TIM BAKER

Seascapes haven’t been the only marine subject this summer – as I said in the first of the riverbank posts, I have gone back to drawing the River Thames more since the Big Burn Out after Lockdown 1 where it was the only nearest subject I had, and it became stifling as much as I tried to vary it. Boats have been a frequent subject in my work included messing around with boats and Kingston Regatta, but not like this. I would take a moored barge, riverboat, yacht or what my Dad calls ‘Tupperware’ – the big plastic motorboats – and draw them in detail I’d not usually go for in the evening.

In the case of a few of them I was angry about something and took it all out in the work. I guess these are an extension of the River Man series, in feel and quotations!

Seems odd that unlike the abstract expressionists of old, rather than splash paint everywhere and drink loads, I sit down and become more measured and realistic, but there is a fury here. I would click to expand these, there is a LOT going on!

And I think that’s what I have a hard time explaining to people sometimes, they see pretty pictures, I see a lifeboats from how I was feeling and emotion behind it all. That’s why the titles have radically different names, or reflect states of mind, what I was doing at the time. Rivers and seas play a big part of this, calming me down, like a cork on an ocean, going with the tide. And I am obsessed with light on water, it’s a very primal early thing.

The name of this post comes from Mark Twain, a chapter of one of his books called Two Ways of Seeing A River, which seems very pertinent:

Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had gone out of the majestic river!…

…a day came when I began to cease from noting the glories and the charms which the moon and the sun and the twilight wrought upon the river’s face; another day came when I ceased altogether to note them…

No, the romance and the beauty were all gone from the river. All the value any feature of it had for me now was the amount of usefulness it could furnish toward compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat. Since those days, I have pitied doctors from my heart…doesn’t he sometimes wonder whether he has gained most or lost most by learning his trade?

Mark Twain, ‘A Life on the Mississipi’, 1883

I wish I could tell you much about ‘Riverboat’ but I remember being really happy with the greenery in the foreground…this isn’t the first time I’ve drawn this boat or view, it pops up quite often in my landscapes. Then we have Dry Land 1 and 2 – after the Joan Armatrading & Pam Nestor song I was listening to, inspired by a boat moored in the sunset with a red rag on the bow. Sadly that didn’t make the first version, so I drew it again!

This boat is very similar to the first cabin boat my Dad when I was a kid had, although that one was wooden, the Silhouette.

Tides and waves have kept me
Kept me going
I’m longing for the calm
I’m heading for the pastures
I can see on your dry land
Let the sea that once did take me
Bring me back safe to your door
For I long to touch the dry land
Of your shore

Joan Armatrading & Pam Nestor – Dry Land

An early part of this series was ‘Riverbank Couple’ – two boats and two people in my A5 sketchbook, this piece certainly informed the later ones, as I was very proud of this one – it was quite quickly done, in a moment, and I think using my Hero 395 pen – the one that quite often blobs everywhere since I eyedroppered it and Hero ink is quite ‘wet’ anyway, but I like how it works. I think a lot of these pieces were with that pen.

It was a very hot day when I drew ‘Jupe’, the really big houseboat on the river. The occupants were lounging on the top deck with their shirts off, being all Calvin Klein. Later on a woman kneeling on a paddleboard with a child on the front paddled by, I think I messed that bit up partly because she was gone before I really could draw her. I’m guessing Jupe stands for Jupiter?

We then have a drawing that should have been on the Regatta post but I think was drawn later of Westfield Landing, opposite Raven’s Ait, of the London River Yacht Club’s pontoon – hence the name.

And finally one of the angry ones ‘Night Barge’, where I had to leave the flat late one night, sat down and drew this in less than an hour. It was very manic but it really works. Again, there’s a lot going on, I really recommend clicking on these.