DRAWING

I have started drawing again recently, feeling a need for some input.

. The olive grove that surrounds the house is a wonderful treasure chest of line and shapes and over the past fortnight I have spent a few hours a day trying to get my eye hand co-ordination working at a reasonable level.

As an extra activity I have had some enjoyment scanning  these sketches onto the computer and  playing around with them on photoshop. 

I was never one of those children who had the ability to conjure up life-like sketches of animals that caused adults to lavish them with praise of artistic talents. In fact I became an artist by accident, having incorrectly filled in a college application form I found myself enrolled in the art department instead of the maths department of a college of education. I had not even studied art to A level standard at school.

When the drawing lessons started I remember feeling extremely apprehensive because I couldn’t draw I could only make ugly marks on paper that didn’t look like anything. To my great surprise and relief  the  A level art students around me came in for more criticism than me for their rigid stylised forms of drawing. The tutor kept insisting that drawing was about looking, not about producing neat little sketches. I hid at the back listened, but didn’t understand and in the end got myself excused and allowed to go back to the sculpting.

A few years later, living in the countryside I decided to try drawing again, and those things the tutor had said, not understood by me at the time, started to make sense, the idea of drawing as a way of wakening the visual senses.  Drawing became a part of my everyday life for many years after, though not producing drawings that you would want on your living room wall, it was an activity I looked on as visual training, at its best a way of intensely observing the world.

Somehow as the years went on I got out of the habit of drawing regularly, so that when I did occasionally try it was difficult, in the way that keeping fit is not something you can do by exercising once a month, to keep your eye and hand working together you need to do it a little everyday.  

From "The Baptism" by Francesco  della Francesca

Since the arrival of computers  I have spent  some time using a computer to make drawings, starting with a photograph and abstracting and playing around  using photoshop.  Computer drawings on the website

Abstracting from a photo

The computer is a very useful tool if  kept under control, 

But if given a chance it can often take control and run away with things. 

A Simple One

I had some offcuts of bardiglio left so I decided to make this small and simple one 

  It would be better this size.

Three Exhibitions

Pietrasanta Una Citta d'Arte

The  town of  Pietrasanta calls itself  “Una Citta D’ Arte” although a great deal of  the painting and sculpture exhibited there is not always to my taste or liking, there is a always plenty to look art in the commune run or private galleries of which there are many. 

Currently there are 3 exhibitions sponsored by the Commune Di Pietrasanta all very different to each other. 

 For me the most enjoyable was the  small  modest exhibition of Etchings by Fabrizio Pizzanelli.

Fabrizzio Pizzanelli

 All the elements that go into good picture making are strongly present in these works, balance  of light and shade, strong structural composition, a wonderful sense of line all presented with an immaculate technique.  I found Fabrizio who manned the exhibition himself very “sympatico “ and enjoyed our discussions on his work and painting in general. Definately one of the joys of living here is to wander out to the Piazza for an evening drink and stumble upon work of such quality.

 I liked his work so much I bought this  print.

Paolo Maggis

Across the Piazza I also stumbled upon the paintings of  Paolo Maggis  half a dozen large rooms of  mostly large paintings and in almost everyway the exact opposite of  Fabrizio’s etchings. 

For me these were loud, in your face, images presented with a jarring impact. Punk Painting, strong on energy and vitality but lacking all the other qualities that go into making a good painting.

Mario Marcucci

In between these two exhibitions was the large exhibition in Pietrasanta's main venue the church of San Augostino of Mario Marucci (1910-1992). A painter  from Viareggio

 It is rather difficult to know what to say about these paintings of which there must have beenwell over 100. I wanted to be excited by them, I had seen the catalogue and had expectations of discovering really exciting work by a painter previously unknown to me but as I went from painting to painting, liking a part of one here and a part of one there I found myself wishing that the painter had painted fewer paintings and had really pushed through hise images  to arrive at something much stronger.

He obviously worked fast and instinctively producing a very large body of work but I couldn’t help thinking that his life was more or less concurrent with the italian painter Morandi and how much more Morandi’s work had to offer.

Cultural life in Pietrasanta is assisted by an excellent blog called Art is Life who email all their followers with details of all thats is happening

ZIG ZAG

I have finally finished the sculpture in Bardiglio I started at the end of November

Early stages

STAN TRACEY

Photo by Pino Ninfa

Two days ago I attended a performance at The Bulls Head in Barnes given by Stan Tracey to celebrated his 86th birthday.  There was absolutely no sense of it being a “noble effort for a man of that age” it was a performance by a man  still completely in charge of his considerable creative powers.

Stan Tracey has been the pivotal figure in British modern jazz for 6 decades. His dedication to making music and his total refusal to compromise his creativity in any way has been an inspiration to generations of musicians.  

 Last New Year he was here in Italy performing at The Umbria Winter Jazz Festival in Orvieto and then again in the Summer sharing a stage with Herbie Hancock.  But whether playing to large venues or a small British pub for Stan it is just another chance to create music. Which he does with own unique blending of harmony and rhythmic line that is impossible to hear for more than 3 seconds without recognising it as his. It may have  influences of Monk and Ellington but you would never mistake it for either.

I first heard heard him at Ronnie Scott's club in soho in the late sixties when he was the support act for Archie Shepp. I was then a student and completely taken in by the myth that only black Americans can play jazz, for me Shepp was where it was at,  with his black power politics and free form aggressive sounds, the white Englishman playing solo piano in between sets was largely ignored be me and many others.

Archie Shepp in Vicenza

Stan Tracey in Italy

  A few years ago at the Vicenza Jazz festival I had again the opportunity to hear both musicians at the same event, the black power activist had by now become a predictable all round entertainer and Stan was as uncompromisingly creative as ever.  The myth completely destroyed.  A myth that has blighted British jazz musicians for decades.

After my student days I rarely listened to jazz until by chance I went to a concert in Kendal, Cumbria where Stan was performing with John Surman.

 I was so impressed that subsequently whenever I was in London I sought him out and soon became hooked on the British modern jazz scene, eventually booking Stan’s quartet to play at my home in Appleby, Cumbria. An event that grew into an 18 year annual jazz festival. Stan Tracey performed at every one of those festivals.

I have always felt  his playing to be sculptural and that he uses space in a similar way to a sculptor.  Space in sculpture can become an entity itself when defined by the weight of the forms around it. Stan creates solid phrases of structured sound that weave  in, out and around solid spaces.

Photo by Pino Ninfa

 Stan is an inspiration to all creative artists, by his own admission he is a hermit, he hides away between gigs and shuns social events (though he did come out of hiding to receive both his O.B.E and his C.B.E}. He doesn’t take work as a pianist in other musicians' bands, he doesn't write or perform in advertising jingles. He has his own vision of music which he has dedicated a whole life to perfecting, without deviation.

In the words of pianist Keith Tippet “Stan Tracey  is the Master”.

A Stroll Along The Thames

Though I have never seriously lived in London  it has all ways been a part of my life and now that I live abroad visiting London becomes a nostalgia trip revisiting old haunts. West London with the Thames meandering through several large parks has always been a favourite one.

Last weekend I took a stroll from Hammersmith bridge along the river to Barnes. To feed the desire for nostalgia a pint in the Dove at Hammersmith was essential, even though it was only 11am.

The river passes alongside the Fullers Brewery and  Hogarth House and on to Chiswick Old Cemetery famous for its  rather boring monument  to Hogarth situated right next to the church of St Nicholas. 

  Few people realise that in the far reaches of this graveyard against a wall lies a sarcophagus containing the remains of  a painter much more to my taste - James McNeil Whistler.

The message bronze plaque near the sarcophagus is a sad comment on our age. 

The four bronzes survived 60 years before finally being stolen but when replaced in our time didn’t even last a year. I am sure if they had been in Italy they would still be there. While like most Europeans the Italians don’t really have much time for art or religion in their daily  lives they still hold a deeply rooted reverence and respect for both. 

After paying my respects to Whistler I strolled on along the river to a place that was truly life changing for me 25 years ago -  the Bulls Head, Barnes.  It was here listening to musicians such as Stan Tracey, Peter King and Don Weller that I fell in love with British jazz, an obsession that initiated  the  creation of  The Appleby Jazz festival in Cumbria which incrementally took over my life for 18 years.

Though I no longer function as a jazz promoter I try and catch up with the musicians and the music when in London and the day before my stroll down the Thames I had travelled down to Dorset with Alan Barnes to attend a concert he was performing with Don Weller and Art Themen.

And the day after I spent a very pleasant afternoon in the Princess of Wales, Primrose Hill listening to Art Themen. The immense quality of British jazz has never received its true appreciation - but that is for another blog.  Meanwhile here is a taste.