As I pen this article on the 11th of November 2024, it’s been two days since yet another glorious North Coast Artists’ gathering — always a coming-together of friends for the love of visual art, from all walks of life and spanning perhaps three generations. As always, it’s a wonderful source of inspiration and creative vibrancy; a day I look forward to with much anticipation every month with a group of souls who’ve influenced me immeasurably since I joined NCA in March of 2022.
I got to thinking about those who make a profound difference in our lives and, as it’s Remembrance Day, or Armistice Day depending where you are in the world, the only person who is on my mind today is my dad, Raymond Armist McGowan, who would have celebrated his 104th birthday today.
My dad was without doubt the greatest creative and artistic influence in my life. From as young as I can remember, he was teaching me to observe light, shape and form. If he wasn’t designing and building a boat out of marine ply or glass-fibre, he was creating something out of metal, welding things, making moulds for garden sculptures, carving an otter out of a block of wood or busy with some sort of pencil or charcoal sketching, and whatever he was about, he’d invariably ask me to assist him in some way.
As I progressed from infantile scribbles to colouring-in books, he would painstakingly teach me how to choose my crayon colours and to fill the blank spaces uniformly, without going over the black lines. Whenever I was in the mood to draw, Dad would set aside whatever he was doing to help and encourage me.
I must have been around seven or eight years old when he started to teach me about tonal value and cast shadow; how depicting the light play on an object produced form, and how rendering its shadow gave it dimensionality. He had me drawing cubes, spheres and cones, working with the different grades of graphite pencil, teaching me how to hold a pencil and vary pressure with my wrist, length of strokes and consistency of direction. I still remember these lessons half a century on, and they’ve stood me in good stead countless times through my career in design, and more recently as a practicing artist.
Even from an early age his teachings began paying off, as I recall my junior primary school headmistress giving me many a row of green Well Done ink stamps on my wrist (which I refused to wash off until they’d faded away completely) accompanied by gold stars affixed to the large artwork I would proudly haul in with me of a Monday morn that I’d worked on over the weekend. And as always, Dad was there to praise my efforts and steer me towards the next project.
Then, as I grew a little older, obsessing over model warships and aeroplanes, my dad would show me how to construct them without residual glue showing, and how to affect smooth, blemishless finishes with my model paints.
A highly talented artist, sculptor and craftsman himself, he evidently recognised similar gifts in me, as opposed to my three older siblings who weren’t artistically inclined (albeit no less creative) so I’ve always believed that this was why he encouraged me to follow my talents, no matter what.
Even though he saw me pursuing a career in graphic design, branding and advertising, something I know he was proud of me for, he passed away in 2010, so he wasn’t around when I scaled back the digital art and began taking up charcoals, pastels and acrylics — where he probably would have joined me once again with glee …
One of my greatest regrets in life is that I never got to thank him for all that he did for me, although I know he’s watching over me with his perfectionist eye, nodding in benevolent approval. For those of us then who choose to remember, let’s give our gratitude to all of those who have helped us along our artsy paths.
Thank you, Dad!
Guy McGowan
WASA representative in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal & Chairperson of North Coast Artists, KwaZulu-Natal.