Man with Birds

Man with Birds

(acrylic on canvas board, 8x8 in)

Gateshead Art Society can’t meet these days at the Shipley Art Gallery because of the virus, so those nice people at the Shipley have set the Club a Challenge based on a painting in their collection. This is the painting:

'The Chorus of Birds'

by Jan van Kessel

 We were asked to "draw or paint any birds or animals you see out of your window or garden. If you have a pet, you could draw them instead." 

Being a disobedient artist with precious few birds in the garden and no pets, I decided I’d just riff on the basic idea and the painting you see above is the result. It's a curious affair, but one that answers a little voice in my head that often asks why I don't get on and paint the kind of figure paintings I've always intended to paint. How to interpret that answer I leave to another time, but the Coronavirus Lockdown is leading me down interesting paths.

Bird Table

Bird Table 
(Acrylic on canvas, 8 x 8 in)

I completed this little painting a couple of weeks ago, but forgot to post it here. I know it's a bit sentimental, but sentimentality is nice now and again, and I like it. If you like it, it's available - just email me.

Here's the sketch it was based on:

Museum Sketchbook # 8: Ethnographic Case

Hancock: Ethnographic Case 
(Charcoal, compressed charcoal across two pages of A4 sketchbook)

On one of the galleries of the Hancock Museum was a set of Ethnographic Cases devoted to artifacts from around the world. This one displayed items from the South Seas: shields, unidentified wooden objects and brightly coloured stuffed birds.

Somewhere in the studio, there's an unfinished painting based on this drawing, but I can't locate it right now.

Overnight Dove

It was really cold on Friday and the windy was blustery, shaking the tops of the cypress tree outside, but here in Gateshead we were lucky to escape the snow that afflicted most of the country. 

As I sat in my third floor study working on the computer, I glanced through the window and spotted this dove settling down on the windowsill. It seemed unconcerned by the light I had to put on as the day darkened and when I went closer to look it simply looked back at me. I left the blinds open so as not to chance scaring it, but it seemed unperturbed by anything I did.

It stayed there for the rest of the night (I checked on it around  1.30 am), but by the morning it had gone, leaving me a little present on the windowsill.

Museum Sketchbook # 5: Moa Legbone

Hancock: Moa Legbone 
(Compressed charcoal and coloured Conte in A4 sketchbook)

The moa were giant flightless birds in New Zealand and are generally believed to have died out due to over-hunting by Maoris. All that remain are bones like this which hint at what impressively massive birds they must have been.

I really liked the way the bones stood (literally!) in silhouette against the light from the cases in the background.

Museum Sketchbook #3: Bird Gallery

Hancock Museum, Bird Gallery 
(Charcoal and compressed charcoal in A4 sketchbook)

I loved this eerie part of the Hancock. It always seemed to be deserted, except, of course, for the stuffed birds in their glass cases who sat on their branches and stared down at me.

Sketchbook No.2 (#1)

Northern Goldsmiths, 4th November 1990 
(Fine point marker and sepia ArtPen in A4 sketchbook))

Having begun a course in painting with the OCA, I decided I needed to get serious about my sketchbook, so this drawing is the first done in a lovely black bound A4 sketchbook from Atlantis.

It was a freezing cold Saturday afternoon in November and I stood on a corner of Westgate Road to draw this great example of Victorian Newcastle. I was just outside a pub that was later closed for allowing drug dealing on the premises..My thermal socks, fingerless gloves and whisky-primed hip flask failed to keep me warm and by the time I went home I was almost frozen solid.

It's interesting to note that in 1990 there were still flocks of starlings settling on the tops of buildings. Even individual starlings are a rare sight in town now.

Dales Diary - Sunday 25 April

Gateway to The Rookery (4B pencil, wax crayon, in A4 sketchbook)

A mixed day for weather. At the front of the house is a covered area with tables and chairs, so for a while I sat there and fairly quickly drew this archway. Through the arch are some of the trees that give the house its name. There's a constant uproar in the tree tops from nesting rooks, but in the forecourt chaffinches fly in and out looking for crumbs. After a while, I took to making sure they found some.

Warm Thoughts from Indoors

Down in the garden, there's a blackbird valiantly pecking at the seed in an effort to get as much of it as he can before the snow covers it all up. Outside my upstairs study window, the snow is swirling and billowing, and inside the study there's me, thinking.

I sometimes wonder whether I think because I'm not painting, or I don't paint because I'm thinking. Either way, I'm thinking. What I really need to do, however, is write down what I'm thinking. There are connections being made, plans formulating and possibilities being explored, but all of this is internalised. It needs to be put on paper so that I can see where it might lead, so that's what I'll be doing for the next hour or two.

As is usual with these thinkfests of mine, there's a book driving me on. This time it's Eric Maisel's Creativity for Life, a book that pulls together some of Maisel's previously expressed views and turns them into an encouraging overview of the problems faced peculiarly by artists. There are exercises at the end of each chapter which, on a quick skim last night, suggest ways I might be able to get my act more securely together than it feels at present.

Whether or not I'd be better off painting than thinking is somewhat irrelevant. It was quite nightmarish trying to get down the backstairs to give the birds their cold weather rations; I'm not sure I fancy shuffling down again to get to the studio. Blimey. I might never get back up again until the thaw!

Speaking as someone born in the historic winter of 1947, I remember much, much worse snow than what we've got now. We really have forgotten how to deal with snow in this country, haven't we?

Home from the Island

Lindisfarne Castle from the Harbour

I was wrong about the weather. Although there was a strong wind blowing a lot of the time, we also got a fair bit of sunshine and by the end of the two days I'd adopted my "caught by the sun" beetroot look.

As is often the case with short holidays where others make the agenda, it proved difficult to do any sketching , so I opted for taking as many photographs as possible. There are certainly potential paintings in some of those, and the walking we did round the island made up for the lack of any sketching.

On the way back from one of our walks , I noticed a thrush behaving oddly on a window sill. He was jumping around, looking in through the window and tapping on it. Moments later, an old lady came to the door with a bowl in her hand and her dog scurrying round her ankles. The thrush, rather than flying away, jumped down and ran to the door where the lady threw food to it from the bowl. The dog and the bird ignored one another. Apparently this is the fourth year the thrush has come to her house for feeding. The natural world continually surprises me.

Death at Zip Mansion

I was ushering Patsy123 up the drive of Stately Zip Mansion this afternoon - she's off singing her little heart out again - when a large bird-shape took off and flapped silently but quickly away. Too quick for me to decide what it might be. Somewhat tawny and a bit mottled, I thought.

As we got to the gate, we noticed we were treading on a path of downy feathers. More and more greeted us as we walked out onto the pavement and then, right in front of us, lay the remains of a freshly killed pigeon. It's head was mangled and the feathers had been torn from its breast, showing the bare red skin.

It's an upsetting thing to find a dead bird at any time, but more so when it's just happened and at your own front door. Patsy123 was visibly shocked. I take a more sanguine approach to these things, but I was sorry to find it. Even more sorry that we'd inadvertently scared off the predator, whose right to eat is just as great as the pigeon's and who now would have to find another meal.

I marked the corpse's position with a white outline and disposed of the body.

Down in the Valley

I wonder if it's possible to write and paint? For me, I mean. I'm fully aware that there are painters who write. And there are writers who paint. There are even painters who write on their paintings. But it seems that the only time I'm visited by the writing muse is when I'm stuck with my painting.

Or when I'm in something of a depression.

Which tends to be the same thing.

I went for a walk on the Valley yesterday. As a kid, I used to love the Valley. I'd cycle there with my buddies and we'd play all day in the woods, drinking Tizer and making useless clay lamps out of the mud we'd dig up from the river bank. I don't think you can get at the river now; it's been culverted in. And there's not much left of the woods either. Cut down to make room for more offices and factory units. But that's OK really; it's what the Valley is for, and if it makes for more jobs, then who am I to complain?

I still like walking on the Valley, though. Despite there being fewer areas of woodland, there are still open fields and every Avenue is filled with trees and bushes. These are usually kept trimmed a bit, but still spill out onto the pavements. And curiously, it's pretty quiet.

A dual carriageway runs down the middle and this is always full of cars, lorries and buses rushing about their business, but the other Avenues are generally rather quiet. I suppose because everyone's at work. Except me, the lone pedestrian.

So it's a little like walking in countryside which has been invaded by the city. Or in a city which has been invaded by the countryside. I guess it's one of those curious non-places that modern civilisation tends to produce, such as airports and shopping malls, but this one is much nicer than those.

The Valley teems with wildlife. Every bush twitters with sparrows and there are innumerable blackbirds flitting silently from tree to tree, or shrieking at everyone and everything. Earlier this year (or maybe it was late last year - pleasant memories seem to flow together now into a sun-filled whole) Patsy123 and I walked on the Valley and saw a family of rabbits sitting about in the late rays of a setting sun. As we approached, they scampered off to the safety of a huge clump of overgrown shrubs by the side of their field.

But why was I on the Valley yesterday? It was a fairly miserable day, grey and misty with occasional showers, and I was somewhat grey and miserable myself. I'd decided to go there to see what Borders might have in stock (did I mention that, in addition to offices and factory units, there's also a Retail Park?) My curiosity had been piqued by mention in a recent blog of a book by Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now. I thought it might prove interesting and/or useful.

In the event, I found I wasn't in the mood for the Tolle book, but I spent some time leafing through some other self-help books. Nowhere near as much time as the guy who slid a big illustrated copy of The Karma Sutra off the shelf and sat himself down at a table in the corner with it. He was still there when I left, slowly turning the pages. I'd like to think his wife or girlfriend might be in for a good time later that night, but somehow I doubt it.

Mostly I was fascinated by books about organisational strategies and time management which seemed to suggest a way out of my present malaise, but in the end I didn't buy anything. Maybe I'll go look again. Or maybe I'll just shake myself up and get on with things.

Sunday in the Park with Patsy123

Patsy123 and I took a stroll through the renovated Saltwell Park on Sunday. I've wanted to see what kind of a job the Heritage Lottery Fund had paid for and this seemed like a good opportunity.

It's late in the season now, of course, and the wind was pretty fierce at times, so the general public weren't greatly in evidence, but there were sufficient to show how much the Park is still appreciated.

We cut through the Grove and admired the freshly decorated Bandstand. This isn't the one I remember as a child, evidently, but is a little 1920s number they picked up from Beamish Open Air Museum and is nicely Art Deco. Brass band concerts still happening there, apparently.

The work isn't completely finished, but enough has been accomplished in the grounds to show how well the money has been spent. They've rebuilt the Almond Pavilion (burnt down by vandals a few years ago) and removed the intrusive pathway in front of it. From the Pavilion you can now see the view that Edward Kemp, the original landscaper achieved - an uninterrupted view across the lawns to the Lake, then on over the valley to the countryside beyond.

The Lake was drained and cleaned before refilling and the island in the middle reduced to it's original size. It's still big enough to provide a home for Canada geese, at least until they start their honking skeins over my house later in the year. And there were eight swans a-swimming, as well as coots, mallards and tufted ducks.

Unusually, there were three small Hassidic boys taking a rowing boat out (how times must have changed in the Gateshead Orthodox community!) and a Jewish woman who seemed to think that feeding the already overfed ducks should be achieved by heaving the contents of three loaves into the water in one go.

The big hit in the Park is the renovated Saltwell Towers. Originally built as the home of William Wailes, a local stained glass manufacturer, it's a wonderful fairytale structure of towers and turrets, all done out in decorative brickwork.

When I was a kid, there was nowhere more fascinating than Saltwell Towers Museum. From the whale's jawbone at the entrance to the stuffed birds and giant dollshouse, I loved it.

It eventually fell victim to various forms of rot, the roof collapsed and for a long time there was talk of tearing it down.

Now, however, the exterior has been splendidly restored and inside there's the inevitable Visitor's Centre done in a sympathetic contemporary styling. There's a cafe, a small gallery space, some interactive displays, a nicely integrated ramp for wheelchairs which seems to be part of the design rather than something that simply had to be there and some stained glass decorating the spiral staircase.

It's perhaps a little churlish to criticise Bridget Jones's stained glass, but it did come across as rather insipid, unlike her usual work. And I do wonder why she had to find her inspiration in the rose bay willowherb she saw in Germany, when there must be a wealth of other imagery in the Park itself (including willowherb, I'm sure).

All in all, though, a really good way to spend a Sunday afternoon, even if the wind had us chilled to the bone by the end of it.

Bird Update

It's been obvious, since my return, that the collared doves have given up any attempt to make the high-rise golden cypress habitable. There is a dove who occasionally sits and coos mournfully on the roof, but I don't think he's fixed up. More promising are the frequent visits to the desres pyracantha made by a blackbird. I think something may be occurring there, which means my planned pruning of said pyracantha will have to wait.

But what am I to make of the magpie with no tail, now taken to visiting?