These figures were intended for a number of Hervé paintings, but the wolf was particularly used for Furious Embrace (below)
Drawing for Furious Embrace
This maquette below was the main one used for the Hervé and the Wolf paintings.
Drawing for a yet-to-be-made Hervé and the Wolf painting.
I have to be honest, Clive: you could well do an impressive show with the maquettes. The details and colors are amazing. The previous angel coupled with these are beautiful without translation to canvas. I’m once again awed that you put these together as temporary models for your paintings. It’s a brilliant idea that is as much art as is the work they help you create.
I can see that they hit the spot for you Jason. I’ve always shown a few of them in my ‘public’ gallery shows, but they’ve had less of a presence in my Martin Tinney Gallery exhibitions. This time though Martin came to the studio and chose them for himself.
For all painters the process of producing art involves finding a starting place. For me making the maquettes helps the process along. Once I’ve made one I play around with it, trying different configurations. Often the most unlikely arrangement of limbs is what sparks a painting. On one occasion, having tried without success for a long time to find what I wanted out of a maquette, I threw it down on the ground in frustration. There it lay, back to front… all the maquettes are painted black on the reverse… and with knee joints bent in the wrong direction. I used the outline of the figure as it had fallen in the composition. Just the solution that had been eluding my conscious mind.
Another thing that happens with the figures is that en masse they make casts of actors for various unfolding dramas. Blu-tacked to the walls of the Battery and a constant presence, from time to time I rearrange them into unlikely pairings and groups. New scenarios develop. At one point all of the male figures were grouped together and falling headlong. I enjoyed the compositional effect. It didn’t become a painting, but the idea is there. (The Fall of the Rebel Angels)
The fact is that play is essential to creativity, and these are my way of playing and learning. The process helps subvert any inclinations toward repeating myself or making my mind up too quickly about how an idea is going to emerge. The maquettes kick-start the work but also offer often unexpected directions of pursuit. Unlike when faced with a large and empty panel at the start of a painting… a daunting sight… when I start cutting up card to make a maquette I never feel overwhelmed by the task that lies ahead. It’s always fun to create a complicated articulated figure, and that gets me painlessly over the starting-line. The engineering aspect is always a new challenge, particularly when I want a figure to have a very wide range of movement.
I think the starting-line is a place of peril for all people working in a field of imaginative endeavour, whether it be musical composition, writing, choreography, photography, sculpting, assembling or painting. For me the starting point of painting has to involve playfulness, or I just sink under the leaden weight of expectation. And selling on maquettes once I’ve had the use of them is probably good too, because it just means that I have to make new ones. (Though there are a few that will never be framed and offered for sale, as they’re talismanic to the process of my work.)
Fascinating, Clive. Do you put them together with those old-fashioned brass clips with a head and two bendable “legs”, and then paint over them? Or what? Happy Friday! It’s sunny and lovely here though still not above freezing.
Yes Beth, the old-fashioned clips are just the business for these, though I always try to find ‘old’ stock in ancient stationary suppliers, as the quality of modern clips is sadly deficit. To begin with I used to just paint over the domed heads. Later I began gluing paper patches on top to disguise them, but then devised a way of ‘hiding’ them entirely by attaching them behind the card with little paper collars the size of a postage stamp glued on to secure them. (The collars have a small hole through which the bendable legs pass.)