 What
do you think of when you hear the expression ‘Canal Art’? Is it Roses
and Castles, Canaletto, or a drawing by Telford? Each has a valid claim
and there could be a host of others too. Perhaps we need some more
precise words for Art just as the Eskimo has lots of descriptive nouns
for different types of snow. What should we call the art of the
photographer Eric de Mare to differentiate it from the sculptural stuff
that increasingly litters up the towpath?
My fresh attention to this hazy term has been focussed
recently by two new canal books, one just published and another about to
be. The first is Brightwork by Mike
Clarke and Sam Yates, a detailed and long overdue study of the
extraordinary paintwork traditions of the boats of the Leeds and
Liverpool canal. Because their odd size precluded them from travelling
far into the interconnected southern canals their individual decorative
tradition remained a very tightly regional folk art confined to
Lancashire and Yorkshire and inexplicably ignored by nearly everyone
else, and nearly lost forever. Be grateful to Mike and Sam for this
splendid piece of research, both documentary and celebratory. Mike
Clarke is justly renowned as a thorough and thoughtful canal historian,
particularly of the northern canals but it is his partnership with Sam
Yates that makes this book so essential. Sam was apprenticed as a
boatbuilder and boat decorator in Blackburn in the 1950s and it is his
first hand experience and numerous colour diagrams and illustrations
that lift this book into a category that is unlikely to be ever
superseded. Highly recommended to absolutely anyone interested in canal
art of the folk and popular variety.
You can
order the book online here. See also my
January 2009 Off the Mainline
about Leeds & Liverpool Canal decoration.
It is a very different sort of canal art in
Canal Linocuts by Eric Gaskell, a
book soon to published by the artist himself which will also be
available through this site. You will have already navigated past some
of his printwork on the Canal Junction home page to get here and I hope
you will be delighted with this new venture. Eric is a professional
artist who has chosen the medium of linocut prints for a refreshing look
at canals, a new eye on their architecture and engineering and the
landscapes they pass through. Linocutting needs a skilful combination of
hand and eye. Each mark of the print is hand-made, cut in or engraved
into the surface of the block to create a white mark when it is inked up
and printed, a negative mark in the positive printing surface. This
process needs a careful and decisive visual analysis of the key elements
to reduce the details of reality to a crisp image suitable for the
block. The material also has a bit of a mind of its own, guiding what’s
possible and creating happy accidents and the resulting artworks are a
combination of several factors. Top of the list is Eric’s artistic
judgement and balance, the style in which he presents this selection of
canal scenes, the way he manipulates the stonework, the arches and lock
beams whilst the essence of the real scene remains. All the prints all
work well as abstract compositions, interesting arrangements of
contrasting textures, strong lines and bright whites, pushing growth
patterns into the brickwork and formalising trees and clouds into
nature’s architecture. Each scene has a liveliness of its own and a
good-humoured vitality but each print is actually a record of a
recognisably precise place, some iconically well known to the canal
traveller like Stoke Bruerne or Chirk aqueduct, others less so like
Salford Junction in Manchester. Rather fittingly for the transport
subject each picture is something of a journey in itself, from an
exploration of the gravel or bricks underfoot, past the lockbeams and
bridges, leading us into a sunlit and generally hopeful distance.
Perspective may be pushed and planes flattened for the pattern making
but Eric’s translation of each scene through the medium of the linocut
print presents us with a whole new set of images, however familiar some
of these places are to the canal enthusiast. They are already available
as individual limited edition and signed prints but reproductions of a set of over twenty will be published
as a complete book soon. Look out for the adverts in the waterway’s
press, and on this site. Very collectable indeed. See
www.canalprints.co.uk to buy
original prints online and order the book.
As regular readers of this column will know my
especial interest in canal art has been a long time obsession with the
painting traditions of the working narrow boats, the colours and
designs, and especially the ‘roses and castles’ of their amazing folk
art tradition. More recently however I have been concentrating on what
is usually called ‘fine art’-- paintings in oil and watercolours, many
of them canal scenes, although I fear ‘fine’ is very much the aspiration
at the moment rather than the achievement, alas. Howsoever, in pursuit
of that muse I was recently huddled under the hedge by a canal bridge
abuttment sketching a tiny cottage-cum-barn alongside the Montgomery
canal.
It is a regular hazard of outdoor painting to look up
and be shocked to find someone watching over your shoulder. Several
times on this day I had that feeling, only to realise it was the
presence of another piece of canal art just across the way, glimpsed
from the corner of my eye. It was a carved wooden statue of a man, a
nineteenth century canal worker one assumes, all flat cap, waistcoat and
white shirt, holding a shovel. He is a bit larger than life size, about
seven foot high, but carved with a simplified monumentality that makes
him feel bigger still, a slightly un-nerving companion to have watching
you for the morning.
There are a lot of positive things to say about this
piece of canal sculpture. It has a calm presence, a solid totemic
solidity that honestly reflects its material, a vertical pillar of wood
standing sentinel between canal and road. The colouring is subtle and
thoughtful, the clothing stained rather than painted allowing the wood
grain to show through, with the natural colour of varnished oak
providing the tanned flesh colour for the face and arms. The facial
features are simplified somewhat, more cipher than portrait, making him
more gently symbolic than staringly individual, a good thing I think in
this role as waymarker. The wood was obviously not seasoned well enough
to begin with as this single log carving is already developing a lot of
bad ‘shakes’-- splits and cracks opening out along the grain that will
let the weather in sooner or later. They are attractive at the moment,
stressing the verticality and the nature of the material, but it does
not bode well for longevity. The shovel is a bit of a surprise too, a
real slim coal cutters shovel that contrasts oddly with the chunkiness
of the statue proper. Perhaps it was an afterthought, or a replacement
for something more sculptural for it only seems to be held in place with
a couple of anachronistic pozi-drive screws.
But my main problem is wondering why he needs to be
there at all. What is he doing that is seen to be an improvement on his
not being there? He is friendly enough, which must be better than being
unfriendly, a large peg doll with the charm of a well-made toy. However,
for me this jokeyness devalues the reality of both the history and the
actuality of the canal – the tonnage of transport, the poorly paid
labour of shovelling limestone and coal and breathing quicklime, the
utilitarian grace of the architecture. In my eyes this charming chap is
actually devaluing the work he is standing near to, that extraordinary
sculptural installation of subtle curves, voids and volumes, a massive
chunk of human craftsmanship in bricks and water, toned and coloured by
age and nature. “What’s he talking about-- what on earth is this
masterpiece?” you may ask. Oh, nothing much, just another common canal
bridge combined with a warehouse.
©Tony
Lewery,
The Brow,
Ellesmere,
22nd July 2009 |
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