Dougie with his faithful companion, Leah

ABOVE: Lucien Freud appears to have denied an early portrait from his art school teens.

A DELIGHTFUL SIDE TO DRAWING AND PAINTING

How embarrassing but how nice!

I was invited to Condado Beach, Puerto Rico for the weekend when resident in the Dominican Republic the next island shared with Haiti. My former client, Revlon chief in Spain, like me had moved into the Caribbean. As we entered his high floor condominium apartment, my eye was instantly taken with a beautifully framed artwork. The lounge furnishings and colour were all complimentary to the quite small painting, making the whole room special. “WOW!” I said – “Colin I do like that.” He replied, “You should, It’s yours!”

I was genuinely flabbergasted and embarrassed, to his amusement.

‘Going to the Gumfields’ – Garth Tapper – 1985.

Over years we often forget artwork that we have made, and it is always good to see a forgotten friend, rather like finding a lost child. The thrill is to unexpectedly find a work worthy in our own estimation I suppose. Equally when a special work surfaces that I didn’t even remember doing, it really is a joy and if I’m honest, is perhaps one of the best moments we can possibly get when we draw or paint. My only other similar moment was when one of my social-realist works ‘the enduring of suffering’ 1994 series, brought a tear to a visitors eye.

Like any job, sport or skill, we all enjoy achieving, but artwork is such a static and visible statement. Possibly also a terrible moment, if an early work obviously lacked basic skill. How would I have felt had my painting gracing that superb apartment not been worthy in my own eyes? Lucien Freud appears to have denied an early portrait from his art school teens.

‘Southdown Boy’ – 1967-1970 – Garth Tapper.

This leads me to the need to keep track of paintings over years as we mature. Most of us are a bit slack and sales take them all over the world perhaps. Computer photography very recent solves the problem today. Keeping detailed records it’s not the way most artists heads work. It helps when you have an interested partner who like my late wife, loved to see me work and was a constant source of encouragement. She also looked after the sales and business side, the Expo’s and Artist in Residence arrangements etc. Artist’s need a good friend as a personal assistant with enduring patience as at times, we can be difficult when the work in hand takes us over, immersed following an unknown direction, and if the thread is broken? – we lose it. Dinner’s ready, on the table! And an hour later after wiping brushes and cleaning off my palette I suddenly come back to reality – but not before a sly glance from the doorway, before going into the house.

Garth Tapper

Artwork for me is a very solitary occupation, it’s very personal. One that I become totally absorbed an interruption can break that mystic creative thread, and once broken I personally find is very hard to reestablish. My wife understood this well fortunately, and dearly enjoyed as when driving America west to east and back, to be with me as I completed watercolours. However round and about in NZ, and as I always paint plein air, we almost never painted in company. To capture the spontaneity and loose technique I enjoy in watercolour I felt pressured if I felt that I was holding her up. To paint well I must have no set time limit, even though 40 minutes is about my maximum to lay in most of the painting using an inch wide brush, before reducing brush size and increasing tones and darker washes wet on wet most times. As a studio boy I would pick up finished artwork from Frank A. A. Wootton MSIA at his studio. One time he told me to bring in my paint box and brushes as I admired his work enormously, especially his de Havilland aircraft and Rolls Royce and Bentley paintings. He opened my box and threw out tube after tube saying – “you don’t need that, and you don’t need that” Leaving me with about six or eight tubes, no black or white, then to attack my brushes leaving six only, starting with the inch wide chisel and finishing with a long-haired rake. I always work with chisel brushes only – I personally feel comfortable with the sharp square ends. I still have the same Victorian paintbox which, already old at age seventeen, has lasted me years and was likely a hundred years old when I was gifted it by a Wilkins. I love it!

Frank Wootton MSIA. An exciting painting at age thirteen. Client: De Haveland.

‘Automat’ – by Edward Hopper. 1927 – Oil on canvas.

Trained from an early age as a professional ‘creative problem solver and lateral thinker’ I suspect I have lived on or beyond the “edge” bordering reality and fantasy most of my life. Always fascinated by the unknown solution be it shape form mass or colour. I don’t believe ‘Creativity’ can be taught or assessed in the same way as academic subjects based on known correct answers. Creativity can only be encouraged and developed. Everybody is capable to a greater or lesser extent but unlike most people who can be taught to draw, even those who say that they can’t draw, and they in my opinion have usually made up their minds they can’t, so don’t wish to try, or be taught. Likely they were equally good at age nine, but I suspect were emotionally destroyed somehow or by someone. Creativity is quite different in my opinion. One is standing on the edge of the unknown, venturing into a featureless void. Nothing is quite so frightening as a blank piece of paper. When video interviewing Northland Artist the late Garth Tapper, he told me his wife asked, “when are you going to start that new canvas you have on the wall?” Garth replied – “Well, I have been looking at it for some months and actually, I rather like it the way it is!” Edward Hopper said much the same.

He would also agree with me in telling you, please – never destroy work you have just completed because you think at that moment it’s not good. Leave it alone, look tomorrow or twenty years later, you may be surprised. Painting or drawing is all about selecting options and making decisions. Sometimes one makes the right decision, but we don’t recognise it at the time or what is achieved. The hand pre-empts the head possibly. When in this creative state that we call ‘creating art’ we are lost in a truly wonderful space, an amazing sensation beyond formal consciousness – time, what, where all astern – may the force be with you.