View over London

It seems like a lonnnng time since I put one of these out. There are no reasons, only excuses which I won’t go into except to say its been a busy few months.

Last weekend we were in London for a few days. Like many people I know, I have a love hate relationship with London. There are so many things to like and dislike.

I will list some:
DISLIKES

• 
it’s busy and stressful
• 
it’s exhausting
• 
it’s impersonal and people are rude
• 
it can be dangerous and alienating
• it takes too much time to get anywhere or get anything

LIKES

• 
its energy
• 
its bookshops, clothes shops, cafes, pubs, cinemas, restaurants
• 
its hugely diverse and innumerable people
• its exhilarating urban landscapes
• the diversity in everything
• freedom and anonymity
• its both stimulating and exhausting at the same time

While I was there I managed finally to get hold of one of Miroslav Sasek’s brilliant books, This is London. I wish I had the time to do justice to the people and sights I saw as well as he did. Sasek did a brilliant job, he is sharp, witty and informative and his illustrations deceptively simple and yet saying so much. They capture beautifully the spirit of the big city and also the detail of its places and people. Some things have changed a lot in London in the fifty years since he made the book, even in the four years since we left. Like any big city, London is constantly in flux. 

One thing that does remain the same however is the magnetic energy that draws all kinds of people to London. Its vibrant diversity and the feeling of being part of something big. A place of opportunity, of gold, silver and big bright shiny lights.

Pulp Fiction

I read a lot and normally when I start a book I HAVE to finish it. But I currently have three books by my bedside which remain, as yet, unfinished. So in desperation I recently turned to some pulp fiction to help me get through this difficult period or at least what I consider pulp fiction;  easy to read, entertaining and not too taxing on the intellect. The book, The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness is the first in a trilogy, aimed at teenagers, (that’s me then) and in the fantasy horror genre, which I have to say is also not my first choice when it comes to subject. It follows the frantic flight of a young boy living on another planet where everyone can read everyone else’s thoughts, except that is for women who can’t be read, (no change there then). It also features a cool and funny talking dog, who’s main preoccupations center around poo and squirrels, or alien squirrels, as we’re on another planet!. The book recently won the Guardian children’s fiction prize. Another pulp fiction novel I read in the same genre, which I could recommend is Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games. Also set in an alien world and also part of a trilogy and similarly fast paced, it is darker and more morally complex than The knife but without its wry humour. This is reality TV taken to the extremes and follows the adventures of Katniss Everdeen a sixteen year old girl, who is forced to appear in a live event called….The Hunger Games, which start with 12 children in a live televized event and ends when there is only one! And while we are on the subject of horror and fantasy I will give you a recommendation for a third fantasy novel though this time I wouldn’t consider it pulp fiction. If I’d read the synopsis first I guess I wouldn’t have read this book but it came recommended to me and although I’m really not a vampire enthusiast this one really is in another league and takes a completely new twist on the genre. Justin Cronin’s The Passage is superb and an extremely dark and unrelenting story set in a post-apocalyptic world, where humans fight for their very existence against a legion of vampires which spread like a virus. If you have never read a horror novel before this would definitely be a good place to start!

Alan Burke Hooligan Trees

I came across this excerpt by Muhammad Ali, which reminded me of a book of poetry I have by the late Alan Burke.

I done wrassled with and alligator.
I done tussled with a whale,
Handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail.
Only last week I murdered a rock,
injured a stone, hopitalized a brick.
I’m so mean I make medicine sick.
Muhammad Ali 1974

I wonder how much if any, this had an influence on Alan Burkes”Pieta”. It certainly has a very similar rhythm and swagger. Actually poetry is the one form of art I find most challenging but Alan Burke’s Hooligan trees struck a nerve with me immediately. It is a small but extremely strong collection of poems by a young man who died of a brain tumour. He was aware that this was terminal when writing Hooligan Trees which makes it all the more poignant and powerful. This is the last poem in the book.

Carving a Pieta from an Atom

Throw heaven and earth into a sack
And carry it always on your back.
Go up to Gods black eye, spit in his face, say goodbye,
Take the devil by his balls and bounce him off hells slimy walls!
Roll death on your palm, touch it, stroke it, without alarm.
Ride your life the buckshot horse,
Whipping it always to stay on course.
Do in a second an hours job-
From time you must begin to rob.
Stand on stacked up years to touch eternity.
Your home in all certainty.
Scale Everest with a smile,
Scaling mountains is no great trial!
Carve a pieta from an atom…
Alan Burke

Big Horizons

I’m in Frankonia, (Bavaria, Germany), for a few days, but unfortunately with no access to a scanner or any way of uploading any artwork so, today its only words.

The landscape here is linear, structured and ordered, made up of clean lines, horizontal and vertical. The sky seems always at a distance and the light though not today, is even and bright. By contrast the landscape I grew up in, in North Yorkshire is rugged and uneven. It is busy with dry stone walls and hedges, small river valleys, sunk beneath high moorland. The colours seem altogether more rich and varied. It is a windy spontaneous landscape, where the sky and everything under it appear to be in continuous flux. It is often heavy with dark clouds under which the light gets trapped, saturating everything. The contrast to Bavaria couldn’t be more different and when I first began visiting here years ago I found it un-stimulatimg and sterile by comparison.  It isn´t the same but it does have its own ordered, linear beauty.

(Actually it was the photographer Thomas Struth in his book Dandelion Rooms that helped me appreciate it more. The landscape photos taken in that book are actually taken around the area of Winterthur, where we live. But the topography and landscape in both areas are very similar).

Its not a patchwork of history like England’s landscapes, but a green and gold landscape where fields and woods are neatly divided. The ploughed furrows are perfectly straight and you find few abandoned farmhouses or dilapidated orchards to disturb the uniformity.  I joke that even the trees here stand to attention. It also got me thinking how landscape so much reflects the history and character of its people. But it could be just as well, that we are formed by our natural environment? By the consistency of the weather and open or obstructed horizons?

new sketchbook

I love starting  a new sketchbook. Its so full of promise. I imagine all the great and still unknown stuff that’s going to go in there. My default sketch book at the moment is an A6 Moleskin plain reporter, normally with a hard cover, as they’re easy to hold in one hand and sketch in surreptitiously. I also like the paper, which takes a pencil well and is nicely absorbent for watercolour. I used to use and sometimes still do use the plain note books from Muji, (148x105mm), which have a similar paper. They have a lot more pages, they last longer, but don’t have the hardback or top hinge. They also use to do an A5 notebook which was great, but they have since discontinued it.

Sunday reading – in Patagonia

Did you ever have a book sit in your bookcase for a long time and not read it? Actually, I hate to have any book in my library which I’ve not read.  Yet for some reason there are still some which I haven’t gotten round to reading. I need to be in the right frame of mind to read a particular book, the same with Music. If I pick one up and don’t get a good feeling right off, then I will put it down. Though once I do start I’m committed to the end, even if I’m not particularly enjoying it. That’s why those first few lines are so important. One case in fact was/is in Patagonia – Bruce Chatwin. It sat on my bookshelf for nearly ten years before I finally got round to reading it recently. For some reason every time I picked it up, I couldn’t get beyond the first page. In Patagonia is Chatwin’s account of his journey through “the uttermost part of the earth”, (Patagonia), part travel, part history, anecdotal and adventurous, it now ranks as one of my all time favourites. I love travel and travel writing….I don’t know why I didn’t read it earlier!

Robert Tavener

Margaret Howell has been one of my favourite designers for a long while and as well as the clothing range, she also sells in her stores a beautiful selection of handpicked books and accessories. I picked up this lovely book, following the life’s work of ROBERT TAVENER. Tavener (1920-2004) was a printmaker and teacher for over fifty years. His Linocuts and Lithographs were inspired by the “shape, pattern and colour” of the English landscape and English architecture. I particularly like in his prints the combination of the formal and the abstract.

Project Ocean – Selfridges

I’m not normally one to champion causes but I do like my seafood and this was so nicely illustrated, (though I couldn’t find out by whom)….It was in the form small booklet as part of Selfridges, Project Ocean, which gives a guide to the safest Green-Fish to eat (available in the UK). Unfortunately it seems that half the fish on our plates we shouldn’t be eating…… If you want to learn more go to: http://www.selfridges.com/en/StaticPage/ProjectOcean/#/

Sunday reading – Charley Harper

One of my other diversions, on which I spend too much money, are large Art and Design books. One of my current favourites which I picked up on our last visit to Italy, was a large format copy of the late Charley Harpers, An Illustrated life. Charley Harper was a Modernist Illustrator and Artist, born in West Virginia in 1922, famous for his natural history prints, posters and mural work. I don’t really like the term coffee table book, but it is perfect for this. I have it on open view and turn a page every week or so. There is so much humour, drama and pathos in his work, at once formal and expressive. And if you spent any of your life growing up at any time up until the seventies, or early eighties, you will probably find his images oddly familiar. This is because he not only illustrated many children’s books such as the Random House “The Giant Golden Book of Biology” but because he pretty much invented the style of illustration he now epitomizes…sublime…