Love Machine

'heartmilk' {graphite on 300gsm cold-pressed Fabriano} 2012

Having, yesterday, closed the first book of my motherhood - and packing it deep into the dustiest corner of my memories - today I open before me my second book of mothering - beckoningly open, pristine with joy!

I was asked last night whether I wanted to have another child. I gulped. And suddenly was engulfed with memories of Layla's sheer physical need of me as her mother. The nourishing from my mother's heart literally poured out through my body to grow and sustain this little soul, and her perpetually starving heart and fragile body. A little bird in my plump embrace. Sometimes fiercely protective. Sometimes tender and awe-stricken. And, so often, exhausted beyond what I ever thought I could bear. And did. 

This drawing fell out of me in a confused tangle of relief and anguish the morning after my milk dried up. I was flooded with guilt at what felt like a betrayal. Layla was too young to understand why my body 'stopped working'. (The only way to explain to a 2 year old in tears. Both of us.) The drawing outlines the physical mechanics of breastfeeding. Something desperately out of my control. And the inextricable knitting together of my body and my heart. The two as one functioning, nourishing, pounding, life-sustaining organ. A love machine.

Below are drawings and paintings from Jenny Savile, Paula Modersohn Becker and Picasso that push deep beyond the stoic taboos behind breastfeeding, and into the intimacy of mothering. (Also, a vintage diagram of the changing breast through pregnancy.)

“how to write a poem: catch the air around a butterfly”

‘Danaus plexippus (i)’ — Acrylic on Canvas { by Lisa Roberts } 2006

Glancing back over my shoulder, the year behind me is a chrysalis. At the time, it felt less like a restful growing and preparing for flight and freedom, than a  tightly claustrophobic, inescapable nightmare. But now, that chrysalis is beautiful to me.

My child’s 6 weeks of school holidays at home with me was a blessed frustration — time to work, craft and dream played a spiteful little game of hide-and-seek with me —- a game which I tried desperately not to play: out of that relentless, shameful mother-guilt of wanting time to simply be me, and torn the other way into swimming down deep into the magical, mysteriously beautiful ocean my child.

Moths and butterflies have always captivated me. For their fragility, and fleetingness of life. The miraculous meaning of their life-cycle. And what we can learn from the perfect blue-print of nature…

“…a butterfly is like the soul of a person, it dries out in captivity.”     { Marlene van Niekerk, Agaat }

“You can only chase a butterfly for so long.”  { Jane Yolen, Prince Across the Water }

Naked Love

Nude (i) {mixed media / cold-pressed 300gsm Fabriano / 100 x 150cm } SOLD

Chalky gesso stained with night-black calligraphy ink, drying in deep swathes of rapid brushtrokes -- and between layers, I'll grab this writing time. Another commission, and this time - a portrait. Unclothed, intimate. A gesture for her lover, above his bed.

“For so many centuries, the exchange of gifts has held us together. It has made it possible to bridge the abyss where language struggles.”
― Barry Lopez, About This Life: Journeys on the Threshold of Memory

Entering into this gift exchange of theirs, I feel a strange discomfort. A necessary sort of intrusion. Without the involvement of the artist and her ability to capture a subject's external and internal likeness, this poetically loving gift wouldn't be possible. And so, unwittingly, I am witness to her devoted passion for this man she loves, and - I believe - will always love.

“It isn't possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

This is, without a doubt, a far less conflicted commission to undertake than the previous one which was almost a slap in the face, but one which I had no choice but to accept as smilingly and gratefully as possible - because, hell, quite simply, I needed the money. I have certain artist friends who refuse - in exaggerated (almost comical) revulsion at even being approached to undertake a commission of this sort. University cultivated this self-same aesthetic bigotry in me -- but it earned me nothing but confused friends and mindless arguments where egos and values clashed. Ugly. Life and its painful twists and exciting turns grows us, whether we like or not. Whether we even see it or not. And this is one particular area Life has gifted me a new perspective on.

 (I posted this blog-jot on my other website, Frou-Frou & Fish, by mistake because both blogs celebrate by examination: beauty, art and meaning.)

Nude (ii) {graphite / 300gsm Fabriano / 40 x 50cm } SOLD

 

 

 

Commissions: Compromise or Collaborate?

Commissions are so often deeply dreaded by artists. I, for one, have travelled a long and and very humbling journey in this area, where money, survival and creative compromise come together to cause heated arguments with egos bashing each other about the head in idealistic wrath and scorn.
                         I know. *sigh*. The drama, the drama. But it's honestly what commissions do to us as creatives. We run. Or we want to run - but mimic indifference. Or we pretend we don't want to run. Or we stay because we need the cash. Perhaps, there are those that learn that 'creative compromise' can, in fact, be developed into 'creative colloboration' with the client? I am stuck between a couple of those reactions at this very moment with the various commissions I have on the go.(NB: Not the with the commission below!)

{This is a commission-in-progress: a graphite portrait for a software-design guru's website.}

Look for Part 2 on commissions and the psychological theories behind this oft-felt 'artistic prostitution'! Coming soon!

Sutures, silk & bees...

'Listening to you approach,
       The press of each footfall, soft absence inbetween,
  I feel a kernel of utter completeness.
            Then time hustles forward, trailing us like silk.' *

{ for sale : inquire within }

Between waiting for my layers of priming gesso to dry last night in my studio, I nestled myself down deeply into the old sleeper-couch in my reading/research nook, just yesterday covered by an old pink sari that has travelled all around the world with me. One month a gauzy bedroom curtain, the next - adorning my bed, or covering the diningroom table in time for a lazy sunset supper with friends.
          Opening up one of my trillions of visual diaries, I found a piece of old woolen felt, the colour of clotted cream, and softly warm beneath my fingers. I'd discovered it at the bottom of an old box of fabric scraps given to me by my sister's very Yorkshire mother-in-law. The lace was from my other sister's wedding dress, which I'd handstitched onto the rich duchess satin years before, and which I painstakingly - full of memories of her - stitched on with the thinnest of needles and white thread.
                                 I used to have an untameable fascination with bees (moons ago...) I'd photocopied this dead bee, then transferred the image onto the most diaphanous of silks - cutting carefully around its outline with my sharpest scissors, fixed forever flightless onto the felt with almost microscopic sutures.

*The quote was found on the page in the visual diary, sandwiched against the felt/bee piece.

Le Journal d'un Voyage Peinte

"Painting is just another way of keeping a diary." 

{ Pablo Picasso }

Mother & Child { November 2012 }