Today, I am bringing you an interview which is the first I’ve done for a deceased sculptor. I came across the work of Roy Noakes when his wife, Biddy, contacted me to do some conservation work on one of her late husband’s sculptures. Roy Noakes was a sculptor known mostly for his portrait commissions, such as Lord Avon which can be found in the House of Parliament to Bernard Miles, the actor, which is in the National Portrait Gallery among many others, but the sculpture I was brought in to help with left the figurative as a dot on the horizon. It is more easily placed in the dynamic abstract category. His work makes you scratch your head, it’s emotional but not in a literal sense.

A quote by Martin Harrison in a book on Noakes said,

His sculptural language was concerned with transience and lightness,  to conveying fleeting appearances and gestures with the greatest economy of means – pared down, in the sense of needing to eliminate everything that was extraneous to the inner energy of the forms. He worked, in short, outside all of the mainstream or avant-garde, cultural orthodoxies of his time, neither a brutalist, a conceptualist nor involved with smooth or shiny surfaces that were barriers to expressing the dynamic potential of his materials. His surfaces were active not static. He aimed to breathe life into clay or bronze and breakdown the distance between sculpture and the human form it signified, almost as though blood was coursing through its veins.

Biddy, Roy’s wife, who joins me for the interview is one of the most articulate women I’ve ever come across. She tells Roy’s story so well that I just had to capture it. I’m not sure Roy could have done a better job. What she is dealing with at the moment is something many others sculptors may need to think about which is how to deal with a sculptural legacy – where should it go, who is the right custodian to prevent the loss to the history of British sculpture of work which is significant.

Biddy

I met Roy at City and Guilds art school, remembering that it was an art school which was supported by the city fathers specifically for developing skills. So there was some stone carving, there was engraving for the mint, there were apprentices who came to do a lot of skills, and also life drawing. So I met Roy when he was just doing some life drawing, and he had come from national service. Before national service, he was an apprentice carver with Italians. So he’d been a carver with a big firm called Anselm Odling, where he’d carved marble angels for gravestones. So with Italians, very skilled, learning to carve and going to the Brixton School of Art not for art, but for building to sort of setting out stone and then by the time he went into the Army, he changed his apprenticeship to a carver for Gerald Giudici, and he was a sort of fixer for big academic sculptors. So, there were big commissions that had to be carved. They had to be set out, and these sculptors would deliver the models. Roy and his friend, James Butler, would then start carving them, and almost to the end, when the sculptor would take over.

Lucy

Quite an unusual background, for an East End boy, wasn’t he? He wasn’t highly educated in, not that little education means that you’re not interested in art. But equally, you’re less likely to be introduced to art.

Biddy

Absolutely, his father, who died when he was 12, painted the white lines down Commercial Road, which, of course, is one of the big roads in the East End. And it was in those days when you had little trolleys, and you would trolley all your things bit like football grounds or the white line right the way down the road. And when his father died, his mother brought them up. She had five children. Roy is the youngest. Her oldest children all went into apprenticeship, so his next brother went into carpentry, and Roy had to choose. And he was obviously really good at making things and drawing, and so he was apprenticed to a carver, to a firm of carvers. So, it comes from a background of apprenticeships, which is what you did, and then you would be a monumental Mason would be at the end of that. So that transition between a mason and thinking that you would like to do sculpture is a really serious break with tradition, and that all came through somebody saying to him, why don’t you go and try and do some drawing, because your carving will be better if you could draw. So, that’s where you went, City and Guilds which was the only kind of art school that he could have got into in those days. You don’t go to art school unless you come from another route and you’ve come from a school route and been really highly educated. Yeah. So you’re exactly, right – It is unusual.

Lucy

And so do you think it was at art school, well, the City and Guilds, that he began to learn that it wasn’t just a practical, technical skill. He had more to him than that. His work is very complex. But I wonder at what point that opened up for him?

Biddy

I think it opened up by meeting people by being taught. So when he went to City and Guilds, he was taught by a sculptor called Bernard Sindall, who was very, interested in Italian art. So Giacomo Manzu or Rosso Medardo  Rosso were two sculptors who were just beginning to have exhibitions in England, and Bernard Sindall was obviously really madly fond of these two Italians sculptors. And of course, that includes Michelangelo and Donatello and all the sort of big Italians Renaissance sculptors. So he was introduced to sculpture as a medium for drawing and portraiture, and life modelling, but strangely enough, what his work was like when he was at City and Guilds was imaginative. So, instead of making life models, he made big figures, which were purely out of his imagination, and that is slightly different. So he could have possibly been thinking of going to a route where you would do commissions, which were quite realistic, but clearly, all his work was coming from his head, and it was imaginative. So that started him on a road to doing figurative work, but also learning to draw and to model traditionally. He would learn how to put an armature up, how to put clay on, and how to make a cast because carving is different. You’re pushing away from the mass rather than building up on an armature, and it’s fundamental because then you’re thinking of putting on rather than taking away. So it’s a whole new skill, and then casting and finding materials you could cast in.

Roy Noakes 1995 ©

Lucy

And so just for people that don’t know Roy’s work, can you talk just a little bit about his style? Now, obviously, he had a long life, and it didn’t remain the same from start to finish, but just if you can introduce people a little bit.

Biddy

He left City and Guilds, and he had made some monumental figures. Some of them, or at least two or two or three of them, you could almost say were slightly influenced by the Pompeii figures. The figures were beginning to be recognised as significant, which were the figures where they were pouring in Pompeii. The archaeologists were pouring plaster of Paris down the hollows and finding these figures that had been encased in the dust and the ash from the volcano. And suddenly people saw figures, sort of suffering and in, how can I put it? In gestures which were very active, some of them looked quite tortured as the ash caught them. These influenced, Roy, I think and influenced other contemporary sculptures that were also modelling at that time. You could say, well, there were Italian influences. When he moved to Essex, he built a studio with a friend and had space and suddenly he could make different kinds of figures, and he was having to work out what sculpture was about to him and that continued the whole rest of his life rather than doing commissions. He never refused a commission but his commissions were mainly for portraiture, but the work that he was doing for himself was one of imaginative surfaces; he was interested in the surfaces and the contours that, for him, I think, made sculpture.

Lucy

How did he do it? What was the process of him working out? Did he go away and sit in his shed  or did he draw?

Biddy

Walking, walking and thinking. So. when you’re working on an armature, you’re you’re restricted, by the internal shape that you put up for an armature. So, if it’s figurative, you have got to put up irons. You got to put up the wood, the irons, the structure inside, in order to that would hold the clay, which, of course, is going to flop. It’s going to want to flop all the time. So this is my understanding of how he’s thinking, do I need to concentrate on a silhouette? Because if you think about what is the thing that’s before him is sculpture which relies heavily on a silhouette, and you walk around sculpture in order to see the whole, so if you think of something like Henry Moore, you walk around it, and each time you move 360 degrees, you are seeing a different piece of work, which is really fascinating. The thing that Roy started to think about is, do I want that, or do I want to concentrate on the internal shapes of a piece of work, and that the external silhouette is not the most important thing. and gradually, this took years to sort of begin in his thinking; gradually, the silhouette became very simple. So, by the time we had moved to Cambridge, where he was restricted in terms of space because he was working on the bottom floor of a very big old house and he’s also restricted in light. So his restriction in space meant that he couldn’t move in or build big armatures. So the work becomes slightly smaller and it becomes simpler in terms of the silhouette.

Lucy

Was it a torturous process? Because this is a quite a complicated philosophy. This is not something that’s being explored much at that time. Was it difficult to get out? Or did he just, or was it a Eureka, kind of moment that he reached?

Biddy

I think it was a very torturous process, and he was looking back at his work and thinking, I I haven’t got things right in terms of sculptural form, and do I need To make the external simpler – then two things happened. One is that they can stand still, and it’s more contemplative. They could just look for a long time. The other thing is, when you’ve got your standing still, the light is moving so now he’s got the complication that as light falls on a shape, it actually changes. And the more complex the shapes inside the shapes become, the more complex the sculpture becomes, because the light is doing the movement you are not walking 360 degrees around something in the direction –  the light is going to do a lot of the work for you, and it’s going to strike shapes from different angles. So, it appears that it’s sort of almost shimmering so that you get this complexity of light falling on shapes. I think that it took a long time to get more complicated. Here in this exhibition is an example of his last work, where it also becomes almost flatter, and he’s modelling onto the board with no armature. So don’t put any armature up now. You can work on a wooden board.

Lucy

What I was wondering is, are these shapes? Are they feelings? Where’s the anchor point for the shapes that he’s making?

Biddy

I think they’re made quickly. I used to think, oh, he’s not working. He’s not working at all. But because he’s walking or thinking or drinking at the pub, it’s talking to people and sort of shutting off and then shutting in again. But they’re made with his hands, mainly. So he made his own tools. You would think of modelling tools as quite traditional and they were based on modelling tools, but he made his own because he wanted his own shapes that he could pull the clay around with. He’s also got that, if you look at his work, he’s got hand movements and thumbprints. So he’s got hand movements and fist movements and the edge of the hand and the shape around the thumb. That part of the hand is all over his work where he’s pushed it. So it’s almost like the carving is coming back again. But instead of having carving tools, you’ve got your hands, and you’re making the shapes with your hand, because you’re thinking a thing, and then he’s refining them. So they pushed in quickly. In fact, very quickly. And I always used to think it’s a bit like a poet. So sometimes it’s quite a short burst of energy that makes the first move, puts the thing in, and then it’s refined, but often not changed a lot, just sort of looked again and looked again. And refinements happen all the time, but the main burst of it is quick.

Lucy

Do you think there was one he was most proud of, one he would have liked to have been remembered for?

Biddy

I think possibly you know the one that it is, the reclining figure that looks almost like it’s in a landscape. And people say, you know, it looks like cushions or something, but actually forget the realism or putting a tag on it. It is actually a figure, but it is in a series of, sort of like a landscape of shapes. Funnily enough, that piece has to be looked down on. So you often see sculptures on pedestals, or you look up, you know, look at them or look round. He was very adamant that people should look down on his work, and that it should come out of a surrounding that is totally anonymous, that it hasn’t got a definite edge. It should almost sort of float into nothing, and that the actual sculpture would emerge from the outside edge. In fact, somebody saw one yesterday, who’s an archaeologist, and she’s been working on bog people in Cumbria. And she said, do you know this really reminds me of the bog people, just where the head just sort of emerges out of the surroundings. And I knew what she meant. It obviously isn’t that, and that’s not where Roy got the ideas from, but it does get that feeling that these are emerging figures out of something and that and awarding back into something.

Roy Noakes’ – Carving The Queen’s Beasts for Kew Gardens ©

Lucy

Quite often, sculptors and artists, but I think sculptures, particularly, face challenges in their careers

; the reason that I say particularly sculptors, is because it’s so expensive to cast.  I know even more so maybe now than it used to be, but it’s always been expensive. Were there challenges do you think in Roy’s career?

Biddy

Well, the course – there’s always the obvious challenge, how can you keep a family? You know, it’s all this kind of obvious challenges. I think casting is an issue, because when you see his work in bronze, it is how he saw it so clearly. He had bronze in his mind, simply because of the quality of the surface. So, you know, when the quality of the surface in plaster is beautiful, actually, because it’s so soft and it catches the light. It’s this light business. But you something in bronze, every single finger mark. It shows where it doesn’t show in plaster, it really shows. And u don’t really understand until you see it in bronze what you’ve done, I think. There were moments where he had a commission, a really good Commission, which was a portrait, and then immediately the thing that he did with money would be to to try and get his work cast. And we were, very lucky with the a big reclining figure, we got some grant from the Henry Moore Foundation, which pushed a couple of figures into bronze, which was really good.

Lucy

It is the financial challenge. I’ve more than one sculptor that I have in mind at the moment where that is limiting their career, this huge expense that they’re having to lay out and how much debt they’re getting into, because it becomes a point where you have to  because you’re a creative, You just want to keep producing, but actually, it’s limiting you because you don’t want to sink completely and sink your family as along with it.

Biddy

Yes, it is, it is. It’s a real issue, you know,. Bronze is very expensive, and if you’re thinking in bronze, fibreglass and resin or fake bronze does not do the thing at all.

Lucy

One of the things I was wondering was how Roy felt about the reception of his work. Did he have any opinion on that or not?

Biddy

He was a bit of a chameleon, because lots of people didn’t know he was a sculptor. So he’s not going to, you know, in public, start saying I am an artist, because I think he probably felt that people wouldn’t understand or hadn’t got a language in which he could talk. He’s trying to develop a language which is understandable by other sculptors but maybe not understandable by everybody because it is a language, and it’s a language of shapes, and it’s a language of light, and it’s got all kinds of facets. You know, you can have a literal interpretation of a thing, but when it’s just your shape,

Lucy

He was trailblazing, really.

Biddy

Talking about language, that’s what you will say. I’m trying to develop a language. I’m trying to think in a language. And that gets a bit philosophical, and so it’s you probably feel a bit embarrassed talking to your mate about this language. So I think he kept it a bit secret, you know, and he was working it out all the time.  And it’s very nerve-wracking. Is this one going to work? Because each one is quite different. Is this going to work, or is it going to sink? So he did work in series, which tells you how, it tells me, anyway, how you started, often more realistically. So there’re recognisable feet or whatever, and then gradually it’s moving, moving until it becomes really just a language of shapes. And it doesn’t matter that it is a figure, or is it a bit of drapery or something? It’s based on something that he can base this language on.

Lucy

Did he exhibit in his lifetime?

Biddy

He had an exhibition at the old Geoffrey Archer Gallery, which was a bit of a disaster, for various reasons. He had a really successful exhibition at the October Gallery. I can’t date it, but I remember it, and we put up a big wall, so all the ones of the swimmers went up. And again, interest and support, but no commissions coming from his own work. So again, we’re still getting a commission, surprisingly, for the House of Commons, for a portrait. So then people say, Oh, Roy, it’s Roy doing a portrait that’s extraordinary, and he did the portrait of Anthony Eden, Lord Avon for the House of Commons and one for the foreign office because his work had been seen in the National Portrait Gallery. So, you know, it’s almost like there’s a different route, sort of threading through and then funding the next piece of bronze. So that’s like a sort of route in and out of portraiture.

Swimmer by Roy Noakes ©

Lucy

So you’ve brought all his works together at the moment. just tell everyone a little bit about the exhibition that you have on there and where it is.

Biddy

So we bought this exhibition together, because it was the first time for over 20 years that there had been no exhibition of Roy’s work. And the whole family, thought it was time to review where he stood in terms of British sculpture. I mean, that sounds very grand, but you know, you do review things, and think – is this important? And sometimes you can’t see that, unless you have it on exhibition. You have to put it out there, too, and you sort of remove yourself once you do it. Put the work in a space or in a situation where you can see it. I mean, see it and understand how it relates to other people’s work, how it relates to drawing, and how it relates to what else is going on around you. And so we took, we made up an exhibition. Not of all the early work, which is now no is non-existent, because, of course, a lot of the plasterwork disintegrated, but of the main bronzes and of the main panels which are in relief, and put them in one place and have a really good look at them and really think: Is this, what is the value of this work? And so we put it together in two places. One was where he worked, which was up in the Moors, and the second place is in this space where I am now, which is on the King Street workshops in Pateley Bridge.

The workshops are a set of working artists and craftspeople working together on a site in an old museum. And in this space there’s a glass blower, there’s another sculptor, there is a jeweller, a ceramicist, a textile worker, and somebody who’s working in mosaics. So there, all these artists are working on one site, which makes it a very self-supportive sort of atmosphere where people can help each other with all kinds of things. This space here is an education space where drawing and painting are taught, where, well, all kinds of crafts are taught, but it can turn itself into an exhibition space. So number six Studio Gallery, as it sounds like, is at Pateley Bridge, at the old workhouse.

The exhibition will now be on till the ninth of June, which we are nearly at the end of the last weekend. But it’s been very successful in terms of numbers of people who’ve walked to the door, because the whole site is having a 30 years celebration of working here. So we’re all using each other’s, names to advertise it. So, it would be lovely if people came and really talked and asked questions because I think unless people ask questions, we can’t really find answers. Give anybody any answers that they might want to know. You know how things are made? Why were they made? What’s the point of them? What’s the point of sculpture? Why is it so different to painting? All these questions come up when people walk through the door. So, it is not a selling exhibition, it is a looking exhibition. So there’s nothing here to sell, in terms of nothing here that you could immediately take off the wall and buy, because although there are some drawings, the drawings relate closely to the works that are on the wall, that are the sculptures, and therefore they almost belong to the sculptures at the moment, until we may make a decision about what’s going to happen, what’s the next stage for this collection of work.

Lucy

And if people miss this exhibition?

Biddy

If people wanted to see it, they are more than welcome. It will be back in his studio, in a sort of exhibition space, or set up like an exhibition. But now his studio is not a working studio so much as as an exhibition space, as showing a studio, and people are more than welcome, and I will give anybody who asks. I can give them my email address, and it’s by invitation, they’re more than welcome to come and and look and spend the afternoon looking. It’s the beautiful space.

Lucy

Tell people, Biddy, where, where you’re based, where his studio is based.

Biddy

The studio is based just outside Pateley Bridge, North Yorkshire, and it is based quite near the big sculpture called The Coal Stones Cut, which is a sculpture by Andrew Sabin sculptor, which is a monumental piece of work over a quarry. So you can walk up, but it’s that you sort of almost down the road. Difficult to explain, because it’s, it’s sort of right up on the Moors, and you have to find it, it’s a most beautiful place.

Lucy

Tell me, just to sort of round up the interview, what would you like to see happen for Roy’s work next? Have you any thoughts about that?

Biddy

This is almost the most difficult question that I’ve been asking myself, what do we do with a collection of work that we feel, and I feel is important in terms of where this artist sits in the  history of sculpture of his period? So that’s of working as a carver and then a modeller, working with clay, so working traditionally, but trying to find a philosophy through quite a traditional way of working in the sense that it’s clay, plaster and bronze. So, trying to find his own language, how important is that? Should it be kept as a collection? This makes a lot of sense in terms of looking at it because you can see the relationship between one piece and another piece, and you can see how one piece grows into the next piece. So, like a sort of education sort of thing?  Well, that’s the one question that would probably be my first reference. How to do that, of course, is amazingly difficult. I mean that there are ways, but that’s what our thinking is at the moment. Other than that, he’s not here anymore. So it’s not public sculpture. It can’t be put in the public domain, ie put outside or offered to somewhere. Would you like this piece of sculpture? It takes it out of the its context, which I think is the whole that that’s not, I don’t think that art galleries would be where it could work, that their art galleries are so full of work, and having to look after another piece of work is really a problem. You know, it’s almost like lumbering an art gallery with a problem even to offer it to them, because they’ve got to maintain it, they’ve got to store it. They’ve got to show it. You know, occasionally, if it fits in, letting them know that it’s available might be a really good idea, because then if somebody wants to use this work as part of an exhibition, that would make a lot of sense. So that’s sort of where the thinking is at the moment.

Summer Mary by Roy Noakes ©

Lucy

Thank you, Biddy. This has been such fun, so interesting. I’m hoping that you’ll just tell people, if they’d like to come and see Roy’s work. How do they get in touch with you? What’s the easiest way?

Biddy

They would be welcome and should just email me, biddynoakes@btinternet.com