Ho-Ho-Ho!

At this time, the mind turns happily to all things festive.
Pity the poor window-painter- not myself this year, but my accomplice, Al. It's one of our busiest times and the red paint's slapped on like nobody's business.
None of our customers wants their shop window decorating too early for Christmas, nor too late, so it's a frenzied period of activity resulting in a sort of madness- a blur of holly, a whirl of snowmen, a sweetness of Nativities, forests of fir trees- and the dreaded favourite, Pere Noel, who, for this stressful period, is often referred to in irreverant and colourful terminology involving size and mother's marital status.
We work from photos and old cards. It's difficult to find a plumptious, white-bearded old fella in a red suit to pose while we paint, and the best-drawn images of Santa are the ones from the old Coca-Cola adverts. The offending bottle in his hand ( no wonder he's fat!) is replaced by a star or a dolly. Or, on last week's pharmacie window, a blood-pressure gauge.
I see that this year, Al's photcopied a picture of Brian Blessed as a possible model.... he'll have to bleach that beard, and add a few extra locks.
Other window painters crawl out of the woodwork around now and we see their handiwork. Some are ok-ish, but bad taste does abound in the city of Rennes. A semi-naked woman dressed as Father Christmas on a bike, smoking a tab somehow lacks the festive ring of Decking the Halls, Awaying in Mangers , and bringing pine logs hither.
And to Slade's perennial questions ' Does he ride a red-nosed reindeer, does he turn up on his sleigh?'- well, 'Yes, if that's what you'd like on your windows, M'sieur, Madame!'

Early Learning

It's a Wednesday and high time to have another 'Kidzart'. I've been reading the excellent 'Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain' , so instead of doing what are essentially craft-based projects with the young 'uns we decide to give them a workshop that will, hopefully, get the creative half of their grey matter working.
We start off by copying drawings which are upside-down... we chose cats and dogs. The fact that the drawing is reversed abstracts the familiar subject matter into shapes, angles and lines. It also discourages using the usual symbols- by this I mean the tendency to think ' this is what an eye's like- round!' , or 'this is how I draw a tail!' . We're careful, also, not to name any of these bits.
The first drawings go well, but they tire after a while-poor mites! and start reverting to what they think or know is there. Or what they believe should be visibly there, eg a dog has four legs so I give it four even if I can't see them all.
We have a break and then they stand at easels like 'real artists' and do a painting of yours truly lying on a couch. We're amazed at how well they work- for forty minutes- remember these are youngsters aged four to eight only- and produce some great pictures. They all have an instinctive sense of design and even if the figure's badly placed in the beginning it's balanced out afterwards, somehow.
Well done Lawrence, Mathieu, Thibaud and Manon! And thanks to their Mums. And for the cake!

Phew!

After a pause from this blog I can now reveal to you, dear readers, that for the last few weeks I’ve been working non-stop on a series of paintings of Salford for an interior design company- an excellent commission, and- frighteningly, my first of this magnitude.

They’re to be reproduced , much bigger, for an outlet of (so my pizza-literate friends tell me!) the most up-market of pizza restaurant chains.

And with a short deadline, small wonder that I’ve been akin to a headless chicken!

For starters, photos had to be taken of the area, both of the spanking-new, trendy Salford quays with its bridge and Lowry Museum , and the old Salford… factories, mills, streets of red brick.

Out of hundreds of photos I found the best sixty, eventually whittling it down to a dozen or so, choosing a good variety of subject matter. Colour, too had to be considered – I didn’t want to use the same palette on each.

I worked in a mixture of media which gave me the grand sweeps of colour and the delicate architectural detail I wanted to convey.

I was pleased with the results- I’d have liked a little longer to do the ‘ pizzapics’, but I stuck with what I knew would work well and I feel I’ve captured some of the atmosphere of a city under metamorphosis.

It’s been important to me also that I record the changing scene before the charwoman that is regeneration arrives, takes up her Mr. Muscle, and cleans away the grime- and some of the character- of centuries.

Pictured are small details of the work, more to follow!

Everybody's Mate, Rolf.

Sometime late in 2006...
An Art job comes through from the excellent Axis Art website. It's the BBC who want North West artists to join Rolf Harris in Manchester for the day. I'm over in France and feel I can't be fussed- then I decide it'll be interesting . I email examples of my Manchester paintings and I'm taken on.
Rolfie's doing a programme on L.S. Lowry, culminating in Piccadilly Gardens, with himself and the chosen artists painting the scene that Lowry depicted in 1954.
The Beeb give us details of Lowry's palette of colours in case we choose to use the same. That's Prussian Blue, Vermilion, Yellow Ochre, White and Black.
I've never used this combination before and have avoided the all-pervasive Prussian, but when I try them out on test-pieces I'm pleasantly surprised. I leave out the black- 'not colour but the absence of light'.
The results are instant Lowry! I'll use them on the day if they're suitable.

January 2007
All the artists meet the BBC folk in the cafe on Piccadilly Gardens and we're given some idea of how the day will go. We're to be filmed working in a big marquee in front of the building. As we file out , an affable Rolf , swaddled in ten feet of colourful scarf, holds open the door for us.
Out in the open-sided marquee- after Rolf's foot-stomping rendition of 'Sunarise'- no-one can see as much of the scene as Lowry could. A mushrooming of modern buildings pushes us further into the square, so I decide to paint just the slice I can see without scanning.
We have around three or four hours . The BBC and the artists are jolly and friendly, despite the cold, and Rolf's doggedly working on an intensively coloured panorama from photos taken in dramatic evening light.
The artists are working in various mediums- charcoal, oils, acrylics, and - don't ask me how- mosaic and batik!
I meet some nice students from the Fine Art Courses at Manchester Uni. Although we're cordoned off, the public are close by and I loose count of the number of times I hear "Have you guessed what it is yet?" shouted out. But our Rolf's a patient man and poses for endless photos with complete strangers as the day goes by.
I think it's really naff and embarrassing to have your photo taken with Rolf Harris and I wouldn't ever do that, but later on I think 'well, everyone else is and I might regret it later'- so I do!
All the artists are filmed and interviewed towards the end of the day. It's nerve-wracking and we have to carry on painting as we speak (two different sides of my brain, if you don't mind, Mr. Producer!).
I say my bit, feeling daunted by the previous artist's encyclopedic knowledge of Lowry and I know that my paltry observations won't be chosen.
When the programme goes out in March, they have picked my bit and tho' I look pinched and my voice is cracked and ancient with the cold, I say what I really wanted to point out. I tell how it's easy to paint a beautiful picture of, say, a vase of flowers, but that Lowry depicted the ugly, the everyday and the overlooked, and he transmitted their strange beauty to the observer.
A word about Rolf..... I know he isn't popular with some... well, he's enthusiastic and approachable, and who said Art should be depicted in a po-faced way, to be enjoyed only by intellectuals?! His is one of the few TV programmes showing the craft and technique behind paintings.
There's nothing wrong with being populist, and as a schoolkid I was greatly encouraged by his Big Brush Paintings.. .encouraged down that chosen path to a life of penury- thanks, Rolf, haha!!

"When I was young I did not see the beauty of the Manchester streets. I used to go out into the country painting landscapes and the like. Then one day I saw it... I saw the beauty of the streets and the crowds" L.S. Lowry 1972.

Pictured: Lowry's Piccadilly Gardens, Rolf at work with myself being filmed, my own Piccadilly Gardens, Rolf and me!

Light In the Darkness of the Post-War Era

A 195os childhood spent in a drab northern town was illuminated by posters for Startrite shoes, by Christmas annuals or the sight of rainbow starlings splashing in a puddle..... and Aunty Dorothy's bright lipstick left on a cup....
Best of all, and before me now even as I write, is 'The Whopper Paint Book'. Inside its cheerful cover is a world of cute puppies, ducklings, kittens, piglets and foals to colour in - some of whom are happily cohabiting with different species!
I wasn't as keen on the racing cars or the planes- even though the Vickers Valiant is one of the most up-to-date of British bombers and the Supermarine Swift was flown by Lieutenant commander Mike Lithgow. Not to mention the Sunbeam Talbot, "one of Britain's leading hopes in competitive motoring"!
In 'the Twins Birthday Party' their aproned and smiling mother cooks and organises games and father puts in a vague, suited appearance at the end.
"All the children are wearing gay clothes at the party " and we should "give the little girls gay dresses", Jumbo is grey and he has on a yellow jumper, Teddy is golden brown, leaves are green, but-look out! One of these Toadstool Houses is quite different from the rest!

To the Chateau Borne, part two.

Down to chateau l’Age Baston once again to replace Mr. Price after his two week’s tutoring drawing on the Painting course.

I have a smaller number of students than usual, for the first week-and this gives me ample opportunity to hone my own skills. Back soon!

Images: gateway to the woods; six cows and a donkey; one red tomato. All Caroline Johnson

Football Magic

Painting a window is hard work both mentally and physically, and is usually done in three to four hours.
In the lead up to football's World Cup, held in France in 1998, we had eight-six window portraits of players to paint, that's an intimidating forty-three each.
Such a huge amount of portrait work was an unique opportunity to hone our craft- and my 'own work' in the studio can only have benefited, despite at times feeling drained and distraught !
I compare this to the Beatle's arduous training in the clubs in Hamburg, although there the resemblance ends- not many 'prellies' available in the average Breton village, to enable the artist to stay awake and continue working!
I would hesitate, to their faces that is, to call the French an over-self-confident race of people... but we portrayed Zidane holding the cup on more than one window, before the matches began. After they won, we were able to say it was due to our paintings!
I could, in fact, visualise a direct parallel to the sympathetic magic practised in prehistoric cave art and other rituals up to and including the present day!
Mmm...... could be a lucrative service we could offer, perhaps we've been barking up the wrong tree..
'Miraculous Good Luck Paintings- they worked for the French, now let them work for you! Commissions taken in strict discretion.'
Picture:Barthez in goal, window in Plancoet.