Mixed Media Drawings

In the Pauline Boty exhibition at Gazelli Art House is a stained glass panel new to me, the fourth of hers that I’ve seen. These student works from the late 1950s and early 1960s hold a great fascination for me, they are full of her unrealised potential and also of my own memories of being a stained glass student in London. That was seventeen years or so after Boty’s time, the world had moved on but stained glass didn’t seem to.

Pauline Boty, Untitled (Architectural details, Edwardian Woman) c.1960/61. Collage and stained glass panel.

The best thing was seeing the collage (above left) that shows how she worked out the design of the stained glass panel.

The best thing at my next stop, the mansion now exhibition space that is Two Temple Place, was a postcard on sale in the shop showing the design for part of one of their celebrated windows (below left). These Clayton and Bell beauties from 1895, landscapes with people and buildings at sunrise and sunset, put everything else I have ever seen in this exhibition space into the shade. These are a different type of drawing, done not to work things out but to show someone what the finished window will look like.

Clayton and Bell, water colour on paper.

I used to be able to get away with presenting that sort of drawing for a commission. I mean an ink, watercolour or pencil sketch that didn’t try to look like glass, other than by showing some lead lines. My final design for a rooflight in the new extension at the Russell Cotes Art Gallery and Museum (below left) mixes views I’d drawn along the coast in Bournemouth with scenes from the rooms in the museum. These views and scenes had gone through many versions by the time they became part of the stained glass panels, with areas working better in one or the other medium, for example the scratchy trees along the cliff tops in watercolour and a particularly good pier in painted glass.

Left: Design for rooflight at the Russell Cotes Art Gallery & Museum, Bournemouth. Sasha Ward 1990. Right: Stained glass rooflight, 3 metres in diameter.

Since that time, 1990, I haven’t often used lead in my large commissions for buildings. Alongside a changing glass technology, where the design is screenprinted onto large sheets of float glass in transparent and opaque enamels, came a different drawing and design process. It seemed untruthful (under the influence of ‘truth to materials’) to have my hand sketches made into stencils and screenprinted. Instead I started drawing shapes for stencils sometimes incorporating photographic imagery, and as the years went on, drawing on the computer. All of this translated very easily into the screenprinting process and also meant that the design could look like the finished artwork would - something that the commissioning bodies particularly liked. An example of this is the hanging panel I made in 2006 for Dewsbury Health Centre (below). The arches in the design remind me of Pauline Boty’s untitled panel, but also of how far I had moved away from making those spontaneous looking, scruffy mixed media drawings.

Left: Collage design for hanging panel at Dewsbury Health Centre, West Yorkshire, Sasha Ward 2006. Right: Hanging panel, 3.2 x 3.2 metres.

Trees in stained glass

In this commission, finished but not yet installed, I have linked the glass door panels with the fanlight above by using a vertical design, based on trees. These are not trees with bare branches like the ones I’ve written about on a previous blog Drawing Branches. They are lollipop style decorative trees with clumps of leaves placed where the layout and balance of the design dictates.

The tree sections of door panels and stained glass fanlight photographed on my light box.

Rather than nature, I’ve drawn on historical stained glass as a guide. Not just the trees in medieval glass at, for example, Canterbury Cathedral (below left), but more particularly the trees you see in the backgrounds of Clayton and Bell windows (below right) with a jumble of different painted leaf forms making up the clumps.

Left: Adam Delving, Canterbury Cathedral c.1176. Right: Clayton & bell window from Sts. Peter & Paul, Wantage 1870s.

My trees have clumps made of four different patterns (below). The two on the left are not particularly like leaves, while the other two patterns each come in three different versions created with sandblasting, stencilling, scrafitto and painting. The client didn’t want any colour in the front door, instead there is tone, translucency and overlaps created by using both layers of glass in the double glazed units.

The four leaf patterns.

Highlights from The Stained Glass Museum

I feel lucky to have visited the stained glass museum, upstairs in Ely Cathedral, last week when such things were open. My last visit was about thirty years ago, I read that it has been revamped since then but much remains the same. The collection of fabulous stained glass panels is mounted on light boxes in the narrow triforium gallery. The contrast between the experience of viewing these here, stripped of architectural context and the stained glass in the windows of the stunning cathedral space is inevitable, but still painful. However, it’s fine if you focus on detail, and as I’ve been looking at painted faces recently that’s what I concentrated on. Here are six of the best (below).

Top left to right: Mary at the tomb, George Hedgeland 1856. St Catherine from Wood Walton, Cambridgeshire c1310-30. Virgin and Christ Child, Margaret Traherne 1956.

Bottom left to right: Head by John Richard Clayton of Clayton & Bell 1861. Crowned female head, Norfolk c.1440-60. From the legend of St. James, Rouen c.1500-50.

The other aspect of the museum I enjoyed this time around was getting close up to panels by some of the favourite makers whose work I have got to know on my stained glass travels.

Mary Lowndes: Left, The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple (detail) 1910. Right, St Peter, Christ, Mary Magdalene, St Peter’s Church, Great Cheverell, Wiltshire 1909.

It was the window in Great Cheverell, Wiltshire (above right) that made me really appreciate the artist Mary Lowndes, this east window has an incredible presence in the church. Obviously this is the very quality you don’t get from the display in the museum, but the soft painting and interplay between the figures in her Saviour in the Temple panel (above left) are wonderful to see.

I saw a Leonard Walker window in Lydd Church on the Romney marshes (below right) and loved his technique, where specially made glass full of streaks and textures does the work that painting would normally do. The example in the museum (below left) is a replica of part of a window he made for the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, Singapore. The minimal painting, on head, hands and feet, blends in beautifully with the hand made glass pieces.

Leonard Walker: Left, Commerce 1923. Right, Christ in Glory, All saints Church, Lydd 1959.

Geoffrey Clarke: Left, Priest 1949. Centre, exhibition panel. Right, Church of the Ascension, Plymouth 1958.

The museum has acquired four works by Geoffrey Clarke, all of them fascinating, pioneering and difficult to see properly in the space. Priest (above left) is made of glass pieces set in layers of painted plaster. The exhibition panel (above centre) I saw last year in the Pangolin Gallery at Masterpiece is made of cast aluminium, as are his windows in the Church of the Ascension in Plymouth (above right) which I never managed to get inside. Whenever I see a glass panel by Geoffrey Clarke it makes me want to start experimenting with materials.

There aren’t many stained glass panels around by the pop artist Pauline Boty. The first one I ever saw in an exhibition at the Pallant House in Chichester (below right) I thought was the best thing I’d ever seen at the time. Her stained glass self portrait in the NPG is wonderful, as is the Siren panel (below left) that I was thrilled to see at the museum. I read that Boty was keen to get out of the stained glass department at The Royal College of Art in order for her work to be taken more seriously. I also saw a photo of her at Wimbledon School of Art where she first learned stained glass, with her fellow students including my teacher at The Central School of Art, Tony Attenborough - I’m so pleased to have discovered this link.

Pauline Boty: Left, Siren c1958-62. Right, Untitled (dreaming woman) 1961.

The Joy of Visiting Unlit Churches

North wall of St Peter Everleigh. Built in 1813 in the Gothic style and on an iron frame, with monument to Francis Dugdale Astley Esq. founder and donor of this church.

My trips to churches in the past few years have been generally unplanned, I stop if I pass one that looks as if it may be open and has an easy place to park outside. I had noticed that some of the loveliest, most uncluttered ones I visited were in the care of The Churches Conservation Trust whose website is up to date with current visitor opening times - no need to book!! - so we set off to see a couple of CCT churches near us in Wiltshire.

St Peter Everleigh. Left: East window, Right: South wall of the nave.

The interior of Everleigh church contains nothing ugly apart from those unevenly spaced wall lights on the north wall (top photo). There are wall monuments from the previous church in the village between tall windows with orange borders and a greenish glow from the trees pressing against them outside.

The glass in the east window by W.T. Cleobury is full of beautifully painted detail. I particularly like the mother and child panel (below left), the gaze and the hands of the shepherds point at them from one side and the three kings from the other. The best hand painting I have noticed from a stained glass firm I had never heard of, which is a perfect example of the surprises you get when you use your eyes rather than a guide book.

Everleigh, details of the east window by W.T. Cleobury 1873.

St Mary, Chute Forest. Left: entrance porch, Right: west window by Jones and Willis 1921.

St Mary, Chute Forest, is tucked away in an overgrown churchyard, again with nothing ugly inside or out. It was designed by J.L. Pearson and built in 1875 of brick and flint. The interior, with no electric lighting that we could find, had a perfectly Victorian atmosphere and perfect conditions for stained glass viewing on a drizzly day. The WWI memorial west window is moody, nicely painted and eccentrically repaired at bottom left with gold coloured glass (above right).

View fullsize

Chute Forest, Left: carved reredos in front of east window by Clayton and Bell, Right: window detail.

The east window is a lovely one, made by Clayton and Bell in 1875. The background to all the little scenes showing the life of Christ is covered in a web of sgraffito flowers which looks great against the familiar patterns of brick, tile and architectural ornament. You can find the same patterns and shapes in the church itself - the example below shows a lantern in the top of the left hand window and, in front of one of the deep window recesses, a lantern that reflects the colours of the stained glass.

Chite Forest, Left: top of the left hand window, Right: lantern with stained glass reflection.

Paintings In Church

Left: The Resurrection Chapel. Right: Gladioli and Stephen stoned by Clayton & Bell (1870s)

St Mary Abbots Church in Kensington is large and grand, designed by George Gilbert Scott with stained glass by the firm of Clayton and Bell. The Resurrection Chapel was redesigned by G.G.S’s grandson in the 1920s, and last week was beautifully decorated for remembrance day. For once the familiar sight of stained glass obscured by flowers didn’t annoy me at all.

Juliet’s Goodden’s paintings on the left hand side of the west wall.

On one wall of the church, either side of the west door, was an exhibition of paintings by Juliet Goodden celebrating interfaith week. I am a fan of Juliet’s paintings. In this series, which is about diverse faiths living side by side, she has painted religious souvenirs and fragments of patterns and places on top of prayer flags and saris. There is not a lot of painting on some of these intricate pictures, she said a lot of the work was in thinking about what should go where. Amongst the small stained glass windows in the nave and the stone memorial plaques they looked totally at home, glowing in the gloom.

Juliet Goodden’s paintings on the right hand side of the west wall.

However the church is brighter than it used to be - in the 1950s the firm of Con and Barnet carried out stained glass repairs and also decided to remove the borders and canopies of Clayton and Bell’s nave windows replacing them with white glass (below left). This strange decision emphasises imaginary tracery and makes the windows seem as if they weren’t made for this church. It also causes the light to flood on to the surface of the glass making the details harder to see.

Left: nave windows. Right: window showing St. John in Patmos.

You can see the glare and gloom effect along with patches of artificial light in the photos of the nave above and below. You can also see the wonderful detail in the figures and the birds flying through patterned backgrounds.

Left: nave & clerestory windows. Right: baptism window.

The patterns on the glass, particularly in the cloth and the backgrounds, take you back to Juliet’s paintings where plant derived patterns mingle with architectural shapes. Amongst the sgraffito floral glass backgrounds I spotted a couple of bright red pieces (above the hand holding the lantern below) that don’t match up. I imagine these to be hasty replacements by those vandals Con & Barnet - but this scratchy drawing is so lively that it just adds to the charm.

Left: detail from window of St Timothy. Right: detail from nativity window.