‘JMW’ – ‘Prince of the Rocks’

*Ros and Shaun McCrindle with ‘The Rising Squall’ at Tate Britain*
Photo by Andrew Graham-Brown

Do you recall my post about Bristol City Art Gallery’s crowdfunding campaign to buy ‘The Rising Squall’, J.M.W. Turner’s first exhibited oil painting (shown at London’s Royal Academy of Art, in 1792)? The crowdfunding campaign was successful (over £100K was raised through public donations in a single week) but ‘Bristol’ was unfortunately outbid at the Sotheby’s auction when ‘The Rising Squall’ came up for sale and we could not ‘bring Turner home’.

*Screenshot of images from Bristol Museum’s #bringturnerhome crowdfunding campaign*

My wife and I suggested the crowdfunding idea to Philip Walker – Head of Culture and Creative Industries at Bristol City Council – so I was honoured to be subsequently invited by Phil to film a performance of a new song I’d written about Turner, at Bristol City Art Gallery’s ‘Prince of the Rocks’ exhibition. The exhibition featured rarely seen local watercolours painted by Turner during his ‘teens, including a view of St Mary Redcliffe Church before the spire was added and two very accomplished watercolour paintings of the Avon Gorge at Hotwells, painted very close to where ‘The Rising Squall’ was painted.

The logistics of organising the film shoot would have been far more complicated if the project had been undertaken as a commercial enterprise. We would have needed permission to film in a council-owned space and we would also have needed insurance, risk assessments etc, to film in front of invaluable works of art. (We would also have required considerable sums of money to pay for all the above!) As it turned out, the process flowed smoothly as the project was undertaken as a collaboration between the art gallery, the musicians, a filmmaker, and a sound crew.

*The ‘JMW’ team, including film crew, sound crew, Goldfinches, and Fran Coles*
Photo by Grace McCrindle

Fran Coles is the Collections Care Manager at Bristol Museums. On the day of filming, Fran was there to monitor the ‘light budget’: how much light the Turner watercolours – and other works in the gallery – could be exposed to during our shoot. (She also helped us out with the clapper board during filming takes!) The musical group I performed ‘JMW’ with is called Goldfinches. We have been playing in Bristol for a few years now and it was a pleasure for us to perform the song acoustically in the gallery space, right in front of Turner’s work.

*Goldfinches (the group)*
Photo by Andrew Graham-Brown

The gallery was quite reverberant, so it was essential to have skilled sound engineers to record our performance. Our partner in sound was the award-winning creative studio, dBs Pro. Jay Auborn is the Creative Director of dBs Pro and, on this shoot, he was assisted with the sound recording by two undergraduate students, Louis and Oliver, on a work placement from dBs Institute.

*Jay Auborn from dBs Pro with work placement students from dBs Institute*
Photo by Grace McCrindle

The final essential partner in this venture was an old friend of mine called Andrew Graham-Brown, of AGB Films. Andy has many years’ experience working as an award-winning documentary film maker. He has great kit, and he loves music, so he was the perfect person to capture our song performances (we shot half a dozen or so live takes in all). Andy was assisted by my daughter Grace who also documented the day’s activities on her phone, for a short ‘making-of’ film. All together, we made a great team and the official video of ‘JMW’ should be available online for all to view soon.

*Andrew Graham-Brown (AGB Films)*
Photo by Grace McCrindle

We hope that one day the owner of ‘The Rising Squall’ will consider loaning the painting to Bristol City Art Gallery, so it can be seen in its local context (perhaps alongside the preparatory watercolour sketch in the Tate Gallery’s permanent collection?). ‘The Rising Squall’ is currently on show in London – for the first time in over 200 years – at Tate Britain, in its blockbuster ‘Turner & Constable’ exhibition. It’s a fine painting and not bad for a 17-year-old! (Imagine submitting ‘The Rising Squall’ as part of your A-level Art portfolio!?) In it, Turner seems to have applied oil paint in thin translucent washes, almost like the watercolour paintings he was making up until this point. It’s a very bold and assured painting for such a young artist and it would be lovely to ‘Bring Turner Home’, even if it were only for a short while.

*Click on the image to watch a clip of Shaun busking ‘JMW’ on the steps of Tate Britain*

The Buddha of Crediton

As the singer-songwriter of Bristol Indie-folk group Goldfinches, I visited Tony Plato at Trobridge House (on the outskirts of Crediton) last summer to discuss the possibility of recording an album with him there, in the home he shares with Gina Williams. Tony is well-known locally, as a regular performer at the Moon Jazz Club in Crediton and also as the drummer of the CowPunk Americana band Yellabellies. As he was showing me around, I asked Tony where he’d acquired a very striking, large wooden Buddha which occupied a window-seat halfway up the stairs. Imagine my surprise when I learned that Tony had carved the Buddha himself! This happy discovery led to the Buddha becoming the centrepiece for the artwork of ‘Shanti Time’, Goldfinches’ debut album.

‘Shanti’ is the Sanskrit word for peace, a mood the album explores throughout many songs: it is also commonly found in the Eastern chant ‘om shanti’, used in Buddhist and Hindu prayers. As such, Tony’s Buddha seemed a perfect fit for the album cover and we photographed it from a low angle on the lawn in front of the house to exaggerate its size. But what about the Buddha itself? How was it made? I’ll leave it to Tony to pick up the story from here.

*Vaughan Gallavan sawing the Monterey Pine for Tony, in 1986*

“It was cut from a fallen Monterey Pine in Morchard Bishop by a friend, Vaughan Gallavan, in about 1986. He followed the chalk lines I drew on the section of the tree. I carved it in the front garden of our cottage in Crediton using a small brass Buddha that I brought back from India in 1980 as a guide. This Buddha is naked which means technically it is portraying a Bodhisattva, as Buddhas are normally draped in a cloth. I would get friends to pose for me, so it has Gina’s sister Anne’s knees, Steve Clarke’s back, my hands, etc as I wanted it to be somewhat androgynous. I knew this sort of pine had strong radial rays and so got Vaughan to rough out the piece I used so as to try and make the rays radiate from where the heart would be. I give it a new coat of linseed oil every decade or so.

I chose the cupped ‘Dhyana mudra’ position for the hands as it is the mudra for peaceful meditation. I gave the Buddha to my Mum who was converting a barn in Snodhill, Hereford, and it sat on a special shelf by her stairs for 35 years. She had been a practising Tibetan Buddhist for many years and would say her morning and evening prayers to it each day and I knew she would appreciate it the most. I knew it would be hard to part with it, so we held a Buddha farewell party and invited all our friends to say goodbye to it. It was a wild party in the end with many explosions! The Buddha came back to us here when Mum had to leave her house about 5 years ago and I think of her love for it and her prayers every time I pass it, as it lives half way up our stairs now. It was the first proper sculpture I made, apart from a whittled chinese dragon I made with a penknife. I have since mainly made things from copper or bronze.”

*Tony’s Buddha in its current home at Trobridge House*

Goldfinches are thrilled to announce that Tony’s Buddha will ‘manifest’ at our album launch gig at Crediton Arts Centre on Friday 6th June. It should be a very special occasion, bringing together the band’s Bristolian songs with the ‘genius loci’ of where the album was recorded. Our opening act for the evening will be Crediton’s very own Triffles, who describe themselves as “suppliers of sundry songs silly, sarcastic and (sometimes) sincere”. We hope to see you there.

Tickets are available now from the Crediton Arts Centre website.

Goldfinches update – May 2025

*Photo of Goldfinches, with special guest Tony Plato, outside The Rising Sun pub in Bristol.*
Photo by Paul McLeod

It’s been a busy time so, apologies, there haven’t been many opportunities to post any updates lately!

Goldfinches’ debut album, ‘Shanti Time’, was released online at the end of April (you can stream and download it from Bandcamp). The band is very pleased with it and we hope you will enjoy listening to it too (a CD version, complete with lyric booklet, will also be available at our gigs). The album was mostly recorded at Tony Plato’s house in Crediton and then mixed by dBs Pro in Bristol.

The photo above is from the Bristol album launch which took place in our local pub on Windmill Hill, in south Bristol, at the end of April. Three of the band members live on or near Windmill Hill so it felt like a good place to hold a celebratory performance at. Our hunch was right! It was a great night and you can watch some phone footage from members of the audience here.

Crediton Album Launch

*Click on the poster to go to the Credition Arts Centre ticket link*

Our official album launch will be taking place on Friday 6th June at Credition Arts Centre. As Credition is the spiritual home of ‘Shanti Time’, we wanted to celebrate the album release there, with Tony Plato joining us on drums. As if that wasn’t enough excitement, the Buddha that Tony carved (which features on the album cover) will manifest at the gig, AND we will be joined by Credition duo Triffles (“suppliers of sundry songs silly, sarcastic & (sometimes) sincere”). It’s going to be a very special event which we hope you will be able to join us for.

Tickets are available from the Crediton Arts Centre website.

Jay Auborn – artist-producer

As mixing starts on Goldfinches’ Shanti Time album, I thought you might like to learn about the person who will be overseeing the mix, composer and producer Jay Auborn.

I’ve collaborated with Jay on two projects, the ‘Peaceful’ album and the ‘Life Lines’ mini-album, both by Rock n Roll Angels. Each time, Jay demonstrated his commitment to capturing sound recordings in unusual acoustic spaces. ‘Peaceful’ was recorded mostly live in a church in south Bristol and ‘Life Lines’ was recorded live in the same space without any musicians being present at all! (instead their studio performances were broadcast through a suite of amplifiers into the church space, where Jay sculpted them into live mixes). Goldfinches look forward to hearing how Jay and his team at dBs Pro will recreate the acoustic vibe of Trobridge House where the Shanti Time sessions were recorded.

Here is a link to a dBs Institute online article from 2021 about Jay’s background and his role as the Creative Director of dBs Pro in Bristol. Needless to say, Jay’s been involved with many more projects since the article was published but nonetheless it’s a good introduction to his experiments in the world of sound recording.