Old Drawings #62

In the Yard at Lemba (Charcoal, compressed charcoal on cartridge paper, 60 x 60 cms.)

As the snow continues to swirl round the lamp standard across the road, as it has done for days now, let's move back again into the swirling mists of time to the sun-drenched Cyprus College of Art, where I last talked about the curious wall there and showed you one of the drawings based on it. This is the last of those drawings, done in the studio at University and, as usual, ignored by all and sundry. I find I get increasingly cross now thinking about that, but I still like the drawing.

Old Drawings #60

Lemba (Charcoal, compressed charcoal on 60 x 60 cm cartridge paper)

This was the next drawing based on the wall at Lemba College of Art. I was getting quite excited about the turn my work had taken at this point and began to make plans to construct still life set-ups of random junk from which to make drawings.

Meanwhile, I started a painting based on this drawing. It drew no comment from any of the lecturers and as it was nearing the end of term, I think it was abandoned rather than finished (although not a lot more was planned on it).



Lemba (Oil and collage on board, 60 x 48 ins.)

Old Drawings #59

Small Lemba Drawing (Charcoal on cartridge paper)

Despite my reservations about the first trip to Cyprus, I returned to Paphos in 2000. I still didn't like it much, but a visit to the Cyprus College of Art at Lemba did pique my interest.

For some years the students at the College had been building and adding to a strange wall round the edge of the yard. Made of concrete, wire, bottles and general junk, it was a fascinating structure and it led me to produce some drawings. This was the first.

My interest was such that I immediately made this painting from the drawing. As was always the case at Uni, no one expressed any interest in either the painting or the drawing and I came to believe that it was in some way wrong.

Looking at it now, I realise that it was, as I secretly suspected then, an interesting direction I could have taken. Another nail in the coffin of my University course.



Organic Form, Lemba (Oil on blockboard, 21 x 22 ins)

Cyprus

Lemba (Oil on board) - work in progress

There's a companion piece to this Lemba painting, called Beyond Lemba; both from 2000, neither of them finished.

The reason I find myself harking back to them is that, in a kind of synchronicity, two references to Cyprus have climbed over the garden wall and stared me in the face. The most recent is a comment from Bee Skelton on my last post. The other is a pair of videos of the Cyprus College of Art in Lemba on Robbie Bushe's blog.

I've been to Cyprus twice. Once in 1999, when I stayed in Polis-

Polis Plaza (Oil on board - sold)

- and again in 2000, this time in Paphos..

This wasn't the best of times for me, so I didn't get all I might have out of the visits and my memories are filtered through a disagreeable haze. But I do still think of the long-eared hedgehogs I watched each night on the outskirts of Polis and the time spent in Limassol:

Limassol Cathedral (Oil on board, 10 x 10 ins.)

Most memorable of all was the day I had in Lemba, at the Cyprus College of Art. I was a year off graduation and still in the frame of mind where further education seemed the right course of action. Looking round the College in the hot sun, it felt like a place I could settle into and get some interesting work done. Like one of Proust's madeleines, Robbie Bushe's videos have brought back that time in all its many colours, both light and dark.

Events conspired against me and I never did get to enroll at the Cyprus College of Art. Maybe it would have done me good to go. Maybe not. That's all very much chaff in the wind now. I'm still here. Let's see what Gateshead has to offer today.