From Dillons' First Floor Window

From Dillons' First Floor Window
(Oil on board) Private Collection.

We went out to a Private View last night at a gallery new to me - the Bewicks Gallery Space in Gateshead Civic Centre. We'd been invited to a preview of work by Tom Bromly OBE, Dean of Newcastle Polytechnic (the forerunner of Northumbria University) Faculty of Art and Design until his retirement in 1992.

I liked the show very much, although I preferred his more designed/abstracted compositions to the straightforward studies and paintings of trees. I chatted to an old friend for a while and then, as we were taking a second glass of wine for a second turn around the gallery, someone came up to me and said:

"You're Harry Bell, aren't you? I bought a painting of yours a long time ago and I still love it!" We were joined by his wife who said "You're Harry Bell! You painted my favourite painting!"

The oil painting was From Dillons' First Floor Window and it was sold in 1995 from my first solo show. It was always a favourite of mine and here was the man who bought it twenty years ago, still enthusing about it now. 

Don't you just love it when that happens?

Big Dave

Big Dave arrived. He brought with him a bottle of M&S Islay single malt whisky. He was not unwelcome.

I summoned up my most creative kitchen mode and made a pasta dish of wholemeal penne with smoked bacon, onions, garlic, celery, plum tomatoes, a few sliced black olives, chilli, a pinch of thyme, a bit of chicken stock and a couple of teaspoons of anchovy sauce. It was grand, even if I say so myself, and Big Dave, who puts himself forward as something of a Big Man in the Kitchen, was interested in the two teaspoons of anchovy essence which had lent the dish a piquancy he had not been able to identify.

"Oh, just a passing reference to puttanesca," I posed.

Smoky bacon and anchovy essence being the salty elements they are, we resorted to making sure there were two empty spaces in the red wine racks in the kitchen. And then we had to find out if the M&S whisky was any good (it most definitely was), but not before we'd done a mutual sampling of an interesting sloe whisky I picked up last month.

And so to bed, grateful that we'd not wasted our time buying drink in the pub.

Venice

Venetian Wall (Oil on canvas, 40 x 40 cms)

I went to Venice for a week in 1997. This painting was one of the results of that trip and I've wanted to go back ever since. Earlier this year, I sold a picture for a decent price, so Patsy123 and I decided it was time to go back, this time for two weeks.

These are just some thoughts I wrote down shortly after our return

Venice was everything I remembered and more. I think I could happily live there. Even the heavy rain we got in the last couple of days didn't put me off. Indeed, while Buddy K and his wife were with us for a few days, we were hatching a plot to go back for a visit in the Winter (of some unspecified year).

The little bridges over the canals showed up a minor disadvantage of roller-cases. "These damn bridges," said an exasperated American tourist. "Why didn't they just build everything on the same level?" By which I guess she meant they should have raised the ground level by at least twenty feet - this, in a city where the ground level is already supported on piles driven into mud.

We wandered for hours every day, side-tracked by little alleys that might lead to a dead-end or a canal, but could just as easily open out into a delightful little campo, with kids playing in the pools of rainwater.

The Jesuits were not popular in Venice during the Republic, but when they were eventually given more permanent status, they really pushed the boat out in building their first church there - Gesuiti. It's the most vulgar palace of kitsch imaginable. They coated the entire inside with green and white marble, inlaid so as to look like the finest curryhouse flock wallpaper. And the balconies have huge swags of drapery all carved from green and white marble. The weight of all this grandiosity means that the church has suffered from subsidence ever since

Looking at paintings took up a greater part of the trip this time.

The Peggy Guggenheim is always worth a visit - Max Ernst's "Robing of the Bride," Picasso's "On the Beach" and Robert Motherwell's "Personage," to name but three I was glad to see again.

And the great collection in The Accademia. Amongst the many treasures there, of course, is Paolo Veronese's "Feast in the House of Levi" which eventually inspired a Monty Python (or was it Secret Policeman's Ball) sketch

But this time, ah this time I got to see the Tintorettos. After a spell-binding time with Titian's "Assumption of the Virgin" in the Frary, we went round the corner to the Scuola Grande di San Rocco. Blimey. After agreeing to the contract for the first painting there, Tintoretto (who,incidentally, is alleged to have been able to tell the difference between forty different reds) accepted a commission to spend his life filling the place with yet more. There are somewhere around sixty pictures by him .And all of them breathtakingly daring in their use of composition, perspective and light.

I like the description in The Rough Guide of the first picture to greet you as you enter (although it was painted in later life):

The tempestuous 'Annunciation', with the Archangel crashing into the room through Joseph's shambolic workshop, trailing a tornado of cherubim...

... scaring the life out of Mary who was getting on with her sewing. You can see the picture here.

The trip was not without its mishaps. I'd completely forgotten about the Mosquito Menace, and was bitten rather badly before we could get to a pharmacy to buy preventative measures and oils and unguents. Even with those, however, they got to me, and I do tend to respond rather unfavourably. As a result of a bite on my finger, I woke up in the middle of the night with a hugely swollen finger and a signet ring inclined to cut off the blood supply. I managed to keep it from turning blue, but had to find a jeweller the next day who could cut off the ring for me

A couple of days later, I woke up with my face badly swollen on the left side. Took two or three days for the swelling to go down with the aid of yet more stuff from the pharmacy and I was forced to go round with what, in my childhood days, would have earned me the ultimate insult - a fat fyess.

Later in the holiday, I evidently let one of the little buggers get up my right trouser leg when out to dinner. The next day I had 8 bites on the leg which gradually developed into coffee-saucer sized scarlet areas of painful itch

Despite all of this, I never wished I was anywhere else. One day we went to the Lido to look at some rather neglected Art Nouveau houses. Within minutes of getting there, we were pissed off with the automobile traffic and yearning to getting back to Venice itself where you can wander about and never think of getting run over.

Oh, and just about everything else. One night, the four of us went to a concert in Chiesa San Vidal in Campo San Stefano. Given by a group called Interpreti Veneziani who performed Vivaldi's Four Seasons, a Mozart piece and Folies d'Espagne by Marin Marais. It was splendid -- especially the Four Seasons, each of which were led in turn by one of the four violinists; and the Marais, when the cellist took centre stage and played the cello with every inch of his body, flinging his sweat-soaked long hair at the audeince

And then there were the bottles of Prosecco, glasses of spritz with Campari, plates of fegato, bowls of fish soup overflowing with mussels, clams, prawns, squid, and langoustine, excellent grilled sea bream, buns and pies, the fun of travelling everywhere by vaporetto, and above all, helpful pleasant people who never seemed to feel it was more than their job's worth to help where they could

I can't wait to go back

Jack me into the broadband and pass the stem cell toffees......

Torquil, Oil on board

You can't beat it, can you, a good night of amiable conversation and argument over an enjoyable meal?

Patsy123 is up from London again so we spent the afternoon wandering round the shops in town, just mooching. I bought another ludicrously expensive colour cartridge for my HP710c and Patsy123 found out the carpet she has on order for Tynemouth is gonna take another 4 to 5 weeks. I came off best.

And then it was time for another meal out. Can I afford it? Like hell. Should I stop? Like hell. This time it was an old favourite - for me at least - Paris Texas. It's an old student hangout in St Mary's Place; cheap and cheerful. If you stick to what they do best, like pizza, pasta or vaguely Tex-Mex stuff, you'll do fine. If you push the boat out and opt for something like grilled tuna steak, you'll be making a big mistake (won't you, Buddy K?)

The food was excellent, anyway. In fact I'm tempted to think they've got a new chef - they've definitely got some nice new bistro-style tableware. Must remember, also, to tell Will Barrow that there seems to have been a sufficiently large turnover of staff to maybe make it safe for him to go back again.

As the pretty good house red loosened my tongue, I found I was talking myself out of what Eric Maisel would call a meaning crisis. With some effort on my part, it may be that I should channel my efforts into a slightly different meaning container.

And what meaning container might that be, I hear you ask. Well, no, I don't hear you ask anything of the sort, of course, because you probably haven't the faintest idea what I'm talking about, so I'll ask it for you.

"What meaning container might that be. Mr Zip?"

Why, thank you for asking. I'll tell you. One of the strands running through my thoughts for some time, has been an urge to do some figurative painting. I spent years doing cartoon figures and all the while wanted to do figure paintings. When I finally got to painting, what did I do? Don't worry, these are all rhetorical questions. I began painting townscapes with no figures in them whatsoever.

In the last year or so, perhaps as an expression of my need to make and keep contact with people, figures have started to walk into my pictures. In ones or twos at first; in crowds later on.

But I've been trying to make sense of my attraction to certain kinds of figure painting. It's not a school to which one might attach oneself. The painters are as apparently diverse as Stanley Spencer, Paula Rego, Alan Feltus, Carel Weight, Balthus and Hopper (you'll have heard of him?)

In his foreword to a 1998 exhibition, Jeffrey Carr, the Curator, has this to say:

Embodied Fictions is an exhibition of twelve nationally known realist painters who use the figure to create fictionalized worlds. These paintings demonstrate the power of painterly figuration to embody content. The quality of embodiment relies on the depiction of visual appearances to create fictional worlds, in the way a novel or film can make an invented situation seem "real". This use of the figure is distinct from the way a modernist might use the figure for a purely formal exploration, or the way a postmodernist might use the figure as a cipher, a sign or a decorative symbol to generate content.

I think this, and his even more interesting essay, may be enough to point me in the right direction. "Go for it," said Patsy123, and she's often right.

But she wasn't right, I felt, when we later turned our attention to an argument about the current proposals for human embryo cloning. I'm much too tired to cover the ground of the entire argument - and it was a proper argument, not simply a difference of opinion - but basically I came down on the side of support for stem cell research, broadband connections for nursing homes and colonies on Mars (I think if you're going to have an argument, you should be wide-ranging). I ventured that science, research and technology are the only things which will get us out of the hole we're very likely digging even now. That they may have got us into it in the first place is irrelevant.

Patsy123's arguments tended to be more like reservations about the fallout from technology. Really, she's been reading too much Oryx and Crake. If Margaret Atwood would simply admit she's writing science fiction, I'd have a whole lot more time for her.

I think I played my masterstroke by telling Patsy123 that she was arguing from a position of a glass half-empty, while mine was half-full. She doesn't like to think her glass is half-empty. If I hadn't seen her opposition wilting, I'd have played my trump card (what kind of game requires strokes and cards?):

Anything the Conservative Right Wing Bloody Moral Majority in America are against must be OK.

I rest my case.

And my weary body.

Oog

I woke up at 6.30 this morning. Not unusual, you may think. Bloody unusual for me. I was so stunned that I was not just awake, but wide awake, that for a long time I thought it simply had to be 6.30 in the evening. I was more prepared to believe that I'd slept the clock round, than that I'd woken at 6.30 in the morning.

I knew I'd had a heavy night and figured the extra bottle of wine I shared with the Bi Man at Caffe Zonzo after the wine tasting might have proven just a red too far.

And I'd posted to my blog! What the hell might I have said if I was in such a state that I'd slept the clock round?

Finally, I had to get up and check that it was indeed 6.30 in the morning. I looked at last night's blog and it didn't read too much like the ramblings of a piss artist. In fact, Amy had already found sufficient sense in it to past a comment. So I took a couple of Alka-Seltzer and went back to bed.

When I woke up again it was 10.00 and all was back to normal.

Liddl' ol' wine drinker me....

Two years ago my life fell apart. I've made it an important rule of this blog not to dwell on that period.

The first rule of Boogie Street is: You do not dwell on that period.
The second rule of Boogie Street is: You do NOT dwell on that period.

Writing round it has proven enormously useful. But what proved even more useful at the time was getting involved in the funny old world of local artshow private viewing.

Some people would be ashamed to say that they based their social life on free drinking opportunities. I'm here to tell them that they'd be wrong. When the Greater Depths opened up, I found that I had no money at all and that everything I had might go down the pan.

[Here, I acknowledge buddies who helped out at the time, and continue to do so, to whom I'm eternally grateful]

One of the things you can do in such a situation is give in. Accept that everything has gone. Gorn, Fiona, lorst and gorn. Or you can say, fuck it, what is there I can do that costs me nowt? And the answer to that - especially to someone in my situation and with my background, is - go to private views.

I am more or less gregarious by nature, and private views gave me the perfect opportunity to make contact with People in the Know. Unfortunately, People in the Know in this arena are not the people who can do you much good as an artist - at University, for example, I made good friends with librarians, print technicians, secretaries etc, all the people who make the world of academe actually work. I did not make friends with most of the tutors, who, by and large, were egocentric arseholes who did not make friends..

But the People in the Know are the people who oil the wheels, who make the world run smoothly. And none makes it run more smoothly than Big & Happy. Big & Happy runs a wine retailing business, and over the last two years he's cornered the position of Wine Purveyor to the Middle Class Gallery Trade.

So it was that tonight I was invited to a wine tasting organised by Big & Happy. Absolutely nothing to do with a private art show viewing. Just a wine tasting. OK, it was in a gallery, but it had to be somewhere. This is the second I've been to, and both were really enjoyable.

Mostly they're full of tolerably, though, unexcitingly well-dressed folk sticking their long noses into glasses and saying. "Ah yes, blackcurrants!" Because I'd had to go to another artist function in the afternoon - four artists talking bollocks over a bottle of rose - I wasn't really dressed for the occasion, but I thought, rather than go home and change, I'd play the Bohemian. Anyway, as I so obviously know Big & Happy, no-one would turn their nose up in an aggressive manner.

And they didn't. Because most people, even the despised middle classes, are just ordinary folk out to get by in the world without hassle. So I had a few interesting conversations with people I've never met, before Boy George turned up.

Boy George bears no relation to his namesake, other than his sexual proclivity, and he is a Very Nice Man indeed. We compared wines - he knows his grapes much better than I do, and I'm always open to knowledge - and ended up going halves on four bottles of something expensive but unbelievably palatable. Should you wish to get out there and get some in your own cellar, what we bought was four bottles of Nine Popes from George Melton's Barossa Valley vineyard. Although the bottle we tasted was the 1998 vintage, we had to accept the 2000 vintage and will have to wait a couple of years before drinking.

I find it difficult to believe I'm writing these words, but I have no doubts about the value of the purchase and that each bottle is worth the money we paid. The reason we bought four bottles? That's all that was left out of Big & Happy's two cases. Crazy, huh?

Notes from a Sick Bed

Not wishing to dwell on my near-death experience (AKA my cold), but it has kinda dried up my creative juices. Not only that, but I haven't felt up to doing much, so blogfodder hasn't come my way.

On Thursday, the Frootbat and I collected some of my pictures from the Biscuit Factory. Then, over a coffee back at Stately Zip Mansion, we exchanged our views on the increasingly cluttered Zip living room, bloggery, and loss of memory. I'm sure we touched on more, but.....loss of memory.

Later that day, I met Patsy123 in town. After a pint in the Bacchus we ate in Pani's again. Another good meal (lotsa chilli!). Then we went home. Then we had our Bourbon. Then we went to bed.

Apart from a bit of desultory grocery shopping, and a lot of hacking coughery, I didn't do much on Friday, other than finally get the solicitors to complete on my remortgage. Which is a good thing, in view of today's letter from the old lender, saying they're putting up the monthly payment by a tenner. I fart in their general direction.

I know going to bed early is always a good way to recuperate, but I did notice there was a serial killer movie on Channel Five last night. Classic Kill starred Molly Ringwald as a classical music radio DJ, stalked by a serial killer who kept knocking off people who'd offended her with bad reviews or radio rivalry. There was some romantic involvement with a rather forgettable and unattractive cop with an angular face and dirty-looking designer stubble. There were numerous, fairly obvious red herrings and no way to guess who the stalker might be because he wasn't introduced until the last ten minutes.

Worst of all, the killer got rid of his victims with a poisoned bottled of expensive red wine. Did they writhe? Did they scream? Did their eyes pop? Did they fuck! They just looked a little surprised and keeled over. If you're going to do a serial killer movie, you really do have to have an element of the Baroque. Think Se7en. Think The Bone Collector. Bloody hell, think The Abominable Doctor Phibes!!

Blokeish Behaviour

The funeral on Saturday went with a real swing. I exaggerate, of course, but frankly I don't think there were too many people there who found the passing unexpected. The younger son had even opted for a fresh Spring approach of light grey strides and a striped Tie of Many Colours. Me? I put my earring in and spent some time talking art bollocks to various interested parties. There was a distinct lack of alcohol at the reception afterwards, perhaps because it was so early in the morning, but the buffet was more than adequate. As I left, I was invited to take a doggy bag, but the awful vision of the noxious couple of freeloaders described in Raised by Chaffinches came to mind, and I declined.

After that, it was into town to see buddies. In the relative calm of Fitzgeralds, I found Buddy K, Big Dave, Will Barrow and the Frootbat, well into a round. I say "relative calm," but in the Toon, all things are relative. Throughout the afternoon, groups of drinkers came and went, with varying amounts of noise. There were the usual gaggles of Fat Slags, giggling and snorting, their tattoos and navel rings on display between the skimpy bits of expensive cloth. Some were accompanied by more sedate blokes, dressed in their finest old jeans with their shirt tails hanging out. Mostly shaven-headed, they exuded Cool, as they puffed on their fags and followed on behind their impressive beer-bellies.

By the time we'd had several disagreeable pints of anything but the even more disagreeable Workie Ticket, and the Frootbat had destroyed the reputation of Islam yet again, we were joined by the women, Suzie Sue and the Apologist. They were carrying a four foot clipped yew tree, which went down well in the pub, and continued to be a source of local entertainment for the remainder of the evening. Almost as entertaining as the Apologist's new uppypusher bra, judging by Big Dave's reactions.

Diabetes and rumbling stomachs called for food, so leaving the Frootbat, we went off to Marco Polo's, where the tree was again well-received. Apart from the chairs, which seemed to be designed for the nursery and paid no heed to the concept of the human back, we had a good time, oiling the wheels of conversation with red and white wine. No, not red-and-white. Red. And white.

What else was there to do after that, but hit the Quayside and sink a few sambuccas at the Pitcher & Piano. Multiple sambuccas have become something of a tradition with Suzie Sue, but I guess I'm coming to the conclusion that one is probably enough. I think she was pleased to have her tree photographed there, though, but tried her best to be out of shot. I assured her that modern cameras would easily have included her with the tree.

"I hate to think that when I'm in my flat," said Buddy K, "that the Pitcher & Piano will be my local." I could appreciate that, so suggested that it might be worthwhile checking out the pubs downriver by the Ouseburn. The Tyne proved a blessing. It's one of those pubs I've never been in before, because in the days when I used to drink round there, it was an S & N pub with no real ale, but now it's excellent. Real ale aplenty, good bluesy music and a lot of live bands playing there several nights a week. My only reservation was that, dressed as I was for the funeral, I did feel a little out of place. I'd have felt better with a woolly hat and a dog on a piece of string.

By then we were euphoric. Scrambling about on muddy shrub-shrouded steps in a fine drizzle, we climbed up to the Free Trade Inn. Which was even better than the Tyne. Good beer, wonderful nicotine yellow walls which any interior designer would give his matching shirt and tie for, and a gents toilet covered in the most eloquent and original graffiti. "When the doors of perception have been cleaned, then we shall see the truth!" "These would be glass doors then?"

On Sunday, I did nothing.

Angel of the North

I'm knackered. The Scottish trip took it out of me and Sunday I spent walking in the sunshine with Patsy123 to the Angel of the North. She's not seen it before, at least not close to. I have, of course, but it's always worth a look. I still think it's probably not good sculpture, but it's certainly achieved iconic status, and that's not all bad. More interesting than the big man, however, are the people who come to look at him. This time there was a long procession of big bellies eating ice cream. Several of the big bellies were carried on the short fat stumpy legs of American women, so that's to be expected, but an awful lot more were wobbling on the fronts of local Geordies. What's becoming of people here? Too much popcorn, beer and burgers, I guess.

Anyway, they all took their turn at standing with arms outstretched in ludicrous parody of the metal man, then sat on his feet and had their photos taken there. Gormley would be thrilled to see how popular his creation has become. There was even a family from Africa, dressed in really great yellow baggy outfits who were genuinely pleased to let Patsy123 take their photo altogether with their camera. They didn't have big bellies.

After all that fun, there was nothing left for it but to walk in the continuing sunshine to the Ravensworth Arms. There I was forced to try out all three of the guest beers, brewed by the North Yorkshire Brewing Company. It's a hard job, but Mr Zip is up to the task, and the beers were not found wanting. But the long walk back to Stately Zip Manor and the subsequent bottle of Baron de Barbon rioja took their toll.

Said goodnight to Patsy123 and fell sound asleep in the armchair. Woke up at 5 o'clock with a stiff neck and tumbled into bed. Plans for blogging put on hold.