I have just watched a YouTube video featuring the German artist Georg Baselitz. I was struck by the following things he said "Our yearning needs painting" and "The image must contain something that other paintings have never had. Something that has never yet been seen, that has never been solved. The eye must pursue an idea that has not been pursued, and that mostly means chaos." This strikes a chord with me because I am always striving to find some indefinable other, something beyond the ordinary, in my own and others paintings.
In the odd way that things can lead, these words inspired me to go back and tackle a painting I had shelved, that had pushed me far out of my comfort zone. It is the middle section of an eventual triptych based on a mother and child theme. The first panel will feature the "other mothers" the members of the medical profession you have to accept into your family when you have a disabled child. I hope to depict this with white shapes of nurses and bright red crosses emerging out of a tangle of grey corridors and a background of hospital green. The third panel will contain "the mother" about to step through the hospital curtain that separates her from her child.
Detail of wheel
In the central panel I have tried to create the initial image I saw in my head of my future, as the consultant said "I'd like you to think about the words cerebral palsy" while he examined my baby daughter. The results of her MRI scan had revealed the extent of the brain hemorrhage she suffered whilst being kept alive in the neonatal ward . I have heard there is a poem about discovering your child will have special needs, likening the experience to being on a plane thinking you are going on holiday to Spain and then discovering you are going to Mexico for example. I like this analogy, it is not what you chose, but you do discover new things that you would never have come across. However, when you first hear about the change of destination, it feels like your plane has been hijacked and you are going to be landing by parachute, without a map or belongings.
Detail of face and arm.
I tried to paint this image without too much emphasis on thinking and let myself be guided more by feeling. I therefore have less idea as to whether the outcome is successful. It is not accurate, it was all about the wheel and a slumping figure of my full-grown child. I tried to disregard the usual warning barriers that spring up and direct me away from a crap result. So here it is, it could be crap or it could be something. There are parts I can take from this that can be used for a further attempt. Here it is:
Oil on canvas. 33 x 41 inch.
Maybe like Baselitz, I should turn it upside down...
I have not worked out yet whether I should explain my paintings or leave them for others to interpret on their own. As it is early days for me as a painter, I don't suppose it matters much either way. If it does, look away now.
This painting happened suddenly and was my response to a bad day. I just got all the swirling images in my mind that were gathering and put them out of my head and onto the paper. Here I could see them clearly, writhing undefended for me to examine. That same day was turned around as I transferred my sketch onto canvas and began filling in.
I was trying to come to terms with and integrate the gaping void between domestic imagery fed to us from the television and magazines, and the cold blooded reality of hard work and raw emotion as you fall into the role of motherhood.
The only true advice I wish I had received before becoming a mother is "Expect the unexpected, nothing is ever as it seems.". We have little experience to prepare us before embarking on our personal journey into motherhood. Of course this is true of fatherhood as well. Our dislocated society separates the births and deaths from our sanitised and independent lives. Few of our new generation have memories of the birth of siblings at home, or the final preparing of the body of a deceased loved one, as an opportunity to say goodbye. These are not easy things to face but they do not go away by hiding them. When the time comes we are unprepared and have to face these experiences with little support, and it soon has to be hushed up again. We have lost the support and guidance of women in our community. Community is a rare treasure not many of us have known.
So armed with our mothering magazines of perfect images we take our fragile selves into the labour wards like lambs to the slaughter. This may sound harsh, reality may be kind and often is, but babies are born prematurely everyday, many women don't have chance to consult their perfect birth plans as they are rushed into emergency caesareans. New mothers sink into the ambivalence of post natal depression and not everyone is fortunate enough to experience the spontaneous miracle of bonding with their child. Some parents replace their broken rose tinted glasses with an alcoholic haze.
The perfect ideal of a house in the country, in which we can be a domestic goddess is passed off to us through the media as "real", leaving the majority of us lacking. I love to watch these programmes and dream and have my fill of their virtual, vicarious pleasure. Equally it can lead to torment and dismay.
There is a phrase, "Follow me home to know me.". The fake kitchens bursting with le crueset; flowery china and copper bottomed pans are purpose built fabrications and often not the celebrities actual homes. In real celebrity homes adultery and temptations can be prevalent.
A cat curled up on a rug in front of an open fire turns into finding flea bites on your children's skin. The new cute kitten has defecated on your new comforting cushions, and left a dead bird behind the settee. Small mercy that the toddler didn't find it first. The open fire covers everything in dust and brings the extra job of cleaning up the ash and soot. We all have our dreams and then their are the practicalities never far away.
The baby in the painting is copied from a real photo of my poorly daughter, born three months early. When tragedies occur, someone still has to wash the dishes that are mounting up, put the Christmas tree up, do the festivities and put the Christmas tree back. The beautiful flowers in a vase fade and die and have to be thrown away, the bacteria filled water in the vase poured away. These simple yet heroic acts that keep a family going are often the responsibility of mothers. The little things, the disgusting things, the boring, relentless, unnoticed and essential things.
As I have got older I have learnt with great difficulty to let go of my Catherine Cookson ideals of how life should be, and to love the reality of what life actually is as it comes. A technicolour, 3D, scratch n sniff miracle. To turn chores into opportunities for contemplation and listening. We will all still have bad days but I try to face life clearly and openly and enjoy the miracles of having children and being alive.
In my painting there is a butterfly that can momentarily break you out of an inward cage of depression as you turn to look at it's beauty. A Georgian shop window, full of the promise of wonderful things reflects the storm beyond. A cottage with roses around the door, leads on to a pretty chintz cup and saucer, or is it clouds gathering. Will the oncoming storm be only a storm in a teacup. Have a cup of tea and gain some perspective, you never know what your future might hold. The gladioli symbolises strength and preparedness, and moral integrity. Exactly what a mother needs for consistency and to be a guide by good example. They are also a symbol for love at first sight, how it should be when a mother first holds her child.
Mausoleum. Oil on canvas. 32"x24". 2012.
I was brought up to care about what the neighbours think, to try to be nice and to please. These are good qualities in certain ways, to be conscientious and aware of your affect on others. It also leaves you particularly suggestible. I am learning to stand up for myself and believe in whatever I am, even if it does displease. This painting is not quite finished, I am going to work some more on the details, these are not good quality photos, but what does it matter. Until further notice I have put my cherished but sentimental notions in a mausoleum.
I have only recently found out what I want to be when I grow up. An artist. I have no masterpieces to back me up, just a few inklings of "something" indefinable. This knowledge is a holy grail to me. I have spent the past forty years in a bewildering pathlessness, following transient "desire lines". As lost as Leonardo's Battle of Anghiari. There is a great article here on desire lines, Purposely straying from the path: Robert Finch.
Battle of Anghiari, Peter Paul Reubens, (copy after Leonardo da vinci) 1603.
It was an envy of craftsmen that led me to this personal discovery. My mind was often filled with the idea of being a baker, getting up early and baking bread, whilst in reality a lay buried under a quilt, stalling the onset of a new day. I thought it was their seeming ability to rise early every day, finding happiness in the repetition and perfection of their trade, that I craved. But it was not only their tradition and consistency, it was the fact that they know what they are. This is what I had been missing, the piece that could complete me. A knowledge which could transform me from being half a person. But what makes me an artist ?. Am I an artist ?. Have I the right to call myself an artist ?. Not yet I don't think, but at least I now know what I am, and have started to get on with it. This blog is about the discovery of art's place in my life. Art as religion, fulfilling an irrepressible spiritual need, and art as therapy. A channel for the self, that prevents madness overwhelming.
Miss E Hughes with the cottage loaves which she still baked in an ancient oven at Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant, and sold in the village.
For me, painting has always been a battle. A fight for expression. I hear painters talk of "joyous peace" whilst working. I have been aware of "the zone" on occasion, and riding "the flow" of creativity is an exhilaration only surpassed by the feeling of love. What bliss to find this meditation, but an inability to render an image in my mind, has invariably left me feeling wretched.
Trying to reach the actualisation of the paintings I carry around inside my head is at the root of my struggle. Whenever I look back on memories of difficult times, I see what I have experienced as a painting, the scene set inside a life-size canvas. Whole finished images that so far have been carefully stacked up at the back of my mind, waiting. I have tried ignoring this artistic tendency, but the impulse to paint these images does not go away. It writhes and surfaces like sightings of the Loch Ness monster, it festers and blackens into a thick, black slug of depression that eats into dreams, and then it bangs on the window of consciousness, inducing headaches and restlessness until it is heard.
So I have been framing my experiences, and now I am at the start of my journey to bring these images out of suspension to try to do them justice. The picture below, was an attempt to capture feelings always just beyond my grasp. I used pastels for their cold and remote quality.
"Within dissociation I found a face" Pastel on paper. 23x23". 2011.
I hear of painting being a hobby, a pastime, but my life choices have meant I have never had time. Every moment I take for painting is guiltily stolen from a continuous stream of chores and distractions, arising like the porridge in The magic cooking pot, the fairy tale by the brothers Grimm. I have often poisoned precious moments of found time, with doubt and procrastination. Maybe motherhood and domesticity has acted as a self-sabotaging subterfuge against my artistic creativity, but I treasure the adaptability and perseverance motherhood has honed in me. Having eight children must have been the level of S.A.S. endurance training I required, to get myself into gear, and truly appreciate my time. I am now a ninja time juggler able to focus in extreme distraction with heightened peripheral vision. Qualities gleaned from watching three toddlers move in different directions, and remaining aware of all of them. I am sure this will serve me well when painting. Remaining aware of the whole of an image at the edge of my mind, whilst focusing on detail.
Abstract portrait, "A search for self". Oil on paper. A1. 2010.
It was a personal promise to myself, made in the depths of early motherhood that finally set me free of these self-imposed limitations. After reading a book on Francis Bacon, I noted that he became a successful painter in his forties. Previous to this his output had been small and infrequent. My promise was, that I would at least begin my art by 40, reasoning that if it was good enough for Francis Bacon to start art late in life, (a painter I had admired more than any other), it was certainly sufficient for me.
Not long after my 40th birthday and wondering when "life" would begin, I searched for local art courses on the net, as a means of bringing art back into my life. I found a Year Zero course which is the introductory year of a Fine Arts degree. Inquiring via email to find out more, I was invited to look around and have a chat the following week. Shocked by the pace of events, I went along and showed the Programme Leader a photo on my phone of a painting I had done. I was told they wanted me on the course, the interview would be a formality, oh, and bring your portfolio.
Dad portrait (detail) Oil on canvas. 2007. This photo got me on the course
I didn't have a portfolio. I had 8 weeks to produce a "real" portfolio of work for my "pretend" interview. The huge boost to my confidence and having a deadline and a purpose, enabled me to break free of my procrastination. The words of my Junior school teacher came back to me as I left to go onto Secondary school, "Don't ever give up on art Julie, don't ever give up on art.". I am now in my second term of studying this course on a part-time basis.
Francis Bacon tried to move away from narrative painting but it seems I am trying to move towards it. Not in the traditional sense of depicting historical or mythological scenes, but narratives drawn from real life's story that we all share to some degree. He wanted to side-step the intelligence and hit you first in the emotions, creating a response in the senses.
"Some paint comes across directly onto the nervous system and other paint tells you the story in a long diatribe through the brain."~ Francis Bacon
My challenge will be to portray my personal happenings without losing their impact, leaving the image open for a viewer's own interpretation. My next quandary is, if I explain my images with the written word, will it accentuate or diminish viewing of my future art. The question is, should the viewer know the story behind the art, or should the picture hold the thousand words within.
