Niches Paradou
For many years would spend a few weeks staying in a lovely old mas in the Bouche du Rhone. Set into the wall leading up to the house were several empty niches just longing to be filled. Each year I would use whatever materials I could find to create a variety of sculptures for these niches to make a nice welcome.
Drawings
Many of these drawings were made following the methods passed on from Cecil Collins, for instance using multiple instruments at the same time, and or both hands, maybe not looking or holding a quill pen from the tip of the feather. There was always a model. Control in the normal sense became increasingly difficult, until, if you were lucky, you gave up the idea of control altogether. It’s one of the best lessons I ever learned. Sound scary? Have a go. It’s only a drawing. There will be plenty more.
Maquettes
Maquettes are a sculptural way of exploring and trying out ideas, rather like a sketchbook. Sometimes a maquette will carry with it the distant vision of vast sculptures erected in important places. It’s not going to happen of course, but it does allow one to explore the possibilities of such works and allow the imagination to roam. Go with the imagination, however impractical some aspect of your character might want to call it. Let it flow unhindered. You never know where it might lead. The path to inspiration can visit the most unexpected of places.
For me a maquette is not something to be copied and scaled up for a finished work. For a start changes in scale demand even subtle changes in the internal proportion and relationship of form. From my point of view, for a piece to be able to stay alive, the creative process will carry through right to the final touch.
Even a few minutes following your ideas and making marks freely in a sketchbook, or building a maquette, can give you the seeds of much fruitful creative work in the days, weeks, months to come.
