A big thank you is due to Birmingham City Council for granting permission for me to paint amongst the action during the visit of the German Market to the city centre. If you haven't been it is quite an experience, the large public spaces are taken over by wooden lodges each selling winter food, beer or Christmas trinkets. The permitted outdoor drinking gives a relaxed atmosphere and attracts hoards of the city's workers after a day in the office. Smells of garlic mushrooms and sizzling sausages permeate the air.
These German markets really come to life when the light dulls and the strings of lights that adorn each building make the whole market glow invitingly. I wanted an image that captured some of this bright artificial light in cold dull winter days. I positioned myself alongside the large carousel that dominates Victoria Square. I had clocked this an an interesting subject when I visited the market the previous winter. It proved a really interesting challenge, mainly moving, but even in the intervals where it stopped it never seemed to stop in the same position twice.
Masses of moving intense colours filling a composition. The painting was mainly completed in dull daylight although there was a golden hour everyday at twilight when there was still enough light to see the palette and painting but little enough so that the bright lights of the carousel made it scream out in the landscape.
I enjoy how recognisable but not complete horse shapes appear out of the puzzle of moving colour. The vertical railings looping around the ride cast really interesting moving patterns of light when the daylight had gone completely.
What wasn't so enjoyable was the barrage of fairground organ music you get if you stand for days alongside a carousel trying to attract custom. The tunes this one was playing even made the news when passers by realised that 'Dambusters' and 'Dad's Army' might not be appropriate in a German Wonderland!
Part of the challenge of this project has been how to fund the national tour of 'Year of the Boat' and our wages whilst holding back the work produced, in order to have full impact exhibitions of the journey throughout 2013 (see details of the exhibitions here).
Our voyage has only been possible because of a superb year of gallery sales, from long-term stockists in Staffordshire, Barewall, and a remarkable first year with the new Shrewsbury based gallery Millard and Lancaster.
The success of working with Millard and Lancaster (M and L) has meant the luxury of developing a deeper knowledge of Shropshire. After returning back from Oxford to Staffordshire with the boat, Shrewsbury was the first port of call to build up a stock of local subject matter for M and L. The gallery had arranged for me to have use of a town centre flat in Shrewsbury which allowed me immediate access to the subject matter (much the same as travelling to a town on the boat) and the precious daylight hours this time of the year were not being lost commuting. The set working hours in the town allowed me to develop a flow over the week working across 4 canvases in a day over the five days, each having a daytime slot -
8.00am - 11.00am The morning painting was entitled 'Kingsland Bridge'
I have used the span of the bridge and it's reflection to form a loop that tunnels us into the painting our eyes naturally leading down the park's tree lined riverside path. The river is the River Severn that horseshoes right the way around Shrewsbury and with the Quarry park gives a relaxing green space within easy reach of any part of the town centre. The morning slot for this piece meant I was mixing with the hoards of early morning dog walkers and joggers.
The painting captures some of the autumnal colour in the bed of leaves formed on the grass. The buildings on the opposite back are Shrewsbury School and the boathouse. The school has quite a commanding presence on top of the steep sloping bank, overlooking the river.
11.30am - 2pmThe War Memorial
This one was a bit of battle with tackling the statue and the pillared housing literally head-on, almost perfectly symmetrical on the canvas. This meant it was an exercise in expressively painting accurate perspective.
Quite a sinister subject matter, a striking statue of St Michael that captivated me enough to warrant a painting. He seems to have a dark side silhouetting against the light portland stone, one schoolboy on his way to the nearby swimming baths told me not to stop looking at the statue, because he thought it was a 'Weeping Angel' from Doctor Who, and would attack if you turned your back.
St Michael is there, also in The Quarry Park by the river, to commemorate those from Shropshire who lost their lives in the two World Wars.
I was photographed by the friendly Ian Sheppard of The Shropshire Star whilst painting this piece.
2pm - 4.30pm Wyle Cop
Although this was mainly an afternoon piece I spent a full day on this one at the beginning of the trip. This was the subject matter in Shrewsbury I knew I wanted to tackle before arriving here. I had walked up and down the Wyle Cop on previous trips searching for an angle that summed up the whole street. This main old thoroughfare into town steeply snaking from the English bridge over the river up to the spires of town at the top of the street is packed with character and sums up Shrewsbury as a whole. This was the best composition I could find, flipping the composition to a portrait and a slight abstraction on the buildings to accommodate them on that plane, really worked to communicate the steep angle of the street, giving an instant fun almost a cartoon feel to the painting. It is a concept that immediately communicated to the passing audience and was in turn very popular making often making people smile with a shared communicated statement about an experience. I am pleased with this piece although I had initially set out to 'move' vantage point as you scan up and down the street so it is possible to see the bridge and river at the bottom as well as the spires at the top. David Hockney's journey photomontages and paintings are an influence as is Tim Hyman's studies of whole streets.
David Hockney - Mulholland Drive: The Road to the Studio
Tim Hyman
6pm - 9pm The Monklands
A quick interior study for residents about to leave their flat in The Monklands, Shrewsbury for a new home but wished for a record of their living room in particular. Apart from the human sitters we have a Jack Russell called 'Gio' and a whippet called 'Pencil' in rather relaxed poses on the sofas. The whippet painting brings to mind Lucien Freuds wonderful studies
Getting the boat to London was becoming more and more unrealistic this year, and in Oxford we wrote it off completely due to a few factors -
underestimating the distances and times on the whole route so far,
getting carried away with unexpectedly good subject matter in places we weren't expecting to stop
being delayed working on other jobs that have helped support the year
the height and strong current conditions on the Thames (genuinely dangerous for a tall narrowboat)
lock maintenance happening on our route home in early November (meaning we have to get a move on)
It is a shame, but we could have not given more to this project, and have no regrets with how it has gone and with what we have seen.
Also it is far from over, we are turning around and heading back up north for the winter but have until March to complete our 'Year of the Boat', we have decided to risk this winter outside of a marina and I am looking forward to getting some winter scenes and more internal boat scenarios into paint.
To make up for the boat not physically going there I shall be visiting a few times independently instead to try and explore visually some of the capital's canals and rivers.
I have been down already this year producing the Diamond Jubilee Pageant on the Thames. Whilst down for that painting I had a walk around the canals around Camden, locating where Banksy had his graffiti war with 'Robbo', you can read more about that here - http://www.banksy.co.uk/QA/camden/camden4.html#. There was bits that attracted but not so much on the actual canal, more the markets and bits and pieces just off the canal.
I returned again this autumn to visit friends, armed with a blank canvas to Camden Lock and produced Oil Painting 55 - Camden Town.
Camden Town is another world - the throng of weird and wonderful hedonistic people making their way over the canal bridge was an exciting subject to be amongst, I was stood on one side of the canal/road bridge, and there was a supremely talented one woman band on the other side, singing and playing all afternoon, the music easing the atmosphere of the crowd. I was looking down towards the tube station at all the strange fairground-esque sculptures coming off the buildings. Giant tacky shoes, swirls, dragons and monsters taking over the georgian buildings.
The fashion of the general passerby is bizarre, neon hair styles tattoos and piercings, quite an intimidating place to be, and one linked to some of other worldly experiences I had whilst studying in London, intimidating but certainly exciting, an excitement I have tried to translate into the brushwork. I have used the spiral motif in the tree and shop on the left to try and communicate the more hedonistic culture of the place. The strong afternoon sun means this piece has become an unexpected study of sunlight and shade. I might yet return to work into this piece more, although that could mean losing some of the bounce to the brushwork and the drama if the sunlight isn't as strong. It is an unusual painting that challenges me so it is probably best to leave it.
I was getting the impression whilst producing the painting of the Radcliffe Camera and the view from the tower that I was still missing an important feature of the Oxford experience. A lot of the fascination of Oxford University is that it seems to be going on behind closed doors that the city just allows you glimpses of from the street. I wanted to get inside some of these majestic buildings I was staring at and the obvious place to start seemed to be the famous Bodleian Library.
After signing wavers stating I would pay for any damages caused (not stupid these Oxford University people) I was granted access to paint in the Divinity School section of the library.
Although I do know quite a bit since standing in there for two days and listening to numerous tours. This is a gothic masterpiece, and unusual because the plans were changed dramatically half way through the 15th century build. It was never intended to be a 'school' as such, more a room for examination of a students knowledge through aural debate, with students addressing their professor, fellow students and the general public from pulpits in the room. The subject being 'Divinity' which was the core subject in the 15th century with so much of education being linked to the church.
So it was really a presentation room, all 'study' was happening in the neighbouring colleges and the university just stood as an examination body in the centre. Wealth came to the colleges from former students but not really to the university itself and so the build of this school was delayed over the course of the century due to lack of funds. The university were presented with a collection of some 245 manuscripts by the Duke Humphrey half way through and this is where the dramatic change to the design arrives. In order to house the manuscripts (extremely rare and valuable, often bejewelled) the university divided this space into two storeys instead of a single tall room. This has pushed an elaborate gothic ceiling down really close to the naked eye and gives the opportunity to really study the remarkable amount of decorative bosses.
It has also survived remarkable well, looking as though the 15th century stone masons could have left yesterday, The Reformation left a serious toll on religious architecture in the country with saint carvings and crucifixes being defaced, but only a handful of such vandalism occurred in this room. Upstairs, the now named Duke Humphrey's Library, suffered a different fate with only 4 of the 245 manuscripts surviving with piles of books being burnt in bonfires outside the library.
The library is still being used today and so is the Divinity School as a graduation ceremony location for Oxford University students along with the neighbouring Sheldonian theatre.
The other key point the tour guides would bring up when they could see heads dipping in the tour groups was ...
Harry Potter was filmed in here! *heads look up*
and in the Duke Humphrey's Library upstairs! I was painting the the actual Hogwarts.
How was it used?
Ron Weasley learned how to Waltz in this room, it was also the Infirmary in one of the first films. I was standing pretty close to Harry's hospital bed
I dont even like Harry Potter. I was more a Lord of the Rings fan, I think that is the Beatles vs The Stones of our generation.
Anyway, hope you like the painting, I am pleased with the injected colour into the naked stone, similar to what happened in Worcester Cathedral although this has a much warmer quality due mainly to two dull days outside that allowed the artificial light inside to light up the fluted stonework like fire. These gothic subjects are really linking well with my work at the moment and I am please with this discovered tangent to year of the boat.
I emailed a few different spots on arrival to try and get a vantage point up high so I could really see those dreamy spires of Oxford. St Michael of the Northgate were really friendly and open to the idea from the offset. Their viewing area on the top of the Saxon tower (the oldest building in Oxford) made a perfect studio space, which although open to the public I had largely to myself during the four afternoons it took to complete the piece. There was an initial visit which was a complete failure where after lugging all the gear to the top of the bell tower and getting everything set up the wind caught the painting and somehow the easel collapsed ripping through the canvas. I have never had that before. I thought it might have been Divine Intervention from the big man on home turf stating he wanted a bigger canvas for this glorious view provided.
I felt like Quasimodo with my own space up amongst the pigeons in a bell tower, you walk up and up the tower on stairs that circle the bells. The pigeons rule the roost here though, plenty of artistic expression from them in and around the tower. Put it like this, I wasn't worried about the odd splash of white paint being noticed.
The strange thing about the painting of this piece was the utterly different weather conditions on each of the 4 visits, I had a dull day, a rainy day, a glorious sunny afternoon and finally a foggy day. The painting is a combination of these different weathers.
The crowd painting returns again in this piece although now we are onlooking from afar. The dark shapes reminding me of LS Lowry and a french national day painting by Claude Monet I have always adored -
The second painting started in Oxford. Our only experience of Oxford prior to this trip was calling in for a break on the way back from collected a rejected entry to the BP Portrait Prize (they didn't know what they were looking at). We had a brief walk around Christchurch Meadow and the old University quarter and I remember the experience well, of walking narrow streets between golden stone buildings that opened up into this, the magnificent Radcliffe Square. I have attempted a composition that hopefully reflects that experience of looking up at spires from street level and then the vista of the Radcliffe camera inside the square.
The painting also captures the pushbikes, the dominate form of transport in the city, that have also taken over any available inch of railing in the centre. The building on the right is the famous Bodleian Library.
The morning light also became a strong feature in this painting and because of this I would only work on it in morning conditions and work on something else in the afternoons. I am pleased with the diagonal brush strokes on the corner of the Bodleian Library as the sun just caught it before moving round and leaving that wall in shade.
The aerial perspective (reducing contrast and slightly bluing) is working on the dome of the Radcliffe camera, this treatment reminds me of the painting of the Council building inside Victoria Square, Birmingham (Oil Painting 35 - Birmingham Watches the Olympics)
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