Another nice old man

I met him a couple of weeks ago down at the gallery space that the Stoke Newington Library hires out now and again. His name is Owen Jeffreys.

Owen had a show on of his paintings. The whole large gallery space used to be a theatre, probably for local amateur productions that never happen anymore. It still has a simple stage down the far end. The floor is well worn and could really do with a good clean and polish.

Owen had his paintings hung two or three paintings high all over the walls. There must have been more or less a hundred paintings in there. They were reminiscent of Klee, Miro or Kandinsky; they had similar sorts of colours, shapes and designs to these artists, but I’d say that is because Owen had opened up a similar part of his brain for exploration; you do not get the feeling that he is copying anyone else.

If I had a large house and lots of money I’d have bought one or two of his pictures as they were good, honest paintings. Mostly they were abstract, but then occasionally there were the simplified shapes of ships, suns or moons floating in them. All the paintings looked like some kind of landscape, but really they were just pure bursts of improvisation formed from the shapes and colours that come straight from Owen's heart. You could tell that they were not painted by some young cynical artist who has been to art school and has read a lot of art theory; they were the real thing, and they were only two or three hundred pounds each, and so I’d buy one if I could.

When I first walked into the exhibition I was greeted by Owen who is short and has fine white hair combed in an old-fashioned way, and a moustache and thick black- rimmed glasses that make him look a little like a professor in an old black and white movie. He’s of the generation of Londoners that is happy to talk to anyone so long as the conversation is full of amusing stories and he did not seem at all interested in my social status, but just that I was someone who likes to hear some of his stories and was happy to tell him a few of mine too.

After we had gone around looking at and talking about his pictures together we found ourselves sitting along the edge of the old disused stage and Owen started talking about the war. He was a gunner in the RAAF in World War II. He told me about being shot at and having to open fire at other aircraft and you can tell he was not too proud of it, of having had to shoot at people, but that he was glad that I was interested. I suspect that he might have had to drop bombs on German cities, as he mentions this as if it were something that others had to do, but he seemed so emotional when he mentioned it that I wondered if it was something he had had to do himself. Yet I could tell that even though some of his memories of the war made him a little sad, he’d gotten used to feeling a little sad, and he also seemed to want to tell me some of the stories. And although the stories were often so terribly sad there were things to laugh about too. He told an amazing story about being in a radio control room and helping an American plane to land that had run out of fuel and might well crash. They had a great strong lamp shone towards it to help guide it down and although the odds were not good the plane got down okay. Then when they got out to the plane the pilot on board was so happy to still be alive that he gave Owen a lot of the chocolates and cigarettes that he had on board, from a casefull that were supposed to be there to be given to the British generals. And of all things he also had a piano onboard with him too, which was duly delivered to the officers mess. And so one of the stories that could have been terribly sad ended in a way that was funnier and more extraordinary than just about anything that could possibly happen when there is not a war on, and so I suppose that some of the memories were good memories to have, although perhaps I shouldn’t try and speak for Owen in this way.

Then he told me about what happened after he finally got out of the army.

‘I had been to art school before the war, and so I managed to get a job in one of the art studios,’ he said. ‘ That’s the way they used to do it then; you would get out of art school and then try and get in at one of the art studios. Anyway the first week I was in there I was terrified as I didn’t know what to do! And then this guy from the directors office comes in and tells myself and all the other young guys in the studio that we had to come up with something for Cadbury by the end of the week. Anyway, I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do, but then one evening when I’m at home I see this stuffed penguin that my mother bought me sitting there on the side board. And so I did a drawing of it, as good as I could, and then when it was the end of the week and we all had to submit our ideas, I gave them this drawing I had done of this stuffed penguin and then low and behold, two weeks later, there’s a new Cadburys chocolate biscuit out and it’s called ‘The Penguin!’ And there is my drawing of a penguin on every one!’

‘My God! I used to have those as a kid!’ I said.

‘Well now you know where they came from.’

This story about the penguin had really made my day. When I got home I wanted to know more about Owen Jeffreys, and so I googled him, but nothing came up. Then a few days later, in an idle moment I googled ‘Penguin biscuit history’ and a little entry on Wikepedia came up telling me that they were first put out in 1932 by McVities. So that would have been quite a few years before World War II, or before Owen would have been old enough to have designed the damn penguin for them.

Damn the internet. Sometimes it’s better if we simply don’t know the truth about something: I’m sure we used to get along okay without the internet but I’m not sure how we would get along without hearing a good story now and then, and sometimes, perhaps for the sake of a good story to survive, it would be better if we couldn’t look things up on the internet quite so easily…

God knows I love Hackney...

Changes

I must say I am fairly sure I will remember where I was when the news finally came in that Cameron was to be Prime Minister.

It was the first evening last night of a new life drawing group that has just started up at one of the art studios over the road from me. There are about 8 or 9 of us fussing about getting our bits of paper ready in this small dance studio; there is just about room for everyone and their easels and the wall behind which the model is to be standing is one huge mirror, in front of which the organizers have placed an old-fashioned folding screen -which you would perhaps get dressed behind in an old movie- and a pile of cushions off of couches and so forth.

I’m busy fussily sharpening a whole lot of my pastel pencils with my scalpel blade (so that I won’t have to stop and sharpen anything whilst drawing) when the model finally arrives and I’m aware that they are quickly undressing nearby behind me where I am sitting. I’m politely still looking down to finish off sharpening a pencil when they step onto the cushions and sit down and are still settling in to assume their fist pose. When I look up to begin drawing I find that for this first pose the model is sitting cross legged and facing away from me, yet turning to one side just far enough that the models breasts and profile are visible; and so my first thought on looking up is, so it is to be a middle-aged woman tonight. For some reason I realise I'm also not especially in the mood for drawing, yet here I am, and so I start sketching away this first quick pose.

Soon it is time for the model to assume a different pose. She gets up and then… hang on a minute… for a moment I’m confused as suddenly I’m faced with a man… or is it a woman?

Well actually, I suppose it would be fair to say she was a bit of both; the model not only had breasts, but cock and balls as well! Yet out of respect for the model I took the revelation as calmly as I could, as did the others in the room.

Before the evenings drawing was over somebody gets a text message and announces to the assembled artists wearily, ‘Cameron’s Prime Minister’. There are various sighs and groans around the room. A middle ages man with swarthy features who had been working furiously away with charcoal stops drawing briefly and raises a charcoal blacked hand to his brow and says angrily, ‘Great. It’ll be cuts, cuts, cuts. Cut’s to the arts; cuts to everything…’

At the evenings close we all politely thank Pia our model, who has done a good job, and have a look at each others drawings, and Agnes the organiser asks me if I enjoyed myself and if I think I’d be back next week. I tell her indeed I shall. If this is only week one of this new drawing group then I can’t wait to see what else she might have lined up once everyone has settled in a bit…

Provocative Art

Quite an unusual day in Hyde Park yesterday. Caught the tube to Oxford Circus and then on to Lancaster Gate, struggling to do my usual practice sketches of passengers on the sly as I have a guitar propped between my legs. Only two stops from Oxford Circus to Lancaster Gate; I spy a suit with the cocky sticky spiky hair look; can just see the cars, the coke and the appalling but beautiful girlfriend; yes, he thinks he’s the man. Just a few lines to try and catch him on paper; three or four glances and an effort to rely on memory, but oopsy; he’s seen me and I sense he doesn’t especially like it; occupational hazard for me really, although I figure most will recover from the experience. There he goes with a twitch of his nostrils and a sharp intake of breath, and then we’re at Lancaster Gate already. I snap the little sketchbook shut, slip it in my pocket, catch his eye and try on a smile and say ‘sorry mate’. Last thing I know he’s just sitting there still, and he did not return any sort of smile, nor any humanity at all. He's Mr Cool; think's he's above all that. Yet this is my stop and I'm leaving him and his attitude behind. The great people shuffling device of the Underground in London means the odds of me ever seeing him again are basically nil.

But no, there he is in the lift as we ascend to earth once again, the stern old recording of the posh lady saying over and over; ‘Doors closing. Please make sure you have your tickets ready.’ But there must be 20 of us in here and he's over the other side and so I pretend not to have noticed him.

Then through the ticket gates and stepping out into beautiful sunlight I walk towards the traffic lights to cross over to the park and I notice him one last time out the corner of my eye; quite bright navy blue in his suit in this sunlight; pink high blood-pressure face, yet he seems to be about to cross the road else where.

Then a guy with proper Bob Dylan sunglasses and a guitar on his back like myself is suddenly there before me, and then says to me with an American accent;

‘Are you Michael by any chance?’

‘Yes; I suppose you are J S?

He chuckles amiably and smiles and we shake hands and then head towards the park together.

Walking along together, beautiful day, conversation goes well. We have a good laugh about this and that; we are getting on well. Funny how after the brief conversation we had had on the phone the day before I thought he’d be a youngish student, but he’s more around about my age and been around a bit.

Ducks and swans on the river; the grass bright luscious green, every now and then a sweaty jogger struggles past us; we are bound for the Serpentine bridge. J S explains what he knows about the photo shoot. ‘It’s some kind of re-enactment of a scene in Hyde Park in the late 60’s when the Stones had a concert here to honour Brian Jones following his death.’

'Is he the one who took a whole lot of drugs and died at the bottom of a swimming pool?’

‘That’s right. Anyway, Mick Jagger had a whole lot of pigeons ordered for the concert and there was this moment when they released them into the sky, from some big bag or something, and most of them were still in the bag, completely dead; so that was a bit of a bummer…’

‘Oh dear. We’re not going to be killing any birds I hope?’

‘I shouldn’t think so.’

‘Actually in the email it said something about the Book of Revelations too…’

‘Oh yeah; that’s got something to do with it.’

‘Something or other.’

We get to the bridge and there was Justin on the otherside of the road surrounded by a lot of bags, a camera on the tripod, and one of his pretty young female assistants fussing about with some cables or something. J S and I were just about to cross the road over to him when there again before me was my spiky haired suit from the train suddenly in my face looking rather angry!

‘Hey!' he yells at me, 'you shouldn’t be drawing people on the underground!’

I wondered later if he had just snorted a big line of speed and coke in the nearby bushes prior to approaching, as he had that kind of slightly nutty, ego-gone-mad vibe about him, but at the time I didn’t really know what to think, nor less what to say. Then the next thing I know he whips out his Blackberry and holds it up to my face and takes a picture of me.

‘See how you like it!’ he yells. He’s really quite angry, yet I think I might have simply smiled out of habit when he took the picture.

‘You’ll be hearing from me!’ He says finally, with intense seriousness, before turning and marching off.

I still didn’t know how on earth to react to that; I was struck completely dumb, a little shaken to be honest; but J S seemed a bit more on the ball and was shouting after him, ‘Go fuck yourself you dumb fuck!’ or some such, and so I was in good company, I suppose.

‘I wish I’d taken the phone off him and chucked it in the river!’ J S said a bit later once I explained about how I had sketched the man on the train. I wondered what on earth he could actually do with his picture of me, but in the end we both decided he could do precisely nothing, and that actually that was a bit of a shame, as an article in the paper would only do my career good, and if I was going to get in trouble with the law about something, then it would actually be quite nice if it was something do with my efforts as an artist.

When we caught up with Justin he briefly smirked when we told him about what had happened, and looked at me with an affectionate, ‘There goes Michael getting into mischief again!’ sort of expression. Ever the amateur-psychoanalyst, Justin opined that the man sounded like a 'classic screwed-up passive-aggressive type'.

'Even so, I must say I prefer passive-aggressive to aggressive-aggressive,' I replied.

More fiddling with camera's and cables needed to be done for quite a while yet, and so J S and I were ordered off to sit under a tree and play our guitars, to return in a hour and begin attempting to enlist members of the public to form a crowd around as we played our guitars and were photographed. J S and I discussed the suit with his camera-phone a while and I realised that I had actually been unwittingly successfully provocative with my art, which was something quite satisfying in a way as it is something artists often yearn to do. How often is it said about artist's that they are being 'challenging' or 'provocative' when really everything is just safely happening in the usual safe white cube and none of the viewers are being especially provoked at all compared to the reaction of the man in the navy coloured suit? The most that will happen is that they will remember what they have seen and politely discuss it over capuccino's later on, yet here I am with my tiny little sketchbbook and pencil, really causing a stir! How the man could not have known how he had helped make my day!

A couple of hours later J S and I are standing around with our guitars at the appointed spot beneath the bridge, and along comes a mother and several children in a peddle boat, all nice and snug in their life jackets, saying yes, they’ll be in the picture. J S and I had completely forgotten asking quite some time earlier, at complete random, whilst at the nearby café, before soon deciding between us that the odds of them turning up were very slim, yet here they were. Justin decided that he’d like them to stay in the boat. Then along come a couple of friendly middle-aged bottle-blond ladies from Essex, dressed smartly- if a little undertakeresque- and they have with them a small cage complete with it’s own portable plastic palladial column on which to sit, and within the cage are two doves, which when Justin gives the word are to be released so as to form part of the picture, and assuming some viewers pop culture knowledge to be especially acute, will thus apparently invoke the aforementioned Mick Jagger incident, although it will surely be a pretty part of the picture even if you are nonethewiser.

Meanwhile J C and I start banging out bits of tunes on our guitars and accosting various passers by to see if they would like to be in the picture. Eventually we have a couple of attractive young girls who had been jogging by and a middle-aged German lady, and we are all getting on very well, when Justin’s assistant comes over and gives me a white jacket to get on.

As far as I can tell everyone is still chatting away when no sooner have I struggled into this rather-too-small-for-me jacket, much to the hilarity of the jogger girls, and had my guitar handed back to me by someone, J S comes over and tells me it’s all over. Apparently the police have come along and told Justin to move on as he has no licence to shoot pictures in Hyde Park, and so he had just madly fired off a few shots before putting the camera down, and somehow managed to at least get the doves released whilst I was probably rather unglamourously halfway through struggling my way into the ill-fitting white coat and being laughed at by one of the jogger girls. Thus I shall now perhaps be forever immortalised and remembered, and perhaps even destined for the walls of the Tate in this latest grand work by Coombes.

Our rather random little group are still in good spirits once the photo's have been taken though. We stood about a while and had a chat and I only wished that Justin had budgeted for some beers or snacks, yet I succeed in getting the number off of one of the nice attractive jogger girls and shall be seeing her tomorrow, so all was not lost…

The French

Another evening at the French, one could talk about the ghosts of Francis Bacon and Jeffrey Bernard or whoever, but what a bore; here comes Paul Ryan, With his Bela Lugosi stare and slicked back hair, and he’s looking my way just long enough for me to quickly sketch him..

Beautiful woman in a buff coat, carefully and expensively crumpled, how the lovely many rose like folds around her arms and breast make me ache to do more than simply stand afar and draw her! Will she just carry on talking to the tall Italian, with his ‘Days of Our Lives' hair and jaw and stupidly confident quarter smile ? Yes, she does… and she does not ever notice me, but for the best in the end: the drawing comes off not too bad. Best thing in this last little pocket sketchbook of mine and so I’ll share it with you…