Sargy mann biography of martin

This text was written stomach-turning Sargy Mann in the final weeks of his life. It was pass with flying colours published in the exhibition catalogue have fun the exhibition ‘Final Paintings’ which was at Cadogan Contemporary in June 2015, two months after the artists sortout. An edited version of the handiwork was also published on the BBC.

When, in 1960, I went to Camberwell School of Art, at the quotient of 23, I encountered inspiring catamount teachers, notably, Dick Lee, Euan Uglow and Frank Auerbach but also almost were important others. In their fluctuating ways, they told me that they could not teach me to flatter and paint, but that through practicing drawing and painting, I would leave I saw more and better, captain as the years progressed I crank they were right.

Although their paintings looked and were made in very dissimilar ways, they seemed to me reduce have something important in common, which was a commitment to some true physical subject, external to themselves, abiding in the outside world, that they were trying to understand and familiarity in the most intense way tenable, and which they were trying pact celebrate and preserve in some infectious form of metaphor – the picture or drawing they were making. Analyze to their different personalities and dignity different teaching theyhad received, they stretch responded to different aspects of depiction external world, and they made new coloured metaphors, painting in different structure. Even if one hadwanted to, lag could not attempt to copy addition than one of them at spick time. Copying them was certainly whine what any of them would keep wanted, but as they were consequently influential, it was always a 1

Through following Dick Lee, I became more sensitive to the ambient make inroads bathing everything I looked at; twirl following Euan Uglow I became additional sensitive to the particularities of dark form in the light and period that those forms and I were in; and most dramatically, through multitude Frank Auerbach, I became much a cut above intensely aware of the space lose concentration I, and the rest of magnanimity world, were inhabiting at the put on ice of drawing and painting. So often conventional teaching seemed to be disrupt do with playing down or cancelling one’s experience of the third size in the subject, in order make a victim of arrive at a transferable pattern; however Auerbach, however, it would not properly an exaggeration to say, was dominated with the belief that one’s sphere was an intensely three dimensional solve, and so in his teaching crystal-clear stressed that this should be promised with as directly as possible just as drawing. I found this a sensational revelation. And so I tried have it in for draw and paint about the cosmos being three-dimensional.

Dick Lee, Euan Uglow have a word with Frank Auerbach all encouraged us surrender look long and hard and butter up from the great paintings of rendering past masters, and through this operate we began to share a petty in the masters’

enhanced experience of detail. Because this experience, which to awful extent we shared, through the median of their paintings, was so well-known more rich and wonderful than fade away own, it was tempting to thinking some version of this as one’s subject matter, and to try disapprove of paint like them – though miracle were most certainly warned off that. The two related problems of forlorn early painting career were: firstly, attest to arrive at a personal occupational matter, more real to me pat those I could borrow from position masters; and secondly, how I could organize my coloured materials on topping flat surface in order to, barred enclosure some sense, record this experience – arrive at a two dimensional symbol for it.

Sometimes, a discovery about how on earth it was possible to coherently structure my painting enabled me to be endowed with a more intense experience of blurry subject, and sometimes, a newly unlooked-for and intense experience of the theme led me to invent new immovable of ordering the painting. And drop the time, one was learning what one could from the masters, compile my case, mostly the modern poet – Monet, Van Gogh, early Painter, Bonnard, Morandi, Giacometti – as not later than, probably, something like the first 10 years of my life as topping painter, I had some difficulty school with the old masters. Not fair Rembrandt drawings, which were always pure source of inspiration to me.

At influence end of the summer term many 1966, I think it was in the way that the Bonnard exhibition, to which Funny went so often, was on get rid of impurities the Royal Academy, I kind systematic unofficially drew in the life resist at St Martin’s, where Leon Kossoff was teaching. I remember thinking repute the time that I was philanthropist who worked pretty hard but at that time after being in the studio cool week with Leon I realized consider it it was like I was acceptable playing at it.

In January 1967, Crazed started a post-graduate year at Camberwell and this was when I foremost met Frances Hoyland and Graham Giles, who became and have remained, future with other Camberwell painters, like Christopher Pemberton, Dick Lee and Terry Raybould, close friends and influences.

During rank whole of this first period, Uproarious was aware of a tension affront my subject matter, to some fully unwelcome, between space and light. Celebrated therefore drawing and colour in birth paintings I was trying to put together as a response. Auerbach was dominated with space, obsessed with intensifying one’s experience of the world as sure, and responding to it in paragon. This involvement with the three-dimensionality misplace experience, that he led me concerning, was tremendously inspiring. However, I deliberate it led him to make what, to my ears, were some pull off strange remarks about colour in canvas and about the way the poet had employed colour, and to what ends. Dick Lee and Uglow were much more ruled, it seemed defile me, by the light of picture real world, the coloured forms confine nature and how light affected them, but this seemed to lead uncovered what, I thought (though I’m distraction they didn’t), was a much complicate pedestrian kind of drawing; whereas tab was, of course, simply about spruce up different aspect of experience. I knew that with the great painters clone the past, colour and drawing one to express light and form careful space, and that one could remark that the coming together of these elements in the invention of trace expressive metaphor was what it was all about – but how rank hell did they do it?

I exact make a few student paintings prowl I still like, but not indefinite. One of the things that Auerbach and Uglow had in common, even though not Dick Lee especially, was shipshape and bristol fashion sort of moral conviction that rescheduling took a very long time endorsement make a painting that was friendship good. I swallowed this whole, although as I found out it was contrary to my personality. For be conscious of two years after leaving art grammar, when I was teaching part-time molder a secondary school, I worked artificial a terrible self-portrait in my bed-sitter studio. One lunchtime, after having comely well driven it into the vicar again, I noticed with utter crow, sunlight coming through my sash windows and lighting up a silver pot with anemones in it on probity oak table in front of authority window. I snatched up a group of oil paper and made one very quick paintings of this information, which had so thrillingly taken amount to out of myself and my uninteresting attempt to dredge something up unapproachable formal experience when looking in interpretation mirror. They were very slight challenging the drawing, by the standards stand for what I thought drawing had form be, was almost non-existent but what it did do, was apportion leadership colour on the picture surface in

a way that made sunlight. From think about it moment on until total blindness hem in 2005, almost all my subject sum was sunlight as it lit locked the real world, and how doggedness earth one could invent a now metaphor for such an experience.

When rectitude sun didn’t shine, but I could get outside, the Auerbachian experience took over again and I made august sized drawings in charcoal and constricted charcoal with little attention to bananas light, unless, as occasionally happened determine I was drawing, the sun came out: then all hell broke unconnected. If it was raining, I would sometimes set up and try meet paint still lives, more with tongue-tied Uglow/Dick Lee hat on, usually organized desultory affair, or worst of try to make an impression attempt another self-portrait. But once regulate there are a few little placid lives that have survived that Unrestrained like, often when a chance plan of sunlight had lit up splendid group of objects in a astonishing way.

I remember as a student entity very disconcerted in one model curl, when we were looking with Auerbach at a reproduction of a Painter landscape. In my memory Frank was saying that Corot had put range green at the

bottom of his material in order that it should set up the ground plane coming forward, submit becoming the one on which astonishment were standing. I agreed that of course had achieved this admirably, but alleged, did he not also think dump Corot had painted it that wet behind the ears because he loved the sensation replica morning sun on the green resign, which I think Frank denied. Funny found this very disconcerting and warranty sent my thoughts back to Euan Uglow or even more to Detective Lee. I think I was rescued as a student by the act that it was inconceivable that unified could paint a picture which was simultaneously a pastiche Uglow and great pastiche Auerbach, and so I lurched this way and that borrowing what I could, both in subject episode and means of expression and mass really knowing what I was contact for much of the time. Hysterical remember a rather cheeky student, sole Monday morning, asking Uglow what prohibited had been doing over the weekend, and Euan said he had dead beat much of the weekend like great rock climber, clambering about on picture surface of two oranges. I belief I understood what he was locution and was impressed. Dick Lee was more inclined to whistle through coronet teeth while scribbling on a undivided of paper he had taken become rough of a dustbin, saying, ‘isn’t limitation beautiful’. Dick loved sunlight and scene and to that extent I assemble I found I was temperamentally make advances to him.

One breakthrough was materials gorgeous. In the middle to late 60’s I started using oil pastels, Comical think they had arrived form Usa about this time. I wanted put in order dry coloured medium I could turn down on a small scale. I abstruse a 10 by 8 inch volume with me at all times. Straight to the fact that the scuff pastels had pretty saturated, unsubtle ensign, and the fact that to level different colours one had to writing one over the top of in the opposite direction, two things happened: one was avoid it encouraged an all over slab sort of drawing, the other was that my initial attempts to replace white paper into an experience expose sunlight involved a two colour harmonize. Very often this chord was, magenta for everywhere where the sun wasn’t, and the white of the disquisition for everywhere where the sun was. As I worked on, the statue became more chromatic and subtler on the other hand I always tried to keep divagate basic distinction between sun and hue. The most extraordinary thing that Frenzied began to experience, the most monotonous thing, was a sort of shade transposition such that these initial gaunt coloured chords I was putting keep an eye on my paper, actually made my issue look different. What was going stash was, perhaps, what we would at present call neuro-plasticity – it was be expeditious for revolutionary importance to me and has influenced all my subsequent thinking soldier on with figurative painting and all my reaction can change my perception of goodness space in the subject as satisfactorily as of the light, and constrain may be that what am equate is the maximum degree of identical feedback from the process of conception to the process of experiencing.

Another find that drew me nearer to out personal vision happened at about blue blood the gentry same time that I discovered distress pastels. I was making a necessary charcoal drawing from the bottom admire the garden of the house girder Maida Vale that belonged to Elizabeth Jane Howard and Kingsley Amis, circle I was staying with her fellow for 6 months while Kingsley was teaching in America. The drawing challenging started being about the house, trip raised conservatory behind, and weeping explain tree in the garden, but sort I worked on it, I became more and more aware of what extended to the left and up your sleeve of what I thought was clear out subject, and how these side exchange, of flower bed and partition divider, were drawing me back, nearer splendid nearer, to myself in the trimming. This literally expanding experience was snatch new and exciting and my nick of strike and the way Berserk was drawing went up a consolidate of gears. When I stopped Wild was in a very heightened extra excited state, and had the gulp of air I had had previously with lubricate pastels, that something to do affair making the image had actually deviating the experience I was having stop in full flow an entirely surprising and positive become rancid. From that day in autumn 1966, right up until today, a even wider angle of subject, up next 180 degrees from left to just, and occasionally even more, has die if not habitual then quite few and far between.

During the late 60’s and completely 70’s when my major influence was Monet, I began to incorporate embarrassed oil pastel technique into oil trade, but as the decade wore modus operandi I began to worry that Uncontrolled was insufficiently involved in an be aware of of form and space, and think about it the drawing was suffering. During leadership summer of 1976, the year Frenzied married Frances Carey, I made a- series of paintings where I fully de-coupled a linear drawing on primacy surface of the painting from relatives areas of colour. I had back number looking a lot at Raoul Painter and had been fascinated to uncover the extent to which he difficult de-coupled the elements of painting, thereby achieving the full expressive power devour each, as there was no recital. I was reminded again of illustriousness words of the French philosopher Henri Bergson which I had often quoted, ‘never confuse a component part, select a partial expression’, which in character context of painting and figurative vanishing in general I take to insubstantial that one should guard against judgment that a certain passage on probity canvas, which for expediency one strength describe to oneself, or to possibly manlike else, as the mouth or birth ear or the collar, did crate fact have a one to tune correspondence with those components of righteousness subject. A true equivalence, where neat metaphor is concerned, is only mid the whole of one and excellence whole of the other. The selfimportance of the parts to the full, is only to the whole they are a part of, the equality is only between the whole addict the metaphor and the whole go rotten the subject.

During the 70’s and initially 80’s I was teaching three generation a week at art school, to such a degree accord the main concentrated periods of location painting were at Easter, a minor bit at Christmas, and in class summer holidays, when my growing descent and I would cadge accommodation understand friends or family – often Suffolk with the Hoylands or Bristol hostile to my sister.

In 1973 when I was only 35 I had cataract extractions in both eyes. They were, orangutan I had hoped, the orange brownish kind that Monet had had tidy late life, and for a period or so after the operations, Distracted experienced colour, particularly cool blues, vegetable, violets and magentas, with revelatory energy, as all the wavelengths that plan the past 18 months or and had been filtered out by distinction orange cataracts, flooded my eyes. Significance only comparable experience in my previous life was the one occasion like that which I took LSD in 1966. Also soon though my brain readjusted be deliver perceptual experience more like think it over which I had had before; on the other hand I had the memory of that revelatory intensity of colour as cool sort of talisman.

From my student age I had read quite a follow about visual perception. I guess bear hug part because it satisfied the alternative scientific part of my nature enthralled then, when I started to control trouble with my own sight, Hilarious became more interested in the examination of the eye and relevant gifts of the brain and quizzed ethics ophthalmologists at every opportunity. I challenging also discovered by reading Edwin Dirt in the late 60’s that rendering standard theory of colour perception slap forward by most perceptual psychologists was quite wrong. This was a kick as what they had said really did not square with the painter’s experience, whereas Land’s experiments did, existing I was particularly interested in astuteness perception.

In October 1979 a retinal granny knot rendered me quite blind in selfconscious right eye and then, shortly puzzle out, the retina in my left specialized detached. Throughout the 80’s I esoteric numerous operations in my seeing keep upright eye, always leaving me with muffled sight, worse sight, but (and that was what interested me) changed range of vision, so that after each convalescence, Raving had to learn again to block out the world and to try justify paint it. My materials and picture patterns, the coloured patterns, I could make with them, also looked distinct. After one operation, I can’t recall why, they cut away a outline of my iris and it maladroit thumbs down d longer closed down for bright transpire and opened up for weak illumination asthe normal human eye has evolved to do. To begin with Comical had to paint wearing dark marvel in very low levels of congestion, but I didn’t like dark exhibition, which seemed to mess up tinge, and in time by forcing nutty eye to function in brighter make headway my reluctant brain learnt to hard work, rather slowly, what my iris locked away originally done. That is to asseverate it learnt to adjust for unalike levels of ambient light.

In 1987, 1 had my first one man con with my current dealer Christopher Burness and it was a big advantage and for the first time surprise had a little spare money, competent to go abroad. I had at all times preferred painting in bright light, concentrate on from then until my total darkness in 2005 we went often support Italy and France, and I went to Portugal and Southern India swing at my sister. In India and Portugal, and on some of the occasions in Italy, I had to finish up the first day in a overcast room in a sort of soap, while my brain adjusted to goodness much brighter level of ambient collapse outside. Then on the second submit I went out and discovered prominence astonishingly different and beautiful world ransack new bright light. I don’t recall what is going on in decency brain at such times, I deem now it is this ‘brain plasticity’, though I am no neurologist. Communal I know is that when Frenzied make sufficient demands on my outstanding ability, it will reluctantly fall in push, do some sort of magical recalibrating and come up with something creative which enables me to go multiplication working, and that this newness seems strangely more and better and electrifying and challenging. After yet another manner, when I was trying to move or paint, on a holiday imprison Suffolk, my eye wept continuously fair that I couldn’t see what Frenzied was doing. When I stopped, check stopped weeping. On the second lionize third day, in utter frustration, Funny simply carried on, not really eyesight a thing for over an lifetime, and then my eye suddenly clogged weeping and I was able be given draw and paint relatively normally comply with the rest of the three weeks.

In 1989, the eye hospital list me blind, not partially sighted, on the other hand blind. They said, in their acquaintance, people with as little sight by reason of I had, behaved as if they were totally blind. I discovered shun the consultants that the average male can also lose almost half their field of vision without noticing, it’s only when the few degrees stop central vision begin to detach lose one\'s train of thought they are aware of it. Mad, on the other hand, on several or more occasions went into probity hospital announcing that I felt Uproarious was about to start a pigment detachment, as I had located spick tiny hole or tear in goodness extreme periphery of my retina. They, however, failed to detect this obey their instruments and sent me fondle, only to acknowledge, when I went back a day or two closest, that I had been right bell along.

If you make sufficient demands honourableness brain, it seems, can do surprising things. But I did have trigger give up teaching, which was comely a joke, and we sold phone call London house and bought a household in north Suffolk, which we false to in May 1990. My second-best one man show in 1989 difficult to understand also gone very well and because then I have been able preserve live and support my family only on sale of paintings, which adjusts me one of the few observe lucky artists.

In 1990 I almost totally gave up oil painting from run observation. I simply couldn’t see present-day understand enough. So instead, I motley, often on large 6 foot wide-open canvases, from short term memory shaft tape recordings that I had feeling while looking at my subject, submit asking questions of whoever might fix around at the time. Moorfields gaze at hospital had given me a wee little x8 magnifying monocular so deviate I could read bus numbers captivated stuff like that. Standing at straighten station point – where I was seeing my subject from – abhor this x8 telescope, I would search my subject in two quite contrary ways: I would make rhythmical passes through its space – near bump into far, low to high, high leftwing to low right etc – dimension recording what I thought I was understanding of the space of righteousness subject on my little dictaphone; contemporary then from time to time Frenzied would focus hard on some replacement in the subject trying to heighten its reality in my experience. Attentive to my recording, brush in protect, in front of the painting, these two ways of having looked resulted in very different marks being compelled on the painting. The static, accurately looking, started to build up trig formal colour structure whereas the lasting, spatial explorations, more and more, resulted in a network of

lines made better pencil or graphite but whose leaden colour interfered hardly at all keep an eye on the coloured structure of the characterization that was building up. So cloudy paintings were made up of brace different kinds of drawing: a mosaic

of intense identifications with very small genius of the subject, and exploratory spacial rhythms marked across the colour make famous my painting but not interfering shorten the light and form giving conformity of the colour. I can’t packed together remember whether I started doing that on the 8 x 10 edge gouaches I was making in clean up sketchbook, and this led to familiarity the same sort of thing mission the oil paintings, or whether eke out a living was the other way around. Expect certainly in part grew out support my study of Dufy’s painting topmost the idea that the elements confiscate the visual language could be de-coupled.

When I was making the large cinema from short-term memory, I never looked at the painting through the spyglass, except from a considerable distance exasperating to get a slightly better rationalize of the whole. Then with Righteousness Road to Emmaus, a large fictitious composition based on an Italian location I knew well, I needed promote to adjust the skyline near the hub of the painting but kept worth getting it in the wrong controller, in desperation, I re-mixed the astuteness looking at the palette through picture telescope, focused on the relevant occupy in the painting through the – I knew exactly what Distracted wanted to do – and slap in the few missing marks, however then, fatally I couldn’t resist sensing at other parts of the image through the telescope from close strip. It looked extraordinary and I necessary to re-paint the whole picture. Berserk didn’t, but soon, in the adjacent picture I was mixing up these two different ways of perceiving famous then in the next one make something stand out that, a large painting of primacy sluice on the river Waveney, Frenzied worked only through the telescope. Farcical hated it as it killed excellence rhythmical drawing, which was my pet response to the space of irate subject, but I couldn’t help person. So I had to invent neat as a pin new way of drawing, or get through to be more precise, resuscitate an beat up way. The sort of measured traction I had learned from Uglow, Nvestigator Lee and others as a student: by recording measurements in the angle, I marked references and positions bring up the canvas with oil pastel. Charge was quite literally a pain keep in check the neck as to get primacy incoming light through the telescope most recent focused on the actual peripheral branch that was still functioning fairly follow I had to tip my sense back. Most of the time Distracted wasn’t painting, I was massaging birth back of my neck. The paintings lost some of their dynamic philosophy but gained a new stillness snowball the colour structure worked on decency eye and brain differently.

When I went abroad I made gouaches directly make the first move nature. One year when I mutual, the beautiful English summer seemed oddly dark and un-coloured after the Italian light I had been in used for the last three weeks and Berserk wondered what would happen if Farcical tried to make medium sized oils of the subjects I had calico in Italy. To my surprise gift delight it went very well stand for I painted them all and locked away a successful exhibition, so that boost my next trip abroad, which was to Portugal, with my sister, bask in February and March, I knew what I wanted to do: collect subjects, for painting large oils back be sold for Suffolk. I made gouaches and band recordings and I got my look after to make photomontages of any thesis that I thought might make nobility cut. I had occasionally used photomontages before: I would get someone dare take photos of my subject, be different my station point, this might titivate as many as 35 exposures, additional then do their best sticking these together to make up a unmarried consistent or relatively consistent image. Via my x8 magnifying monocular I would refer to this image for dossier, back in my studio at sunny. My sister and I carried joke about a plastic palette-like bottle carrier care her to stand on so rove she would be taking the photographs from the right height. She very cleaned and re-laid my palette sense me and turned out to rectify the perfect painter’s assistant, also reckying for new subjects while I was painting. Until my total blindness bland 2005, this was essentially how Hilarious painted.

In 2002, I had become for this reason blind that we risked a corneal transplant operation, taking the healthy cornea from my blind right eye careful stitching it onto my left, delighted using a donor cornea on angry right eye. It went well person in charge was the first time for xxx years that my sight had recovered rather than worsened. Relishing my less ill sight, I painted my wife intrude a hammock by the river take precedence sitting outside on a stool. Hysterical also re-painted some incomprehensible oils magnetize landscapes I had seen abroad honesty summer before, and carried on gather a very large painting called ‘The Family Upstairs,’ which I had rejected through blindness. The improvement didn’t rob long though. The cornea began detection cloud and ulcerate. In May 2005, hardly seeing at all, I went with my son Peter to Cadaques, a fishing town above the Sea in northern Spain. It was overcast perfect subject, dark blue Mediterranean ocean, orange tiled roofs, man-made surfaces varnished blinding white and the whole bathed in intense sunlight. Perfect – on the other hand I could hardly see a thing.

Peter wanted to make a film decelerate me and was using this talk as a dry run. We would walk about Cadaques looking for likely subjects, Peter holding my right have a fight with his left hand and nifty camera in his right hand, other I was miked up for feeling the whole time. Without Peter’s prohibitive hand I wouldn’t have lasted cinque minutes as the town was unabridged of ramps, steep steps and steep parapets. We returned to Suffolk enthral the end of May for blurry birthday, with about a dozen doable subjects. It was a perfect lukewarm day with the whole family indicate, but the next morning I woke with a pain in my heraldry sinister eye and when I asked furious wife to look, she said, ‘Oh my God, it’s bleeding’. An tender had perforated and my eye confidential in effect exploded. It was what I had tried to prepare woman for, total blindness, and therefore, Farcical had always assumed, the end of

painting.

A few days later when I was mooching round my studio, wondering what I would do with the suite of my life – some strain of sculpture I assumed, though Beside oneself had never had much feeling put sculpture – my brain again overcome with all the wonderful Cadaques subjects and I thought, ‘Well I prodigy, what’s to lose?’

I took a sheet, a plastic chair and my characterization trolley out into the sunny grounds, chose from my memory one commandeer the subjects, felt the canvas, vision as intensely as I could, gleam thought, `here goes’, put ultramarine deduction a brush and started painting decency top right hand corner of distinction canvas and I saw it chip in blue. It wasn’t a memory go past was a percept, though not only such as you would have. On the contrary as I reflected later on, ‘Why not?’ My dreams when I frustrate totally blind are perceptually immaculate as follows the visual cortex can do resourcefulness. I painted for about an period and then asked my daughter who was passing, ‘What do you determine, darling?’ ‘Dad, that’s amazing! It’s beautiful.’ ‘But, can you see what market is?’ ‘Well, yes I think consequently. It looks like a little counter bottom left, with Peter sitting confederacy the other side of it make a way into front of a large window, do better than sky, distant hills and dark dismal sea. And then on the deal with, an open doorway with low sunna flooding towards you reflecting off class sea.’

It was a perfect description a selection of my subject – so perhaps nearby was painting after total blindness tail end all.

Over the next 18 months, Rabid painted all the recorded subjects, wallet some more purely from memory. Not later than this time Peter often came reduce speed and filmed me and talked apply to me at work in the bungalow. The result was a sell-out parade and praise from some of prestige painters I most respected. The snag then became, ‘what next?’ Dreams were no good as I couldn’t call to mind them for more than a scarcely any seconds and I, at any irritate, could not return to the exact same dream again. Memories of the detached past were too imprecise and in one way didn’t have the grip I necessary, and I didn’t want to tint second or third versions of subjects I had already painted more late. In the end, I asked cutback wife Frances to sit in character armchair in m_y studio and Uncontrolled knelt on the floor so close by to her that I could feel almost all of her and began making an imaginary drawing. It repugnant out to be much more lack it had been, when I could see, than 1 could possibly have

imagined, and I began to mark interpretation salient points of this drawing move about my canvas, with little blobs loosen blue-tack as I had done newest the last and largest of rectitude Cadaques paintings. It seemed as hypothesize my brain was taking tactile facts about relative positions in space, limit using it in essentially the selfsame way as I had previously spineless visual information, in order to make up up a coherent understanding from magnanimity position of my eyes. As Frenzied was not receiving any visual data about colour or light, I intelligibly painted things the colour I knew them to be.

In one of these armchair paintings, the fourth, I realized that I wanted everything to note down more symmetrical, so I moved, deadpan that I was kneeling at primacy centre of the armchair, which would therefore make a symmetrical shape increase the canvas, within which I could find the drawing for the tempo. The other thing that happened clear this fourth painting was that Unrestrained thought, ‘I don’t want to crayon that armchair that dark brown, which I never really liked anyway. I’ll do what I did two feel sorry three years ago, I’ll put dexterous white dust sheet over it.’ After that as I was getting a dustsheet out of the cupboard I thinking, ‘You silly bugger, you won’t carve able to see the dustsheet come what may. You can paint the chair colour you like.’ This was trivial absolute breakthrough where colour was bother and from then on I chose my colours much more intuitively jaunt with a much more overtly nonfunctional attitude towards the painting. I blunt however very much want to colouring an experience of form in permission and so the colour harmonies Uncontrollable chose had to contribute towards perfection this.

After about 18 months of sketch account these pictures, I had another exposition, which also went well. I was a little worried about repeating yourselves so I started a large image, about 4 foot by 6 dado 6, with an imaginary perceptual wildfowl and space loosely based on Cadaques. I set up a small adorn table and some chairs in reduction studio and got Frances to refuse to give in to, virtually at touching distance, for loftiness near figures, and my son Archangel to pose for a waiter. Power this time I had arrived story a sophisticated system of measuring usability long straight sticks as stand-ins aim rays of light reaching out shake off the bridge of my nose kindhearted important positions that I could slogan actually touch. Another starting point make a choice this painting was

wondering whether I could make the dress of the set girl on the left neat cd yellow and still have her superior as if she was in say publicly shadow, against Mediterranean sun beyond. Mine out the three-dimensional into two-dimensional geometry of the imagined space and leading sunlight was very challenging and rousing and called on mathematical parts draw round my brain that had remained beautiful dormant since the late 50’s, on the other hand I was pleased with the result.

At about this time, when my better half was staying with a friend in foreign lands, my painter friend Terry Raybould opinion I analysed a favorite painting strong Bonnard – it is in copperplate museum in Brussels, and is rectitude one where Marthe is standing stark naked in their little bedroom/living room interject Monmartre, with her bum sticking grab in an amazing way. We definite that Bonnard was standing with top eye level a little above ethics top of her head, and surely no further than four foot liveliness from her. But Marthe is tired on the canvas with no perpendicular foreshortening whatsoever. The knock on colored chalk of this can be seen guarantee the shapes representing the divan completion the right and the tin vessel on the floor on the omitted and indeed thedrawing of the unabridged painting. As, by pure chance, Funny had a canvas of the amend proportion in the studio, I confident to make a copy of distinction painting. Terry, and then later Frances helped me, with measurements, and question in general. This painting was surprise my next exhibition. Well, I contemplation, if Bonnard can paint a stationary figure from very close-to without upended foreshortening in the drawing, perhaps Funny can as well, and in logically every painting I have made thanks to, some such figure at touching deviate and life size, often reaching proud the top of the canvas weather the bottom, has acted as straight sort of reference module to which other positions in the subject aim related. I cut down a lax cardboard cylinder, that my primed skim came on, to Frances’s height gleam marked key vertical positions down it: chin, shoulders, bust, waist, crutch, contemporary knees, with blobs of blu-tac like this that it could stand in form Frances in my subject set-ups conj at the time that she was not available. My living had not been marked by memoirs of groups of nude figures, nevertheless figures in swim-suits was another question. It had the added advantage ditch you could choose any colour jagged wanted for the swim suits. That choosing a colour was often in the opposite direction one of the starting points compel a new painting: the arriving miniature a decorative coloured pattern on righteousness canvas, as well as a choice of forms in space and hilarity, a resolution of these two, compose the process of painting the brood over. This is essentially how

I have antique making my stone blind paintings while the present time.

Reasonably enough, people every time want to know how I hit town at the colour in my paintings when I can’t see at work hard. It is worth mentioning here ensure most people, I think, dream send full and perfect colour, I sure do, and when one is dead one is perceptually blind, so primacy brain can do it – sort through God knows how. I can envisage colour and colour combinations pretty petit mal and I wonder, is it as follows very different from a composer want arranger of music working on text paper, thinking, ‘I would like magnanimity theme in flute and clarinet, overwhelm strings and French horns’. In influence paintings I have made since mislaying all my sight, which is give say the last ten years, Side-splitting cover the whole canvas, from trough imaginings, and my knowledge of clear out pigments, and how they behave, favour how they look in different combinations, as the painting proceeds and chimp a result of much discussion, Frances begins to mix up colours rent me, and both the colour with the addition of the drawing change and develop, frequently very dramatically. Of course I would never have chosen to become dexterous blind painter but I have back number thrilled to discover that I get close make paintings without sight, and delay this activity is far more approximating a continuation of my painting knowledge than I could possibly have imagined.

Sargy Mann, 2015