British trip - London, Green Park

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Green Park, London, Avenue, oil on card, 24 x 30 cm   SOLD

There is only one picture from London.

 But it is a good one- of Green Park- the simplest and most graceful park of central London`s parks.

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A trip to Scotland and Canterbury

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Argyll and Bute

My pictures sold well at the last Society of Scottish artists exhibition and I want to produce more Scottish works. These will all be larger- about 30 x 25 cm.

Hence Oban in August, a small, touristic town on the West Coast that should provide, within easy reach, a good variety of views. I`ll also visit Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen, and in the south, Canterbury and London.

I`ll be showing work with Jane Rutherford at the Porty Art Walk festival, in Portobello near Edinburgh, where Jane and her husband Mark Haddon have a gallery (6-15 September).

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Paintings from New York- Manhattan

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 Chelsea, New York, Jewelry Store, oil on card, 18.5 x 17 cm  unavailable

These cubic buildings, on corners in Manhattan are very satisfying to paint. Painting a set of them is would be an enjoyable project. Perhaps next time I`m in New York  I`ll stay in Manhattan to be able to really concentrate on this. 

I have been to New York four times now. It wears its meanings on its face. This is what I first liked about it, this frankness,expressed in bold architecture, grand bridges and  gigantic museums. This is what attracts me as a painter.

In New York a rich neighborhood is very obviously rich. Your don`t need to de-code people in N.Y.  as you do with the (much) more subtle British class system, in which a rich man might dress in simple clothes and drive a bashed up mini (the American idea of wealth is a poor man`s idea of wealth- ostentation, bigness, obvious luxury symbols). 

Contrariwise, of course, you can get to know it fairly quickly and as you do you  find it less and less curious. And, as Kenneth Clark points out Civilization, it is much better at a distance than close- at a distance it is grand, but up close the lack of human scale considerations taken by architects can make one weary. 

In the great steeplechase of best cities- London N.Y. or Paris,  Paris has moved to the fore- it offers more long term pleasures.

 New York- on Lexington, oil on card, 17 x 19.5 cm - available

Washington Square Park- the arch, oil on card, 17 x 18 cm  SOLD

This is the third time I have painted the arch- this picture is larger and more simplified than the others. Arches are extremely satisfying to paint- and the simpler they are, the better.

 In Central Park, oil on card, 19 x 17.3 cm - unavailable

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A bowl on a tray and a plate with apples; painting in monochrome

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A bowl on a tray and a plate with apples, oil on card, 11 x 13 cm - available

I had the idea that on one of the trips I should eschew colour entirely and just work with black and white,  or dark sepia, this sustaining a deeper understanding of this fascinating area.

I like the way subtleties of brush movement, or of texture or tone become highlighted and how using black and white tips one into abstraction. Perhaps London, already monochrome in Portland Stone and steel sky would be the ideal place to experiment?

Colour is heady and tends to obliterate appreciation of anything but itself. It's like a drug, and like a drug you need to take more and more for the same effect. That does you no harm, though appreciation of anything grows with its absence.

A puritanical, or perhaps merely ascetic, side to my nature, Scottish or Danish in origin, lends me to suspect any too easily won aesthetic pleasure.

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British Trip. late September

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Both maps taken from the Cavellini School Room map of the British Isles

I'm pleased to say that I shall be going to the UK in September for just over two weeks- a trip which will include London. Berwick, Edinburgh and Alloa, near Stirling. I shell go painting in Greenwich, or opposite. It's  one of the few places in London that offers good views for painting.

Lothian, Fife, Berwick and around

I am especially pleased to get to know Berwick better as I have so often passed on the train and swooned at its wonderful location. And I shall enjoy visiting nearby Lindisfarne too.

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House, St John's Wood, London; naive painting

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House, St John's Wood, oil on card, 65 x 65 cm  NOT FOR SALE

This picture was painted back in 13 years ago in Hamilton Terrace, NW8, in North London. It's  a handsome street with grand Victorian Villas. 

Looking back on the paintings I did then, I sense that they were animated by an idea of how paintings ought to be made and appear, which in their insistent "correctness" might be described as naive. 

I did not think much about Rousseau at the time, but I see that they share a good deal with his pictures. There is a similar insistence on explanation, completeness. This is expressed through absolute clarity of delineation (note how difficult the natural messiness of foliage becomes to an artist with this mindset!). There is also an underlying sense of certainty about what a picture should do. Thus the images are unambiguous representations, usually placed centrally (none of the messy lopping off of corners or showing only half of a thing that you get in Impressionist art). 

There is a sense of certainty in how a painting ought to be executed technically, Rousseau followed the manufacturing conventions of nineteenth-century Salon painters such as Bouguereau. I had very clear notions of "truthfulness" which I followed rigorously - only working plein air, insisting that the piece was uniform in terms of finish, omitting figures, and ensuring that all parts of the painting "fitted together" (as opposed, for instance to the geometrical discontinuities of Cezanne).  These values often lend naive painting the qualities of furniture. Everything has to be very solid and make complete sense, like a farmhouse chair. Naive paintings are frequently heavily executed.

Behind all this is an absolute clarity as to the role of the artist in society, in which his function is very plainly to present and record for posterity the higher values of the day.

 I recall that when I was painting this picture I was convinced of the importance of my role as someone sustaining the art of painting (as if it were about to become extinct) and, moreover, the higher values of art. I was enthusiastic about architecture because I could see in it a clear expression of social ideals (married to design and practical skills)- thus my motivations were greater than mere subjectivity. 

In naive art the subject is chosen for it's obvious consequence (in Rousseau's case, such images as War (1894), or Liberty Inviting the Artists to Exhibit at the 22nd Salon des Independents (1906)). Indeed, Rousseau's art would be pompous were it not for the childishness of his drawing, which takes away the threat inherent in pomposity.

 One might observe that such self-important notions are commonplace among painters, and could be heard from representatives of romantic, modern and postmodern schools. I would suggest, in response, that what distinguishes naive painters is that while romantics might hold similar views of their own importance, their attitudes are coloured by anxiety; and the positions of post-modern artists are usually "ironical" (and extremely tiresomely so as well). There is little posturing among naive painters.

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April in Britain and France: Part One: London

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 Hampstead Heath, oil on card, 18 x 16 cm   SOLD

 Berkeley Square, North side, oil on card, 17.5 x 17 cm   AVAILABLE

The colours here are gaudier than is truly the case

 Here are my first offerings from April's painting trip, which took me from Brazil to London, then to Paris, to Scotland, Somerset and back to Brazil via London.

London is not a good painting city. It lacks dramatic landscapes. The weather is both bland and unpredictable and the season changes lack force. The architecture is often good, but is also often fussy or indecisive, as is the street plan which rarely accommodates grandeur. And the city is uncontained,  rolling lazily in from endless suburbs and shires, undefined.

At the same time it lacks the sort of street life that makes Morocco, say, fascinating. In London, the private is utterly hidden. It cannot be intimate with you. It's true that you can sometimes get interesting views into the backs of people's gardens from railway lines but its hard ever to be able to find a place to paint them. And they aren't that fascinating anyway.

I never really "got" London, though I lived there for ten years, I seldom found it mysterious or enchanting except in old books or through the eyes of others such as writers like Ian Sinclair or painters such as Auerbach, though I came to love the more obscure stretches of Kensington and Bayswater. But most of it makes me shrug my shoulders.

Princes Square, Bayswater, oil on card, 14.5 x 16 cm  - available

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Many thanks to Lise and Felix for their generous hospitality in Westbourne Grove.

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April in London, Paris, Scotland and Somerset.

I'm pleased to say that I'll be travelling in April: London- Paris- Edinburgh- Glasgow- Somerset and back to London.

I am most concerned about Paris, which I fear might have totally transformed into a museum city.

There is also the fact that my notions of Paris are so heavily informed by black and white photos of the 1930' and 40's, and by paintings by Utrillo. This is a problem as part of me is inclined tops seek to interpret and represent Paris through the pictorial devices used in a previous epoch by artists to communicate to another generation.

What can one do about this? Not much, except to be conscious of inauthentic responses. I had thought in the past of developing a self-consciousness about this by very deliberately painting touristic, postcard pictures, but I am not sure how successful this was: a steroptypical view remains one, regardless with what spirit it is seen or represented.

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Do join me for a drink in any of these places if you feel like it. 

Not long ago...a visit to a doctor.

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Ear, oil on card, 14 x 15 cm - unavailable

Not long ago, shortly on my return from the Pantanal in Brazil, where I had been sent by VEM Engineering to discuss the possible creation of a giant plant for the manufacture of domestic appliances, I began to hear in one of my ears a constant scratching sound, much like a knife scraping against a ceramic plate.

After several weeks of this, I went to see my doctor.

He conducted the obvious examination: peering into my ear with a special eyeglass. Finding nothing,  he began to ask me questions about my home and work life before cutting me abruptly: “Stress.”  He scribbled a note. “Give this to your employer. Take a week. Go to the seaside.”

So the next day I found myself strolling listless on a dull Eastbourne promenade, a paperback unloved in a pocket, the scraping sound in one ear, the sound of waves crashing in the other.

And week later I was back in the surgery demanding further consultations: he sent me to an Audiologist near Paddington station. I stood in a tiny room at the end of a filthy corridor in which elderly, obese, patients quietly rotted like forgotten vegetables in a provincial corner shop. 

I lay on a couch and a nurse, using a fantastical machine made a scan of my ear region. With amazing speed the results were printed out and I was ushered into an even smaller room behind where a man was sitting at a desk: Andreas Andreopoulos, Consultant.

He was Greek and spoke with great emphasis on particular words, as if treats to be savoured.  He was filled with enthusiasm for my case. 

“Tell me all about yourself, please, where have you been?”, cocking his head to one side like a cat.

“Well I went to the seaside”, I began. “Yes the seaside- I read that here.  But before? Perhaps you were in the Congo, Borneo, somewhere tropical? More exotic?”

I told him about my visit to the Pantanal, and the plans for the giant factory and how we would soon be able to produce sufficient vacuum cleaners to hoover the entire Amazon rainforest.

“That is wonderful. Progress. We Greeks,” he continued, with a somewhat philosophical expression, “how would you say?, we laid the foundations of civilisation. Now it is the turn of the new countries. The future is always with youth, is it not?”

I smiled.

He looked down to the scans on his desk: “ We do not often get such interesting cases.”

“Look!” He beamed, indicating with a pen on the scan. “It is like this. There is a fly, a burrowing fly, found only in tropical regions. It loves dark places. Look! It fly into your ear! And see...” He pointed to a channel deep in my ear. “It began here, and now!” - he tapped with his pen, at an area that had been circled with a thick red marker- “It has got all the way... here!” It was a point deep inside my cranium. “ It is making a little home! Home sweet home!, as you English say”

He began giggling, then saw my appalled expression.

“We will cut it out. Not to worry. We will cut it out on… ” - he consulted a computer screen- “Thursday!” And he began laughing again. 

“I am glad this is so very amusing,” I said.

“Oh, you will be fine,” he said dismissively, but then his merry smile fell with unusual speed to one of despondency.

“Be cheerful. There is a sickness, there is a cure! It could be worse, look at me: I am shrinking.”

He stood up, and I could see how his clothes hung in swags like theatre curtains, his trousers bagging round his shoes, how he had rolled up the sleeves of his white coat.

“Every year I have to buy new clothes, a complete set. It is...it is ridiculous. Humiliating. My wife won’t even go to the shops with me. She is ashamed. It is shameful.  Of course she is embarrassed. The nurses make jokes. I hear them laughing on the other side” He gestured to the door and whispered ,“They pretend to care but I hear their laughter when the door closes.”

He fell into silence.

The surgery came, I convalesced and left the hospital: the scratching sound was no more. 

And I didn`t see the consultant until a year later.

 I was walking down Wimpole Street with my new girlfriend- a tall slender woman, an ex-model for la Perla with a phD in Astro Physics from Harvard. We were so very much in love that even strolling aimlessly was a joy. A tender sun sent shimmers to the spring trees.

 A figure hurried along the pavement in our direction: at first I thought it a small boy, albeit one oddly dressed in a white coat. 

I caught his face: it was the consultant. "Doctor!" He stopped. 

 "Alessia. This is the wonderful doctor I told you about!" She bent to shake his hand, but he ignored it. “Ah...you are well I see. I'm so glad for you!”

And off he toddled, somewhere towards Portland Street.

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Read to the Detroit Metro Writer's Workshop, March, 2021 and Edinburgh Creative Writers' Club 13 April 2021

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London

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Horseguards Parade, the lonely civil servant goes home, oil on card, 11 x 15 cm  

Before returning to Brazil, I spent a couple of days wandering about in the strange fog that descended over London a week ago, which made it quite triste and nineteenth century.
 
 

Near St James's Palace, oil on card, 12.5 x 14 cm  available

St Mary le Strand, oil on card, 12.5 x 15 cm   AVAILABLE

Crimea Memorial, oil on card, 14.5 x 12.5 cm   SOLD



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 Thanks


Many thanks to John, Alison and Fred for their generous hospitality in London.


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Morocco, London, 2014

I have booked flights to Morocco. I`ll be there for just under a month with a week in the UK.

A friend

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A friend, oil on card, 15 x 11 cm  -  available

A corner of my room. The flat has boxes of Ensorian items which I put in storage, in boxes. They were collected when I was painting still lives in gloomy London. The visual language I used for still life there was, naturally, an extension of that huge and yet most eccentric of North European capitals, a place where so much is hidden behind circumspection. Thus, I developed a style had antecedent in Fantin-Latour and and Ensor.

This didn't translate to this context- Brazil- but finally I`ve found a way, via the interior, to revisit the still life.

A trip to Egypt: Cairo

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 Nine from Cairo, in their carriers

 Cairo: a street, oil on card, 10 x 12 cm  SOLD

 Cairo is a fine messy polluted annoying place  for painting. There is a good range of different styles of buildings and the sense of being somewhere that matters.

I painted in various places: I worked from hotels, I visited the pyramids in Giza across the river, and I looked at churches and mosques from the Citadel area and from the Coptic neighbourhood.

 Cairo- from Ismaili House Hotel, oil on card, 15 x 12 cm  SOLD

This hotel had splendid views. I stayed there on the first night, it is behind Tahir square. But it is fillthy, so I moved to another, the splendid Victoria Hotel, where the manager kindly permitted me to work from the roof.

 Cairo, apartments,  painted from the Victoria Hotel, oil on card, 12.5 x 14 cm  SOLD

 From the Victoria Hotel, Cairo, oil on card, 11 x 14 cm  SOLD

Above is my hotel window, and below is the view at night.

 Nocturne, Cairo, 8 x 10 cm, oil on card  SOLD

Cairo- a view from the roof of the Victoria Hotel, oil on card, 12 x 8 cm  SOLD

I visited the pyramids: the light shifting across them is a wonderful thing to watch. I want to return.

Pyramids, and the city.oil on card, 12.5 x 14 cm

A pyramid, Giza, oil on card, 14 x 11 cm  SOLD

I saw the Coptic Cathedral and churches:

Cairo, Coptic Cathedral, oil on card, 10 x 14 cm  SOLD

And I painted mosques in and around the Citadel:

 Cairo, inside a Mosque, oil on card, 14 x 14 cm  SOLD

 Cairo, Mosque, oil on card, 11.5 x 13.5 cm  SOLD

Mosque painted from the Citadel, Cairo, oil on card, 12.5 x 9 cm  SOLD

Finally, here is Cairo from the parking area below the citadel:

Cairo- a view from the Citadel, looking south, oil on card, 16 x 11 cm  SOLD

And here, to end, is the Nile:

Cairo, the Nile, oil on card, 11 x 15 cm  SOLD

I spent a week in Cairo, but one could spend a lifetime. it isn't an easy city- it`s polluted and messy and very noisy.

 But it is extremely interesting, and it is cheap to visit now, given that Egypt`s years of political crisis have devastated the tourist industry.  So I regret that I didn`t have time to do more than scrape the surface.

Two pyramids, Giza, oil on card, 14 x 11 cm  AVAILABLE

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Egypt, London, Scotland 2013

Egypt: it makes sense to go in late January, so, I'll try to sort that out- It'll be much like the Tunisian trip, a maximum of 4 locations, quite concentrated, twenty days. I can visit London and Scotland too.

I have some reservations about street hassle and general nuisance. In Tunisia it was tolerable- unpleasant but tolerable.

Back from a painting trip to London, Edinburgh and Tunisia: London: a selection

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The Tower, oil on card, 14.5 / 9.5 cm  NOT FOR SALE

Well, I am back, and it is tremendously hot here. I've been to Tunisia and Edinburgh. These visits were bookended by London, and instead of posting absolutely chronologically, I´ll post according to place categories: its just easier to make sense of a broken up painting trip.

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A view near Earls Court, oil on card, 10 x 10 cm - unavailable

I stayed in Kensington and most of the pictures are from my wanderings in Kensington and its fringes: up near Kensal Rise and across to Shepherds Bush. 

The days varied, sometimes with that incredibly crisp winter light you get in London, to days of unrelenting grey: both have their charm. 

Holy Trinity, Brompton, oil on card, 12 / 10 cm  - available

An old pub, the North end of Ladbroke Grove, oil on card, 12 / 14 cm  NOT FOR SALE

Kensington Gardens, Winter, oil on card, 14 / 13 cm   SOLD

 A house in Kensington, oil on card, 12 / 10.5 cm  AVAILABLE

Warehouses serving a shopping mall, Shepherds Bush, oil on card, 8 / 10 cm  SOLD

Ladbroke Grove, looking North, oil on card, 13.5 / 10.5 cm  AVAILABLE

I generally feel that the fringes of a place offer the key to understanding the centres: life is less regimented, there are more spaces, things have gone wrong, the clock shows its mechanisms.

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The London trip ended with a show of pictures at Matthew Cushen's beautiful apartment overlooking the river: thanks to him, and to Lise and Chris for hosting me, and making my time in London so pleasant.

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