Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Portrait painter from Australia with a musical background.
On the island
Eight records
Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major
may we start from the cadenza, please?
I love the textural colours of Ravel, and I used to think that I would love to be able to give that sparkling texture to my painting.
I have a cello playing daughter. And she amazed me one day by playing this as a student, and I had no idea that she had so much music in her.
Grande Messe des Morts (Requiem): Lacrymosa
London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus
Recently I was working with orchestras. I had a a pass to just go to the rehearsals and draw whenever I wanted to. I was working with the L S O and they were rehearsing the Requiem. And I was standing in the middle trying to concentrate on doing little sketches with this amazing noise going on around me.
Orchestral Variations on a Theme by Paganini
Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
I had a record of this many years ago, and the most disastrous things happened... They left them in the back of the car in the Australian heat... And there was no way of getting the blacko back. It's out of print.
one of my favourite ladies, as I can't have all sorts of other people, I've come down to Cleo Lane. That marvellous scene with that gorgeous voice. And I also combine this with my love of Gershwin, and I adore the opera Porgy and Bess.
Spring SymphonyFavourite
I think the songs are so beautiful, and I just love the finale of this work.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:45How much of your parents' musical talent rubbed off on you?
Well, I I will never find art. I mean, my passion is music but, of course, with two very busy musician parents, they never taught me to play, and they didn't send me to anybody else either.
Presenter asks
2:59Was your childhood rather unorthodox as a result of having two busy musicians as parents?
Yes, I think you've hit the mark very much so there. They were both musicians in theatre. And I didn't see much of my father after a very early age, but I followed my mother through with her musical friends, her theatrical friends. I spent an enormous amount of time backstage because she worked with opera, with ballet, with musical comedy, with revue.
Presenter asks
4:25When did drawing and painting become important?
I really couldn't tell you. There was no starting point that I could recognise at all. I was one of those lucky people who you know how a child draws, and I just kept on drawing. It was just there.
The keepsakes
The book
Chronology of the Modern World
Neville Williams
I think that I would take the Chronology of the Modern World. It's a a marvellous book. All the years are laid out with all the events that belong to that year on the same page, so that you can find out that Beethoven died, or that was the same year as Gainsborough painted the Blue Boy, or such and such a war started, or somebody came into power. And it goes through masses of years. Absolutely fascinating reading.
The luxury
a painting set (canvas, brushes, and paints)
I suppose I'll have to paint, won't I? [Am I] allowed canvas and the brushes and the paint to go with it. The whole set.
Presenter asks
How did it come about when you eventually decided [between theatre and art]?
Well, unusually there was really a particular moment when the switch came. And I was at odd school still. And I happened to be working on a large picture of a cellist, strangely enough. And I also at the same time I had a screen test coming up for Sir Michael Bulken. and I had the last sitting on this painting to do just in my art class. And I didn't want to miss it, so I did the last sitting on the chalist, and I didn't go to my screen test, and I turned round and looked at the whole thing and said, Who are you fooling? If you couldn't be bothered going to the screen test, forget it, dear.
Presenter asks
17:24How well do you have to get to know someone before you can paint them?
As a very old hand at this, I suppose it's the chicken and the egg thing here, my experience now. I I think I must have had an instinct for this given me. But after that you're experienced, and you don't know which comes first. Somebody walks in the door. And it is your job. to make a statement about them which is not your view of them. But it's what they are telling you, and you ought to get it right. Sometimes you get it better than at other times, but You must not make a big mistake about them, and as you work with them you build up your knowledge of them, and more and more goes into the picture.
“I left school at an appallingly early age, and then there was art school to come, because this was quite obvious that that should be the next thing.”
“You do a good painting, and you'll get another one. You do a bad one, and you won't. So at what point you are established it's almost impossible for you to say.”
“If you want to go somewhere, it is really not too difficult to organize at least one painting. To take you there.”