Still Life

The idea of still life seems really anachronistic now, I don’t think I’ve set one up for years, but it used to be a central plank of visual learning. There were two main issues we used to deal with. On the one hand there were concepts related to the types of things available to make images from and on the other hand it was a controlled situation whereby you could explore how to approach image making itself. 

If we wanted to as employees of Leeds City Council Education Department we could borrow objects from the Leeds Schools Art Loan Service. They had a large ground floor storage facility behind the Leeds City Art Gallery, this service was when I first used it headed up by John Robb-Webb. He would mysteriously on Frank Lisle’s retirement then be made our new principal and the Art Loans Service would follow him and be relocated in the basement of our Rossington Street building. I used to use the service for my classes at the Swarthmore centre, the centre wasn’t far away and I could borrow things in the morning and take them back once classes finished in the afternoon.  In particular you could borrow full skeletons, actual ones not the plastic surrogates you get now, bones browning with age, wired together and attached by a hook to a stand on wheels. The walk to the Swarthmore took me past the back of the Leeds General Infirmary, you might find me many a morning and afternoon wheeling my bony companions to and fro in full view of patients looking out from the wards to the amusement or horror of passersby.

Once this service had relocated into the Rossington Street basement the foundation course started using it more often. In particular to build elaborate still lives. Students would often be employed to help with the building of these situations and of course different staff would have different views as to how these should be set up and what for.

Colin would often choose objects for their geometric potential. Selecting objects as cones, cuboids, cylinders or spheres, not really too bothered that one object would be a Nigerian drum another an Edwardian lamp, an old leather football or a Japanese box.  Students would be asked to help him draw out a geometric floor grid with proportions based on the selected objects. The intersections of this grid with the objects being very important and these would be linked to the students having to check sight-lines and horizon lines, vanishing points etc before actually starting drawing.

Geometry in perspective would be the actual subject matter of this type of still life.

These drawing sessions implied a Platonic idea of universals, everything could be reduced to geometric solids and there were clear mathematical principles as to how these objects could be described using perspective.

Gavin’s approach would be more to do with his desire to introduce students to new things. He always carried a duffel bag with him. It wasn’t used just to hold bottles of the latest beer he had found, although this was an important aspect of Gavin’s life and if you went to his house it was stacked with beer bottles of all shapes, sizes and dates, masses of them covering the floors.  He would also go on a regular basis to Leeds market. He would look for any new fruit or vegetable coming in and buy one. I remember him one day bringing in a brown paper bag full of kumquats. He had brought them in to show his tutorial group, he would demonstrate how to eat them, skin and all, the rind being sweeter than the juicy centre. As long as the ‘bank’ wasn’t open yet, he would wonder the studios with these vegetable finds, getting students (and myself as he had quickly guessed that I was as culinary uneducated as the foundation lads and lasses in those days) to taste them. The British Isles had been cut off from the rest of the world during the second world war and fruits and vegetables from exotic locations were only now (mid 1970s) starting to arrive in the shops in any quantity. Markets were places where strange fruits often came into a city for the first time, in particular because many of the immigrant families who wanted these additions to their diet would shop there. This interest in the exotic would also have Gavin enthusing about different fish or squid now available. He would take students down to the fish market to show them a particular red gurnard or cuttlefish that had become available. These things would also be something to wonder at, new forms to explore and colour combinations to use.  It might mean a smell of rotting fish because it took several days to mix colour and get an understanding of what was being looked at but it was well worth it. These still lives were used to develop an intense look at colour form. Usually painted in oil, (I also ran some sessions where we used watercolour to work from squid), these still lives would be dense fought over mixes of paint. Zurbaran, Chardin and Soutine were looked at as examples of painters who had made realities from their direct confrontation with simple basic foods, but Cezanne would be the hidden ingredient. The struggle to recreate the moment of looking was seen as key to this. Life would be recreated on paper if the eye could sense the excitement in the initial looking, hence Gavin’s need to find new objects of desire. I had a feeling he was a frustrated Gauguin, the nearest he could get to the exotic being these market found imports .

This was all about recreating the excitement on seeing something new.

Small piles of fruit were always to be seen being painted once we had broken down intodifferent areas after Christmas. Often these would be set up within the L of a chair back and seat. The issue being that the scan of looking that went from the
front edge of the seat to the top edge of the chair back encompassed a
spatial transition from close to far and back again and the round solids of
coloured fruit contained the mass energy that would have to be reconstituted
in paint. They might as well be landscapes and one essential issue was scale.
Patrick would hold sway over these situations. From mass to paint energy, from
three-dimensional scanning, to two-dimensional syncopated rhythm. Poetry would
be brought in via Wallace Stevens, “the colour like a thought that grows”,
out of the colour mood would come a battle between the living and the
inorganic, man and nature, where the only constant is time and paint the poetry
of looking. 


These still lives were used for an exploration of the compaction of mass and space into painted surface and colour.

Another approach to still life was based on the text, ‘On the Nature of Things’ by Lucretius. This involved a full day’s drawing that had a still-life setup as the subject matter and would be led by myself.

A situation was set up by each student, usually on a table-top or similar, (a drawing board on a stool might be used as a table). A small group of objects that included both straight flat surfaces and curves would be set up. No more than three or four objects.

Students would have been looking at measurement (26 Sept post) and spatial awareness and may well have participated in the ‘rain’ drawing session. (24^th Oct post)

Before starting to draw there would be a discussion as to the nature of surfaces at an atomic scale. Lucretius would be invoked as a poet who through the use of poetic images led us towards an understanding of scientific principles. The objects set up ready to draw would be seen as vibrating compound bodies containing atoms of different types. Atoms moving through space create an infinite number of bodies, they are constantly in motion, and tend to (as Lucretius states), move downwards. The surfaces of these objects would then be described as surfaces of vibrating atoms, some of these atoms on liberation being eventually intercepted by the eye, vision being produced by the impact on the eyes of these atom formed images. However large distances between objects and the eye meant more air for atoms to pass through and this of course whittled the images down, thus explaining perspective and the fact that objects appeared smaller the further they were away.  Spin and angle of trajectory would be discussed, hypothetical directions of photon bounce indicated and a reminder given of the 8 ball morning drawing. (6^th Oct post) Object angle relationships between each other changed as you moved your head, this it was argued could be seen as part of the gravitational attraction.

Finally students would be asked to draw the situation. They could only use marks and lines moving through space, could not draw around edges of objects, but could change mark energy or direction when a surface was found or bumped into by a line/mark/photon/vibration.

In a good drawing gradually a mass of moving lines and rubbed out marks accrued across the surface and a vibrating mass slowly started to emerge, in other not so good drawings the concept was one step too far and students just concentrated on measurement.

These still lives were used for an exploration of a poet’s scientific understanding of looking. 

In many ways this was illustrational and looking back it was perhaps a much too prescribed situation for any real invention to take place. 

Because we had areas of the course heading towards different disciplines still life would also be used as a stimulus for pattern or decorative motifs for textiles students. Kate Russell 

(this now feels quite sexist) as the only designer on the staff, would set up large displays of 

textiles, decorative objects and coloured cloths, students working from sections of these 

displays to develop design ideas and supportive drawing and colour investigation for their 

portfolios. 

What I find interesting looking back was that only within the design area was an object’s cultural understanding being considered as a meaningful subject. It felt as if in fine art (1970s) 

everything could be translated into formal issues and that there was a universal visual 

language based on looking that was fundamental. Kate as the only woman member of staff 

and the only design specialist would be fundamental to a shift in opinions, not least because of her involvement with the development of feminist politics and her awareness of Griselda 

Pollock’s growing influence over at the University of Leeds. What was at one time accepted as a principle would eventually be read as doctrine.  (Formalist thinking) 

Of course within the complementary studies area these issues were already being discussedbut as yet they had not really invaded the studio floor. 

Complementary Studies

Terry's message has reminded me of my own first ventures in complementary studies. This was a separate area in those days (1970s) from Art History. My earlier experience of complementary studies when I was doing my DipAD in Newport had been really positive. We had sessions on such things as philosophy, classical music, film and Egyptian Poetry, a whole term I remember was devoted to learning to listen to the differences between Beethoven, Bruckner and Mahler. We were also introduced to Debussy and impressionist music, all achieved by a man with a box record player lifting the stylus up and down onto the records as he tried to get certain passages across to us. He must have destroyed his entire collection of classical music in an attempt to educate us children of the 60s. 

I still need to unpick my thoughts on complementary/critical/contextual/theoretical studies but today's not the day especially as I'm thick with cold. So back to Terry's observations. 

In complementary studies around 1975ish, there was a core team consisting of Dave Williams, Glynn Thompson, Max Farrer, Jane Storr, Jane Bostock and Graham Savage (these are the one's I remember, I'm sure there were others) and the department had a pretty lively political/sociological agenda. They worked across all the college courses and brought staff in from those courses to help deliver their programme. 

Complementary studies in those days was dominated by practical political and social concerns. Practical in the sense of exposure to what was out there in the real world. I took sessions myself at one point, these must have been available to be taught by all staff working at the college during that time; part-timers as well as full-timers. Goff Oddy who was head of graphics, used to take a walking and camping trip. I can remember all sorts of things ranging from vegetarian cooking to African fabric tie-dye techniques. The central issue was that complementary study was about raising awareness. There was also a concern to make the students understand that everything had political and social ramifications. For instance I was asked to take a group of students, (I cant remember for how many days now, but it was probably for four) and get them to experience how the ‘powers’ behind the city operated. I looked at what we could get into legally and found several places that Leeds’ citizens were able to go and observe the processes of law and civic decision making in operation. We spent the time first of all visiting the Civic Hall and sitting in on council deliberations, (you could research beforehand what was open to the public) which students were initially really bored by, until issues came up that they realised could effect them. We sat in on planning as well as education debates. At one point we were escorted out of the room because one councillor objected to our presence and then were re-escorted back in again, once it had been pointed out by my local Kirkstall councillor that we were within our rights to be there.  

We then spent days in the law courts sitting in the public benches and most interestingly in the local magistrates court. Students had not been aware of the old fashioned etiquette of the law courts or power of magistrates to make decisions. Most of the magistrate’s court cases involved young people their age, so the students empathised with those being brought before the dock. What came across was a huge difference in class and power. Barristers and magistrates had a subtle command of both legal jargon and the English language, it was therefore easy for them to ‘trip up’ the people in the dock or make them look foolish, which they often did. Magistrates seemed to exude middle class righteousness and their main role seemed to be to make sure the people who were in front of them knew their place.

The fact we were there made people feel uncomfortable. These were their territories and usually they had the place to themselves. The only other people we met were reporters or relatives and friends of the accused.

I found the sessions really enlightening, but some of the ‘trades’ lads (these were students doing courses like painting and decorating) thought it was all a waste of time. The more thoughtful students however made the connection and in a deeper and more concrete way than teaching them Foucault. Years later I would return to teaching ‘Theoretical and Contextual’ studies as it would become; theory in the late 90s playing a vital part in the art college new degree level curriculum. However in all the lectures I have given since those mid 70s times, I never saw again that dawning of awareness of the reality of class difference and power that I came across then. 

An exhibition of foundation students' work

Terry has e mailed me an image from an exhibition of foundation course work. I remember this because it coincided with Leeds United playing in the European Cup Final against Bayern Munich.  They lost a contested match by two goals to nil, all the staff watching the match in a London pub after going for a meal in one of the places Andrew Tilberis used to recommend. It must have been the end of May 1975. I was still very raw and impressed that we were invited to show work in London. I didn’t yet realise the importance of the foundation course’s history.

This (below) is the full text of Terry’s e mail, as he says I havnt mentioned complementary studies yet. It is for me a very important subject, so will get round to it at some point, but not yet:

Searching through various damp boxes in the garage I found this page which might be of interest to you.

It refers to an exhibition called Foundation organised by Philip Hughes and held in London in the early 70's at something called the International Art Centre (I've forgotten where this was). It included work by the then Jacob Kramer College, Bath Academy of Art, Chelsea School of Art, Croyden College of Design, London College of Printing, Ravensbourne College of Art, and seven schools, mainly in London that had 6th form foundation courses in competition with college foundation courses.

The page I have included says a lot, I think, about the ethos of the JK foundation at the time. There is an air of breathless excitement about it which is quite amusing but it reminds me of a part of the course that you haven't mentioned yet - complementary studies. At the time there was a feeling that this was a distraction from studio practise but in retrospect it was probably a contributory factor in broadening the experience of the student.

I seem to remember that small groups of foundation students came together with small groups from the graphic, textile and furniture (and other) courses and they spent a week together each term on a project devised by the complementary studies department. I suppose this was a way of 'mixing' the students, exposing them to a wider group of staff ( each foundation tutor could run a project as well: I remember taking a group of students around all the cinemas and theatres in Leeds - far more than there are now, and still in their decor of the 1920's and 30's - to study and record the architecture. We also watched the films showing in the afternoon and rehearsals at the Grand.

The list of subjects introduced and visiting lecturers are both particularly interesting. Science, history, religion, pottery all seen as useful information. From what I remember anything was grist to the mill, but it was argued it should always be delivered around students working on the studio floor. Lefty Frizzell was an obscure country and western singer that had been picked out by putting a pin into a telephone directory and researching the surname found. (This was well before the time of Google) This became a starting point for both staff and student work. I can remember Terry in particular making organic guitars as a response to this and the LP covers we sourced in second hand shops. 

Patrick encouraged me to become a 'wondering intellectual' not that I felt very intellectual, it was just that my knowledge base was different and I was around and about and talking to students. Glynn Thompson and the complementary studies staff had other agendas and when the two systems came together sometimes it was fantastic, but at other times the studio was totally out of synch with the experiences students were getting from what was supposed to be 'complementary' study. This needs opening out in detail at some point, but the reality was that often opportunities were missed. Ideas woven through Glynn's lectures or introduced in the complementary studies weeks, (these could be anything from cooking to politics) often ignored or just not picked up on, when they could have helped drive students' work towards a much broader set of responses. 

An introduction to colour (Part five)

A different day five from another time

Colour and space

As we moved into the 90s colour and space become more important. We were looking for ways to move smoothly into 3D and it seemed logical to therefore get more involved in this area. New staff were coming in and older ones going, a different sort of hands on was needed. By now I had new responsibilities and was working across several courses, sometimes with the foundation course but not always. However I would nearly always return to teach the drawing, colour and 3D introduction during the autumn term.

At one point, I forget the year, we had students make small boxes and in these boxes they were making colour constructions from their collections of colour. We were getting them to develop 3D geometric forms and part of the task was to locate colour in space in order to clarify the forms made. Alongside these we were also getting them to make small freeform constructions that allowed students to test colours’ locations by moving them backwards and forwards in space. 

I cant remember who it was, Steve Carrick or Sean, who was now working full-time, decided that much more ambitious colour space constructions could be made, not only that, but they could be made in such a way that they created optical and spatial illusions. Georges Rousse and a few other artists had developed ways of working across and through environments with colour shapes placed in such a way that when seen from one unique viewpoint a simple geometric form would reveal itself. In order to do this well a precise control of colour and form in space was required as well as an understanding of perspective, therefore for foundation students a mix of two disciplines could be learnt at the same time. As working at this scale could only be done in teams, collaboration could be introduced and of course environmental, installation and site-specific practices engaged with. This of course reflected changes in fine art practices nationally. By now nearly all the painting schools had gone, fine art now being mainly conceptually driven and there being little room for specialist craft focused work.

The first year this was done it was very exciting, colour objects would spread over the studio, what could appear to be a mess of bits from one angle, would from a specific point (usually a camera tripod would be set up for this) suddenly appear to be a flat blue square or a perfect yellow equilateral triangle.

At the same time as these new ideas were being developed, student numbers were increasing. This meant that the focus was becoming more and more on organization; how to manage groups of large sizes, how to get them through workshops and the new need to ensure they all understood how to use appropriate computer software.  Some things were going to have to give and colour as it was taught was redesigned to fit new needs. Photoshop allowed you to select colours with ease and identify them as Pantone or any other colour system. You could mix on screen and view as many colour swatches as you wanted before making final choices. Few seemed interested in the mystery and history of oil paint. Phil Nicol was now the painting tutor and for a while he seemed to be holding out a possible space for painters to operate in but the reality was things had moved on.

Colour would at times become a vehicle for processing or mixing would be done with a chosen set of acrylic colours, to set rules; grids for mixes drawn up and 20 or 30 even mixes asked for, students now replacing discovery with precision. We were now (late 90s) really controllers who made sure students were in the right room doing the right thing at the right time and pointing out very straightforward things such as a mix that was out of step with the asked for gradation of tonal change or even worse that the squares were too messy.

I could easily get bored but there were now so many students, by the time you had been round everyone to check they knew what was going on, it was time for something else to happen. I wasn’t sure how this could be diagnostic either. Except for diagnosing colour blindness, it didn’t seem to be a problem solving session or an image building exercise, simply a lesson in control. However as I was now being packed off to the East Leeds Family Learning Centre to set up an art college in the middle of a housing estate, I was going to have to reinvent myself.

I don't think they do any colour theory at all now. Times change, I gather Elspeth has now resigned, so another foundation head will be being sought. 

I'm really bad at keeping track on who has been in control but I think Gavin was at one time head, then there was some sort of consortium or board of studies, whereby all the staff contributed, then in came Peter Smailes, followed by Terry, then John Fairclough and when he went on some computer course for  a year Derek took over as temporary head and then permanently as John decided to emigrate to New Zealand. 

I’ll probably park this for a while and come back to the issues surrounding staff, outreach work and access another time.  

Some of these stories are better told by others.

An introduction to colour (Part four)

Day four

Local colour

Looking at local colour allowed students to test out their new mixing skills. In order to make sure there was a direct link between the sessions undertaken in the studio and what they would do outside, a particular set of colour relationships were to be explored. After all this was Leeds in Autumn; cold, dark and overcast. It was unlikely there would be fantastic saturated colour experiences on offer, so students were directed to those ubiquitous patches of drab that at that time seemed to swathe the city. The 70s were it seems to me much greyer. There had been power-cuts and gloom seemed to penetrate everywhere. As you entered the college in those days a single light bulb would be used to cast a yellow glow over the Vernon Street hallway, a space now suffused with cool designer lighting.

The students are told to take their paints, palettes, drawing boards and paper out into the streets of Leeds and to find situations where small amounts of highly saturated colour could be found surrounded by large amounts of different neutrals.  Sometimes we would ask them to use paper frames to help with selection and to ‘abstract’ the colour from the busy world of happening life. This meant that we could get them to look at abstract strips of colour. A strip might start with the greyed out orange of a brick-wall, continue over a yellow grey Yorkshire stone pavement, move over the sharp yellow of a painted no parking line into the cool black-blue of a newly tarmacked road. We were also asking students to look at shadows, so there might be the violet shadow of a road sign breaking into the grey orange of the wall, or edging into the yellow grey pavement.

After a morning of attempting to paint these moments of urban beauty, the afternoon was often spent adjusting these to give more control and depth of application. A glaze might be used to deal with a shadow and compared to a straight mix. These images were never very large. Probably on average A4 or smaller, each A1 sheet would have a few selected images. Perhaps two strips of neutral colours and a square patch of grey with a red hot spot.

Looking back now its interesting think that we never thought twice about sending students out with great cumbersome drawing boards. When I went back to work on foundation this year to do some drawing, all the students were working directly in notebooks or on A4 sheets. In the 70s and 80s this would be seen as an avoidance of the problem and unprofessional. Because it was difficult, we would at other times get students to develop painting and drawing kits for outside work. 

(At some point I will look at the importance of trips and going out to work at places such as Meanwood Valley, Buckden, Otley Chevin or Newly Quarry)

It was about this time of course that imperial sizes were being replaced by metric. I can’t remember exactly which year but it seemed that one year all the student lockers were fine and the next they were too small and portfolios wouldn’t fit. Imperial portfolios would fit under an average sized student’s arm, but the new metric A1 size was too big for that and students really struggled with them, the idea of having a handle set just below the top not coming into fashion for a few years. As always with change it takes a few years for people to work out how to adapt to it. For several years when these new sizes came in we had to adapt. We developed a welded handle that could be fitted under the base of these new large portfolios, a single length that would go under one side and fold over to make a handle on the other side. The square section was then wrapped in cloth to make a handle. The welding shed was in the yard between the Vernon Street and Rossington Street buildings and seemed to be Patrick’s own private space. There was probably more brazing done though than welding, (always oxyacetylene gas welding, never electric arc) brazing was much more aesthetic. The warm colours of the brass rods were perfect for what we wanted, Patrick inducted me into the welding shed by if I remember teaching me to braze together some small measuring devices I was then making. I digress yet again I’m afraid.

Sometimes of course it would rain and if so we were restricted to the studios. We would set a similar problem, but this time perhaps we would look at tints. The studios had white walls, there was white paper everywhere and each type of paper was a different white, the neon lighting systems were slightly warm toned and with the large windows letting in daylight you could easily spend an afternoon watching two different types of pale tints moving across a curve of white cartridge paper.

In order to facilitate this we would get students to quickly create white paper forms over the walls and floors before they began the task of colour selection. Mixing tints would get us involved with discussing the uses of different types of white. Lead white was still used then and we preferred it for this session, zinc white was translucent and better for glazing. Flake white becomes transparent with age and is stiffer in the mix. If a student had to choose an alternative to lead we would suggest titanium white, it had less of a yellow tendency. Zinc white had traditionally been used for highlights because it dried very slowly and so worked well in the top layers of a painting, but because of its transparent nature you would often mix in lead white or similar to give it body. These arcane conversations would soon disappear with the introduction of standardised colours. I’m very aware that when I walk into the present day Fine Art studios it’s obvious that the student painters have never had this type of exposure to mixing and thinking about paint. It’s often handled with a crude sensibility as if applying emulsion for the house wall. Getting control of an exact tint and mixing colours for colour theory related reasons is a rarity, it is more likely that the reasons for colour choice will be conceptually driven. I sometimes feel like a dinosaur talking to young painters about how their colours can be made to move and shift by adjusting various contrasts.

We didn’t always use paint to mix colour with and oil pastels provided us with a cleaner and easier way in. We used them to have a go at all of the above mixing and then in one specific session based on colour/light observation, which was always done outside on sunny days, they would come into their own.

Turner was still very influential and in particular the way that when he used paint he dissolved the world into light. It felt at that time as if he was far more important than the Impressionists and that they had simply followed in his footsteps.

After looking at Turner and Monet in particular, students would be asked to develop a scan type gaze across any given area. They were not to focus on edges, they had to practice ‘seeing’ the whole light/colour mix. Then using the oil pastels, and lots of extra white ones, they would recreate the experience as if a shaft of light was moving diagonally down through the image. All the marks would take the same direction, the colour drawing knitting itself into the surface, white flecks binding these images together as the blurred shapes of whatever was out there came slowly into being. Staff would repeat constantly, “Remember it’s not what it is, it’s where it is and how does one patch of colour change as it meets another”.  This was a really hard thing to do. You had to be a very good draftsman that knew how to locate things quickly, so that as you developed the colour surface actual underlying proportions and relationships were maintained. If not all you managed to get were sloping distorted shapes of messy colour with lines running through that made it look as if it was raining. When these coloured drawings did work they could be stunning, but this was a rarity and in my mind often achieved by students destined to become illustrators and not painters. Oil pastels were another medium that seemed to go out of fashion, I don’t see them around much anymore; perhaps they were replaced by oil sticks.

There was once an attempt to use pointalist techniques and students were sent out to build up surfaces of coloured dots in response to selected views of the city, From what I remember it was a disaster, the scale was all wrong, the control not there, students were trying to copy an image in their heads of all those Seurat paintings they had seen in reproductions, so nothing fresh or discovered anew was done, just cheap Montmartre copies.