![\"Bernard](\"http:\/\/bernardvanlierop.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Anatomical-Tracings-E-247x300.jpg\")
<\/a>Pre-school anatomical tracings<\/p><\/div>\n
My\u00a0earliest ‘drawings’, made in French West Africa, are tracings from my parents’ anatomy textbook from the Missionary School of Medicine, London. I can recall my childhood\u00a0fascination\u00a0with watching\u00a0animal\u00a0carcases being cut up at in our town’s market,\u00a0a sight\u00a0which\u00a0seems to have\u00a0started\u00a0my life-long\u00a0interest in anatomy, informed by medical textbooks.<\/p>\n
Another favourite subject for my sister and me to draw was the camel-train\u00a0of weathered rocks which we saw every morning from\u00a0the front windows\u00a0of our house.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"Dogondoutchi](\"http:\/\/bernardvanlierop.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/Doutchi-Rocks-E-300x109.jpg\")
<\/a>The Doutchi Rocks, seen from near our house (photograph by Don Adams)<\/p><\/div>\n
After being sent to boarding school in Britain, my best Christmas present in 1955, was a good quality watercolour paint-box, given to me by a wealthy and cultured\u00a0‘Aunt Mimie’ from New York (in fact, an aunt of Dr George Kelly,\u00a0one the temporary\u00a0guardians\u00a0of\u00a0my sister and me). ‘Aunt Mimie’\u00a0had noticed my interest in drawing, and her generous present gave my intertest in art both practical and psychological\u00a0 encouragement.<\/p>\n
![\"Bernard](\"http:\/\/bernardvanlierop.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/Doutchi-Rock-E-300x235.jpg\")
<\/a>The Doutchi Rock (1959)<\/p><\/div>\n
I used this paintbox in the summer holidays of 1959, when\u00a0my sister and I\u00a0visited our parents and\u00a0\u00a0I attempted to paint the rock, which gave our town its name, Dogondoutchi,- (“Tall Rock” in\u00a0Hausa). This obsession with ‘The Rock’\u00a0 may have been a trigger for my later ‘obsessions’ with the\u00a0topography of where I live.\u00a0As we we walked through the town and looked up at the rock from different places, I was\u00a0disturbed by\u00a0the weakening of\u00a0its usual\u00a0heraldic\u00a0profile when seen from our house. Perhaps this was an\u00a0early response to sculptural form, albeit on a colossal scale.<\/p>\n
Two years earlier, I was eleven, my sister and I had spent Easter in the Netherlands, after an invitation from\u00a0our great uncle ‘Om Carl’ and ‘Tante Monnie’,\u00a0his wife. He was a Lutheran minister in Deventer and my Dutch-American Grandmother’s youngest brother, who had been a missionary in Java and a prisoner of the Japanese. His extreme war experiences are recorded in his memoir (J. C. Hamel Soldatendominee<\/em>, 1948, ‘S.Gravenhage, N. V. Uitgeverij W. Van Hoeve). He saw and praised\u00a0drawing\u00a0I had made of\u00a0my left hand in a small\u00a0sketchbook , and\u00a0followed ‘Aunt Mimie’ in\u00a0buying me a larger “Schitzenboek” to\u00a0spur my enthusiasm.\u00a0\u00a0Om Carl owned original oil paintings and took us to the Rijksmuseum to see Rembrandt’s ‘Nightwatch’, re-inforcing the high status that Art enjoys in Dutch culture that we had begun to learn from his older sister, our grandmother<\/a>, who had studied for a year in a Dutch Art Academy before emigrating to the US.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This ‘Juvenilia’ page\u00a0refers to a childhood decade,\u00a01951-60. I mention this decade\u00a0only as\u00a0a preface to 1961-70,\u00a0as it gives\u00a0a few pointers\u00a0to later efforts. My\u00a0earliest ‘drawings’, made in French West Africa, are tracings from my parents’ anatomy textbook from the Missionary School of … Continue reading