TIM BAKER

I wasn’t sent to Coventry in August for a week – more the opposite, fleeing the dreaded River and the big Smoke for pastures new staying at the home of Ian and Naomi (and Gladys!) who are old friends, parents of my godson and also Ian produces the excellent Lloydbrary podcast. What followed was a body of work ranging from Elizabethan gardens to the latest tower blocks, medieval castles in the middle of estates, ruined cathedrals and modern sculptures. And chickens. It is very much my response to the city!

To begin in Coventry you have to start with the bombed ancient Cathedral, intact for 700 years until a night in November 1942 when the Luftwaffe came to call. I am a big fan of John Piper, who famously painted the still burning ruins the day after…. so felt I had to tackle this on day one. Only to find it closed…so I drew it from the outside with dip pen and my then new brown Sketchink which had arrived the day before. A hard subject…I like the background but not sure it hangs together 100%, but I am trying to still challenge myself with drawing complex structures.

Lots of people came up during this…Coventry people are very friendly and seemingly artists on the street are rare? I even got photographed with local figure ‘Lady Godiva’, an actress who plays the infamous horse nudist for tourists- thankfully clothed and without horse.

As lockdown is still in effect I have ambivalent feelings still about being approached…nice to have others appreciating my work, but safety first and people seem to ignore social distancing. And I had to tell someone who smoked they couldn’t see my work on my second visit to the Cathedral – more of that later.

As I was working in nearly all of my books and jumping around all over the place, my chronology is a little sketchy (ha!) but I know the watercolour of the remains of medieval Caludon Castle, in the middle of an estate in the north east of Coventry was the second day since that was the hottest August day in 17 years. 38.5 degrees!

I had to shade hug later in when trying to finish this piece, and glad that a ice cream van turned up, which the owner was complaining it was too hot for business. I love the clouds and ruins in this, I feel the trees could be better, I struggled with those, unusually.

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So it being one of the hottest days on record, with a big rucksack what do I do? Hike across Coventry from Caludon to Coombe Country Park of course! So hot and I got lost several times. Coventry is very automobile based, surprisingly so for the home of the modern bicycle, and many times roads and industrial estates stop you from getting to green spaces.

I learned at the Transport Museum that Coventry has or had the biggest car ownership per person in the UK. Not surprising with the state of the very unintegrated transport system – I had to pay twice coming back from the park because of course all the bus companies ignore each other’s roaming tickets, and there is a lack of joined up paths and green spaces.

Anyway I got to Coombe, found some nice dead trees…and got bombarded with a plague of flies. So I had to retire to the road and do an ink drawing and painting from the road with the trees in the distance!

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Talking of the Transport Museum, I visited early on in my trip and drew this ink piece with Parallel Pen and waterbrush while in the cafe. This was the first time in a cafe for 5 months. Another early piece – maybe the first was this one of Cook Gate, one of the old gates in the city surviving the automotive onslaught – just. I sat with my back to a multi-lane highway as I did this brush pen and watercolour piece. That red sandstone, really hard to paint…this became a theme….

Not too far from Cook Gate is Spon Street. This is a preserved street in Coventry where they piled up all the old buildings removed from various developments…so it’s a little strange, a little bit like Heritage Disney, an Uncanny Valley museum of collected old buildings. They sort of fit, but it doesn’t seem slightly real, not the natural uneven development of cities, it’s all too neat, like a film set. Still I’m glad they saved the buildings and moved them here. This didn’t happen with a few ancient buildings….

Another central location it was good to hang around in the heat is the waterfall by the very closed and seemingly abandoned Tourist Centre, a sculpture called The Water Window. It is a wonderful copper green, matching a bright green Sketchink I had just got, so I drew it with heat exhausted pigeons lurking above. Shame I couldn’t look through the window on the other side as intended, there’s a platform where you can peer out.

I talked about buildings that disappeared under road developments, the ruins of the massive Whitefriars is one of these. I’d guess it was bigger than the Cathedral before the abolition judging from the massive hall that is left being one small part of the whole thing. This became Coventry’s workhouse, a history of misery until the Herbert Museum took it over. It is of course closed, hidden by the University campus and I found it by accident. There was some works going on, and I liked the juxtaposition of new and old of the barriers and the medieval building – something that became a theme in my work in Cov.

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While I was in Coventry I got to know one of the residents quite well – Gladys the chicken! She is a rescue chicken and lives in a coop in the garden, likes grapes and after the death of her friends spends a lot of time hanging around humans, she’s very friendly. She will try and trip you up though, and did nearly peck my foot once…so maybe she is an evil genius in disguise.

Another part of Coventry is the massive War Memorial Park. After the first world war this was built to commemorate the local soldiers killed in the war – every tree has a plaque and is for a named soldier. Although life goes on and people were playing cricket and sports there. There is an amazing modernist ‘light house’ with an electric light at the top which is the main memorial, and was an early use of electric light in sculpture. There is a light that never goes out, indeed.

I was in the area to check out London Road cemetary, I’d seen pictures of ruined chapels and overrun gravestones…only to find that they had Heritage Fund money to do it up, and it was nearly all covered in scaffolding! Curses. Artistic gothery denied!

Blue Coat School is a very old school, still going but has moved from this really grand building in the 60’s. This is near the current Cathedral and next to the ruins of St Mary’s Priory and the original first Cathedral. I wanted to do a loose abstract piece, after all these more technical pieces. I like the left hand side, not sure the main building went well – classic wet on wet issues! Also while I did this a slightly strange Afghanistani man came to talk to me and sat way too close, he didnt speak much English but was a refugee. Not really sure what he wanted…

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On one of the last days I went to Kenilworth, of course pre-booked online, and fortunately the weather was good and it was an amazing experience. I could have spent another day there just drawing the ruins of the castle of Elizabeth I’s favourite, Robert Dudley. Midsummer Night’s Dream was possibly inspired by the 19 day blow out / marriage proposition of her last visit here, a cornucopia of gods, myths. theatre, extravagance and even locals crashing the party that Derek Jarman would be proud of!

The Atlas fountain statue is modern, but based on an account of the garden by a visitor to that Elizabethan rave, it was so hot and obviously Elizabethans didnt believe in shade or had cooler weather! A woman was hiding in the shade of the fountain in the first drawing, and I braved the sun for the second, madly drawing as the place closed.

This meant I missed the Keep…given what strangeness appeared in my watercolour of it – a ghost? – I am not that sad. ”The Figure’ started as a painting from what I now know was the wonderfully titled ‘Presence Chamber’ towards the old medieval Keep. Really proud of this painting but I didn’t paint that figure that appears in the window…and later I found there is a ghost in the keep of a black-clad knight with silver sword. Spook!

After this I did the tour of Leicester’s Tower, the part built to house Elizabeth, and later walked around the base of the tower listening to the tours above. I stopped and drew the shadows from the ruined window and painted it in ink – hence ‘Elizabethan Shadows’.

The nice day at Kenilworth and the heatwave at Caludon were a rarity later in the week – we had sporadic gloom and rain….I did this painting of the new student accommodation skyscrapers popping up everywhere while thunder rumbled and a rainstorm was threatened…thankfully it was finished in time. I used a large flat brush, the idea was to work very abstract and loosely. I gave this piece to my hosts as a thank you 🙂

And finally a piece also showing new and old, when I finally got in to the ruined Cathedral at the end of the week – only to find it closed at 3pm! So I finished this piece at home from a photograph – all the drawing was done, just the watercolour was needed. I liked the contrast of the green/purple of the new St Michael’s Cathedral with the orange/red sandstone of the old ruined one. And finally I got the colour right!

All-told a good body of work and showed me how I needed new subjects and time away desperately. I had a bit of a renaissance after this trip, as you’ll see – and have seen in a few of the recent postings. It is a big part of why I have abandoned my usual subjects – i.e. the river – because this threw it in sharp relief how stale and unhappy with it I had become. Also interesting to play tourist and think what might work visually in a place I had visited several times before.