Correspondence with Sarah Pickstone. The Winter Garden.
Sarah,
In the garden’s bare bones of winter it’s harder to reach a place of desire and inspiration. I have spent the past year unearthing my garden onto canvas, moving through overgrown jungles of colour where fairy tales and female subjects appear on my canvas. Perhaps it’s not the weather; maybe the garden isn’t holding me just now.
The neck of the swan hangs, its body plump, feathers splayed majestically. A dead swan. I am making clumsy drawings from an exquisite Rubens painting. It occurs to me the swan shape is tree-like and reminds me of the magnolia outside my window. Lizi is heartbroken; swans mate for life. I sit her under the magnolia tree so I can visualise her with the swan and the she-wolf, Lupa.
In the Rubens painting the dead swan is on a table with a dead peacock. I imagine it less dead in a tree in the garden. I draw a peacock, its long magnificent coat. I find some peacock feathers in the studio, as though they had been waiting for me; funny how that happens.
Several drawings later I begin painting ...
It occurs to me that, in contrast to earlier works, on this upload I have focused more on drawing and composition. Is this ok? I’m not sure if I have progressed or become too self-conscious. However I’m pleased things are moving again. One observation is that initially I explored the garden as a mass of natural forms painted freely, and now I am creating pictorial and emotional space. I think: should I visit other gardens? How can I develop and keep it fresh?
The women, my garden (nature) and Rubens are overlapping; the combinations take away from garden static. Metaphors emerge and I write short poems alongside the work. The work is mostly based on a personal experience, which I want to be hidden and universal. I dip into mythology; Leda, Narcissus which leads me to Echo.
Echo is a painting I leave in what, I think, might be an unfinished state; but then feel glad it is left.
The large swan painting, which I name Silent, has been very challenging, figures painted in and out. Agonising, I have repainted it several times but can’t let it go. I learn from it and it’s a new area, bringing separate entities together; but it’s possibly overcooked. I paint a smaller quicker version from the large painting; it is satisfying, quick broad brushstrokes. I complete it in a day.
I’m also painting Forest Dancers which is directly from a Rubens; this method of working always helps me stop thinking.
Saw Kiki Smith at the MAO in oxford, her tapestries gave me a sense of mythologies and wanderings of life in other worlds that are always just outside the window.
Radical figures at the Whitechapel gave me a much needed look at favourite contemporary painters, especially Cecily Brown, Armitage. Sanya Kantarovsky; an interesting new find. Still looking at Bonnard, Monet and Van Gogh.
From Jayne
