Also in the news is the beautiful classic print of “The Port of Chester 1863” (visit page http://www.frickers.co.uk/marine-art/chester.html).

Slight problem re marine print of  the Virgin Atlantic Challenger II.

The gentleman has not left his name, phone number or address  and has not responded to email…

Not to worry, he kindly paid and it will take a few more weeks to proof and prepare this great  and now historic picture.

I doubt we will sell many copies (thus it will remain very rare) however we have had other enquiries about this remarkable picture.

The scene shows the moment at the Wolf Rock lighthouse, Isles of Scilly as Virgin Atlantic Challenger II (Richard Branson and Chay Blyth’s  second attempt with his second boat) completed what was at the time the fastest powered crossing of the Atlantic.

Both these personalities are clearly recognisable in the painting.

At the invitation of Radio Cornwall I worked from the press boat.

As we waited the anticipated arrival, the weather deteriorated, the sea rose and drizzle set in.

Several of the fleet street photographer’s suffered camera malfunctions due to the damp.

I was fortunate to take the only colour pictures and made a sketch while the memorey was fresh as our boat rolled and pitched her way back to St Mary’s.

Later, at the request of the National Maritime Museum Greenwich, I gave them a set of the photos.

Meanwhile, sitting at the back of the subsequent press conference I turned the sketch into a water colour and was lucky to have all the crew sign the back of the art work before they dispersed.

You can if you wish see this unique marine watercolour on page

http://www.frickers.co.uk/marine-art/virgin_atlantic_2.html

More highly finished Marine Paintings can be seen on most of the other marine pages of www.frickers.co.uk.

Some of the marine prints are signed by famous sailors, notably Sir Robin Knox-Jonhston on the famous picture  “Roaring Forties”

http://www.frickers.co.uk/marine-art/suhaili.html

and Tracy Edwards, “Ice Maiden“, a beautiful quality print, last few still available see page

http://www.frickers.co.uk/marine-art/ice_maiden.html

but none are signed by an entire crew except this Virgin Atlantic Challenger II watercolour.

In the year 1933, Geoffrey Hales commissioned and donated a trophy.

To Richard Branson’s disappointment, this trophy was denied to Richard Branson and his Virgin Atlantic Challenge II team on the grounds it was intended for commercial ships thus it remained with the mighty  SS United States.

Branson eventually bought the original painting after asking me to bring it to London for him to see.

My asking price was a modest £500.00

Skilled negotiator that he is he argued the price down to within £10.00 of me walking out.

Fortunately he is my only client who has negotiated like that.

Actually I consider I have been very fortunate with my clients and in the process have had the privilege of meeting some very remarkable people some of who have become friends.

It helped in those early days of my career to have sold to such a high profile person but I have never heard from him since, not even a thank you for a unique and splendid painting of an achievement he, his family and his team  can be proud of.

~

Chester:

Moving on to happier subjects, a much appreciated painting, The Port of Chester 1863 refuses to be forgotten.

A rather younger Gordon Frickers is shown here with John Rundle then Mayor of Chester and the painting which Chester considered sufficiently important to give a civic reception which 400 guests attended and at which we sold 90 framed prints.

You can discover this remarkable story and art work on page

http://www.frickers.co.uk/marine-art/chester.html

and via the attached further reading, it is quite a story…

While the Duke of Westminster declined a chance to buy the original it did eventually go to a good home for a healthy 4 figure price and is appreciated.

The Port of Chester 1863 has been my best selling print and copies still sell.

Today The Port of Chester 1863 has been on my agenda twice.

I have a very appreciative email from a client who has just received his remarqued copy purchased from this site.

Also, a previous client who runs a PR agency phoned to ask if I was interested in painting a commercial ship.

I’d be delighted to work on the proposed subject, commercial shipping is a speciality of mine, the more modern the better although followers of this blog will recall the older subject, the recent painting of the Blue Funnel Steamer Talthybius, first blogged on 03/02/10 and sold within a month.

I have one Blue Funnel steamer painting left, Agapenor, and am planning 2 more for later this year.

This proposed new commission, if it materialises will be wonderful and an appropriate retirement gift to a company director; knocks spots off a gold watch!

~

Meanwhile I am putting in as many hours as I can on a series of new paintings.

I have the rare pleasure of the studio to myself, well almost, I have 2 cats to catsit, more very soon on the new paintings including pop up pics of the progress.

The light has been excellent for painting for the past few days here in the Tarn.

Today we finally lost the cold weather, the day felt like an English summer, fresh and warm.

This evening I went shopping in ancient Cordes, a lovely drive just before dusk.

I am told Cordes which receives 1 million visitors a year ( maybe not exactly 1 million), is a good place for an artist to register as living in France.

The town has a long association with artists and they vote.

France is of course renowned for it’s often frustrating bureaucracy;

Many town halls have the revolutionary slogan Libertie, Egallitie, Fraternitie over their entrance, to which people sometimes mutter as they enter, et Bureaucracie…

There is some good news though.

Much of France’s red tape is to go online thus reducing the queues and frustration at the marie.

Planning permissions, health forms, customs and tax,  and driving documents will be included while sites will be reduced from some 400 to 10 for individuals and 10 for businesses.

France intends to reduce the number of passwords needed, redesign public sites to be instantly recognisable (so what are they now , don’t ask!), allow online payments, have guaranteed response times for emails, and allow users to evaluate their experience.

Now that will be a French revolution!

If it is all to much try an Armagnac.

I discovered Armagnac by accident while working on a series I call Famous Wine Villages of France, now in the archive section of www.frickers.co.uk, some of which you can review from page http://www.frickers.co.uk/archive/wine.html

That series was painted partly in conjunction with selected French wine producers of Bordeaux.

Should I follow that work up and maybe include Armagnac and Cognac?

During the bleakest part of my life I found a tot of Armagnac worked wonders on the nerves before bed time or after a bad dream.

As far back as 1310 A.D. no less an authority than The Vatican extolled the virtues of Armagnac for conserving one’s health.

Dufor wrote “This water, if taken medically and soberly is said to have 40 virtues.
It enlivens the spirit, if taken in moderation, recalls the past to memory, renders men joyous, preserves youth and delays senility“.

He did also add a warning, that Armagnac “loosens the tongue and emboldens the wit“.

This smooth and illustrious liqueur is France’s oldest spirit (drink).

Armagnac has been in the news here partly because it is loosing market share which is a loss for us all.

The plan is to bring it to the attention of the 35 to 50 age group as an all round drink.

I’d drink to that, in my significant but limited experience Armagnac is one of the most enjoyable and versatile liqueurs going down well solo or with a wide range of foods.

I also found taken in moderation it stopped cold bugs dead when days of paracetamol left me still suffering and Armagnac tastes on my palette far better than anything the pharmacists have ever given me!

The taste of this less known fire water is similar to Cognac or other good French brandy but smoother, more kindly although none the less strong.

While you won’t find an Armagnac that is 700 years old, not even here in the heartland of Midi Pyrenees and Gascony,  Armagnac is seriously older than Cognac which developed in the 16th century.

Now it is late here and you have talked me into having a tot as I retire.

G. I have sent you my first draft of my explication for my new (landscape painting) works.

I would welcome your thoughts and comments. Regards, D 

Jan 18th 2010

Fragments: A short introduction

Upon reflecting Kandinsky’s statement on duality: where the ‘art[s] is the child of its time’; and ‘mother of our emotions’.

I have come to realize the statement offers a challenge for the ’serious’ artist to wage war against the ‘beast of banality’, the ’still-borne’ ossifications created by their contemporaries.

Progression or ‘going beyond’ in art is a fundamental necessity for every serious artist’s to consider: firstly, their reasons for creating a specific artwork and how it should be rendered; and secondly, how
will their artwork be received and perceived by the individual and broader community.

It is this desire to ‘going beyond’ as a serious artist which has given birth to my interest in the concept of ‘Fragments’.

With a linear understanding, the term Fragments are by their very existence dualistic and is either: holism – where the individual parts cannot be fully understood without reference to the whole; or atomism – their separate parts are interpretable and complete in themselves.

To transcend the ordinary (objective or subjective modes) and exploring Fragments multi-dimensionality enables me the freedom to reconsider an exogenous propositions – an alternative stance where society presents ‘what’ or ‘how’ the viewer should interpret the artwork.

In this respect I have become increasing interested in the controlling aspect of the image, either by the artist or societal agencies.

The inference of the societal agencies (government or media) serves the community through editing, faking or distorting the image, which inevitably leaves the viewer with an incomplete truth and the inability to reason upon a ‘lived experience’ as regulated and imposed by others.

There are several of these faculties: external and inner sense, imagination, understanding and reason.

The implications of this might be the speculative ‘infilling’ of subjective reasoning, which Rimbaud called ‘a disorder of all the senses’.
In this respect, the individuals’ voracious gluttony ‘consumes’ all that they are ‘fed’ by a proliferation of external societal agencies.

To attain ‘true’ freedom of thought the individual must disengage from the accepted convention of image promotion.

References

1. Kandinsky, W., Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Wittenborn Art Books,
Inc., New York, 1976. P23

2. Deleuze, G., (Trans., Tomlinson, H., & Habberjam, B.,) Kant’s Critical
Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties, University of Minnesota Press,
Minneapolis. 2005 p. xi.

~

Interesting first draft?

My reaction is:

Maybe we could discuss this sort of thing more often and more deeply???

You have asked for my reactions so here are a few of many which I hope will help.
Over all I like very much the direction and flow of where you go, here.
I don’t doubt this sort of discourse would appeal to many influential intellectuals in Universities and big name galleries, good PR for you, maybe leading to them adopting you.

As a practical artist I have a dread of “college professors”.
My experience is for example,  that while practical seamen were reporting 100 + foot waves the “professors” were saying that was impossible.
Recent satellite technology has revealed 100 + foot waves are not uncommon…
As a youth I was told, dinosaurs were slow and stupid, animals could not “speak” to each other, ours was the only solar system and much more of that sort.
I did not believe it then and I still don’t.
Seems to me, “Science”, the “professors”, the Popes etc, have caught up with what a child / adolescent perceived to be true.

What does this teach us?

I agree the term “Artist” should not be applied to hobby painters, people who paint pleasant scenes for tourists and wall decore, people who paint for reputation and other trivial reasons.
I’d rather think of that sort of endeavor as of artisans not artists.
That is not to say I do or don’t “approve” of such work.
On the contrary, it often has much merit, certainly does not need my approval or disapproval, as with all art and artisan work, it just is and one of the tests of real “Art” is how is it received in the community, another is does it endure?

I think the bottom line is when we paint, much of the time it is not for us to overly concern ourselves with that question, “a challenge for the ’serious’ artist to wage war against the ‘beast of banality’, the ’still-borne’ ossifications created by their contemporaries”.

“…where society presents ‘what’ or ‘how’ the viewer should interpret the artwork”.
I find this very unfortunate.
However I recognize we are all ignorant in varying degrees and it is inevitable given the pressures people inherit and put upon them selves in our modern world, that most people exist on disinformation,  half truths and “sound bite information”, we have to much of our time.
Inevitable and we can’t change it for many reasons not least of which it is deeply embedded in most people as the habits of comparing their experiences and reacting strongly to novelties.
This in turn a close neighbour to narrow minded of prejudice added to which very few people take time to think problems through and consider likely consequences.

My current view is an Artist is some one who is for what ever reason is in pursuit of and some times produces influential, some times  startling and original work, most often does not.

Great Art endures, trivual and novel art may make a fortune but does not endure, right or wrong?

A healthy mental attitude follows this train of thought.
Rather that over intellectualize and attempt more than we can fore fill; which usually leads to “writers block”, we do some thing that is “good enough”.

To put it another way, to be committed to the work and do our best at that moment is enough and all.
Leave great Art to history, “to thine own self be true”, as best we can which includes the option of being very involved with contemporized happenings as JMW Turner was with political issues and Kandinsky the art of his day.
To try to do well what we do is in its self a HUGE challenge and curiously often leads to what eventually is recognized as “great Art”.
I see producing great art as a bonus not a goal.
I have been very fortunate in that a few of my paintings have received wide recognition, “Roaring Forties” (of a young Sir Robin Knox-Johnston), “I have urgent dispatches” (HMS Pickle with the news of Trafalgar) ,”Waterwitch off Gribben Head“.

Much of the credit is due to the Internet reaching a wider audience or rather a wider audience discovering my art work on my web site via the Internet, also to the many journals, magazines and newspapers which have featured my work and activities in particular my marine painting.

Maybe those pictures are famous?

Certainly I can say, they will endure long after we are gone for various reasons.

Some of my best known pictures have surprised me not being the pictures I guessed might achieve renown.

In that sense I painted them partly because as my son would put it, “it needed to be done” so in that sense you may agree they are art in the classic Art for Art’s sake mould?

I see this as a bonus while I struggle to produce interesting Art for the people around me, in a vast Universe I can never fully understand.

My some times amazing landscapes wait to be discovered.

This is partly a fault of mine.

I don’t promote them.

Indeed, many of the most recent and best are not even on my web site so only the occasional personal visitors get to see them.

That fame may yet happen for these landscapes, as interest is being shown in promoting them by a director/ownwer of a chain of New York/London based advertising agencies.

Artists as with artisans, must pay their bills and live so I have no problem with work created knowing it will sell.
I dom have a problem with artists who paint bizarre pictures which seem to me self indulgence and in the meantime sponge off others.

I appreciate some times very personnal expresions can be very worth while  and that one must shift a lot of rock n mud to find a little gold.

All of the illustrious artists in history who I recall tried to do that but the great majority had an eye on what might sell and thus pay their bills.

I think the starving artist struggling to be “special” is not noble, rather an illusion, irresponsible and an idiot, largely a victim, sold a dream created by Art schools, media and art critics, another form of insincere bullshit.
The success rate from following this route is what?

One in 10 million?

You may notice I don’t include galleries ?
This because the vast majority of galleries know an artist must have financial as well as ethical merit.
Some of course are very reluctant to admit this for their own devious “political” and PR reasons, the various Tate Galleries being an example, but they use the principal all the time…

I am also acutely aware, while we revere Kandinsky and many of the other artists from the past, known and unknown, our human society, world, has changed more in the past 30 years than at any time in our history.

What does this mean to today’s artists and Artists?

Seems to me it means much (not all) of what they did and thought is out of touch, out of date, barely relevant to our experience of today and tomorrow so choose carefully what rather than who you emulate and the torch you pick up.

I am very wary of the relevance of historical artists, theirs was another time, another place.
As a 21st century man I only partly agree with Kandinsky’s statement on duality: ‘art[s] is the child of its time’; and ‘mother of our emotions’.
I agree enough to see the statement as a torch he has had to lay down when he died and is maybe worth you picking up and running with.
Are we dream weavers, poets in paint, story tellers?
What strikes me as truly wondrous about poetry, writing, painting and to a lesser extent, photography (still and motion) is it can go anywhere we can imagine and beyond.
This is also strikes me as a daunting obligation.
Do you  think we have a duty (an out of fashion word?) to carry on with the best ideas and work our predecessors produced if it is relevant in tomorrow’s world?

Thus I find the whole subject a contradiction. I chose to be mostly practical and not worry about it, ditto having a “style”.

I think both can be huge assets but also false friends.

~

I was asked very recently by a radio interviewer, if I could have one luxury what would I choose?

What would YOU choose?

It took me a while to find an answer (so I changed the subject and came back to it later in the conversation!)  that I felt said what I meant and meant what I said.

My eventual answer was not to have to worry about my bills, to be able to paint freely in a manner true to myself and destiny.

Time flows swiftly, an artist’s lack of recognition is frustrating, time may well run in more directions than forward but as yet I’ve not see time run any way but forward.

Time to paint, back to the studio, a very cold night here, beautiful full moon and stars have now turned to excellent light for painting.

Painting what?

What we can and a bit of what we must?

Cheers mate,

Gordon

On the subject of which today started with a message from a fellow painter.

Of his painting he wrote: “Work not going too well. I suppose I am trying to be too clever“,  ~

In my view, nothing wrong in trying to be to clever.

It is pushing the limits and I think thus were new concepts and formulae are found.

Some times I do see some painters being overly academic or over complicated but there again the balance is sooooooooooo difficult to find…

I am reminded of Francis Pratt saying “good painting takes time, great painting takes longer“.
I find from experience and as I look ahead, this is a useful though tough mantra.
I find other visual references including visits to similar scenes, books and photo help stimulate the progress with new work.

What does it take to produce great paintings?

One of the benefits of working at Itzac is we artists here some times discuss each other’s work.

Not so helpful when one did not ask for an opinion but a small price to pay!!!
Alternatively, displacement activity can relief stress and clear the mind, a great reason (in my opinion!) to have a “petite Amie”.

I am all to aware how quickly the years are passing and I have entered the region of maybe tomorrow I die.
Of course I might live to be 90 plus but with so many people saying “it will be worth  more when you are dead” I wonder if the negative vibes might affect my health!?
I find this adds a new sense of urgency.
Thus more and more I wish to produce my best work and not muck about with more experiments, tourist painting and more “learning”, rather to apply what we know is already in me.
Happily I have produced a few famous paintings, “Roaring Forties“, “I have urgent dispatches“,  “Last departure” among them and many others meaningful to some people.

The first 2 mentioned,”Roaring Forties“, “I have urgent dispatches“, are available as time limited, numbered, signed Prestige editions from this web site ~ ask for details?

“Roaring Forties” is co signed by Sir Robin Knox -Johnston so doubly rare and collectibles.

~

The Cattewater sketch one of a group of marine paintings on the go at present subjects including a new Trafalgar Dawn, Laperouse and super yachts (more of the others during this month) is slowly turning into what I hope will be marine art.

It is a new painting journey ~ The basic design is now complete.

Many details remain to be worked out in particular the people who will inhabit the painting.

Next is to begin to put down the colours I envisage and find how to make them best work together.
The moon rise will be based on those I have witnessed many times over the Cattewater and the most beautiful moon rise I have ever seen, last year from the beach at Hossigur.
“Take longer” ~ The idea began to register as a possible painting some 15 years ago and gained real momentum over the past 3 years.

The final art work is still a long way off in terms of hours applied and days that slide by partly filled with distractions.
I begin to regard even important things like “getting organized” as displacement activity”…
Communicating with friends and prospective clients remains as ever one of my top priorities, very important, people first.
However my aim is to try to produce paintings of enduring worth.

What makes a painting, of enduring worth?

~

My mate asked about the Paris trip?

It is on this blog (December2009) including photos which if given a click, thanks to my brilliant web master Dr. Michael Baker and Wordpress, magically enlarge, enjoy.

Press on mates, the days, hours, minutes are precious.

Wishing you all the best for the new decade, health, prosperity, friendship and love,

Paix, Joie, Santé… bonne année 2010 !

Gordon Frickers, marine artist, January 2010