Serious waterfall

Left: Paintings in egg tempera & indian ink on gesso - Ray’s wall in the exhibition ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’. Right: ‘That’s not really a question is it, more of a statement’ by Ray Ward. 340 x 210 mm

Right in the middle of Ray’s wall in our exhibition at Norwich Cathedral was a painting entitled ‘That’s not really a question is it, more of a statement’ that I really liked and decided to make the subject of my next stained glass interpretation. In this picture most of the detail is in the landscape, the figures are small and melancholy and the man looks very much like my dad did in the 1970s.

Left: Glass piece on top of a copy of Ray’s painting. Right: Glass pieces painted, fired and sandblasted.

As I’ve progressed with these interpretations I’ve found that a limited and contrasting colour palette works best. In this panel I used dark colours for the background pieces around the bright, light figures with the tones getting lighter into the distance at the top of the waterfall. Once I’d chosen the glass and cut it, I laid the pieces on top of a copy of the painting (above left) and worked out how to proceed with the glass painting stage. The figures are easy, I just copy very directly from Ray’s drawing, but the translation of the landscape was something different and much harder to get right. My first attempts at the rocks looked laboured and scratchy, in the end I painted loosely and then sandblasted a zigzag white line. This device indicates what is a rock or not in a decorative way and also breaks up the greyness of the loose painting style. For the magnificent curtains of water I used a strong opalescent green glass that is quite impervious to painted detail, so the falling water is done with white enamel in sandblasted lines. Below you can see how different the finished panel looks in transmitted (left) and reflected light (right), in weak daylight you get something between the two. You can also see how I replaced the original pink sky - which completely ruined the effect I’d been wanting to achieve of the pink figures contrasting with everything else - with a pale lilac piece.

Left: panel in transmitted light. Right: panel in reflected light. 420 x 275 mm

Detail showing the top of the waterfall surrounded by rocks.

Left to right: ‘Moon Walk” ink drawing by Ray Ward, Glass pieces cut and sandblasted, Glass pieces painted, Stained glass panel completed.

My last stained glass interpretation of the year was a quick piece of a woman’s head in profile (above). We used the photo of the finished panel "‘Moon Walk’ for our christmas card, as it turned out her serious expression fitted the mood this year.

Disembodied head

Purple man from ‘These People Are Intellectuals…’ Left, in progress. Right, in the exhibition at Norwich Cathedral

Purple man’s disembodied head was an unplanned addition to our exhibition at The Hostry, Norwich Cathedral. When making the stained glass panel ‘These People are Intellectuals, They Live in Houses Full of Books and Have Nothing Worth Stealing’ (described in a previous blog post) purple man ended up with two alternative heads. I did a second one (on the left in the photos above) out of the same piece of flashed streaky purple glass because I thought I’d sandblasted too much of the purple layer off on the first head. However head number one turned out to be the best one, so head number two ended up on its own stand in the display case alongside an explanation of how the window was made.

St Margaret, Stratton Strawless Left, the south aisle. Right, north window containing medieval glass.

When you start looking at old stained glass in churches you get used to seeing disembodied heads. These are pieces of medieval stained glass that have survived breakages or the releading of windows and find themselves either part of another picture or out on their own. We made a trip to the village of Stratton Strawless, just north of Norwich, to see a perfect example of fifteenth century Norwich glass painting in the angel head which has been set into a clear glass window (above and below). Miraculously the church was not locked and it is full of stupendous monuments and second hand books as well as the angel head which seems so beautifully done now that I’ve started painting heads myself.

Stratton Strawless, the C15th angel head.

Stratton Strawless, glass in the windows of the south aisle.

Set into the windows of the south aisle are a collection of other glass fragments, including the heads of a bishop, a king with a fascinating web of lead lines where he has broken and a strange head which is all beard and no hair (above right). All of the other churches we drove to were locked, so thank goodness for a visit to Castle Acre Priory. Here were windows and arches, carved patterns and lines and among them just a few carved heads (below).

Stone heads from Castle Acre Priory.

Clothes in stained glass

I said tell me the truth and I got a lie, ink drawing by Ray Ward, and my interpretation in stained glass.

For my second attempt at interpreting one of Ray’s drawings in stained glass (above) I stuck to the original drawing much more closely. For the figure and the trees I painted with the glass pieces on top of a photocopy of the drawing, disguising the lead lines in the web of branches that pretty much follow his brush strokes. I had intended to stick to the original tones too, but when I swapped the dark green foreground I cut first to the piece of old pressed patterned white glass, it looked so much better.

The third piece (below) was from a smaller drawing of a figure surrounded by details that I thought would be interesting to copy. Again I put the cut glass pieces directly on top of the drawing for painting and again I was going to stick to the tones of the original. Then I found a piece of perfect table coloured flashed glass which contrasted well with all the blues. It’s the same piece I used for the sea (above) and the dressing gown (below), but look how different it appears against the other colours.

The Summons, ink drawing by Ray Ward and my interpretation in stained glass.

Details from the two panels.

The powdery blue dressing gown drew my attention to the fact that what really worked was the clothes. This is also true of the first piece I made (see previous post) when what I was intending to concentrate on was figures in a setting. The details in Ray’s clothing reminded me of aspects of clothes in stained glass - specifically the weird neck coverings on Harry Clarke’s figures, the 1950s style skirts and jumpers in William Dowling work for Harry Clarke studios, and an even more fabulous dressing gown in Douglas Strachan’s 1944 Womanhood Window.

Harry Clarke at Sturminster Newton, William Dowling at Drimoleague, Douglas Strachan at All Saints, Cambridge