Paule Vézelay: No One Is a Prophet in Their Own Land

Vézelay’s oil-on-canvas Growing Forms (1946)

‘Art develops. The more you think about it, the more it changes.’
Paule Vézelay

I recently visited a splendid exhibition of the work of Paule Vézelay (The RWA, Bristol until 27 April), and supplemented it by watching a compelling 1984 interview with the artist by Germaine Greer (BBC, Women of Our Century).

 ‘What is important is the work. Is it original? Is it well done? Is it good?’

Vezelay was one of the first British painters of abstract art. She created joyous works inspired by natural forms. She experimented with shadows, silhouettes, colours, curves and movement. And, above all, she conjured up ‘living lines.’

‘After much study, practice and thought, I began to hope that, whether painted or drawn, my lines were ‘living lines’… and in my most optimistic moments I was content, feeling that these lines did indeed come from my hand and my Spirit…that they were inevitable.’

Born Marjorie Watson-Williams in Bristol in 1892, the daughter of a surgeon, Vézelay studied at the Bristol School of Art and, briefly, at the Slade School of Fine Art.

‘I’d already studied in art school for two years, and I didn’t want to be treated as a beginner at the Slade. They were very old fashioned, I thought… And I was bored to death.’

Paule Vézelay, Silhouettes, 1938. Photo England & Co ©Estate of Paule Vézelay

Vézelay’s early output was figurative. She had an eye for observing people and a fascination with the theatre. All was to change when she visited Paris in 1921. She was stunned by the quality of the art she found in the galleries and suddenly England seemed terribly provincial.

‘There wasn’t anything outstanding to my mind at that time in England.’

In 1926 Vézelay moved to France on her own, to forge a new life and embark on a radical transformation of her work. Marking this new chapter, she adopted the name Paule Vézelay, ‘for purely aesthetic reasons.’

‘I’ve never pretended to be a man. Never… It certainly would have been easier for me as an artist if I had been a man.’

Vézelay dived headlong into the French capital’s artistic life. She became part of a circle that included Picasso, Matisse, Calder, Kandinsky and Miro. Abandoning figurative painting, she adopted abstraction and joined the Abstraction-Création movement. And she fell in love, with fellow artist André Masson, living and working with him for four years. Their engagement however was called off.

‘Unfortunately – or fortunately – I had reason to change my mind. And I changed it, which was very painful.’

She remained unmarried for the rest of her life.

Paule Vézelay pictured circa 1919. Photograph: Estate of Paule Vézelay/RWA

Vézelay’s art is full of floating biomorphic shapes, bright optimistic colours, airy spaces and sensuous, serpentine lines. 

‘[Curves] exist in nature and they exist in life. Why limit yourself to straight lines and angles?’

She sought to make work which lifts the spirit.

‘I dislike sad art. There’s enough real sadness in real life. I think an artist might create something joyful or happy or pleasing.’

Vézelay was always curious to try new things. She experimented with three dimensional pictures that featured threads or wires strung across the picture frame and hung in shallow boxes.

‘You’ve got to do a lot of thinking before you invent something which is rather new.’

On the outbreak of the Second World War, Vézelay moved, reluctantly, back to Bristol, where she served in the Home Guard and cared for her elderly mother. She also set about drawing bomb damaged buildings and barrage balloons (what she called ‘tough monsters’). And all the while she continued to produce abstract paintings. 

 ‘A line’s very extraordinary. It can be dark or light or curved or straight. And it can be a lively line, a dull line. But you’ve got to be able to control it with your hand, and that takes years of practice.’

After the war Vézelay had difficulty gaining recognition from England’s conservative art establishment. Nevertheless, she persisted. 

‘I start work at my easel and I know it’s bad, know it’s quite bad. But I think it’ll lead onto something better. So I go on. And I can always tear up the bad work I’ve done. It often does lead to something more complete and better. Bad work can lead to good work.’

Relief sculptures … Lines in Space No 51 (1965). Photograph: © The Estate of Paule Vézelay

In the 1950s, to supplement her modest income, Vézelay designed textiles for Metz & Co of Amsterdam and Heal's of London. 

‘I have a certain amount of faith in myself, confidence in myself.’

Vézelay exhibited occasionally and sold some of her pieces. But for the most part, not given to self-promotion, she remained outside the public eye. As Greer observed in the 1984 interview:

‘Her work is her life, and she keeps it about her as a living oyster keeps its pearl.’

In the interview we see an elderly Vézelay at home. She wears a smart silver necklace, has neat grey hair and a benign smile, listening patiently, replying precisely.

‘I like my work, strange as it may seem. I like my paintings. I like to keep them. I’m never in a hurry to sell them.’

 She emerges as a self-possessed, intelligent woman, with a steely determination to make up her own mind and forge her own path.

‘To draw a line is very difficult. It takes years before you can draw the exact line you want in the exact way, in the exact place that you want it to be.’

The story of Paule Vézelay reminds us of the Biblical aphorism: 

‘A prophet is not without honour, except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house.’
Mark 6:4 

Sometimes we are not properly appreciated by our friends, family and colleagues. Sometimes we must leave our home, our town, our country, our workplace, in order to break free from limiting assumptions and constraining conventions; in order to establish our own way in the world.

The Tate finally gave Vézelay a retrospective exhibition in 1983. She died the following year, aged 91.  

Greer: Would you say that yours has been a happy life?

Vezelay: I don’t know what you mean by happy. I did what I wanted to do. I wasn’t obliged to go and work as a typist in an office, or as a saleswoman, or as a children’s nurse. I’ve been very fortunate.

'When you're running out
And you hear them coming like an army loud.
No time for packing,
When you're running out.
You fall to the ground
But you're holding on.
Is this called home?
Land turns to dust,
This can't be home,
Time's running out for us.’
Lucy Rose, ‘Is This Called Home?’ (L R Parton)

No. 512

Tarot: The Story Machine

Installation view, Tarot: Photo: Stephen White & Co. Courtesy The Warburg Institute

I recently saw a small but thought-provoking exhibition about the history of tarot. (‘Tarot - Origins and Afterlives’ is at the Warburg Institute, London until 30 April.)

Tarot cards originated as a recreational game in northern Italy. They have been used as a mystical means of interpreting the past and predicting the future; and as a creative tool to generate stories and interrogate social norms.

Tarot, or ‘tarocchi’, first appeared in Ferrara and Milan in the 15th century, when the Fool and 21 trumps (‘trionfi’) were added to the standard pack of four suits. Subsequently it spread to most of Europe.

In 1781 a French clergyman, scholar and Freemason, Antoine Court de Gebelin, asserted that tarot was not just a courtly card game, but a repository of arcane wisdom derived from the ancient Egyptian Book of Thoth. There was no historical evidence for this. But that didn’t stop Parisian print-seller, Jean Baptiste Alliette (known as Etteilla, a reversal of his surname) from founding a society dedicated to its study. They produced their own tarot deck, the first to be explicitly designed for fortune-telling.

In the 1880s tarot was adopted in Britain by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a secret organisation committed to the occult. In the early twentieth century the Golden Dawn (whose number included WB Yeats and Aleister Crowley) fractured into new groups that linked spirituality to science, combining Christian mysticism with occult symbolism.

Tarot - Origin & Afterlives

The tarot characters are certainly evocative, including as they do: the Pope and Popess; the Moon, the Star and the Sun; the Juggler, Judgement and Justice; the Hermit, the Hanged Man and the House of God; the Lovers and the Fool, Death and the Devil. When one regards the cards, one can’t help imagining mysterious adventures and unexpected encounters; dates with destiny and the cruel hand of fate.

Italian writer Italo Calvino recognised that tarot cards can have value beyond predicting fortunes. As a versatile system of suggestive symbols, they are ideally suited to telling stories – about the past, the future, the self and society. His 1973 book ‘The Castle of Crossed Destinies’ featured a group of enchanted travellers who, mysteriously deprived of speech, communicate through tarot cards.

In more recent times, tarot has been adopted by countercultural and futurist movements as a prompt to envision alternative futures. At the exhibition you can see how it has been used to indicate fresh opportunities in the fields of town planning, surveillance and social justice; climate change and AI.

I confess I’m not naturally drawn to mysticism and the occult. But I did find the curious course that tarot has taken through the years fascinating. And the cards themselves are often aesthetically compelling. 

In particular, I was struck by the way that tarot has been employed as an imaginative story generator. It brought to mind the creative techniques used by the Surrealists in 1920s Paris.

We live in a world of filter bubbles, confirmation bias and conspiracy theories. Social media and the algorithm drive convergence, coherence and convention, endlessly serving up information and opinion that support a narrow, myopic view of how the world works. 

We should consider any creative tools that open us up to inspiration from the hidden, familiar and forgotten; that prompt us to consider fresh paths and perspectives - new stories for understanding contemporary complexity.

We should learn to respect the fool on the hill.

‘Day after day,
Alone on a hill,
The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still.
But nobody wants to know him,
They can see that he's just a fool,
And he never gives an answer.
But the fool on the hill sees the Sun going down,
And the eyes in his head see the world spinning round.’
The Beatles, ‘The Fool on the Hill’ (P McCartney, J Lennon)

No. 511

Noah Davis: Breaking the Spell

1975 by Noah Davis.Oil on canvas.
Image: Kerry McFate/Courtesy The Estate of Noah Davis and David Zwirner

I recently enjoyed an excellent retrospective of the art of Noah Davis. (The Barbican Art Gallery, London until 11 May.)

‘Do I have to make it new and about hip hop and all this shit to get people interested? Or maybe there is something else?’
Noah Davis

Davis was an energetic, truly creative thinker, committed to making art accessible to all. In his work he sought to represent the normality of African American community life. His paintings of anonymous figures at rest and play, touched by the mysterious and uncanny, have a timeless, dreamlike, haunted quality. He seems to be asking us to imagine a better world. 

‘I wanted Black people to be normal. That was my whole thing. We are normal, right?’

Noah Davis, The artist is incomplete … Untitled, 2015.
Photograph: Kerry McFate/(c) The Estate of Noah Davis Courtesy The Estate of Noah Davis and David Zwirner

Davis was born in Seattle in 1983, the youngest son of a lawyer and an educator. 
Having taken to painting as a teenager, his parents rented him his own studio to stop him ruining the carpets at home. He curated his first exhibition in a shopping mall.

‘I’d rather fail at painting than be successful in anything else.’

Davis studied film and conceptual art at Cooper Union, New York, leaving without graduating, so as to pursue his own education in LA. He clearly had a restless, curious mind. Employed at a specialist bookshop, he immersed himself in diverse works from art history. He bought vintage photos of Black life from flea-markets, and set up blogs in the early days of the internet. 

‘I’m fascinated with the instances where Black aesthetics and modernist aesthetics collide.’

Carefree children cavort in the azure open-air swimming pool, watched by a lifeguard in a red singlet. A group of young men relax by the lake. And two girls lie asleep on the cream sofa. There’s a businessman in a green jacket with a trilby hat, walking with a briefcase along the sidewalk. A teenager levitates on the front lawn, and a young lad rides a white unicorn. Karon stands in the yard in a gold leotard, with large yellow fan-wings at her sides - a contemporary Isis. 

‘I want it to be magical. I don’t want it to be stuck in reality.’

Davis was inspired by Egyptian mythology, daytime TV, historical art, modernist architecture, and photos that his mother took of Chicago in the 1970s. He was quick to paint and slow to contemplate. He rapidly applied rabbit skin glue beneath washes of diluted oil paint to give his images a vibrant sheen. And then he sat in front of his work for hours. 

‘Priorities: walker, painter, Black person, flaneur, all around wild and crazy guy, nice guy.’

The Pueblo del Rio housing project in LA, designed in part by African American architect Paul Revere Williams, was constructed in 1941 as a ‘garden city’ for Black defence workers. It subsequently became impoverished and run down. Davis reimagined how the neighbourhood could look. Ballet dancers practice their arabesques in a courtyard, musicians play by the roadside, and a man sits in sunshine with outstretched legs, engrossed in his newspaper. Images emerge from, and dissolve into, abstract streetscenes and landscapes. These are intimate everyday events, tinged with melancholy and mysticism.

‘I wanted to make anonymous moments permanent.’

Noah Davis - Isis, 2009,
Image: Courtesy ©The Estate of Noah Davis, David Zwirner, Mellon Foundation Art Collective

In 2012 Davis and his wife, fellow-artist Karon Davis, co-founded the Underground Museum on a site behind four storefronts in the historically Black neighbourhood of Arlington Heights. Their vision was to create an artspace that was free and open to all.

‘Mission Statement: To exhibit world-class art to a community that does not have access to such resources.’

Davis asked established museums to lend pieces to the new gallery, but none was forthcoming. And so he created his own versions of works by the likes of Marcel Duchamp, Don Flavin and Jeff Koons, titling the show ‘Imitation of Wealth.’ Within a few years the Museum of Contemporary Art, LA had agreed to loan art from its permanent collection. 

Noah Davis - Pueblo del Rio, Arabesque, 2014
Copyright: The Estate of Noah Davis, Courtesy THe Estate of Noah Davis and David Zwirner

Davis teaches us to pursue our own path with gusto; to persevere and find lateral solutions. He suggests that we should integrate the real and imaginary, the ordinary and fantastical; that we should ‘break the spell’ of convention and past practice.

‘These elements of fantasy may arise from my need to ‘break the spell,’ or the constraints of art theory, and move more into the realms of mysticism.’

In 2013 Davis was diagnosed with liposarcoma, a rare form of cancer. He carried on working from hospital beds and kitchen tables, right up until the end. He died at his home in Ojai, California in 2015. He was 32.

'When life seems full of clouds and rain
And I am full of nothin' and pain,
Who soothes my thumping, bumping brain?
Nobody.
When winter comes with snow and sleet
And me with hunger and cold feet,
Who says, "Here's twenty-five cents, go ahead and get somethin’ to eat?”
Nobody.’

Bert Williams, ‘Nobody’ (B Williams, A Rogers)

No. 510

‘Are You Together?’: Is Your Business Like a Team or a Family?

It was a busy Friday evening at the Fish Central takeaway counter. I’d made my usual order - cod, chips and mushy peas - and was waiting to one side for the fish to fry.

Next up in the queue was a track-suited man in his mid 40s.

‘Scampi and chips please, with a couple of onion rings.’ 

Behind him was a woman of a similar age, with a child alongside.

‘Just two small cod and chips for us.’

The Cypriot chap taking the orders at the till looked up at the man and woman.

‘Are you together?’

They regarded each other wearily. ‘Yes, we’re together,’ replied the track-suited man.

Then he retreated to where I was waiting by the window and muttered under his breath: ‘Just about.’

The woman could tell he’d made a sarcastic remark.

‘What’s that you said?’

‘Oh, nothing, dearest….’ 

This exchange prompted me to speculate on the nature of the family’s relationships. I imagined the couple had been an item for some time. They’d got past romantic gestures and displays of affection. They were now familiar with each other’s faults and foibles, and were enjoying subtle digs and droll remarks. The kid seemed entirely comfortable with their sharp words.

'The family – that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to.'
Dodie Smith, Novelist and Playwright

In corporate life we often see ourselves as creating high-performance sports teams. The leadership challenge is characterised as managing a diverse set of talents and personalities; organising them to function optimally, day-in, day-out; encouraging them to work towards a single unifying goal. We promote players who excel; drop them to the bench if they’re out of form; transfer them if they don’t improve. 

This is certainly a useful way of framing the task. But I sometimes find sport analogies a little clinical, somewhat two dimensional.

Real life and real commerce are, in my experience, a good deal more messy than this.

'Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible - the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family.’
Virginia Satir, Clinical Social Worker and Psychotherapist

The best businesses also have something of the family about them. The core members have enjoyed the good times and endured the bad times together. They have rolled with life’s punches, learned to accommodate each other’s shortcomings and eccentricities; to acknowledge rivalries and accept differences. The relationships are complex and varied. The conversations are frank and open. The hierarchies are arcane and mysterious. They have been bound together by emotional ties of shared experience and values that date back years. They are fiercely loyal to each other.

Of course, analogies only go so far. 

Once home, I liberated the cod and chips from its paper wrapping, poured the mushy peas to one side of the heated plate and sprinkled the dish with salt, dousing it in vinegar. Alone tonight, I dined from a tray and watched football on TV. And I washed the feast down with a glass of cold Chablis. 

‘Haven't you noticed
A breakdown in the family tie?
Just not as strong as it once was,
Every time I see it weaken, it makes me want to cry.
Oh, what a shame,
Because another home's falling apart.
Oh, what a shame,
Another group of broken hearts.
It's not a secret,
We all know that it's slipping away.
Don't let it go, no, don't you let it go.
It is the only true foundation on which we can survive.
Don't be afraid,
Because you got to take it for a stand.
Don't be afraid,
You've got to try to understand.
Bring the family back, bring it back together.
Bring the family back,
Bring the family back, bring it back together,
Together.’
Billy Paul, ‘Bring the Family Back’ (F Smith / T Phillip)

No. 509

Molly Drake: ‘I Remember Firelight and You Remember Smoke’

Molly Drake

Molly Drake was born into English middle-class privilege, endured the vicissitudes of war, raised two gifted children, and suffered terrible family trauma. She was also a remarkable poet and musician who did not publish any of her work during her lifetime. 

For her, creativity was a private pursuit; a natural articulation of her thoughts and feelings; an expression of talent that didn’t need recognition or affirmation.

‘I sometimes think when it is time to die 
I may perhaps have learnt the way to live.
I may have learnt to sift from out the grain 
The chaff of littleness that blurs my eyes,
Small worries, little thoughts and little ways,
That creeping canker of insignificance
That eat away the very heart of life
And leaves behind the dull and flaccid shell.
I live hard, and oh, I hardly live
If living is become life’s only business.
And so I go stumbling and all perplexed,
Puffed on the dreary wind of little fears,
An eddied leaf jostled upon the tide
And seeing not the tide’s magnificence.’

Molly Drake, ‘Martha’ (Poem)

Molly was born in 1915 to military parents stationed in Rangoon. Educated in England, she returned to Burma, where she met and married Rodney Drake. With the outbreak of World War 2, Rodney enlisted and Molly made the gruelling trek on foot to Delhi with her sister Nancy. In comparative safety there, she formed a musical duet with Nancy, and worked as a co-host on All India Radio. Towards the end of the war, she was reunited with her husband, and gave birth to their two children, Gabrielle and Nick.

In 1952 the Drakes moved to England, to Tanworth-in-Arden, where Molly spent the rest of her life. As well as raising her children, she composed poems and songs, and played the piano for family and friends. 

‘I never thought I was glamorous,
Nor dreamed I could inspire
Feelings that were amorous,
Red-hot flames of desire.
But now the door has opened on 
A land of milk and honey.
It’s wonderful, it’s marvellous
But Lord! It’s terribly funny.’

Molly Drake, ‘Laugh of the Year’ (Song)

Molly was quiet, shy and somewhat reclusive, and her life was in many ways typical of a woman of her era and class. It was marked by conventional milestones; sustained by the usual hopes and disappointments; encumbered by the ordinary domestic duties. And yet it also saw terrible tragedy.

Gabrielle grew up to become an actor and Nick a musician. But Nick had poor mental health, and in 1974, aged 26, he was found dead due to an overdose of antidepressants. 

Molly dealt with her grief in the old-fashioned way. She didn’t complain. She kept busy. She wrote, composed and played. She carried on.

‘But time is ever a vagabond,
Time was always a thief.
Time can steal away happiness,
But time can take away grief.
So I won’t try to remember, 
For that way leads to regret.
No, I won’t try to remember
What I can never forget.’

Molly Drake, ‘Do You Ever Remember?’ (Song)

Molly Drake and Nick shopping

With Rodney’s help, in the 1950s Molly recorded some of her songs at home on a reel-to-reel tape machine. The recordings were later re-engineered by John Wood (who had worked closely with Nick) and finally issued in 2013.

Accompanying herself on the piano, Molly sings tunefully, mournfully, in a Home Counties accent. With precise phrasing and occasionally a wry smile, she tells of mercurial love and fleeting happiness; of consoling nights and sustaining dreams. She relates stories of birds and butterflies; wild winds and summer rains; of the pain of nostalgia and forced separation; of regretful recollections and the constraints of motherhood.

I was particularly struck by one composition, ‘I Remember,’ in which Molly recounts how a couple have completely different memories of the same events.

'We tramped the open moorland in the rainy April weather,
And came upon the little inn that we had found together.
The landlord gave us toast and tea and stopped to share a joke,
And I remember firelight,
I remember firelight,
I remember firelight,
And you remember smoke.

We ran about the meadow grass with all the harebells bending,
And shaking in the summer wind the Summer never ending.
We wandered to the little stream among the river flats,
And I remember willow trees,
I remember willow trees,
I remember willow trees,
And you remember gnats.’

Molly Drake, ‘I Remember' (Song)

At the conclusion of this recording, you can just make out Rodney’s quiet approval:

‘I should think that's really good.’ 

Memory is an elusive space, sometimes crisp and clear, sometimes vague and nebulous. Rarely consistent, often disputed, it binds us together and drives us apart. Some of us view the past through rose tinted spectacles; others see it through clouds of gloom. ‘Recollections may vary.’ 

And because of all this, memory is a prime source and subject for creativity. 

'To me a poem is not a forever thing, nor the statement of long held views, but the product of a moment so suddenly and hurtingly felt that it has to burst out into words.'

Molly died in 1993 and was buried in Tanworth-in-Arden, alongside her husband and son. Early on the morning of Christmas Day 1992, her last Christmas, she had written the following stanza:

‘Amid the unceasing starts and flurries
My heart is busy at its usual game,
The manufacturing of woes and worries
Lest the serene of life should seem too tame.’



‘We strolled the Spanish marketplace at ninety in the shade,
With all the fruit and vegetables so temptingly arrayed,
And we can share a memory as every lover must,
And I remember oranges,
I remember oranges,
I remember oranges,
And you remember dust.

The autumn leaves are tumbling down and winter's almost here,
But through the Spring and Summer time we laughed away the year,
And now we can be grateful for the gift of memory,
When I remember having fun,
Two happy hearts that beat as one,
When I had thought that we were we,
But we were you and me.’

Molly Drake, ‘I Remember' (Song)

No. 508

The Sisterhood of Mickalene Thomas: Create the Right Context, Then Focus and Celebrate

Mama Bush (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher

I recently enjoyed an exhibition of work by the African American artist Mickalene Thomas. (‘All About Love’ is at the Hayward Gallery, London until 5 May.)

‘With painting you can manipulate time, shaping how it’s perceived. It’s about exploring fantasy, illusion and the creation of desire.’
Mickalene Thomas

Thomas creates paintings, photographs, collages and installations that celebrate her family, friends and lovers. Her portraits are big, bold, colourful and confident. Conveying a very human presence with intimacy and intensity, they stop us in our tracks, hold us in their gaze.

‘To see yourself, and for others to see you, is a form of validation. I’m interested in that very mysterious and mystical way we relate to each other in the world.’

Born in 1971, in Camden, New Jersey, Thomas was raised by her mother, a former fashion model, who enrolled her in after-school art lessons at the Newark Museum. 

‘It all began as a young child, when I recognised beauty and desire by the way the world responded to my mother’s beauty. My understanding of the complexity of desire began with how I perceived myself in relation to my mother. I became mindful of a desire to be the woman that she hoped I would be.’

As a teenager, Thomas moved to Portland, Oregon, and she subsequently studied at the Pratt Institute and Yale School of Art. She developed a particular interest in creating large-scale depictions of Black women. 

‘I grew up with a lot of brothers, and I don’t have any sisters, so for me it’s really important to develop my sisterhood. It’s something I’ve always coveted.’

Painting in oil, acrylic and enamel, sometimes employing collaged black and white photos to add a touch of realism, Thomas inlays her work with multi-coloured rhinestones. Her subjects, dressed in vibrant, glamorous clothes and located in bright domestic contexts, are in repose, relaxed, at leisure. They regard us directly, with assured stares, seeming both self-possessed and vulnerable.

‘The love we make in community stays with us wherever we go.’

Often the poses and compositions echo the works of historical European painters - Ingres, Courbet, Manet, Monet – as Thomas seeks to reclaim art from its traditional white male perspective.

‘My work is rooted in self-discovery, celebration, joy, sensuality, and a need to see positive images of Black women in the world.’

Mickalene Thomas, Afro Goddess Looking Forward, 2015,
Rhinestones, acrylic, and oil on wood panel, 60 x 96 in (152.4 x 243.8 cm)

I was impressed by Thomas’ process. 

She first photographs her subjects in bespoke sets built in her Brooklyn studio. These interiors, draped with vividly patterned textiles, suggest warmth, security, the comfort of home. 

‘I created domestic settings primarily for fellow Black women – my muses – to spend time and have new experiences in familiar surroundings, perhaps resembling their mother’s or grandmother’s living rooms.’

At the exhibition you can see a couple of Thomas’ living room installations, recalled from her own childhood: mirror walls, thick carpet, Tiffany lamp and pot plants; Donna Summer and Diana Ross LPs leaning against the music centre. She seems to be suggesting that our identity is shaped by the spaces we inhabit, the clothes we wear, the music we listen to.

Having put her sitters at their ease, Thomas then finds deeply personal connections with them. She focuses on who they truly are, celebrates them, elevates them. 

‘Beauty has always been an element of discussion for Black women, whether or not we’re the ones having the conversation.’

In the world of commercial communication, we may recognise this approach: settle on the right environment; create an appropriate context; locate the brand in its own world. Then focus on, and amplify, its truth.

‘I define my work as a feminist act and a political act because I’m Black and a woman. You don’t necessarily have to claim that, but the act of making art itself is a political and feminist act when you’re a woman.’

There’s much to see at the exhibition beyond Thomas’ portraiture. I was particularly taken with a video piece inspired by Eartha Kitt’s 1953 song, ‘Angelitos Negros.’ The artist reimagines original footage of Kitt singing, combining it with images of herself. The lyrics ask why religious painters of the past filled the heavens exclusively with white figures. 

It’s an absence Thomas seeks to address. She paints her own Black angels. 

'Painters painting saints in church,
How do you know that God is white?
Painter, if you paint with love,
Paint me some Black angels now.
For good Blacks in Heaven,
Painter, show us that you care.
Paint me some Black angels now.
Paint me some Black angels now.’

Eartha Kitt, 'Angelitos Negros’ (Translation) (M Maciste, A Blanco)

No. 507

If You Want to Survive the Rat Race, You Need to Learn to Enjoy the Ride

Researchers have discovered that rats can be trained to drive a car, and that they enjoy the experience. With practice, and the incentive of some Froot Loop breakfast cereal, a sample of laboratory rats steered a vehicle constructed from a plastic container, by grasping at a wire that propelled it forward. (Kaya Burgess, The Times, 19 November, 2024)

Writing on The Conversation website, Kelly Lambert, a professor of behavioural neuroscience at the University of Richmond, Virginia observed:

‘Unexpectedly, we found that the rats had an intense motivation for their driving training, often jumping into the car and revving the ‘lever engine’ before their vehicle hit the road.’ 

The scientists then set about establishing whether the rats’ eager anticipation was for the Froot Loops or the driving. And so, they offered the rats a choice: they could either access the Froot Loop by making a short journey on foot, or they could climb into the car and drive the long way round to the treat.

‘Surprisingly, two of the three rats chose to take the less efficient path of turning away from the reward and running to the car to drive to their Froot Loop destination. This response suggests that the rats enjoy both the journey and the rewarding destination.’

Perhaps the lab rats can teach us a lesson. 

Work shouldn’t just be about ends, goals and objectives. If we enjoy the process as well as the prize, we can be more fulfilled; we can make better teammates; and, over time, we can become more resilient.

'It’s not the destination, it's the journey.’
Ralph Waldo Emerson

My fondest recollections of advertising are not just of pitch wins and finished commercials. They are of deconstructing briefs and developing hypotheses; of sharing thoughts and shaping executions. The synergies of multi-disciplinary teams and the camaraderie under pressure. The diplomacy of client engagement and the theatre of presentation. The daft situations, wise aphorisms and witty observations. 

I found the journey as satisfying as the arrival.

As Lambert concludes:

‘Anticipating positive experiences helps drive a persistence to keep searching for life’s rewards. Planning, anticipating and enjoying the ride may be key to a healthy brain.’

Useful advice if you want to survive the rat race.

'You're working at your leisure to learn the things you'll need.
The promises you make tomorrow will carry no guarantee.
I've seen your qualifications, you've got a PhD
I've got one art O level, it did nothing for me.
Working for the rat race,
You know you're wasting your time.
Working for the rat race,
You're no friend of mine.
You plan your conversation to impress the college bar,
Just talking about your Mother and Daddy's Jaguar.
Wear your political T-shirt and sacred college scarf,
Discussing the worlds situation but just for a laugh.
You'll be working for the rat race,
You know you're wasting your time.
Working for the rat race,
You're no friend of mine.’
The Specials, ‘Rat Race’ (R J Byers)

No. 506

Renaissance Drawing: Inspiration Needs Preparation

The head of a youth, attributed to Pietro Faccini, c.1590 King's Gallery

I recently attended a fascinating exhibition of Renaissance drawing. (‘Drawing the Italian Renaissance’ is at The King’s Gallery, London until 9 March.)

Drawing became widespread in Italy in the 1400s, as the cost of paper fell and as new materials like chalk became available. It was the basis for artistic study, a fundamental of preparatory practice and a means of exploring ideas. 

The exhibition features 160 drawings - by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, and many others. There are tender portraits of unknown sitters; fearsome sketches of imaginary grotesques; precise explorations of costume and drapery; of character, posture and attitude. There are designs for small devotional images, altarpieces and wall paintings; allegories and scenes from ancient myths. We can see Leonardo’s studies of horses, Parmigianino’s dogs and Titian’s ostrich. Here’s Michelangelo’s black chalk drawing of The Risen Christ, reaching in exultation to the sky; and Raphael’s sensitive sketch of one naked woman in three poses - preparation for a fresco of the Three Graces. He was one of the few Renaissance artists to work from female models.

We can also inspect large drawings known as cartoons (from the Italian ‘cartone’, meaning ‘large sheet of paper’), final designs to be transferred to an altarpiece or wall. This was done by pricking outlines and rubbing powdered charcoal or dust across the back of the sheet; or by working with a squared grid to enable further enlargement. Cartoons are particularly precious because they were made with poor quality paper and often discarded after use.

Leonardo da Vinci’s Studies of a horse, c 1490
ROYAL COLLECTION ENTERPRISES LIMITED 2024/ROYAL COLLECTION TRUST

I was very much taken with Leonardo’s restless, curious mind. He sketched to develop his ideas on anatomy, botany, water and avian flight. He drafted a bird’s eye view of western Tuscany; a bear’s foot; a dog captaining a sailing boat with an oak tree for a mast. He drew human and animal dissections; filled pages with sketches of vivacious domestic cats, caged lions and sinister dragons. He was constantly looking to understand the physical world, drawing for pleasure as well as for research.

We learn that early paper was made from shredded clothing rags (linen and hemp). Artists could work in metalpoint, employing a lead or silver stylus. They could draw with black, red or white chalk, cut into small pieces and wedged into the end of a split stick – sharpening the chalk to a point for fine lines. Or they could employ charcoal (carbonised wood), less precise but more durable, soaking sticks in linseed oil to produce a richer colour. There was also black ink, applied with goose feather quills or a fine brush of squirrel hair. 

Bernardino Campi, The Virgin and Child (c.1570-80), which is in the exhibition at The King’s Gallery
CREDIT: © ROYAL COLLECTION ENTERPRISES LIMITED 2024/ROYAL COLLECTION TRUST

Shortly before his death in 1564, at the age of 88, Michelangelo ordered that many of his drawings be destroyed in two bonfires. Writing a few years after, the biographer Giorgio Vasari explained that the artist didn't want people to see the labour that had gone into his art. 

We may recognise this instinct in contemporary creative professions – the desire to suggest that inspiration is effortless and instinctive; that ideas arrive magically, fully formed.

But experienced heads know that success derives from exploration and experimentation; from trial and error; from drafting, planning and plotting; from hours of deep thought and hard work.

Inspiration needs preparation.

'Intuition is given only to him who has undergone long preparation to receive it.’
Louis Pasteur

Head of a Cleric c. 1448
Metalpoint on prepared ochre surface, heightened with white, 189 x 173 mm. Royal Library, Windsor

Of course, once we’re properly primed and rigorously rehearsed, we can afford to be more cavalier in our execution. One drawing by Paolo Farinati is inscribed with instructions. The figures, when transferred to the walls of the patron’s villa, should be roughly 3 feet high, but ‘You may do as you fancy when you are on the scaffolding.’

'I been reading my old journals,
Checking to see where my head has been.
And I been apologizing to some people,
Some bridges I needed to mend.
And I been eating more greens,
Getting my body out the line.
I'm gonna be super fine.
And I been letting some old ideas go.
I'm making room for my life to grow.
I just wanna be prepared.
I just wanna be prepared.
Getting myself ready
For what's comin' for me.
I just wanna be prepared.’

Jill Scott, ‘Prepared’ (A Harris / D Farris / J Scott)

No. 505

The Satirical Perspective of Tirzah Garwood: ‘Blessed Be the Eyes that See the Things that Ye See.’

Tirzah Garwood - The Crocodile

I recently attended an excellent exhibition of the art of Tirzah Garwood. (The Dulwich Picture Gallery, until 26 May)
 
Garwood was a wood-engraver, paper marbler and painter, who approached her work with a sharp mind, a sensitive touch and a satirical eye. She prompts us to see the amusing, absurd and uncanny in the detail of everyday life.
 
Eileen Lucy Garwood was born into a military family in Gillingham in 1908. She acquired the nickname Tirzah as a corruption of Tertia, Latin for ‘third child’. Having grown up in the various towns of southern England where her father was posted, she studied at the Eastbourne School of Art. There she was taught wood-engraving by Eric Ravilious, whom she married in 1930. 
 
Garwood’s engravings were imaginatively conceived and precisely executed. They abounded in wry observations and witty juxtapositions. 
 
Here’s a young Garwood on a trip to Kensington High Street with her formidable aunt. The shoppers, wrapped up against the cold, pass comically posed mannequins in summer fashions. Back at home, in her comfortable dressing gown and slippers, an older Garwood stretches and yawns extravagantly, as her contented dog sleeps at her feet. Here a cloche-hatted Garwood, in a neat pussy-bow blouse, sits in a third-class railway compartment. She clutches her purse to her lap, wide awake and alert, as the two suited men opposite take a snooze. Meanwhile her bald, moustachioed father, concentrates on composing a letter at his desk, closely observed by a flat-capped window cleaner. And Ravilious stands enigmatically in the garden, in a trench coat and fedora, a marrow under each arm.
 
Garwood’s conservative parents were suspicious of working-class Ravilious and the influence he was having on their daughter. 

[My parents] ‘thought my subjects hideous, and that Mr Ravilious was perverting a nice girl who used to draw fairies and flowers into a stranger who rounded on them and did drawings that were only too clearly caricatures of themselves.’

Tirzah Garwood - The Train Journey 1929. Wood engraving. Private collection

Garwood’s theme was not just her family. More broadly it was mid-century English society. She shows us the domestic rituals, the complex relationships, the contours of class and gender. 
 
As a group of uniformed schoolgirls marches along the street in a crocodile, one pupil gives an affectionate pat to an attentive black terrier. Formally dressed partygoers conduct a séance, concentrating intensely as they reach out their hands in the dark. A lady marvels at her distorted reflection in the Hall of Mirrors. A young woman chats to her sister as she bathes. And granny plays an ace at the card table.
 
Garwood’s gaze is always acute, amused, affectionate. 
 
Garwood and Ravilious set up home in rural Essex, where they had three children.
Increasingly, her time was taken up with childcare and domestic tasks. Her art took a back seat.
 
‘I always regret that I stopped working because it is difficult with a house to think about.’

Tirzah, 1950, Photograph by Edwin Smith. Private Collection

Nonetheless, Garwood still found time to take up paper marbling for lampshades and books. This involved dropping blobs of thinned oil paint onto a ‘bath’ of gum-thickened water, and then teasing patterns from it with a stylus. Her nature-inspired designs were fragile, complex, harmonious, and became popular with London interiors shops.
 
‘Marbling gave me pleasure because I felt no-one else could do this.’
 
Garwood clearly had a restlessly creative mind. At the exhibition you can see a scrapbook filled with her fantastical cuttings and illustrations. There’s also a patchwork quilt, a design for a children’s counting book, a series of ‘portraits’ of local village houses, and some charming ink sketches - including one of a melancholy snow woman in the back garden. She effortlessly crossed the divide between art, craft and design.
 

Tirzah Garwood - Window Cleaner c.1927, pen, ink & watercolour. Private collection

While still in her thirties, Garwood suffered a double blow. In 1941 she was diagnosed with breast cancer and had emergency mastectomy surgery. The following year, while Ravilious was serving as a war artist, his plane went missing off Iceland. His body was never recovered. 
 
Garwood later wrote that she endured ‘spasms of dreadful sorrow because Eric wasn’t there to share some joke, or some odd occurrence… and worst of all, to appreciate the children.’
 
Two years after her husband’s death, Garwood began painting in oils. She developed a style that was both sophisticated and naïve. A seemingly innocent world of toys, animals, flowers and insects is haunted by anxiety. A kitten looms over a toy castle by a row of black pansies. A goose in a field rears up as she senses a threat to her goslings. Seen from above, a group of children play hide and seek in a garden in deep shadow.
 
In 1948 Garwood was again diagnosed with cancer, and, with no hope of recovery, she was subsequently admitted to a nursing home. Often in pain from her therapy, she nonetheless completed some twenty small oil paintings. She described her last year as the happiest of her life. 
 
Tirzah Garwood died in 1951 and was buried in Copford. Her gravestone reads:
 
‘Blessed be the eyes that see the things that ye see.’
Luke 10:23
 

'Each little day is a world of its own,
Each little day is a tomb. 
Whenever the day has drifted away, 
It's back to the womb .
As I lie alone in the darkness, 
Waiting the next rebirth, 
I say for me what could very well be 
For everyone else on earth. 
Could be the first day of the best of my life. 
There could be sunlight, there could be rain. 
But losing or winning, this is beginning all over again.
This is the birthday of a brand new start,
Change of direction, change of heart.
When I think of today, I feel tempted to say, 
Destiny, do your worst. 
Of the rest of the days of the rest of my life, 
This is only the first.’
Molly Drake, 'The First Day'

No. 504

Late People Lose

Norman Rockwell - Girl Running With Wet Canvas

'One good thing about punctuality is that it's a sure way to help you enjoy a few minutes of privacy.'
Orlando Aloysius Battista

We were coming from another appointment. We were making some final changes. We were waiting for the boards to be mounted. We were running just a few minutes late… But then we missed the train and missed the plane and missed the meeting. And so we lost the client’s confidence, lost the pitch and lost the anticipated revenue. We were denied the celebration, the bonus and the promotion. And we fumbled the opportunity to make some great work.

All because we were just a few minutes late. 

'A Man consumes the Time you make him Wait In thinking of your Faults - so don't be late!’
Arthur Guiterman

I read recently in the Guardian (Hannah Devlin, 10 Nov 2024) about research into tardiness in business. The study, published in the journal ‘Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes’, surveyed thousands of executives in the US and the UK. Participants were asked to rate pieces of work, such as proposals, product pitches, advertising and news articles. But first, they were told that the work was submitted either early, on time or late.

Even though respondents were looking at the same stimulus, work introduced as ‘late’ was consistently rated as worse in quality than material presented as ‘early’ or ‘on time.’ Moreover, a perceived missed deadline prompted evaluators to believe an employee had less integrity, and made them less willing to collaborate with that person in the future.

‘Everyone saw the exact same [material], but they couldn’t help but use their knowledge of when it came in to guide their evaluation of how good it was.’
Prof Sam Maglio, the University of Toronto Scarborough and the Rotman School of Management (who co-authored the study with David Fang of Stanford University)

In the face of substantial work challenges, we may be inclined to procrastinate and delay; to plan optimistically rather than realistically; to hesitate and leave things to the last minute. We may plead for more time, for deadlines to be delayed, while we make the finishing touches, while we journey from good to great. We may convince ourselves that a superior end-product will justify the inconvenience and irritation.

But we would be wrong.

Punctuality may seem rather a modest professional virtue. But its absence leads to all manner of practical problems and negative perceptions. Tardiness taints relationships. It corrodes trust. And so, in the end, late people lose.

'It gets late early out there.’
Yogi Berra

'Stayed in bed all morning just to pass the time.
There's something wrong here, there can be no denying.
One of us is changing,
Or maybe we just stopped trying.
And it's too late, baby, now it's too late,
Though we really did try to make it.
Something inside has died,
And I can't hide and I just can't fake it.’

Carole King, ‘It’s Too Late’ (C King, Toni Stern)

No. 503