Hand-Painted Figure

‘Subbuteo Footballer’

oil on canvas/40 x 30cm/May 2018

Following-on from the previous pair of entries and paintings, this latest effort on the easel, considered now to be at a point of resolution, depicts, via the painterly process, one of the miniature football player figures from a recently-acquired vintage ‘Subbuteo’ team (the upscaling is about x10).

Contrary to the identifier scrawled upon the box by a previous owner (a name to which we are unable to subscribe in these parts), the thinking here is that the presence of the black-clad goalkeeper figure (surely inspired by the style preference of the legendary Lev Yashin) suggests, rather, that the team is intended to represent the Soviet Union circa early-1960s, a more palatable and indeed exotic and Europhilic, prospect. Nostalgia, naturally, pervades such an object containing a collection of objects, the ghosts of both one’s own and another’s (or others’) childhood making their presence felt – this is precisely the vintage of such toys, that have undergone various transitions since, that I was familiar with in the mid-1970s, the things to be collected and enjoyed immediately prior to developing a usurping passion in recorded music with an immersion in the contemporary post-punk sound (the two subsequently being brought together in the form of The Undertones‘ ‘My Perfect Cousin’ single and its accompanying artwork).

To return to the painting, as before there’s a little dialogue between the (quite roughly) ‘hand-painted’ nature of subject/object* and the painting itself and also a little something of that challenge of Euan Uglow‘s in representing the surface quality of plastic (as in the Homepride ‘Fred the flour-grader’ figure Uglow painted, followed suit by myself, in conversation with, last summer), more than one of which are present here – the base, its cup, is of a high-gloss nature that suggests nothing so much as a ceramic glaze, something to which we are no strangers here at TOoT and indeed have done battle with, again, to unsatisfactory effect, once again, quite recently (it occurs that this painting is, in effect, the familiar bowl-form – most often glazed or otherwise glass itself, highly reflective, with which I have been engaged on-and-off since undergraduate studies – with a vertical form filling and emerging from it!).

* A favourite pastime was to repaint the team sets one acquired to one’s own specifications, to ‘perfectionistically’ improve upon the quality-as-purchased, to take account of changing fashions/styles or otherwise individualise particular players.

On the Ball

Another take on the still life, on this occasion the subject/object matter being a pair of miniature moulded plastic model football (soccer) players of a certain indefinable vintage (given the length of the shorts in relation to football fashions it could be anywhere between the 1950s and 1980s, with the neckline of the shirt suggesting the earlier end of this timescale), each scaled up by about 7:1 to fill a 35cm tall canvas – the models, indeed, are pictured beside the  painting(s) on the easel to illustrate.  It should be declared at this juncture that football probably takes up more head space than art in that particular Nick Hornbyesque ‘Fever Pitch’ manner that afflicts many, so to combine the two enduring passions is a treat indeed (although not a novel one, given previous football-themed projects that have been undertaken, as may be evidenced within the other TOoT‘s archives).

The hand-painted nature of the figures, specifically its less-than-refined finish, suggested a broad approach should be taken in the representation of, and the paintings proceeded accordingly to a point of resolution, although it’s yet to be decided whether they’re individuals or a companionable diptych (as they appear on the Portfolio page).

‘Red Footballer’

April 2018/oil on canvas/35cm x 25cm

‘Blue Footballer’

April-May 2018/oil on canvas/35cm x 25cm

Art and Football

‘Slavia Praha shirt’  pencil and watercolour/36 x 25cm

The challenge of the representation of drapery is, of course, as old as painting itself, and a recently-acquired football shirt suggested itself as being a suitable subject-object of study one afternoon last week, so out came the pencils and watercolours. Whilst the particular qualities of the contemporary somewhat shiny-surfaced sportswear fabric were perhaps the main motivating factor in getting to work in the active observation of, the allure of a jersey bearing a red star, particularly in the context of such a pleasing design, cannot be denied a certain significance too.

 

Fair-Weather Football Watcher

Having pretty much taken the subconscious (and, on the days in question, conscious) decision to become, quite literally, a ‘fair weather’ local football spectator this season, such was hoped-for to coincide with the event of our heroes Gresford Athletic’s concluding home fixture of the Huws Gray Cymru Alliance league season on Saturday and, blessedly, nature complied in the form of a glorious warm sunny afternoon, thus the short journey was made to the Clappers Lane ground to attend, sagging-off from what should probably have been another painting session on a rare day of fine natural light – such are the conflicts of the football-nerd artist.

The visitors were the wonderfully-named Holyhead Hotspur as, coincidentally, they had been for the corresponding fixture of last term on the occasion of my inaugural attendance at a match at ‘the Lane’, on a dank December day as opposite to Saturday as could be. That game proved to be something of a corker, one indeed to warm the cockles, as Gresford, at one point of the second half 1 – 2 and a man down, rallied to prevail 4 – 2 and instantly earn a place in the favourite football teams compartment of the heart. Subsequent visits to watch ‘The Colliers’ during the course of last season proved them to be a whole-hearted, well-organised and obdurate team who were a match for all but the top sides in the division (please see here), although alas I wasn’t fortunate enough to see them score another goal, as was again the case in the instance of a pre-season friendly hosting the local professionals of Wrexham one Friday evening last July, going down late and most unluckily to a single own goal in a match that has proved to be more of an indication of Wrexham’s uninspiring travails this season than Gresford’s, who, adding a more expansive and goalscoring dimension to their play, have performed so creditably as to have risen to third place in the Cymru Alliance, behind only the much larger fish of Prestatyn (who recently confirmed their championship with a narrow victory over Gresford) and Caernarfon Towns, despite the mid-season upheaval of their promotion-inspiring manager defecting to divisional rivals and ‘bigger club’ Denbigh Town.

Facing mid-table Holyhead, then, brought with it the anticipation that Gresford could surely find the net and produce a result that would help cement that third place ahead of the chasing Flint Town United and Porthmadog, the latter of whom Athletic had beaten and established more distance between only last Saturday in their previous home match.

Perhaps it was the sudden arrival of surprisingly clement weather (the preceding midweek had brought such rainfall across the North and Mid-Wales region that provides the Cymru Alliance’s member clubs that led to the postponement of a round of league fixtures) but Gresford began the match in something of a casual manner, with misplaced passes and a general, palpable lack of focus, frustrating to themselves, that brought to mind nothing so much as the drowsiness of just-awakened bumble bees. Soon, Holyhead capitalised on the slackness in  their opponents’ ranks and, from a free-kick pumped into the Gresford penalty area, scored the game’s opening goal to take the lead, one they held without much alarm until the point midway through the first half when, following a foul tackle more mistimed than malicious, although it led to the hobbling Gresford victim also leaving the field of play for the duration, the perpetrator was dismissed with a straight red card and the Hotspur were reduced to ten men. Even with this numerical advantage, Gresford struggled to find any rhythm or penetration to the extent that, as half time approached, the more cohesive, direct and threatening Holyhead were quite correctly awarded a penalty after a clear trip in the Gresford box and Dewi Thomas, scorer of the opener, duly dispatched the spot-kick to establish a 2 – 0 interval lead for the visitors. News came over the tannoy that Flint, five points behind Gresford at start of play and with the teams due to showdown at Flint next Saturday, were leading Prestatyn 2 – 1.

Upon the resumption, the second half proceeded to become virtually a game of attack versus defence, with Holyhead holding firm as again Gresford struggled to find any fluency despite their efforts although, due to sheer weight of pressure, the latter did create chances, some clear cut. However, through a combination mostly of hapless profligacy (hitting the crossbar from a yard out, headers from the centre of the six yard box glanced wide) and fine saves from the Hotspurs’ keeper, one of Banksian miraculousness, still, to mounting incredulity and wry, resigned amusement, the hosts could do nothing positive to reduce their arrears and this spectator considered himself doomed not to see his local village team score another goal, certainly on this occasion or this season. This state of affairs continued, alleviated by one opportunity to Holyhead, on the counter-attack, to score what would surely have been a decisive third goal, thankfully saved, all the way until the 89th minute when Gresford did manage to pull a goal back – at last! And then, just a minute later, like the buses making their way between Wrexham and Chester and vice versa along the main road beyond the stand side of the ground (at one point they could be observed queuing up), another arrived courtesy of Jack Chaloner’s quick penalty box reactions once again, an equaliser on the day and cup-overflowing riches indeed, a bit harsh perhaps on the valiant visitors after their sustained rearguard action but reward for Gresford’s perseverance at least, a characteristic that has been a significant factor in the successful season they’ve enjoyed even though this had clearly not been one of the afternoons when they’d managed to attain the highest standards they’ve set for themselves. Honours remained even at the conclusion shortly afterwards, the draw a fair result on a fine football-watching afternoon that ended all the better for Gresford as Prestatyn also staged a two-goal comeback to triumph 3 – 2 at Flint and thus enable The Colliers to edge a further point ahead in the battle for third place.

Here’s a little photo-record:

Clappers Lane looking across the pitch to the stand and dugouts from behind the ‘garage end’ goal.

Holyhead Hotspur take to the pitch…

Closely followed by Gresford Athletic

About to kick off

Second-half pressure from Gresford, trailing 0 – 2, on the Hotspur goal

Close marking

Full-time: honours eventually even, Gresford Athletic 2 Holyhead Hotspur 2

The Gresford team troop off, Holyhead huddle.

Proper Football

Something of a classic for us football (soccer) romantics on Tuesday evening, with a match between two of the truly great names of the English game, Stalybridge Celtic v Bradford Park Avenue in the National League North, a thriller which ended in a 4 – 3 victory for the hosts – that the visitor’s manager attributed the scoreline and result to his team’s shambolic defensive performance only adds to the glamour of the event.

Alas, the victory represented but one of pitifully few for one of TOoT‘s very favourite clubs (an entirely randomly-assembled collection from down the years) Stalybridge in what increasingly seems likely to be a season ending in relegation – the three points gained at least elevated them a place above rock-bottom in the division – which is a fate also hanging menacingly over what seems to be an unfortunate number of those dear to the old heart this term. Gainsborough Trinity have sunk to also teeter on the precipice in the National North, Marine likewise in the Evo-Stik (Northern) Premier, Mossley and Prescot Cables are struggling in the northern section of the NPL Division One and Hendon are second-bottom of the Ryman League Premier Division, it’s really not pretty or good for the soul. To offer a little balance, Blyth Spartans appear well-set at the top of the Northern Premier and Marlow and Tranmere Rovers are in the play-off places in, respectively, the National League and Division One Central of the Southern League, whilst the mighty Gresford Athletic are an impressive third in the Huws Gray Alliance, having added a goalscoring dimension to their undoubted well-organised teamwork. The less said about the current efforts of Wrexham the better.

Of course, the ideal would be for all or most of our favourites to be pitting themselves against other at the same level, rather in the manner of our much-admired (Fictional) Football Alliance and as in fact a fair few did back in the Eighties heyday of the Northern Prem (also including South Liverpool at that time) in which case Stalybridge and Gainsborough dropping down into the NPL wouldn’t be the end of the world but then we’d need Blyth to forego any hopes of promotion, Marine to stay up and Mossley and Prescot Cables to get their acts together and get on up out of the division below: what a treat that would be.

Football in the Dark Ages

Venturing a bit onto Groundhog territory here, but an early evening dental appointment on Monday afforded the opportunity to capture a few arty dusk-hour images of the home of Coedpoeth United Football Club, namely the Penygelli playing fields up the hill towards the top of the village, which has extensive views over the conurbation of Wrexham and the surrounding environment, including the Cheshire plain (at the better part of 800ft above sea-level, it must be one of the more elevated football sites in north Wales).

Upon approaching across (or rather down the steep slope of) the car park, one is welcomed, bilingually, by the refreshment hut with the rather fabulous wedge-shaped form of the building housing what must be the changing facilities, etc (a bus stop nook is incorporated into the street side), just beyond. It’s not the most obvious from the crepuscular photos, but the club’s colours on the crest are yellow and green.

Then the view across the pitch and a fine sunset over the hills in the distance (the covered dug-outs are down the near-side touchline, failing to show up amidst the encroaching gloom of another image).

Passions Overflowing

Featuring today a recent, glorious & irresistible find (& subsequent purchase, thanks to the wonderful A, who came to the rescue & took the decision for me when I couldn’t quite bring myself to ‘invest’ the £20 asking price – which, of course, has proved to be an absolute bargain), from amongst the treasure trove of the second hand bookshelves at Dagfields, that, coincidentally, links nicely to the most recent entry on the Groundhog’s excellent, must-read football ground-visiting blog, a result of the author’s travels having taken him to Berlin.

The object of desire in question is the German-language publication ‘Fussballtempel’ & is a veritable cornucopia of delights, lavishly illustrated as it is with panoramic photographs of a selection of mostly German football stadia, supplemented with a few Austrian & Swiss examples.

Primarily concerned with the homes of top-level &/or historically noteworthy clubs, a number of the images are naturally of recent developments in stadium design & construction, which to my tastes don’t hold a great deal of aesthetic interest, seeming pretty much similar in their shiny new blandness, lacking that particular visual ‘atmosphere’ that defines the most attractive of the genre, most of which, therefore, are of a certain vintage (we are, of course, incorrigibly nostalgically-prone here at TOoT).

Fortunately, ‘Fussballtempel’ features many such gems, either in the form of the inclusion also of some of the predecessors of the new stadia (unfavourable comparisons between new & old, in favour of the latter, are inevitable, as the reader might imagine) or otherwise the still-current but longer-established grounds of other clubs, not least from the east which, back in the day of the separate entities of East & West Germany, was/were always much our favourite/s, in the shape of the likes of the Dynamos Berlin & Dresden, Lokomotive Leipzig, Carl Zeiss Jena, Hansa Rostock, Sachsenring Zwickau & 1FC Magdeburg to name a selection (all of whom we have collected lapel badges of the crests of, as featured on the original TOoT over 2013-14, should anyone wish to repair there to admire at their leisure).

One particularly notable feature of a number these older German grounds is the striking and individual form of the floodlight pylons, stunning pieces of architectural design & obviously a real signifier within the context of the towns/cities in which the stadia reside. Delight also in the examples of grandstand roof design and the environmental details beyond the immediate confines of the grounds, the examples of civic architecture, the wooded hillsides, the sense of space & of them existing within a space, the landscape, none of which, alas, are visible from inside the new stadia, enclosed as they all are. Enjoyable also is the fact that each of the grounds is pictured whilst a match is actually in progress, bringing them to proper life &, related to this, other details such as those of the crowds of spectators, the very sparseness of some within stadia of obviously significant capacity.

All in all, it’s a fabulous book, to be pored over at leisure & treasured as a part of the ever-burgeoning library.

Here’s a selection of favourite images…

N.B. The tile-topped coffee table, an item of furniture long desired for the household, upon which the book has been photographed was another of our Dagfields finds & essential purchases that day.

White Pears #21

‘White Pears #21’ oil on canvas/20″ x 16″/February 2016

Completed over the course of pre- and post-lunch painting sessions on Saturday afternoon (nobly foregoing the not inconsiderable temptation to attend the competing attraction of the local Gresford Athletic v Holywell Town football match – congrats to the mighty Colliers on their late winning goal – in order to devote the time to artistic pursuits, as one must, of course), (re)presented here is the latest production off the easel, as previewed last Thursday in its in-progress state. The subject-object pears have been worked up to a loose, textured finish (somewhere between the pre- and post-New Year painting technique) in order to preserve an attempt at a certain ‘freshness’ of facture, although they’re no less considered and actively observed, with minor adjustments made to the horizontal (particularly) and vertical planes upon/against and ‘tactile space’within which they reside.

All this activity was performed to the aural accompaniment of The Caretaker’s albums ‘An Empty Bliss Beyond the World’ and then ‘Patience (After Sebald)’, the former with its genesis in samples from old pre-war dance hall 78rpm records and the latter, which serves as the soundtrack to Grant Gee’s documentary film of the same title, from Shubert’s ‘Winterreiss’, each source then subjected to a process of sonic manipulation and degradation (in part utilizing the surface crackles from original vinyl discs) that allows disembodied fragments of the originals to emerge from and then become consumed again by a dusty haze of electronic white-noise, an ever-fascinating listen, both haunting and bleak and yet warm and human, a wonderful mix of the digital and analogue, and an excellent soundtrack to the old painting practice.

(detail)

(detail)

Later, to celebrate the completion of another painting, our favourites Atletico emerged triumphant from the Madrid derby, a fine end to the day indeed.

 

 

Saturday Special (and a Bit of a Wobble)

A browse of the afternoon’s football results is of course an essential activity on a Saturday evening, circumstances permitting, and was yesterday rendered particularly pleasurable as not only the team to whom we are irrevocably yoked, Wrexham, won (2 – 0 at the Racecourse against Bromley in the National League) but, browsing through and down the leagues,  it transpired that all our Northern favourites had too – Stalybridge Celtic 3 – 0 at Boston and Gainsborough Trinity 2 – 0 at Hednesford in the National League North; Blyth Spartans 5 – 0 against Ramsbottom United (with the stupendously-named Wilson Kneeshaw scoring all five goals) and Marine, 2 – 1 against Matlock Town with a brace of added-time goals, for the first time since November, in the Northern Premier League Premier division and, just below in the NPL Division One North, Mossley indeed running riot in a 7 – 2 romp at poor old New Mills (who have but a solitary point to their name from 25 matches this league season) and Northwich Victoria surpassing even that with an 8 – 2 pasting of Droylsden. Happy days and, given this, today the excellent Non-League Paper had to be purchased to celebrate such. Below is evidence of how the publication reports the Mossley and Northwich Victoria goal-fests.

But that’s not nearly all, as this edition of the Non-League Paper also carries a fascinating article detailing the mighty Jah Wobble‘s support of non-league football and particularly of his now-local club Stockport County (who unfortunately have of late fallen even further than Wrexham), which, to someone who has ever been a fan of the great man’s work with PiL on the early ‘Public Image’ and ‘Death Disco’ singles and first two studio albums, particularly the seminal and still extraordinary  ‘Metal Box’, which begins with the deep throbbing rumbling foundation of Wobble’s bass guitar and is thereafter driven along relentlessly by it, makes him even more admirable and groovy.

Of another of the lower league football teams in whom we’ve come to take an interest and have indeed recently featured on this blog, our local heroes Gresford Athletic‘s scheduled Huws Gray Alliance match at Mold Alexandra was postponed due to a waterlogged pitch.