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While researching and planning the interview with Bob Belderson, whose Membership Number is 2, someone told me that he was in his nineties. So, on the day of the interview, as Bob and Carol welcomed us into their home, I was very impressed with how well they looked and moved at their age. Let´s just say it was a very unusual icebreaker when I found out that Bob is a youthful 80 years old and Carol… well, it would be indelicate of me to say. So more about Bob...
Bob always loved the landscape, enjoying picking up rocks and things in his early years. He lived in parts of Africa, captivated by the beautiful mountains and scenery. His fascination with rocks, geomorphology and evolution, led him to a degree in Geology. Soon after, while studying for a post-graduate degree, he started working out at sea off Durban, looking at the sea floor, an interest which led him to become an oceanographer back in England.
celebrating 25 years of creativity
BOB BELDERSON, Founding Member
While researching and planning the interview with Bob Belderson, whose Membership Number is 2, someone told me that he was in his nineties. So, on the day of the interview, as Bob and Carol welcomed us into their home, I was very impressed with how well they looked and moved at their age. Let´s just say it was a very unusual icebreaker when I found out that Bob is a youthful 80 years old and Carol… well, it would be indelicate of me to say.
Bob always loved the landscape, enjoying picking up rocks and things in his early years. He lived in parts of Africa, captivated by the beautiful mountains and scenery. His fascination with rocks, geomorphology and evolution, led him to a degree in Geology. Soon after, while studying for a post-graduate degree, he started working out at sea off Durban, looking at the sea floor, an interest which led him to become an oceanographer back in England.
In that role, Bob wrote many scientific papers and was involved in many scientific books. From 1962 onwards, he was one of the first oceanographers on ‘Discovery’, the British research ship, going to all the oceans of the world mapping the sea floor with a particular method of side-scan sonar, exploring the surface of the earth that was under water and never before seen by man. Bob remarks, “As they even say now, we know more about the surface of the moon, Mars and some other planets than we do the sea floor because it is not that easy to map.”
Sculpture came naturally after that. One of his first pieces was presented to the woman who was to become his wife, Carol. It was her reaction to the sculpture – not one of shock and horror – that made him think that there would be people who would appreciate his work. The semi-abstract piece was called “The Laughing Rose” but another man, “not a boyfriend but just visiting” picked it up and broke it by mistake. Carol was very upset by this so, years later, Bob made her a replica.
Chalk is Bob’s preferred medium because it is so easy to carve into wonderful shapes. He and Carol used to go to Burling Gap on the South Downs, to clamber up and down the steps hauling great boulders of chalk. Once back at home, Bob would carve away with just a knife and chisel, smoothing off with sandpaper – all on a tray in the living room with chalk flying everywhere and children playing around.
He chose not to sell these chalk sculptures because they were so fragile. He tried to harden them by soaking them in water glass, but still wouldn’t sell them because they were breakable. Eventually, he was so impressed by people asking if they could buy his sculptures that he ventured to cast them in resin.
One of the first gallery owners he approached turned his nose up, saying, “I’m not having any of that in my gallery. It’s got to be bronze - proper bronze.” That egged Bob on to get his work cast in bronze, a material he has worked with ever since. Bob says, “It put me into a totally different price league really, whereas resins were reasonably priced.”
Bob is inspired by Henry Moore who, according to Bob, “always held the view that the landscape up in Yorkshire was part of his background that got him going.” He also draws inspiration from Auguste Rodin, Michelangelo and Gustav Klimpt’s style as a painter, because Bob thinks his own style is a bit art nouveau, with the flowing shapes of his sculptures.
“The Forbidden Fruit” is Bob’s favourite sculpture in chalk. It was so difficult to carve from one chalk boulder. It won the prize for Best Sculpture in the Farnham Maltings Exhibition. “Rachael Weeping” is his favourite among the bronzes because it was one of his first, and was thought by others to be one of his best pieces. It sold well (particularly in the gallery which first rejected him!).
Bob’s work ethic is “Work hard enough but not too much because if you work too much you affect your family closeness. To be a great artist you need to be single-minded and work at such intensity and for so long that everyone else suffers.”
He adds, “Sculpture and painting are wordless art forms and the world’s gone mad now with words on art. You go to an exhibition which needs so much explanation that you spend more time reading the stuff on the wall that they’ve written about it than actually looking at it.
“We sculpt because it is a wordless form of expression and you don’t want to actually put into words what you’ve done – it should speak for itself and communicate: the fewer words, the better.”
Bob recommends a book on the matter, “The Painted Word”, written by Tom Wolfe (author of “Bonfire of the Vanities”) which deals with the question of verbiage in the arts, where the description of the art overwhelms the art itself.
Bob has published two books, has written several unpublished novels and poetry. Writing keeps him happy. His published memoir, “Flotsam and Jetsam from the Shorelines of Life”, was written for his family. It contains amusing stories of happenings “fun and games” in his life, some of which were considered “disreputable” by some readers. His wife, Carol, appears in many episodes, particularly on their “wild adventures in Africa”. There is a section called “Classic Rambles and Short Cuts” where he led Carol on many shortcuts which were really disastrous!
When asked about the matter of giving advice, Bob says, “I never went to any art training really so I never really did get any formal advice and I don’t remember anyone telling me to do this or that. So, you just do what you want to do.”
He adds, “I feel with art you really ought to try to do something that doesn’t upset people. You want people to feel a bit better even if it is melancholy in its style and so on. A lot of modern art goes the other extreme. They want to upset you, to “disturb” you and I find that there is too much of that around. Thought-provoking, but perhaps you don’t want to provoke the wrong sort of thought. And so I want people to feel a bit better about things.”
What couldn’t Bob live without? “Personally, my wife is the most important person in the world, plus the children and grandchildren. Funnily enough, I was looking at this question when it was put to me on paper, and my grandson, who is a great expert on cosmology and the universe and everything else said, ‘We all couldn’t live without the ‘Big Bang’ because the whole universe and us wouldn’t exist without it’”.
These days Bob dedicates himself to another beloved creative activity – gardening.
Please click the arrow in the centre of the frame to play the video.
Photos by Bob Belderson
In that role, Bob wrote many scientific papers and was involved in scientific books. From 1962 onwards, he was one of the first geological oceanographers on ‘Discovery’, the British research ship, going to all the oceans of the world mapping the sea floor with a particular method of side-scan sonar, exploring the surface of the earth that was under water and never before seen by man. Bob remarks, “As they even say now, we know more about the surface of the moon, Mars and some other planets than we do the sea floor because it is not that easy to map.”
Sculpture came naturally after that. One of his first pieces was presented to the woman who was to become his wife, Carol. It was her reaction to the sculpture – not one of shock and horror – that made him think that there might be people who would appreciate his work. The semi-abstract piece was called “The Laughing Rose” but another man, “not a boyfriend but just visiting” picked it up and broke it by mistake. Carol was very upset by this so, years later, Bob made her a replica.