Elly Robinson
"On
the Beach"
Aldeburgh
Festival catalogue for 1998
James Dodds is a man with connections; not only with his
own subconscious hopes and fears as an artist, which, with his unique
and powerful vision and craftsmanship, he communicates to us, but he also
connects to the sea, the East Anglian Coastline and Aldeburgh in particular.
The spirit of the place began to work its magic on the impressionable
young James through the evocative music of Benjamin Britten, to which
his father, Andrew turned for atmosphere and inspiration while illustrating
Crabbe's verses: "Peter Grimes" from "The Borough".
Little did he realise what a powerful effect the music would continue
to exert over his son; it would be the key to unlock the door to release
James on his lifelong quest — to resolve the struggle to achieve
a balance between the physical and the spiritual.
Lured by the Siren call of the sea (sailing away on a Baltic Trader at
fourteen — if only at weekends), James became an apprentice shipwright
at fifteen. Using traditional hand tools and timber, for four years he
learned to rebuild and restore Thames sailing barges and East Coast smacks
at Walter Cook & Son's Shipyard in Maldon, Essex and in the process
acquiring an affinity with the sea, boats and wood that would serve him
well in his later career as a painter and printmaker.
His second apprenticeship was to take twice as long, beginning at Colchester
School of Art in 1976, continuing at Chelsea and concluding at the Royal
College of Art as a painting student.
These eight years afforded him the time to acknowledge his roots on the
shores of East Anglia and to integrate what he had learned as a shipwright
into his work as an artist. In his final year at the Royal College, still
haunted by the Britten music, James decided to get to grips with the Peter
Grimes at last and produced his first series of powerful and poignant
linocuts to accompany the Crabbe poem. These fourteen prints were used
by him in his first beautifully produced small press book printed at the
College. His professor, Peter de Francia wrote:
"James Dodds is a painter whose ideas and whose work have been moulded
by seascapes, the elements, and themes of timelessness. More specifically,
the Suffolk Coast, ships and nautical folklore form the basis from which
many of his concepts derive. He has made splendid illustrations to "Peter
Grimes". In this sense he is an artist whose work has a strong regional
setting. His imagery is terse but never bleak. In the words of one of
Crabbe's poems, they enable us to see "the tide's reflowing sign."
In doing so his work becomes both moving and remarkably memorable."
The series of fourteen linocuts formed the backbone of James' first solo
exhibition after leaving college, aptly entitled "Peter Grimes",
which took place at Aldeburgh's Gallery 44 to coincide with the 37th Festival
in 1984. The linocuts were used to illustrate the Festival catalogue in
following years. The show, needless to say, was a runaway success. The
BrittenPears Library bought an entire set of the linocuts for their collection
at the Red House — and Peter Pears attended in person! He was treated
not only to the prints but also to powerful paintings, in which James
explored his eternal theme of the struggle to achieve a balance; an obsession
that continues to inform his work.
One painting: "Carpenter Wrestling with an Angel" (also developed
by James into a linocut) now in the collection of Bill Birtles and Patricia
Hewett — is typically symbolic of the artist's quest to dig into
his subconscious and make visible the invisible. Using archetypal figures
in a dynamic composition he depicts the struggle between the physical,
workaday world of the carpenter (or shipwright) and the embodiment of
the spiritual, an Angel. He later wrote:
"My intention is to understand as much as I can about a process which
seems to avoid definition at every turn. I enjoy the physicality of things
involved in the act of doing, be they figures or boats. This relates to
my sense as an artist that when wrestling with the material I'm brought
closer to a spiritual fulfilment."
This timeless struggle for balance has been the concern of artists, with
whom James empathises, for centuries. Rembrandt, Delacroix and Gauguin
tackled it in their paintings "Jacob Wrestling With An Angel"
as did Breughel with Icarus, which was the subject of James' thesis at
the Royal College. The craftsman's skill provides the means for his exhuberant
son to fly too high and fall, although the father advised the middle way,
but an artist must nevertheless make a leap of faith into the unknown
or remain earthbound. Another painting in this show: "Leap before
you Look" was inspired by the Auden poem which has become James'
mantra.
Until Peter Grimes emerged during his final year at the Royal College,
James had turned his back on what he was later to acknowledge as a unique
experience — his apprenticeship as a shipwright. He had lived in
fear of the practical skills acquired during those formative years would
"drown his passion."
It was not before he had spent some years out in the wide world as a painter
— at a distance from the influence of both shipyard and art college
— that he had the confidence to follow his feelings, to allow himself
to value and draw on his understanding of the shipwright's trade and put
it to good purpose in his painting. In his maturity he could review the
course he had steered through life and accept and make the connection
in his work.
He chose painting, as opposed to sculpture even though he had all the
requisite skills for this fear of upsetting the balance of skill and passion.
Over the following years he was driven to produce paintings, with an acknowledging
nod to Stanley Spencer (in particular his "Shipbuilding on the Clyde"
series), that drew directly on his experience as a shipwright that included;
"Floodtide", "Sail the Wide World Round" and "Rigger
Aloft with a New Flag".
Based on these paintings, James went on to produce a delightful and very
accomplished series of nine twocolour linocuts that positively celebrated
his youthful memories of shipwrighting, full of incident, humour and authentic
detail in condensed compositions that echo the lines of a boat's hull.
When he later stumbled across the poem: "The Shipwright's Trade"
from Kipling's "Rewards and Fairies", he at once recognised
that it would not only be the perfect complement to his images, but would
also be an ideal way of collecting them together in a new book. What with
his practical printing and design skills and his lifelong love of literature
it was a natural progression in his career as an artist to produce his
own books.
Among his collection of old printing presses (which includes an 1880's
Wharfdale, and a 1950's "Western" proofing press on which he
prints his large linocuts) is an 1890's treadle platen press: "the
Jardine", after which he named his own small press and on which some
of the books are printed.
The 1990 show was another sensational success, integrating paintings,
prints and the new book. A balance had been struck and part of the struggle
was over.
To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the production of "Peter
Grimes", the Aldeburgh Festival commissioned a new opera from the
composer Nicola LeFanu and librettist Kevin CrossleyHolland: "The
Wildman". This news was of immediate interest to James as it was
to be based on the Wild Man legend. Anything to do with mythology, especially
the Green Man, was dear to his heart, and this was not even just a piece
of his favoured folklore, it was set in East Anglia!
The story tells of a maritime green man caught in the fishermen's nets
at Orford, six miles down the coast from Aldeburgh. He was imprisoned
in the castle, horribly mistreated but fortunately escaped back into the
sea. It had much in common with the Peter Grimes tale, being the story
of an outsider who "invokes fear and hostility in stout Suffolk hearts".
Crabbe described Aldeburgh's inhabitants as:
"A wild amphibious race
With sullen woe displayed on every face;
Who far from civil arts and social fly.
And scowl at strangers with suspicious eye."
This was an obvious must for a new book for the Jardine Press, so James
commissioned Allan Drummond to rewrite, in verse, the saga originally
recorded in 1200 by Ralph of Coggeshall in the Chronicon Anglicanum. An
early representation of the green man can be seen on the font in Orford
church, a frequent venue for some Aldeburgh Festival events.
For the new
book: "Wild Man of Orford", James created a series of nine woodcuts
— an appropriate medium for such an ancient legend. The prints have
a starkly beautiful and timeless quality; James was thoroughly at home
with the subject matter, in sympathy with the hero, (in an East Anglian
Daily Times review of the book, Ian Collins praised the powerful woodcuts
and by happy accident identified James as the original Wild Man in the
flesh!) as well as working in the medium of wood.
Another aspect of James' affinity with wood is demonstrated in an earlier
linocut: "Pollarding an Oak", depicting a balance being sought
between man and nature in the management of trees. Starkly beautiful,
it was commissioned by Chris and Juliet Hawkins, a Suffolk couple very
much involved in tree conservation, and later reproduced in the Jardine
Press book: "East Anglian Poems" by Kevin CrossleyHolland, "Wildman's"
librettist.
Paintings in the show included the poignant: "Journeys Never Made",
"Sirens" and "Back to the Sea Again".
In "On The Beach" we are treated to a stunning range of James'
new work, in which he continues to explore the themes that have obsessed
him over the years — those of balance, harmony and a kind of mythology.
But for the magnificent linocut: "Aldeburgh Beach", the title
could have been; "On the Edge"! In the "Beach" linocut,
his ever present concern with balance is evident — between black
and white, night and day, past and present in the shape of the late Catholic
church tower and the ominous silhouette of Sizewell B on the very edge
of the print.
James is never very far from a beach, or the edge of the East Anglian
landscape at least. He is now living in his birthplace of Brightlingsea,
but until recently lived in the house he built for himself in Wivenhoe,
now his studio, a place with many similarities to Aldeburgh, particularly
in its history as a fishing village and its current cultural leanings.
His delightful and most satisfying panoramic linocut of "Wivenhoe
Past & Present" certainly achieves a harmonious balance of time
and space. Happily, this image appears as appropriate endpapers in the
latest and wonderful Jardine Press and Festival Books publication: "Wild
Man of Wivenhoe".
The Wild Man returns; he has been landed again by local fishermen, further
down the coast at Wivenhoe, just in time to catch the tail end of the
twentieth century. He was patently spawned by his Orford antecedent and
written in exceptionally hilarious verse that sparkles with saltiness
by the Independent's own wild poet, Martin Newell. Accompanying the text
are nine linocuts by James in which monsters from his dreams, whether
drunkards or dragons, appear in the familiar fishing village which now
serves as the University watering hole. In his review of the book, Hugh
Brogan says:
"James Dodds' linocuts are so true to the look of the place... if
you want to know what Wivenhoe was like in 1997, this little book will
tell you."
As if on misunderstood outsider were not enough, a third candidate for
the part appears in the person of Billy Budd who tells his own story in
"Billy's Song", a broadside produced by James on his Jardine
Press. James commissioned David Charleston to write the poem in commemoration
of "Billy Budd, Foretopman" by Herman Melville. Again James
is inspired by the same stories as Britten.
Out of the depths of James' subconscious, yet more wild men come to the
surface; from his dreams comes the powerful linocut: "Wild Man of
the Sea" with his compelling and deeply penetrating gaze, and from
his continuing concern with mythology comes "Past Present and Future"
with his three heads sharing four eyes.
James carries on the tradition of drawing from his dreams — which
are after all, messages from the subconscious — for the paintings
in this exhibition, hence "Field of Dreams" and "Detective's
Raincoat". Here he continues his quest to make visible the invisible
with bizarre chases involving invisible detectives wearing very visible
raincoats.
James' fascinating and powerful work is leading him into new and exciting
uncharted waters, where his next connection awaits. As Roderic Barrett
wrote in 1993:
"In these paintings James Dodds gives only what has meaning for him,
and for this uncommon gift we should be very grateful."
Elly Robinson
Printworks,
1998
