Museum Sketchbook #1: Fossil Tree

Fossil Tree (2B pencil over two pages of A4 sketchbook)

In these times of slow progress to who knows where, I think I might return to pages from my sketchbooks. When last I thought about doing so, I couldn't quite decide which of the various sketchbooks I should tackle first, but in view of the recent attention I've given to the Great North Museum:Hancock the obvious is the Museum Sketchbook.

These first two pages from 1997 (my first year at Newcastle University) show one of the newly installed display areas built from MDF, the architect's material of choice. As you can see it had a lot of nicely curved coloured surfaces and umpteen lighting tracks illuminating ..... not a great deal. A lonely fossilised tree takes pride of place.

Mind Map

Mind Map (Oil on canvas, 12 x 12 in)

One of the things about having problems with my sight and distrusting my ability to see what I want to see in the world outside, is that I think it encourages me to turn inward, to look at the world of the imagination, of memory and fantasy. So you'd be forgiven for thinking that this painting is a fanciful invention, but that isn't quite the case.

In my first year at university we were given free access to the Hancock Museum which was then part of the university. That was before the Labour Government's enlightened Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Chris Smith, enabled many museums to give free admission and well before it was absorbed into Tyne & Wear's Great North Museum.

The Hancock in those days was still pretty much the way I remembered it as a child - full of dimly lit wooden galleries with rows and rows of cases full of beetles and butterflies and big glass cases with stuffed birds and ethnographic items from far off exotic places. I loved it and did a lot of drawing there as well as taking several rolls of film (I had to source very fast film to get what I wanted).

It was undergoing a makeover, however, with roaring life size dinosaurs being put in and new interactive displays to attract children who think they need modern devices to get their imaginations working.

Looking down from one of the galleries I saw two people pondering a new display which linked various collections in the museum. That's what this painting shows, the original rather poor photograph filtered through time and memory and the interested couple replaced by a man who owes his existence more to the workings of paint than to actuality.

Nest Forms

Nest Forms (etching, 12.5 x 21 cms)

Another week without painting. In a spirit of a glass half full, let's call it a period of retrenchment and reconsideration, rather than a block.

Some time ago I made myself a promise to have framed a small collection of prints I made at University. The actual framing has taken much longer than anticipated, but yesterday I collected them from Gallagher & Turner, the framers who've framed almost all of my work since I began to get serious about it.

This etching has always been a favourite of mine. It shows the influence of Graham Sutherland, I think, which is unsurprising given that I was about to write my dissertation on his Pembrokeshire landscapes. It was based on some drawings I did in what was then the Hancock Museum but which has now become part of the Great North Museum:.

Here's a relevant page from my sketchbook;


Bird objects (Rotring Art Pen in A4 sketchbook)