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From an early age I learned to respect the life of an artist.
This career, clearly, was not one for willowy types – despite
what my school friends implied when they proudly asserted
that their dads had ‘proper jobs’, like accountants.
I’ve known some artists to discourage their children from
following in their footsteps, a few who did so for very selfish
reasons, being uneasy with the prospect of familial
competition. As forbidding as my father could be when
possessed by a studio tantrum, he was also the most
generous and encouraging of mentors. As he became
aware of my nascent love of drawing, he was always on
hand with large sheets of paper and a bunch of his pencils.
And when I found myself asking “What should I draw?”, he
would pull down monographs on his heroes and instruct
me to sketch from paintings by van Dyck and Velázquez.
It didn’t bother him that I was nine years old – “You’re never
too young to learn from the greats” was his attitude.
My dad’s encouragement never evolved into formal
instruction. He wasn’t interested in shaping me into some
kind of clone. Still, in passing, he would always proffer a
comment or a tip. Sometimes I bridled at the interference
but I always followed his advice. And he was always right.
As I got older, occasionally I accompanied him on days
out sketching. One summer evening in Brittany, I remember
sitting on a wall together, painting a lighthouse. For a few
hours we worked in relative silence. I followed the progress
of his watercolour through the corner of my eye but he
seemed completely oblivious to my efforts, which were
going gradually awry. At one point, almost without looking
up, he said, “You need a bigger brush, more water and to
mix a little crimson into that ochre.”
It was one, brief sentence of advice which directly guided
my painting towards completion. My father possessed a
kind of sixth sense, an innate understanding for the feel of
paint, the mysteries of colour and light. It allowed him to
seize and resolve visual problems succinctly, whilst others
labour the paint or over-work a detail.
Today, it’s no longer my father’s drawings of cowboys that
make me pause and consider my own work. When I look
through the portfolio that he left behind, I discover an artist
who was always challenging himself. He explored allegory,
mythology, poetry; he tussled with complex ideas and
compositions, he painted on a scale that was, at times,
physically arduous – yet he brought the same commitment
and eloquence to a single line sketch. My father could
conjure with pigment. And when I study the ways in which he
could seize the moment, the beauty and the wonder of life
with every brushstroke, I still feel very much the apprentice.
Alexander Goudie RP RGI: A Retrospective runs from 11-16 April
at Mall Galleries, London SW1. http://www.mallgalleries.org.uk“MY FATHER COULD CONJURE WITH PIGMENT... AND WHEN I
STUDY THE WAYS IN WHICH HE COULD SEIZE THE MOMENT,
THE BEAUTY AND THE WONDER OF LIFE WITH EVERY BRUSHSTROKE,
I STILL FEEL VERY MUCH THE APPRENTICE”
Artists & Illustrators 3128 Lachlan Goudie.indd 31 17/02/2016 16:23