with an artist friend who noticed that many of her fellow students ended up working as graphic designers so this is a scheme which facilitates sculptural projects in the community. There are apparently a lot on the roof terrace at Temple Station in London. They encourage us to go round and look at the large groups of drawings by each of the ten artists who were selected for this four day residency where they drew from a life model each day who sometimes ran at ten minute intervals before positioning herself in a new pose within the landscape. The artists, who were all women told me that they were quite exhausted, often working outside their comfort zones. Sometime working in just pencil, at other times in charcoal and occasionally told not to use line, just tone. So one walked around carefully in between the approximate divisions of each artist’s work. Detmar Blow who owns the gallery Modern Art, whose exquisitely flamboyant wife Isabella sadly committed suicide by drinking weed killer some years ago, was also looking with interest at the drawings. Isabella’s amazing medieval purple velvet dress as worn at their wedding in Gloucester Cathedral also featured in an exhibition Stars and Stitches curated by Sophie Wilson at the Pump Rooms in 1994 along with the suit Laurie Lee went to Spain in, a Jilly Cooper and Joanna Trollop outfits plus people like the cricketer Jack Russell and my own hand made multi coloured velvet jacket and Richard’s American bow tie etc. At the lovely long dinner tale where all the artists and their two teachers are assembled, Richard sits opposite the female teacher and next to Karin with Claire his other side - I sit opposite Detmar and next to Nicky on the one side and a Polish artist on the other. She tells me she is very interested in animation and that the flat that she and her friend shared had a spare room which she turned into a community gallery and even got funding to help with it although they have now had to vacate the flat as the landlord wanted to sell it. Friday 5.5.23 Working further into the Actaeon composition which I have now carried across the whole of the painted plane. Saturday 6.5.23 Richard goes out early to collect the newspapers as reference for a painting of them covering the Coronation which I watch after the event on the lap top. Weighing up the pros and cons of this continuation of the historic realm of reigns that go back before the Norman conquest in 1066. One of the bibles used within the ceremony dates back to the 6th century. Though the crown is much younger having been made in 1661 after the old crown had been melted down by Cromwell during the civil war for the payment to the soldiers. Cromwell and the parliamentary army used to also stable their horses in churches which shows how fickle and vulnerable all these hereditary lines of honour are. Seeing what is happening in Sudan at the moment where you have two generals each fighting for the country’s leadership at the expense of the people, shows how ruthless the seekers of power can be. It has always been echoed around the world; thus Putin’s insatiable appetite to try and increase his empire. Sunday 7.5.23 Richard has already baked his walnut cookies which I arrange on the cake stand and a large plate of egg and smoked salmon open sandwiches when I come down after doing my exercises. As we step out of the front door onto the Lane we meet Mike and Sue from further up, carrying their chairs and some food. There are already quite a lot of people at the street party, which is celebrating the Coronation and the tables are already overflowing with platers of food but we manage to edge ours on and the Union Jack box of liquorice allsorts that I bought. It’s good to see so many friends and neighbours from the Lane. Monday 8.5.23 Working further into the painting of the centaurs. As it is painted on a dark ground it takes a lot of working up to reach the light areas of the forms within - the reverse of working on a white or light gessoed ground where the time is taken in reaching the deeper and dark tones. Feel very sad as receive an e mail from Denys to say that dear David had died in his arms after a couple of months of being bedridden, I think due to his heart condition. He was the dearest man with his mischievous smile, so full of warmth, humour and generosity of spirit. His funeral will be on the 22nd and afterwards at the Racecourse, a place he loved. Tuesday 9.523 Note from Denys saying thank you for the lovely not and how overwhelmed he had been with all the cards and ‘phone calls etc. David was so popular and very loved Wednesday 10.5.23 ‘Phone call from Anthony who used to do the valuations for the television programme Flog It. He has been asked to get a valuation on a commission I created for the Daniel Owen Centre (Daniel Owen was a Welsh poet from Mold) in 1997 which was funded 50% by the Welsh Arts Council and the rest raised by the Centre. There has been discussion at the Centre as to where the painting should go as the Centre is being refurbished. Someone from the Museum has said they would like to purchase it for the museum, whereas he thinks it would be well placed in Theatre Clwyd which had a Heritage Lottery grant towards their £50m redevelopment. It seems to have become a bone of contention as to where the painting should be. There is a committee meeting at the beginning of June and he will let me know what is decided. Thursday 11.5.23 E mail from Viv Styles asking if I can go and help judge the Star College’s student Christmas card design competition that she has organised. Friday 12.5.23 Invitation from James Fisher, head of Fine Art at the University, inviting us to the degree show which is somewhat earlier as they are having building works done soon. Saturday 13.5.23 Have been enjoying the lilac, now heavily laden with its white blossom out of the bedroom window, for the past three weeks. And today it is warm enough to sit out in the garden for brunch where the pale pink candles on the horse chestnut tree are beautiful to perceive. Also the apple trees and various other shrubs including the potentila which is just beginning to reveal it peach coloured blooms. It smells particularly nice as Richard has just cut the grass with his manual mower - so much better for the planet than an electric one, and good exercise too. The perfume of the cut grass is intoxicating. The comfrey is all in flower; it was often used by monks when they prepared plaster for setting broken bones. The garden is also full of vinca major which we were delighted to find is often used in drugs for lymphoma. Its brilliant blue colour starts to light up the garden quite early in the year. A haze of forget-me-nots in a lighter slightly more turquoise blue also covers much of the beds with their myriad of tiny magical flowers. The loganberry is prolific and covered in small white blooms which in July will become luscious deep red fruits rather like a large long raspberry. In my studio garden the plum, the cherry, the apple are all in blossom though my espalliered apricot tree still seems to have leaf curl. Richard’s medlar that medieval fruit spoken of so endearingly by Shakespeare is covered in large white blossoms. Related to the rose the fruits are rather like huge brown rose hips which sadly last year lay on the ground unused even though his intentions had been to make medlar jelly - they had not been been fulfilled for lack of time. Back in the studio to work on the painting of the centaurs. Sunday 14.5.23 So pleased the weather has been good this weekend as Samuel has been doing his Duke of Edinburgh’s Award expedition. He’s already done some of his volunteering at the Shelter charity shop as part of his challenge. Monday 15.5.23 Working on all fronts. Tuesday 16.5.23 On returning from my dental check-up ‘phone call from Henrietta to see how I’ve got on then Harry arrives with one of my works he’s bought back from an auction in the USA which I am buying from him as I’d quite like to do more work on it. Harry is a very nice young man who was at the Abbey School in Tewkesbury in the year below Nathan. They then both ended up studying art in Bristol although Harry was in his third year whist Nathan was in his first as he had been living and working in Paris for three years after doing his A levels. Wednesday 17.5.23 Andrea and Peter come for tea and to collect the two paintings they bought from my charity open studio in December. A lovely couple who we got to know through our mutual friend Sheila. Thursday 18.5.23 A clear day in the studio. Working on the large Ark and the Card Players. Friday 19.5.23 Over to Cirencester for the memorial service for Rory. We’re touched to see that Edward is there representing the King in his role as Lord Lieutenant. Rory had had tea with the King (not for the first time) at Highgrove only three weeks before he died. They had a lot of interests in common especially the restoration of historic buildings. It is again a very beautiful service, gloriously exquisite music, again his cousins made up the choir with the addition of singers from Arcadian Opera. During the service there was also the dedication of the silver Thurible designed by Rory and made by William Hart, silversmith. It was given by Rory and the Friends of Cirencester Parish Church. The tributes to Rory are really touching and Edward tells us later in an e mail that although he hadn’t met Rory “…the three wonderful tributes, choice of music and prayers gave me an idea of what a talented and kind person he was…” After the service we mingle with Rory’s friends and colleagues amongst whom are Sir Nicky and Stephen and Jane Davies who have travelled down from Norfolk. It’s lovely to see them for the first time for a few years. Also to see Mark and Julia. Anne Rachel who was one of the two curators at the Wilson, Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum who like Rory, lives in Cirencester and says how kind he was to her particularly when she was young. We’re sadly not able to go on to see the film that Simon Chorley Rory’s cousin tells me is being shown at the Royal Agricultural University this evening as we’re due to be at the University Hardwick campus for the degree show where I give an annual award. We’re met by Olivia the course leader who takes us round the show explaining what the criteria that each student is trying to achieve. It’s a wonderfully vibrant and eclectic show - one student has made a room where she’s living and sleeping for several days - to bold multi coloured abstract tubular sculptures that remind me slightly of Niki de Saint Phalle or Max whose work felt rather Daliesque in its self conscious performance. Another mature student had made some interesting paintings and a sculpture of a figure of a woodworker planing wood on the floor as if he was planing communion wafers. The concepts were all quite engaging but I decided the film made by Emily Goodchild juxtaposing a large red shell-like pod into which she climbed in and out under water falls, in the sea, on rocks, sand and pebbles. I think she is particularly interested in animee. It was a little reminiscent of the Bill Viola video of the man standing under a torrent of water and on the other side engulfed by flames. James, the head of Fine Art goes to find Emily so that we can tell her the good news and she is suitably touched overwhelmed, We always discuss who I will eventually select, with those who teach to make sure they think the student is a worthy recipient and that the prize will help them. Saturday 20.5.23 Varnish John and Ali’s painting before we set off for Bristol. A lovely sunny evening and we manage to park quite close to Nick and Mags’ house. Meet another lovely lady as we are ringing the bell and Nick appears with his big smile. Having missed Martin’s party in February meant we hadn’t seen Nick since last summer when he came as our guest to the dinner with Grayson Perry at the RWA. And even longer since we’ve seen dear Mags who was caring for her Mum who sadly died earlier this year. It’s so lovely to see her and Joe, her handsome son. Whilst in the kitchen I meet Andy who is an animator and his lovely wife who is a TA working with primary school aged children. They come from Wotton under Edge so I ask if they know Sir David McMurtry who bought my large painting/construction from the RWA and they do and have been to his magnificent circular house for a charity event. Sir David is head of their parish council and Patricia Broadfoot who is the other person we know who lives there is also on the council. We’re so busy chatting that we don’t realise that the main body of guests are sitting outside in the garden where Nick has logs burning in his chimeria which is minus its chimney. It’s aways great to see Martin who is also in the kitchen where the food was laid out. Nick gets him to perform some of his poems and we are amazed at how well he remembers them by heart. He’s so entertaining and the poems although very humorous are so very pertinent to the plight of our planet which is perhaps why he is called Britain’s Green Poet. Another young man, Darren who went to Berkeley reading music, is a drummer but a singer also and we all encourage him to sing so we have a splendid rendition of a Jean Valjean song from Les Mis. and the woman who came in with us also gives a very entertaining reminiscence and Nick does some wonderful Irish dancing a la Michael Flatterly. We meet Joan who is a ceramicist who made two beautiful ceramic torsos for Mags and Nick’s wedding present that Mags takes me upstairs to see and a large squashed elipse pot that I think Mags had bought from one of her exhibitions. Although she studied art she spent most of her working life as a primary school teacher but the most amazing thing is that Mags told us, after she’s left, that she is 92 which one would never have guessed. Before we leave we look at Nick’s creative output in his studio; some brilliant monoprints as well as paintings which he finds so very enjoyable and theraputic as a way to escape from the intense days of working on the latest Wallace & Gromit film. We’re still talking to Martin before we get into our cars and he hopes to come to my open studio on 17 and 18 June. He’s still working on the new novel but finding the last 25,000 words the most difficult. We arrive home after 1am. Sunday 21.5.23 John and Ali, who we haven’t seen for some years, come to collect their Angel and Tiger painting and for tea. It’s great catching up over Richard’s open egg mayonnaise and smoked salmon sandwiches and walnut cookies. John has always worked for his advertising agency like his mother before him. Ali worked for an airline before retraining as an English teacher inspired by a friend who was head of Windsor School who very sadly died of Covid whist still in her early 50s during the first month of lockdown. I’m much encouraged when they come over to the studio and seem to particularly relate to one of the new innovations I have made in the one or two of the paintings Monday 22.5.23 Drive to the crematorium in Cheltenham for the funeral service for dear David Prosser who we first met when Jackie L-B introduced us at a charity dinner she and Laurence were giving for LINC. Over the years he was very supportive, came to my open studios and even to a lecture I gave at the University of the West of England. He acquired paintings and miniatures, often specially commissioned as a present for his wonderful husband Denys who like David had worked as an air steward before becoming a magistrate (then chief magistrate for Gloucestershire). As we are parking we see the marvellous warm grin of the plasterer we met at Rory’s funeral and he is coming out of the funeral before David’s! The first people we bump into are Laurence and Jackie with their daughters Cecile and Hermione and husbands Dale and Dan and their little granddaughter Demelza. The service is wonderfully warm and informal with Elgar to process in with. We learn a lot about David through the various reminiscences particularly from his actress friend Liz Robertson who shared a flat with him fifty years ago and says they were all ‘dirt poor’. What brilliant friends they were - once when she was preparing a meal for her future husband the songwriter Allen Jay Lerner (my Fair lady etc) and she got into a flap David and Denys came early to help which they did so brilliantly that the guests thought she had staff; they saved the day. Also a touching poem composed by a granddaughter who was so overcome by grief she found it difficult to read as he’d been there with her other granddad all her life. ‘One more time around the garden’ played while photographs of David and Denys were shown on the screens and we process out to Lakmé by Delibes. Later at the Racecourse we are again chatting to Laurence when he tells us he has another exhibition coming up in Burford. He says he had recently met Toyah when they were both in the Sky Arts celebrity edition of Portrait of the Year and how different their paintings were. His subject was a female double bass player and I say “that wasn’t Chi-chi was it?” and so we know her too. We met her at Nicky and Karin’s anniversary party at Boodle’s last year and discovered I knew her cousin Trish. After our goodbyes to Denys we come back to start work. Tuesday 23.5.23 Working on the large canvas that I started last week on a white gessoed ground that R has given it’s regular three coats of. So I’m having to think differently as quite a few of the recent works have been on darker gessoed grounds that I mix for the purpose. I think it always feels slightly quicker composing a painting on a dark ground in the way that people like Leonardo did whereas Michaelangelo grounds were nearly always white which is why his colours are more vibrant but Leonardo’s perhaps have more chiarascuro. The painters before the pre Raphaelites (who reverted to white) tended to use a mid-tone primer which can be exciting as you have an equal distance to reach depth of colour and tone as you do to reach the lightest areas within the composition. The difference between Titian who didn’t prepare his compositions in advance and Michaelangelo and Raphael who certainly did is fascinating. Whereas you can sometime see changes made within Titian’s compositions you don’t see that in painters like Raphael and Michaelangelo. Wednesday 24.5.23 Richard answers the door to receive a magnificent hand-tied bunch of lilies, roses etc and brings them up to present to me. They are from John and Ali. He had been slightly worried as we had sent flowers wine etc to Henrietta and Kev as today is their wedding anniversary, that the florist might have got it muddle and sent it to the sender but luckily not. Thursday 25.5.23 Richard’s gone to Trinity House as he wants to photograph the frame construction on one of my very early paintings they have, for the catalogue raisonne that he’s compiling. Although I’ve not been quite sure where I’m gong with the big canvas, today I make considerable progress so I’m feeling happier about it. Whilst I’m working on it in the studio, I listen to Laurence who I had spotted on the BBC website, as a guest on Rylan’s programme on masculinity. Laurence is wonderfully adept at channeling the conversation back to examples from art history including Rubens’ Rape of the Sabine Women and Michaelangelo Buonorotti where he suggested that sculptors and painters of that era tended to give their male subject smaller penises as it wouldn’t have been considered appropriate for gods and heroes to have had large appendages like that of a donkey. Audiences of a work such as Michaelangelo’s Last Judgement on the end wall of the Sistine Chapel which proved very controversial at the time as all the figures were naked were often shocked. El Greco even offered to paint over it! Friday 26.5.23 More of a sense of direction on the big canvas now even though there are parts I might eradicate when trying to improve it later. I’m working away in the studio when I receive a call from Henrietta who’s in the car with Kev is driving to Falmouth with Isaac, to look at Falmouth school of Art/Falmouth University as it has an open day tomorrow. The art school has been going for over a hundred years and one of the first group exhibitions I ever showed in was called Six Artists and one of the six was Tom Cross who was principal at Falmouth and another Francis Hewlett lectured there; after we had all shown in the Westward Television Open. As we are talking they drive past Stonehenge and Henrietta sends me a photograph that Isaac has taken through the car window just about sun setting time, with sheep grazing in the field in front of it. They are staying overnight and as this weekend is forecast to be beautiful sunny weather I suspect he’ll fall in love with the place having the sea, sand even more so than Devon where they go stay in their grandparents’ holiday apartment which he loves. After a bean sprout, prawn and cashew nut stir fry it’s back to the studio for my third session of the day. Saturday 27.5.23 Parcel arrives from Sussex containing Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad from Drs Charles and Emma. Charles had been reading this when we last spoke and found it fascinating. E mail from Henrietta saying they’ve just spent three and a half hours looking at accommodation, a talk by the course leaders, a tour of the film department and a visit to their exhibition. Isaac liked the look of the course. She will ‘phone on their way back tomorrow. Make progress on the upper section of the new canvas with people in doorways and a mariachi-type band. Sunday 28.5.23 It’s really good to be able to sit out in the garden to have lunch each day during this warmer weather and watch the progress of various plants, including the red hot pokers. The pink and yellow foxgloves, the beautiful white and cerise may or hawthorn blossom. Sadly the lilac blossom is now turning although I picked one up from the ground and the perfume was as sweet as ever. The candles on the horse chestnut have turned from white to pink. Ricard is cutting back the ivy on the house which at this time of the year begins to encroach onto the windows. and many would probably have it taken down but I think it’s very environmentally friendly giving extra insulation and homes for many little birds and insects. It also, like the trees, gets rid of the carbon related toxins in the air. Richard comes up to the studio to tell me that he’s just heard a guide taking a group of walkers around the village describing the house as that lived in by the famous artist and how it has been much added onto. He then says that over the Lane is what he considers a wonderful example of modern architecture built for her father-in-law and designed by an architect connected to the Festival of Britain. Dear Ronald Green our architect friend would have been very pleased to hear that; he joined the Sir Hugh Casson Partnership at about that time. He was a lovely man and we still miss him and Margaret greatly and often reminisce about times we spent with them. Richard always recalls him coming into the studio and saying what a formidable organisation we are. It was one of those insights that could be easily missed but we’ve always found that with just the two of us we seem to manage, particularly in retrospect, to achieve Monday 29.5.23 Its Bank Holiday Monday which always feels like a second Sunday on the weekend although as usual I'm always very happy to spend it in the studio after having brunch in the garden. The logenberries which I think the plant suppliers must have sent instead of passiflora have been in flower for some time and berries have started to form where the flowers have finished. The rhubarb’s high though not quite red enough to pull yet. The newest apple tree in the studio garden is again covered in tiny fruits. Big canvas in the studio is making steady progress compositionally although all aspects need much further working into. Richard and I have been reading a fascinating article in The Critic about a tribe who are almost still at the stone age stage living in the Brazilian rain forest where the government has forbidden other people to intrude. Totally intriguing as it makes one realise both the benefits and disadvantages of the huge progress that we in the so-called civilized world have made. They still live naked and with nature and seem happy in their oblivion although do fight quite aggresively with other Indian groups ranging from 20 to about 400 in number. They don’t seem to get illnesses apart from malaria. and live in long huts with woven raffia-type roofs. They use clubs and poison darts from blow pipes. Although they paint their bodies in red there was no apparent other art being made and no apparent religion. It made us more inquisitve about the stone age period which started 3.4 million years ago after which came the bronze age from 3300 BC to 1200 BC so when you compare it with the escalation in technology over the past 200 years when everything changed with the industrial revolution. Since that time progress in development has escalated till now in this 21st century we’ve made artificial intelligence that we’re not quite sure how to tame it and we’ve certainly done more to damage our environs, oceans and air than that of the millions of years beforehand. But how brilliant that on the same planet we still have and protect these primitive tribes. Tuesday 30.5.23 Notice I’ve received a payment from the Bridgeman Art Library for royalties for reproduction fees. Wednesday 31.5.23 Statement arrives from the Bridgeman, the reproduction fees are this time mainly from America. I’m making better progress on the large street party but find myself also going to the slightly smaller card game painting as ideas pop up in my mind. This often happens after I’ve left the work for a period of time to elapse so that the thoughts can evolve. I can’t believe it’s already the last day of May as I count down the weeks to the deadline for the catalogue etc for my London show.