Tuesday, 3 August 2010

What a relief !

Dr. Samuel Johnson said 'No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money'.

I usually agree with Sam, the Great Cham, but then I remember that the fly-leaf of my first physiology textbook (Bell, Davidson and Scarborough) quoted an Arabic proverb 'More than the calf yearns to suck, doth the cow yearn to suckle' and being a silly old moo, I have to admit that blogs are kinda fun if there's not too much grouting or ironing to be done. If nobody reads it, who cares, so long as it relieves my over-burdened chuckle centre. There, that's off my chest, though its a funny place to keep a chuckle centre....but a perfectly reasonable site for a suckle centre.

I expect you'll be wondering how I filled the aching, langorous hours of ennui since my last blog. Well, a lot of time was spent on monotonously chipping away at my latest stone bas-relief (see picture below) and it was with relief that I finished it.



You might also be wondering 'Does that depict what I think it does?' Well yes actually, that sort of thing happens quite a lot, here and there (though more there than here, ......personally I can never find a supportive broken stone pillar when I want one). It's perhaps surprising, given the public interest in 'that sort of thing' that there aren't more statues of Queen Victoria in a similar pose. Just think what Rodin might have done with Victoria, Albert and the Crown Jewels.

My effort arose because my neighbour looked at my previous stone-carvings which were entitled 'The Kiss', 'The Pregnancy', 'Mother and Child' and 'Teenage Daughter', and pointed out that I'd omitted a crucial step between 'The Kiss' and 'The Pregnancy'. I felt I had to rise to the challenge and fill the hole, so to speak.

My friend Richard saw the finished work and said he could recognize my wife but who was the lucky man? The cheeky devil wondered if I was likely to need any models in future. I've offered to repeat the work with him and his wife as the models but only if he can hold the pose for 3 weeks. I doubt he'll accept the challenge, because his wife told me that a few weeks ago she said "Richard darling, lets race upstairs and make mad passionate love" to which he apparently replied "You can choose one or the other, but I couldn't manage both".

I was quite pleased with the sculpture, but since it is sandstone and not Portland stone I was unable to enter it for the recent sculpture competition organized by the British Limestone Corporation. I hear that the statue of Casanova won by a long chalk.

1 comment:

  1. I *knew* you'd be back :-)

    Great post - and displaying great talent with the chisel if you don't mind me saying.

    Ali x

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