It’s Day 70!  They are literally ripping apart the roof of my house today.  Felt a little trapped, hectic and very noisy.  I would be okay with it if it weren’t for my two nervous and territorial frankendogs. 🙂  Well, that didn’t keep me from painting today.  I originally had an abstract expressionist set for today, but decided to honor naive artist Alfred Wallis instead today!

Alfred Wallis (18 August 1855 – 29 August 1942) was a Cornish fisherman and artist. His parents, Charles and Jane Wallis, were from Penzance in Cornwall and moved to Devonport, Devon to find work in 1850 where Alfred and his brother Charles were born. Shortly after Jane Wallis died prompting the family to move back to Penzance. On leaving school Alfred was apprenticed to a basketmaker before becoming a mariner in the merchant service by the early 1870s. He sailed on schooners across the North Atlantic between Penzance and Newfoundland.

Wallis married Susan Ward at St Mary’s Church in Penzance in 1876, when he

was 20 and his wife was 41. He became stepfather to her five children. He continued as a deep-sea fisherman on the Newfoundland run in the early days of his marriage allowing him to earn a good wage. After the death of his two infant children Alfred switched to local fishing and labouring in Penzance.

The family moved to St. Ives, Cornwall, in 1890 where he established himself as a marine stores dealer, buying scrap iron, sails, rope and other items. In 1912, his business, “Wallis, Alfred, Marine Stores Dealer” closed and Alfred kept busy with odd jobs and worked for a local antiques dealer, Mr Armour which provided some insight into the world of objets d’art.

Following his wife’s death in 1922, Wallis took up painting, as he later told Jim

Ede, “for company”.  He was self-taught, and never had an art lesson.

His paintings are an excellent example of naïve art; perspective is ignored and an object’s scale is often based on its relative importance in the scene, giving many of his paintings a map-like quality.

Wallis painted seascapes from memory, in large part because the world of sail he knew was being replaced by steamships. As he put it, his subjects were “what use To Bee out of my memery what we may never see again…” Having little money, Wallis improvised with materials, mostly painting on cardboard ripped from packing boxes using a limited palette of paint bought from ships’ chandlers.

In many ways, Wallis’ timing was excellent. In 1928, a few years after he had started painting, Ben Nicholson and Kit Wood came to St Ives and established an artist colony. They were delighted to find Wallis and celebrated his direct approach to image-making. Nicholson commented later ‘to Wallis, his paintings were neverpaintings but actual events’.  Wallis was propelled into a circle of some of the most progressive artists working in Britain in the 1930s.

The influence, however, was all one way; Wallis continued to paint as he always

had. Nicholson later said of Wallis’ art ‘something that has grown out of the Cornish seas and earth and which will endure’.

Through Nicholson and Wood, Wallis was introduced to Jim Ede who promoted his work in London. Despite this attention, Wallis sold few paintings and continued to live in poverty until he died in the Madron workhouse in Penzance. He is buried in Barnoon cemetery, overlooking St Ives’ Porthmeor beach and the Tate St Ives gallery. An elaborate gravestone, depicting a tiny mariner at the foot of a huge lighthouse – a popular motif in Wallis’ paintings – was made from tiles by the potter Bernard Leach and covers Wallis’ tomb.

Wallis believed that his neighbours resented his fame, believing him to be secretly rich. In one of his last letters, to Ede, he wrote:

i am thinkin of givin up The paints all to gether i have nothin But Persecution and gelecy [jealousy] and if you can com [come] down for an hour or 2 you can take them with you and give what they are worf [worth] afterwards. These drawers and shopes are all jealous of me.

Examples of Wallis’ paintings can be seen at Kettle’s Yard (Jim Ede’s home) and at the Tate St Ives.

Biography is from wikipedia.

Obviously I decided to do a painting of a boat.  I also really wanted to include a lighthouse because I love them. 🙂  I kind of fell in love with this man’s art as I researched his paintings.  The only thing I regret is not painting it onto cardboard!  I hope you enjoy his paintings as well as my tribute and I’ll see you tomorrow on day 71!  I’m starting to wonder where I’m going to store all these paintings by the end of the year.  It’s going to be insane, but also wonderful at the same time. 🙂  Best, Linda