In Concert Catalogue

MARY
NOBLE
I have a much-loved recording of
Janet Baker singing Sea Pictures, which
immediately came to mind when this
project was broached, so I dug it out
and played it over and over. Then I
looked at lots of images of Snape
Maltings, somewhere I’ve never visited
but always wanted to, because of Britten.
As far as I know, Janet Baker hasn’t sung
Sea Pictures at Snape!
The loving and joyous extract I chose
from the final poem in the piece, comes
between two stormy passages, so I selected
it because it fitted with the images
of Snape I found on the internet; the
‘sheen’ and ‘glamour’ is all there. I devised
a loopy script to evoke the ‘babble
and prattle’ for all the main text and
contrasted it with the freer brush writing
round the diamond, perhaps as
a hint of the storms in the rest of
the stanzas.
When I devised the diamond I was
hooked on the idea of fitting Roman
capitals within it, because of their affinity
to squares, so I layered the word
LOVE four times then sealed it with
acrylic gesso which is a bit thin to allow
show-through, but just enough opacity
to enable a layer of writing on top. I
love how Gesso takes pencil. The four
small squares repeat the Love theme
and have more layers of silver and
gold acrylic.
I resisted temptations to be any more
illustrative than to have a landscape
layout, preferring to focus on the words,
which Janet Baker’s wonderful interpretation
so inspires.
Sheen of Silver and Glamour of Gold
Sumi ink, acrylics and acrylic Gesso, gouache.
Pointed & edged brushes, Speedball pens, on BFK Rives
550 x 360 mm approx
Words by Adam Lyndsay Gordon (1833-1870) from The Swimmer,
as set to music by Edward Elgar in his SEA PICTURES Opus 37.
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