Greece: Time to return?

This recently published webpage: Greece and painting and me reminded me of how much I love Greece.

It is a while since I was there - the pandemic happened with all the life-upturning it set in process. And then airlines in a mess, and global warming, made me think twice about extra travel beyond the beloved granddaughters in New Zealand.

I can tell by the way I’m bingeing on The Durrells in order to catch a glimpse of Corfu that it may be time to return. These paintings made a few years back in the Mani and now hanging in my hall are shouting more loudly each time I pass…

The Moon and Scarlet 4, acrylic on paper, 61 x 50cm framed, Lynne Cameron, 2015.

£350 plus shipping.

It was a tempestuous time in Greece that summer, tempers were short and the sun was hot. In the midst of the heat, we celebrated the full moon. There’s a restaurant in the little village of Agios Nikolaos where people gather to watch the full moon rise above the mountains. Stunning.

The paintings are available through the Shop.

The Moon and Scarlet 3, acrylic on paper, 61 x 50 cm framed, Lynne Cameron, 2015.

£350 plus shipping.

usually right ... what, me?

“Our instincts can be honed through use and experience. And you reach a point in life where they are usually right.”

— Lucy Easthope

I’ve been preparing for an upcoming workshop which will provide a space for exploring intuition, what it sounds like, how we pay attention to it, via the process of painting. And I’m currently reading this book, after hearing Lucy Easthope talk about her work in disaster planning on a podcast. It’s really fascinating, although the details of disasters can be hard to read. This morning I reached Chapter 11 and the synchronicity made me sit up straight and notice.

Whether or not intuition can be described (only) as “instincts…honed through use and experience”, it’s the next sentence that struck me:

you reach a point in life when they are usually right

How unusual to hear this from a woman. How wonderful!

I’ve been journalling on what I might do differently if I (finally) accepted this … and wanting to share that thought with all the women who read my blog.

Also - there’s still time to sign up for the workshops and explore what your intuition has to say.

Becoming an artist: responding to Simone de Beauvoir (3)

In The Second Sex, Chapter 14 The Independent Woman, Simone de Beauvoir offers a devastating critique of the problems facing women who want to be artists and writers. Much has changed since she wrote it in 1949, but also much has stayed horribly familiar.

In earlier posts, I’ve shared how I’ve worked with her words since first encountering them, constructing ‘turnings’ from her original. These turnings are not statements of ‘how it is’ but rather motivations/values/desires. In this summary, I group my turnings under four themes. Her critique turns into something like a personal manifesto and/or set of affirmations.

Speech Flowers, acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100cm, Lynne Cameron, 2018

the woman, the work, the world, and transcendence

 My wings are not clipped

I go beyond the given through artistic expression

I throw prudence to the wind to try to emerge beyond the given world

I dare bold flights towards goals, and thereby risk setbacks.

I do not lack audacity to break through the ceiling

I adopt in front of the whole world, the disinterested attitude that opens up wider horizons.

I can be counted on to blaze new trails

I dissipate mirages and do not exhaust my courage - I do not stop in fear at the threshold of reality

I penetrate other shadows beyond clarity

I go beyond the pretext

I traverse the given in search of its secret dimension

I project my spirit with all its riches in an empty sky that is its to fill

the woman, the work, the world

 I fully assume the agonising tête-à-tête with the given world

I abandon myself to the contemplation of the world: I am capable of creating it anew

 I set the world apart. I question it. I denounce its contradictions. I take it seriously.

 I approach nature in its inhuman freedom, try to decipher its foreign meanings and lose myself in order to unite with this other presence

 I feel responsible for the universe

I think myself authorised to work out the fate of all humanity in my particular life

I make my history, my problems, my doubts and my hopes those of humanity

I attempt to discover in my life and my works all of reality

 I enrich our vision of the world

the woman and the work

 truth itself is ambiguity, depth, mystery: I acknowledge the presence of this enigma, and then I rethink it, re-create it

I passionately lose myself in my projects

I commit myself entirely to my enterprise. I am not tempted to give it up

I do not settle for a mediocre success. I dare to aim higher

I forget myself and generously aim for a goal

I aim for an object rather than my subjective success

I envisage art as serious work

I do not consider it to be a simple ornament of my life

I acquire technique. I do not balk at the thankless solitary trials and errors of work that is never exhibited, that has to be destroyed and done over again a hundred times. I do not cheat or hope to get by with a few ruses

I work

I do not attach too much importance to minor failures and modest successes

I have the courage to displease

I dare to irritate, explore, explode

I disown reasonable modesty

I refuse to orchestrate the mystification intended to persuade women to ‘remain women’

I can be a creator

the independent woman

I may feel alone within the world: I stand up in front of it, unique and sovereign

I posit myself as a freedom

I refuse to be object and prey

I will not waste my time on shopping and dress fittings and such

I do not deny my intelligence... or my age

I will not repudiate everything in me that is ‘different’

I have this madness in talent called genius

I will not stifle my originality; I trust it

I am solidly sure that I have already found myself

When the struggle to claim a place in this world gets too rough, there can be no question of tearing myself away from it; I emerge within it in sovereign solitude to try to grasp it anew

I learn from the practice of abandonment and transcendence, in anguish and pride

I dare to construct myself (and cherish myself)

TURN, TURN, TURN: responding to Simone de Beauvoir on creative work (2)

In my previous post on The Second Sex and what it has to say about women’s creative work, I showed the technique of OWN ~ TURN ~ OWN. In this post I share the quotes and ‘turnings’ that I extracted from Chapter 14 The Independent Woman. They are offered for anyone who wants to do their own work on this insightful and challenging text; to take or to leave, to contemplate and maybe dismiss. Even perhaps to serve as fuel for your practice.

Not for the faint-hearted!

Example:

“Throwing oneself boldly towards goals risks setbacks: but one also attains unexpected results; prudence necessarily leads to mediocrity.

TURNING:
I throw myself boldly towards goals, and thereby risk setbacks. ”

— Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

And just like that, oil on canvas panel, 20 x 25 cm. Lynne Cameron, 2023

“Her sterile vanity comes from the fact that she cherishes herself without daring to construct herself.

TURNING:
I dare to construct myself (and cherish myself)”

— Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

From Chapter 14 The Independent Woman, I extracted statements that Simone de Beauvoir makes about women artists and writers, in particular and in general. Doing this is an act of noticing and attending that you might want to do for yourself. If not, you can find the list of quotes here: List of quotes from Chapter 14, in order.

The next step was to TURN each statement*, using I … rather than she, woman. For example:

she tries to deny her intelligence as an ageing woman tries to deny her age

becomes

I do not deny my intelligence... or my age

Each act of turning took me deeper into de Beauvoir’s ideas and my responses. I recommend doing it yourself but if you want it, my list of quotes and turnings/reversals is here.

This list has accompanied me throughout the last 8 years I have pondered it, read it aloud while walking the room, hidden it, refound it, and been re-energised by it countless times. They have become a list of affirmations, a kind of creed, a manifesto.

————————————————

*I’ve come to appreciate TURNING or reversing as a technique from the Byron Katie’s Four Questions in her book Loving What is, from Jung’s ideas of the Shadow, and David Richo’s book Shadow Dance.

In the next post, the themes of Chapter 14, a summary.

Why these workshops, why now?

“...she will go beyond the given in the way she expresses it, she will really be an artist, a creator who gives meaning to her life by lending meaning to the world. ”

— The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir

House by the sea, acrylic on paper, Lynne Cameron

For years, I engaged in rational, analytic study of metaphor and empathy in dialogue. Despite my best academic intentions, the imagination resisted being quietened.

 In the middle of life, after cataract surgery, I plunged into painting. Years of painting that required an intensive search for my lost intuition via personal development courses, including Tara Mohr Playing Big, Julia Cameron The Artist’s Way, Chris Zydel Painting with Fire, Wild Heart Expressive Arts Teacher Training. And contemplation of women’s lives through the lens of women philosophers: Bracha Ettinger, Iris Murdoch, Simone de Beauvoir, Simone Weil. And teaching my own online course Catching the Whispers. And continuing conversations, shared readings with creative women friends. Filling notebooks with ideas and thoughts.

 Now, I’m bringing all this life together to offer exploratory workshops to enrich others’ creative practice.

If you join us, you will

·      experience the impact of intuitive painting techniques (bring your painter self or your non-painter self)

·      be led in intense conversations around your process

·      discover what can happen when you ‘go beyond the given’

Click below for more info and to sign up.

OWN ~ TURN ~ OWN: Responding to Simone de Beauvoir on creative work (1)

When I read The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir seemed to unroll my life experience like a map of the world, pointing out continents and oceans, showing how routes across this world of my life were somehow predictable. She showed me centuries of history and myth that made this inevitable. She gave me words to describe my experience, and a new way to own my experience.

The little pink book is a thin slice of The Second Sex, containing the Introduction, Chapter 14 The Independent Woman, and the Conclusion. Over several years now, it has kept me coming back, repeatedly pummelled my mind, made me sit up and take notice.

Chapter 14 holds the real challenge for me as a painter and writer. Her words about women and their creative work hurt. I wish they were less accurate. Here’s just one example out of nearly 50 pages:

extract from p63, The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir, 1949.

I am brought up abruptly by the truth and relevance of her words. They make me want to throw prudence to the wind and to try to emerge beyond the given world. I’d even like to claim a bit of the madness in talent called genius.

This kind of energising effect points to how we can respond to her words. Take this for example:

“She may feel alone within the world: she never stands up in front of it, unique and sovereign. ”

— Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

One way I respond to her statements about what holds back women is to feel how they apply to my own art practice/life, then turn them around, and affirm the reversal:

i stand up in front of the world, unique and sovereign.

I have found reversed statements like this both bracing and encouraging. They have given me courage on days when being an artist feels so hard, such a waste of effort and precious time.

i throw prudence to the wind and

try to emerge beyond the given world

I can even try:

i have this madness in talent called genius

and if that sounds too much, I can still ‘try on’ the statement or ‘hold it against me to see how it might fit’.

This OWN-TURN-OWN practice of working with de Beauvoir’s words has been very formative for me. It has given me energy to continue on bad days, and to place my work in a larger perspective. It moves beyond a reprimand into spine-strengthening encouragement.

Next time: Themes and metaphors in Chapter 14, all the words

The wall of experimentation and the wall for contemplation

I’m finding this interview in the artist’s studio inspiring in several ways. I love their description of what is on the wall and why.

“One wall of Bastos’ studio is lined with a huge piece of mass-produced wallpaper, featuring large-scale roses in an almost dreamy but restrained colour palette of soft pinks and greys, and overlaid with a smaller painting that pops with lurid green and blue scrawl. This is the process wall, where works are made and composited and amalgamated. It’s the wall of experimentation, Bastos tells us. The wall opposite is the space for pseudo-finished work, where many works go into a space for contemplation, and from there sometimes they go back to the other wall. It’s currently dotted with belts that hang and curl sculpturally. On this wall, Bastos comes to perceptively understand and link the evolving visual gestures in their work. They liken the process of placing the materials on the wall to tarot card reading, a process of divination that works by confirming what intuition and the right side of the brain already know. “I’m obsessed with salon hangs. I love it, because with a practice like mine, form really navigates. You find the commonality in the gesture, in the materials, but it’s not necessarily like everything is gonna look very similar. And when you do a salon hang… it’s easier to pinpoint the thread.””

— Berlin Art Link, Dec 12 2023, Studio Visit with Cibelle Cavalli Bastos

You can read the full interview here

Meanwhile, on my wall ….

Crime Fiction, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 40cm, Lynne Cameron 2024.

a slipping glimpse

Today I wanted to revive this post from nine years ago, and to remember Jo, who offered me these words in the first place.

Baltic landscape, acrylic on paper, Lynne Cameron

Abstract painter Willem de Kooning, talking about his practice:

Each new glimpse is determined by many,

Many glimpses before.

It's this glimpse which inspires you -- like an occurrence.

And I notice those are always my moment of having an idea

That maybe I could start a painting.

....

Y'know the real world, this so-called the real world,

Is just something you put up with, like everybody else.

I'm in my element when I am a little bit out of this world:

then I'm in the real world -- I'm on the beam.

Because when I'm falling, I'm doing all right;

When I'm slipping, I say, hey, this is interesting!

It's when I'm standing upright that bothers me:

I'm not doing so good; I'm stiff.

As a matter of fact, I'm really slipping, most of the time,

into that glimpse. I'm like a slipping glimpser.

(Sketchbook 1: Three Americans, 1960)  

How do we belong to the world?

“In what ways do we belong to the world?”

 This question lies at the core of the work of John Berger, according to Nikos Papastergiadis in an essay Forest (A Jar of Wild Flowers: Essays in celebration of John Berger, 2023, p.83.)

Such a profound question ~

It’s a question that helps me think about my painting in general – how I want to share something of my experience in the world as an older woman – and about how I can develop it through the particular and specific.

Currently I’m working on a series of abstract paintings that arise from walking the canal path in Oxford on my way to my new studio. Houses and gardens back on to the canal, some humble and some grand. Each meeting of garden and canal is different. What people do with their 3 or 4 metre stretch of bank is fascinating to me. Each has some way of holding up the small bank, while often including a step down to the water. There are old trees in random positions along the canal that have been built around. Some board their canal edge and place chairs there. Some keep canoes. Some incorporate it into the garden. Some keep it very trim; others let it grow wild. Many have little sheds there, some turned into offices. And from my vantage point across the water, I see what’s happening at canal level – broken steps, weeds, shadows, and ducks.

 On sunny mornings, the low English sun strims through buildings and branches on to the green water. Sometimes the brightness lies beyond the dark bank, pulling the eye up into the garden. Sometimes patches of sky lie on the water.

My paintings take from the experience of walking and looking. They take the random patches of light and shade, the horizontals and verticals of planks and steps and sheds, the secret tangles below the bank and the overhanging tangles of branches and brambles.

In choosing colour and combining forms, I am speaking of how I belong to this world –committed still to the practice of attention and noticing, starting over in a new studio, priced out of houses backing on to water, privileged to walk on this path, while slightly wary as a woman alone.

 Half a world away in New Zealand, I transform this particular, specific belonging into little studies on paper, in preparation for big paintings on canvas.

Investigations continue

The work of self-knowledge and understanding is never done. It guides and informs everything.

This quote, from an academic paper on self, identity and the danger of narrative*, spoke to me - and with a recent painting that is called Interference, (acrylic on raw canvas, 60 x 80cm).

Other sources of insight currently include:

*Camila Orca, K., (2018) Opaque Selves: A Ricœurian Response to Galen Strawson’s Anti- Narrative Arguments, Études Ricœuriennes / Ricœur Studies, Vol 9, No 1 (2018,) pp. 70-89 . DOI 10.5195/errs.2018.387

Midnight Blue

In the beautiful Oxford Botanic Gardens, I was sitting in rosy sunshine  contemplating the possibility of using plant dyes in painting. A core colour in my artwork is the dark steely blue of indigo, and, yes, there was an indigo plant in the gardens. A helpful gardener showed me where to find it -and in flower (below right), although it’s the leaves that make the dye.

Walking home I passed a pen shop and noticed that it sells ink in a range of delicious colours. There was no indigo but I came away with the beautifully named Midnight Blue to try out.

 I love using ink on wet watercolour paper - as it spreads, it creates unexpected forms and weird edges. It also changes colour as it dilutes into the wetness of the paper. Black India Ink dilutes to shades of grey that verge on browns

Midnight Blue lets loose its underlying colours, revealing a vibrant turquoise and a surprising pink.

This contingent emergence of form and colour fascinates me. I prepare the surface, allow the conditions, then the ink does its thing. I can adjust the process to a limited degree by tilting, adding or subtracting water.

As I get to understand what a new material can do, a dialogue starts with earlier work as I think back to past paintings and processes for possible new ways to work. I wondered what would happen on a disrupted surface, and over handwriting. AT the top of this post is the outcome. I wrote out the opening words from and Iris Murdoch’s text (The Sovereignty of Good Over Other Concepts, 1967) on to thick watercolour paper, ripped them and glued them randomly to construct an almost 3d surface. Then I experimented with Midnight Blue ink spreading on this disrupted surface. This step draws on the word-collaging technique I developed 6 years ago in Berlin Notes in the Dark. That technique was used on a larger scale in the series Other People. In those paintings, pairs or groups of people engaged in unheard dialogue, their individual stance and the space between them conveying something of their relationship. You can see both series on this page by scrolling down.

The final step was reducing the insistence of the words with a layer of white paint on some sections..

Without a loss of substance (detail)

A deeper layer of questions

Finding new ways to interconnect my writing and my painting is a continuing theme in my studio practice.

I spent a long coffee break going through my turquoise notebook – that’s the one where I write notes about my reading. In my mind that day was how to think about some ‘self-portraits’ I’d been painting, how to tie them in to my practice. I re-read notes from poetry workshops to see what spoke to me now. Notes from zoom calls with my friend. Notes about ideas and notes to self. Sometimes screams of agony. Notes and connections. More of an on-going conversation than notes.

The notebook’s timespan included encounters with Laurie Anderson’s Norton Lectures , Jane Hirshfield workshop at Coffee House Poetry, Bracha Ettinger on matrixial theory, Griselda Pollock on Charlotte Salomon, Gabriel Josopovici on Modernism, and the Weird Studies podcast. Iris Murdoch and Simone Weil on attention, on ‘unselfing’, linger in the background always.

My conversation with the notebook turned itself into a list of questions. I realised as I listed them that these were the questions I needed to ask of the portraits.

I gave each portrait half a day to answer the questions. By writing in response to the paintings, I wanted to lead myself deeper into the labyrinth, to explore the mystery while retaining the mystery. Not to ‘unpack’ or explain – impossible – to notice more. The answers became a starting text, to be worked into something more poetic until it fitted, resonated, joined forces, with the painting.

I’m still working out how to best present these hybrid artworks, exhibition or book or ... Meanwhile, here are the questions. Perhaps they would work for you? Or perhaps you could find your own set from your notebook?

Questioning a painting

What can be seen in the painting?

What happens with attention?

            where is attention drawn on looking at the painting?

what was my attention drawn to when I was painting?

How does the painting gesture to beauty and goodness and tenderness? and to the shadow?

 What’s being amplified?

 Where’s the uncertainty?

 What’s the weirdness?

 What’s oscillating? What dynamics are in action?

 Any collaborations going on? e.g. with ideas, with other painters

 What has returned in a new way?

 What transformation has occurred / is offered?

 What possibilities are being held in creative tension?

draft of Yay Day writing~painting artwork, Lynne Cameron 2023

Refound

We found the leaves pressed between two pieces of kitchen roll inside a book that I left here in NZ in October 2020. I have no memory of their collecting, pressing, laying aside.

Refound, they are making new memories as she turns 6, as she creates and owns her artwork.

And as I gather the new paintings I’ve made here for titling, signing and photographing, I notice how we influence each other, grow through each other’s presence. Grandmothering.

Deep Looking

Several years ago, I gathered a set of questions to support people looking at paintings. The power of attention and noticing has been important in all my work, academic and art. Visual attention as a painter is different from the aural and analytic attention I needed in my research into spoken metaphor.

These questions are an introduction to attending to paintings, particularly abstract painting. I’ve recently developed new questions that go more deeply into the theoretical aspects of painting - I’ll share these soon. Meanwhile here are my initial deep looking questions. They’ve been trialled in several gallery / artist talks - viewers are invited to sit with a painting for at least 5 minutes and then to respond to the questions on paper, through writing or mark-making. I am always amazed by what people find..

Residency reflections 6: Painting and other arts

At the end of my residency at the Berghof Foundation we held an event to celebrate what we’d made and discuss what we’d learnt.

It was interesting for me throughout my stay to hear about the creative activities of Berghof staff and how creativity inhabits people’s lives. I came with my painting practice and poetry; other people had experience in, and love for other art forms: theatre, photography, music. In our conversation, we talked about the performative arts and how they might offer ways of working with others to reframe situations and emotions.

Painting can be performative and collaborative, but is often a more private and silent activity. It is non-verbal, and there’s a power, I find, in losing oneself in colour, line and form. While busy with the material and mixing of paint with water, the body occupied with brushing and looking, the mind is quietened for a time and returns to some kind of equilibrium. From the time ‘lost in painting’, we can emerge invigorated and somehow more balanced. The activity is, in itself, restorative; the end result of the painting serves as a reminder of process and is not required to be more than that.

An edited summary of our conversation can be found here

https://berghof-foundation.org/news/transformation-through-art-talk-with-lynne-cameron

Meanwhile, the discussion around art, creativity, and conflict transformation continues …

An occupation of the body. Lynne Cameron, 2022. Acrylic, pencil and charcoal on collaged handwriting, 61 x 84 cm.

Residency reflections 5: Creative thinking in the Imaginal Space

In the middle week of the residency we dived a little deeper into the idea of the imaginal space and what can happen there. Taking space literally, we held an in-person Studio Interlude and set up a table with materials for art-making in the canteen. But the term imaginal space is powerful as a metaphor to characterise creative thinking in project teams and by individuals.

The imaginal space is where

•       creative thinking happens

•       we catch whispers of possibility

•       unknowing is welcomed

•       opposites are held in creative tension

•       sparks fly

•       intuition speaks

•       we attend / listen / look

•       multiple ways forward reveal themselves and enter into creative tension with what is

If you were to watch me painting in the studio, you would see me in a physical space with resources that support my artwork. You would also notice that the work is marked by pauses and ponderings, periods of sitting and looking, of walking around the room, of doodling on scraps of paper and writing in notebooks. What’s going on in these times is all of the above – I take the painting in progress into my own imaginal space in order to find the next steps. These come out of letting new possibilities arise and holding them in creative tension with what is already on the canvas.

 What is possible for a painting in progress

• includes choices in colour / shape / line

• may show itself through accidents

• is sometimes deliberately searched for in my ‘vocabulary’ and previous experience

• is also suggested by what’s around – images and colours on the studio wall, in notebooks, photos

 And sometimes it is necessary to do something disruptive…

What might imaginal space look like for people and organisations wanting to encourage creative thinking?

For individuals, it might be five minutes staring out of the window at the long view, allowing current issues to sink back into a more realistic shape and reminders of previous expertise to bubble to the surface. It might be plants or images alongside the computer to gaze into. Or taking a little time out at a crucial stage of a project to sit with a coffee, a notebook and coloured pens.

Imaginal space for groups might be supported by workshops sharing creative activities. I suspect it needs less tangible forms too: permission and conditions that nourish creativity. Recognition that projects benefit from injections of solo and group creative thinking and that time needs to be built in for this, meetings without agendas, ad hoc encounters and conversations in surroundings that inspire.

below: collaborative and individual artwork from Studio Interlude

Residency reflections continued: Maintaining a creative practice

The residency at the Berghof Foundation was conceived in the belief that there is creative power within each of us and that this power can benefit the work that we are committed to. Sometimes our creative power gets silenced, put down perhaps by thoughtless words from a childhood teacher or lost in the pressures of life. I aimed to nourish and re-activate this creative power through various hands-on activities - shifting to a visual mode through drawing and painting with the hands can release something in people who spend their days engrossed in words on screens. On a wider scale, we considered the work of conflict transformation as a creative practice.

I shared the shape of my creative practice as a painter and invited people to consider their own work in these terms:

• how the physical space of the studio makes a difference, what’s on the walls, the materials, my tables and easel

• my use of images, sketchbooks, photos

• how my practice is about the intangible too: commitment, values, intention, life choices

• how rituals and routines support making art

• the daily practice of journal writing, reading, intuitive painting, and time in the studio space

• how the practice is nourished with gallery visits, books, talks

• influences on my work of other painters and philosophers

After reflecting on their own work, we discussed aspects of the physical space in which conflict transformation happens, the meeting rooms people sit in, the food offered. Every aspect incorporates a message to participants and contributes to the conditions in which dialogue happens.

We talked about visualising ideas to simplify and to adjust thinking.

And arising as perhaps most important was the question of how time and space for creative, non-linear thinking might be incorporated in the pressurised processes of conflict transformation and peace-building.

I labelled this idea ‘the imaginal space’ and next time, I’ll share our deeper dive into what happens there.

Reflections on my artist residency with the Berghof Foundation 3: Creating found poems

Given a page, a poem is found by letting words jump out to meet the eyes.

Then moving up and down the page, adding words or omitting them to let a new text take shape.

A different text that echoes with the original. Forged from metaphors. Allowing the richness of multiple and implied meanings.

 Isolating the words out of the page and attending to the shape of the found poem.

Adding form and colour to re-connect the words into the new whole.

Sustained and repeated attention to each word and its position in the text – we keep the rule of reading left to right from the top, while breaking others, upending grammar, and shifting focus.

 Re-composing fragments of a careful text, inspired by the work and composed for clarity.

Choosing the force of the new.

Reflections on my artist residency with the Berghof Foundation 2: How to begin?

My vision for this work is best described as bringing my art practice alongside conflict transformation in the belief that something positive can happen in that shared creative space.

I don’t claim to know what will happen or even how. My experience does convince me that opening up my painting practice offers opportunities for other people to feel energised and more vibrant. And that feels like something valuable to offer to people engaged in the vital, difficult work of conflict transformation and peace building, the people who do the field work and the people who produce resources for them.*

So there I was with these ideas offered to the Berghof Foundation and received with interest. How to proceed when the pandemic prevented me travelling?

Home studio

As an artist, paintings emerge out of my, almost daily, studio practice and are intrinsically connected to my lived experience: what I’m reflecting on, what I’m reading, who and what I’m seeing day by day. In my original vision, residency artwork would come out of taking that studio practice into dialogue with the new environment, responding creatively to the work of the organization through empathic engagement with its people, practices, and processes.

Instead I began this engagement online, watching interviews and documentaries on the website, attending a Zoom staff meeting where I introduced myself and the idea of the residency. To these ‘watchings’ I took along my sketchbook, capturing words and images that resonated for me, later adding colour as I reflected on what I’d heard and see. The tempo of a voice might prompt a line moving across the page. The emotion heard behind a related experience might prompt a colour.

I started a series of online ‘Studio Interludes’ with staff, inviting them to my studio to see what was in progress, talking about art and conflict transformation, and about other artists. (More on these in la later post.)

In the summer of my missed visit, BF sent me a copy of their 50th anniversary book that celebrates the work they have done since being founded in 1970. The carefully wrought texts and images in the book helped me immerse myself further in the work of the Foundation. And as I continued my studio practice at home in Scotland, I began to see how these very pages could be the beginning of residency artworks, as ‘found poems’.

Next time, the process of creating the found poems…

*It seems likely that art can be of benefit to conflicted parties during the processes of negotiating and building peace. I’m not yet in a position to claim that or to offer many strategies for doing it. I am collecting examples of such work.