Fight

Fight – a painting about masculinity and vulnerability combined.

“Fight” encapsulates the conflict between the portrayal of outwardly brutal masculinity with the vulnerability of the body affected by violence.

Fight, oil on paper painting by Lee Devonish, 2016. Masculinity and vulnerability. — Fight. Oil on paper, 2016.

In/Out of the series

It is part of what I call the muscle series, but as a portrait it stands outside of the main body of the group, not depicting the body or muscularity.

The idea of the series is to look at the body under transformation – the product of a lot of very hard work in addition to any underlying capability.

Trauma

But this painting doesn’t focus on the body; instead, it focuses on the face and picks up on a point of apparent trauma. I could reveal the source of the injury, but perhaps it would be better to leave the air of mystery surrounding the event, with only the title to serve as a clue.

There’s clearly been some dramatic, violent event that has left its evidence, and it’s this visual punctuation that punches the macho façade of the strongman and shows vulnerability.

Movie men

But strength and vulnerability in men as depicted in visual culture are strangely contradictory, as often the transcending, larger-than-life heroes of the cheesiest action movies are the ones who are physically pummelled and beaten to ragged, bloody shreds. (Yes, I’m a child of the 80’s.) I wondered if women found these male types appealing as they are softened by pain and suffering, and if men also found these types appealing because of their transcendence over pain and suffering – it’ll likely be a combination.

It later occurred to me that some men just like to fight.

Masculinity and vulnerability

So this picture grew from the concept of fighting for the purpose of acting out that “hero masculinity” – seeking out and wearing wounds to display strength to society.

It’s now available in my store, and some prints are available at Zazzle.

Fight – oil painting canvas print
by LeeDevonish

Perspective

Graphite on paper, 2011

I’ve always been attached to my artworks – I don’t churn them out, and I feel a strong sense of reluctance when it comes to selling them. There are a few that I’ll never sell though, and Perspective is one of them.

Drawing children

Children grow and change so quickly, and capturing them on a smartphone screen is understandably something that parents today can’t resist. (If you don’t have a baby bore on one of your social media feeds, then it’ll be you.)

None of our images are fixed, but their images are more precious because of being in such rapid transition. Speaking of rapid, it’s incredibly hard to draw children (or at least a child like mine) from life, as they’re constantly in motion and cannot sit still if they’re told to.

Still, drawing your child is a strange and enlightening experience. You’re able to employ and enjoy your love for them in an entirely new way.

The Arboretum

The image I used for this artwork came from a photograph I took of my son when we were in Boston, MA in 2010. It was the first time I’d been able to travel to the USA in 10 years due to visa restrictions on Barbadian citizens, and the first time I’d been able to take my son to visit his grandmother at her house.

On this day we took the bus to Arnold Arboretum alone. It was a good day for it – sunny and warm. When I think about it now, there aren’t many details, which is a bit sad; me, looking at horticultural labels and picking out postcards for souvenirs, and my little boy constantly racing ahead of me.

We reached a pond and stopped, and I snapped a picture of him looking out over the water. The photograph itself was nice enough, but I don’t know exactly what it was that made it stand out so much in my mind.

Water

There’s the combination of dread whenever water and children come together, along with the way the water and the rippling patterns on its surface captured us both. It was a beautiful scene, but the idea of this young life spread out before us like the surface of the water (with so much unseen going on underneath) must have stuck with me.

I remembered us experiencing this and wondered about his perspective on the world.

The drawing itself is simple and sparse, with a lot left out, but that leaves the focus on the little boy and the setting before him, which may or may not even be water if you look at it for long enough.

This is one that I won’t ever sell. This memory feels as though it was yesterday, but looking at my child today, the boy in the drawing seems so small… at least I’ve caught that day for myself.

This drawing is available as a print from my Zazzle store.

Muse 4.3 (The Ear)

I came up with the idea for the series of paintings that I’d call ‘The Muses’ whilst studying for my BA in Fine Art in 2012. Muse #4 was the subject of several paintings and drawings, but this one, 4.3, is one of my favourites.

Let’s face it – there’s a sense of power in looking when the subject cannot look back. How much more so is that true in a situation where the one looking is allowed to get this close… too close… to an unguarded point on the body?

Creepy. That’s what’s good about it.

Influence – Ellen Altfest

There were all sorts of influences flying around me at the time, as there naturally are in art school, but for these, I was particularly guided by Ellen Altfest and a trip to see her exhibition The Bent Leg at the White Cube in Hoxton. (Quite a lot of capital letters in that sentence – comes across a bit pretentious!)

There’s a clear link between Altfest’s tightly cropped images of male body parts and the portraits (and male body parts) that I created for my degree show. Seeing the detail she clearly laboured over up close made me want to dive into that painstaking labour process as well, although I could imagine that the experience was hallucinatory. Actually, I might have read that phrase somewhere in my research – either that, or I’m hallucinating the hallucination reference, which is entirely possible.

The exhibition, which was part of a class outing, was a very encouraging experience for me as the only figurative painter in the group and the only one concerned with representational painting and hyperrealism. Seeing a female artist’s paintings of male subjects created in exactly the same manner as I’d intended to, with a focus so sharp it verged on the unreal, well, I suppose it was validating.

The White Cube kindly let me use some of the images for my dissertation on the male nude, which also referenced Ellen Altfest as well as Sylvia Sleigh.

Gendering

I suppose I’d have to ask myself now, what part of the ear suggests masculinity? It’s not the ear so much as the surrounding hair and the haircut which frames this part as belonging to one gender or another. Now that answer could take me off on another hair-related tangent, but it’s safe to say that hair is still a subject I find interesting.

Whilst it was the hair, and responding to Altfest’s detailed layering of hairs that I was preoccupied with at the time, now I am more drawn to the fleshiness and folds of the ear itself. This was just a starting point for the work ahead. My future paintings will probably owe their ‘intensity of looking’ to this series, and to this picture in particular, the closest image of them all.

This painting will be available to purchase from my Etsy store.

A postcard of this painting is also available on Zazzle – click here to view.

Lament For Wining Past

Getting older is never easy.

I was reminded of the inevitability of aging as I was happily bussin’ a wine to Arrow singing “Long Time”… although to be specific, it wasn’t so much the wining that was my undoing as the jumping up and down to the bit where he goes “oh oh, long time!”

I went from “oh oh” to “aye aye” when I came down and nearly dislocated my left knee. I had to style it out as I didn’t want my sudden infirmity to become apparent to anyone else in the house and was reduced to chipping for the rest of the song. And it’s a surprisingly long song.

Jump, skin out and wine up yuh body? More like jump, skin out and sit down.

Ah, for the days when I could hop around for the entire length of Preacher’s Jump And Wave – but one cannot remain 14 forever. I told my mother and aunt about my mishap via WhatsApp but I didn’t get a single “cuddear” for my pains, just nuff lols. I suppose they’ve been through it themselves, and to be fair, I did choose a fairly ancient song to make me catspraddle so I suppose it was funny.

A lament over the way I could dance when I was younger, and a consideration of the word 'nostalgia'.

Nostagia

Now, for anyone who moves away from home, there is a lot of comfort to be had in the soca from their childhood or young adulthood. We don’t like to let go. Krosfyah was part of my 90’s but Arrow was part of my 80’s, and the 80’s made some soca classics that keep hotel bands going up to now. So I was taking it way back… but this nostalgic trip became too literal.

The word ‘nostalgia’ comes from the greek words ‘nostos’, meaning ‘return home’, and ‘algos’, meaning ‘pain’. Hence, ‘homesickness’. I think I had my share of pain for my mental trip back to my youth, so from now on I might have to stick to listening to Gabby singing “Emmerton”.

I always end up crying, but at least I won’t be limping too.

Lab Rat Lee

Buying gallium with pocket money…

One of the amazing things about having a child is finding yourself wrapped up in their hobbies – interests that seem to come out of nowhere and sometimes fade away as quickly as they appear, but give you a glimpse of the personalities they’re growing.

I love the fact that my son trawls YouTube for experiment videos and can spend ages on eBay and Amazon looking for elements and chemicals. Now I need to figure out what to make with the gallium he bought with his pocket money.

What is gallium used for in everyday life?

Why, playing Terminator, of course!

It was great fun playing around with it, and naturally it instantly made me think of Robert Patrick as the T1000, but I couldn’t help wondering if this stuff was going to kill me. It stained a glazed plate and freaked me out when it left a grey residue on my palm, but I’ve been assured it’s quite safe.