NYC is The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met is perhaps my favourite place in Manhattan, I feel at home there. It's home where I can get lost, discover new treasures, and visit with old friends. I love to re-visit "my paintings" there over and over again, and see how they've changed as I change over time. Vermeer's Girl Asleep is still top of my list.
I went to The Met three times on this visit to the city, always at opening time, before the crowds. I discovered a bunch of Sargent paintings in glass storage cases, but the ones in the galleries are the ones I prefer. I am with Rufus Wainwright when he sings "I looked at the Rubens and Rembrandt, I liked the John Singer Sargents." These four for example.







I also spent a lot of time in the recently renovated Greek and Roman galleries. It is such a privilege to be able to spend time with these works under beautiful natural light. These artists were well educated in anatomy, gesture and lust.



While in New York, staying with an old Queen's friend, Bass, we were visited by Lisa from London - also a Queen's friend who studied Commerce with Bass. I am sitting in Lisa's kitchen with Jonathan as I write this. Anyway, we went out for a long walk though SoHo and Nolita with our gracious host Bass, and Lisa decided she needed a new leather bag. This picture was take mid-justification for the purchase of another bag. Great expression. Verdict: Lisa bought a sweet green leather bag.

Sculpture: a mini man in clay then plaster

For the month of September, when I was drawing the figure every afternoon, I spent my mornings down in the basement of the Art Student's League working form the figure in clay. My teacher was Jonathan Shahn, who is a great artist and has sculpted countless heads of all types. He actually went to school with my old Professor from graduate school, Tony. That's how I came to choose him, and I am so grateful that there was room for me in his class, because it too was really inspiring.
The Art Students League is a unique place. In my sculpture class there were all type of people.The retired types: Harold the dentist who had a practice down the street in the Steinway Building for 41 years and always dreamed of taking classes there; Peter the English engineer who reminded me of Malcolm McDowell, but insisted he was more like Lawrence Olivier, and Oscar the Columbian baker of french pastries who claimed to have opened New York's first true french pastry shop with his French-Canadian wife. Then there were the Israeli's: three dark, beautiful and mysterious older ones, and the young and precious one called Noa. In addition there was Allston from South Carlolina with has the most genteel accent ever; Mark the ceramicist from Portland who like me, was only there for a short time; Christine the hairdresser from Cape Cod; and let's not forget William, the Chinese immigrant postal worker who won the scholarship for figurative sculpture. The week I spent getting all covered in plaster while casting my 30" standing figure was greatly enriched by the casting teachers Beth and Steve, not to mention Renee who works as a counsellor in a lower east side Manhattan public school. All in all, I have to say it was a totally amazing experience. It also reminded me how much I miss making messy sculpture, and the full pleasure dervived from cleaning one's body after a day work, rather than before.
The sculpture pictured here shows my clay figure on the left, and the plaster casting of it on the right. The clay one has an armature in it and is supported by the black pipe, whilst the plaster one has metal rods through the arms, legs and torso. He lives in Manhattan now, where I hope to join him when I'm old(er).

focus on drawing

Drawing is the main focus of my year-off from teaching. The decision to visit many of the places on my itinerary reflects my desire to explore the many different ways this 3-dimensional world is translated/rendered into two dimensions. The subjects of my drawings are films about filmmaking by great filmmakers. Contempt by Godard, Day for Night by Truffalt, and 8 1/2 by Fellini are three of the most inspiring. In these films, and others like them, the directors pull away the camera's viewfinder and expose the structures behind the art of filmmaking. I want my drawings to make visual the structures behind drawing. I will in essence be making drawings about drawings based on films about filmmaking.
The Art Students League turned out to be a great place to start. I had the most amazing teacher, Frank Porcu, for my Anatomy Drawing class. He knows anatomy like Uncle Ben knows rice. He has dissected every part of the human anatomy and many animals, too. And he is a truly gifted and giving teacher. He is full of energy, and talks and draws really fast: think of Martin Scorcese as a life drawing teacher. I learned a completely new and effective way to approach drawing the human figure. His method challenges the 8-head convention that has been in place since the Renaissance. His method is based on true life; the Truth, not artistic convention. It works out to be a 7 1/2 head figure, but it is based upon what he calls visual phenomena. It's a theory based on what we see, and as he demonstrated many times - it is based on actual anatomy. Visual phenomena: what is the visual information in front of your eyes? Use this plus the 7 1/2 head theory and an understanding of the size of the pelvic box, and go back and forth between the two like a szchizophrenic (this comes quite naturally for me). I wish I could spend a few years studying with Frank Porcu. I now better understand JC's disciples.

Welcome to BMAD: The Blog!

B.Mad, the 'zine has been replace by BMAD: The Blog.
BMAD is the acronym for Burke Manufacturing and Design, but it is also a call to be mad!
Mad as in madness! The good mad. The Brit-anglo mad. Mad as a Hatter!
I would still like to return to the physical 'zine format at some point, but right now I am busy travelling around the earth.
Here is the basic itinerary for the coming academic year:
Toronto - New York City - London - Paris -Rome - Dubai - Calcutta - Thailand - Cambodia - Hong Kong - Shanghai - Tokyo - Honolulu - Los Angeles - San Francisco - Vancouver - Toronto.

The first stop was New York City, where I reprised my role as an art student, this time at the Art Students League of New York on West 57th Street.