This Little Light of Mine

The Nest

Hard Truths

Yesterday was a big day, and I am struggling to dispel its heaviness.

My beautiful cousin, Francesca, would have been twenty-one. It’s impossible to encompass the sadness and sense of futility and loss attached to that day in words, or even thoughts, but my cousin Isabella came about as close as possible to it in her amazing birthday letter to her sister, which you can find here. 

Surprisingly, that anniversary was not what was most difficult in my day. It was the saddest thing, but not what left me the most troubled – Francesca's death is a grief we have lived with for almost two years, and in that context, her birthday was almost a ray of light: it marked the day she came into our lives. 

The outpouring of emotion, the renewal of memories and the emergence of unseen photographs were, in a way, wonderful. It was a relief to sit alone in the studio and cry my heart out, with no tissues: a copiously snotty animal in animal pain, released suddenly from all the cottonwool protection of philosophical thoughts.

For just a moment, I felt the whole, breathing, warm presence of the living Frannie, and saw the wonder of her existence and the full pain of her loss side-by-side. It may sound strange, but these two wires are rarely connected in my mind – the terrible shock that sparks when they connect is too strong to live with all the time. But to feel it on these rare occasions is also to be closer to Frannie again.

I didn’t get much work done.

I began a new nest.
The first one (below) has been cast aside for now – my week’s cross-eyed labouring over it served only to produce the one thing worse than a total catastrophe: a near-miss.

I felt that awful thing that I think all artists feel from time to time: am I actually any good at all?  

The work was clumsy, and solving it seemed beyond my resources.

I haven’t exactly given up on it, but I can’t afford to lose any more time at its service when I have only days left to complete all my work for the show.

But I have persisted, as is my way, and made two small nest drawings that are full of good things. I discovered a new way to approach them, drawing the twigs in heavy, thick black ink, then washing over them with water before their core is quite dry, so that it falls away leaving a delicious outline. I then layer paler washes of ink over the top, erase the highlights and negative spaces and repeat this process until there feels to me to be a vibration of sorts, and a good, dark depth between the twigs.

Yesterday I began a new large nest, full of self-doubt, and fragile from the emotion of the day. I did enough to feel it was underway, then packed up and set off for home.

At home, I returned a phonecall from a family friend and loyal supporter of my work. He had left a message to say he wanted to talk to me about one of my works. I imagined he wanted to buy one.

As it happened, he wants to resell one he bought about five years ago, and wanted me to help him. This is a difficult matter. The drawing, he explained, is riddled with unhappy associations to do with his own circumstances, and he can no longer bear to even have it in the house, much less look at it. He hates looking at it. He wants rid of it.

Notwithstanding the delicate and difficult circumstances that prompted his feelings, the assault on my spirits was quite violent. I feel heartbroken for the drawing. It meant a lot to me when I made it, as it was the work that marked the turning point of my three-year artist’s block. It is a brave, fighting, raw drawing, and somewhere in it is a part of myself.

The confrontation was a double-whammy. Not only was it surprisingly hard to hear of the work’s being so passionately unwanted, but I was also obliged to confront and explain the probability that it would be hard for him to sell it. It is hardly, after all, one of Picasso’s formative works!

As an early work of a still-emerging artist, its monetary value still lies in my potential. This shabby reality played some havoc with my sense of the work I am currently making, the purpose of it, and the uncomfortably complex issue of its value and the value of making art at all.

Mostly, I like to think my drawings are bought because they are loved. In that case, their value is not quantifiable – an artwork one loves is priceless.

But what happens when a work ceases to be loved?

The conversation was an awkward and painful one – a polite stand-off of sorts. I like this man, a usually softly-spoken and gentle person. He can have had no idea of the reverberation of his own pain and how it might play out in me. Short of buying the work back (which I can’t afford to do), there was little I could offer. He asked me to think about it.

And needless to say, I have been thinking about it ever since.

Wealth and Ambition

The three-minute ride to the studio yesterday yielded something precious.

The road runs along the railway line, and plane trees, already splendidly committed to autumn, line the road. These have recently been subjected to routine council pruning: an inelegant topiary necessary to accommodate overhead power lines. It leaves the trees in a comical Y form, and I always feel vaguely humiliated on their behalf.

Today I was arrested by the sight of the severed branches awaiting disposal in a tangled row beneath the trees, still in full leaf and mirroring their overhead counterparts. I felt drawn to cross the road, feeling there must be a gift there for me.

 

As soon as I had felt it, I knew what it must be, and almost as soon as I knew, I found it. A darker mass of twigs, tipped on its side, but intact: a displaced birds' nest.

I felt overwhelmed by its being there for me to find, by the marvel of its intricate construction, the touching bed of soft furs and fibres at its centre. 

It is amazing what wealth is contained in such a thing. To find it was to encounter ideas of skill without ego; care independent of intellect; endeavor without certainty; design more ancient than I can comprehend. In a moment, I felt all the inexpressible troublings of sorrow and courage, blame and inevitability, fragility, instinct, family, loss, guilt, privilege, tenderness...

This small, wild triumph, overthrown by the oafish plod of urban imperatives, was almost weightless in my hands. I understood all there was to understand in the breath-held flash of first encounter, and felt as though I had stumbled on a priceless bounty.

Of course, the only way I know to honour it is to draw it. And that is an immense task!

I have begun - and already there are problems. For instance: I have, so typically, let the drawing outgrow its frame. Will I fit in enough for it to look wonderful, still? Will there be enough information, even, for it to look like a nest? I will press on, rather than begin anew. There is too much already that is nice about it: the smoke-grey, textured spaces where the ink has been erased are beautiful, and there is a momentum in the composition that I like.

If I need more space, I'll divide this one in two and add a third panel. The important thing is just to trust, isn't it? To keep building, twig by twig, in the faith that it will come to completion and serve its function before any other forces come to cast it aside.

Sticky

Stick

A Storm Brewing

Something in the murkier regions of my consciousness is putting up a fight. I can feel its willful inertia: the powerful resistance of a toddler sitting down against the pull of adult plans.

But what is being resisted? My instincts and body are bracing for a change of which my mind is still quite ignorant. My chest has an apprehensive weight on it, making normal breathing an effort, and I feel as though I am missing the point, failing to cotton on. But to what, to what, to what?

Here is what I think, for the record: a change that will upset life as I know it is afoot. In my heart, or in my art, something new, disruptive and most probably good is imminent, and I'm scared.

I don't know what to do, except to keep on doing. More parasols, more ink, more dreaming and longing within the bounds that have yielded love before. What can I do differently to summon the good storm, to make it welcome and to minimise its damage, when I don't know its nature or its source?

What if it passes me by? What if its winds are already propelling me forward and I am hampering them, planting my nappy on the pavement and insisting on doing things the way I have always done?

Oh, how hard it is, sometimes, to even know how to be open to the world!