Tag Mother

Part Two: Think Like An Artist

Kate McCalmont-Woods Leave a comment

On the act of creating:

Gompertz reflects on the ability of creatives to think about both the big picture, and the fine detail.

”It requires your mind to constantly go back and forth, one moment concerned with the minutiae, the next stepping away and seeing the broader context… One tiny dab of colour can radically change the appearance of the largest of paintings. Each stroke of the brush is a note struck in a visual concerto; any mistake is as obvious to the viewer as hearing an orchestra member hit a wrong note.”

It’s true that the tiniest detail can make a painting: the small detail of the red sun makes this work by Monet.

Sunrise, 1872, Monet (Wikipedia 7 Jan 2025)

Gompertz describes a visit he made to the studio of Belgian artist, Luc Tuymans.

He is intrigued by Tuymans’ work and its ability to make him want to look closer. Tuymans explains that every painting has a point of entry: a small detail that catches your eye and draws you in. He is influenced by other artists who use this trick: Hopper, Van Eyck and Vermeer. In the case of the latter, Gompertz explains that the point of entry for ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ might be assumed to be the highlight on the earring but, in fact, conservators uncovered an alternative point of entry: a small dot of pale pink paint in the corner of her mouth, which serves to change the overall reading of the painting.

Detail ‘Girl With a Pearl Earring, 1665, Vermeer

As an aside, to my mind, the point of entry in Monet’s ‘Sunrise’ above is the red sun, going down through the buildings on the right, the reflection on the water, back up to the boat in the foreground, to the boats behind, up to the buildings in the distance, into the sky and following the directional brushstrokes up to the top righthand corner.

Tuymans completes his paintings within the course of a day; he uses the edge of the canvas as his palette which allows him to work quickly, as does his preconceived detailed plan, which can sometimes have begun many months, if not years, before. In fact, Tuymans goes so far as to plan an entire exhibition upfront before he has even started work, from the relationship between each painting, its size, location, the colour of the wall on which it will hang, and so on. His rationale for treating his work as a unit in this way is that to make sense of it, all of the paintings will need to be seen together, and so he increases the chances of there being a major retrospective of his work once he is dead. Now, that’s seeing the bigger picture!

I’m not really sure what I think about this. Planning work in such an extensive and detailed way seems very restrictive to me. Having said that, I would assume that his planning process includes a prolonged period of experimentation before committing to the final piece, which is why he can complete it in a day. He also uses existing images as a basis for his work, which is likely to reduce the number of questions he has to ask himself.

As for the focus on his legacy, I really can’t make up my mind. I suppose it depends on why artists, and in particular, Tuymans, make art. Is it to make the world a better place? Is it to fulfil the need to express themselves? Is it to leave a lasting mark on the world? Is it to make money? Is it because they simply have to? It’s probably a combination of all of these things, with some being of greater significance than others. I just get the feeling in Tuymans’ case that it’s rather contrived, and predominantly about his legacy. I actually wish that I hadn’t read this about him: for me it is a distraction from his work, which is primarily concerned with people, and their relationships with the past.

John Playfair, 2014, Luc Tuymans & John Playfair, 1824, Henry Raeburn (momus.ca 7/1/25)

I’m reminded of Sean Scully. My mother couldn’t stand Sean Scully. In fact, she didn’t rate Picasso either. I remember a conversation I had with her when she phoned me up one morning: she hadn’t been able to get to sleep the night before, so she had got up, made herself a cup of tea and put the TV on. She ended up watching a documentary on Sean Scully. She hadn’t been able to get to sleep after it either, as she had been so incensed by it. Did I know that his paintings, basically just coloured stripes, sold for millions of pounds? I suspect the problem had arisen because the programme makers had juxtaposed some footage of Scully applying some paint to a canvas in a rather sloppy slapdash fashion with footage of one of his paintings being sold at auction. I think it was one of those ‘I could have done that’ moments, but I resisted the urge to give the obvious answer ‘But you haven’t, have you?’, and instead commented that it’s because he is actually a very astute businessman. From what I understand, Scully controls the supply of his art into the art market, retaining a significant number of works himself, thus reducing supply, increasing demand and driving up prices, whilst at the same time ensuring that there is plenty of his work readily available for retrospectives. Basic economics, really.

Song (1985), Sean Scully approx value 2022 £1.6M (sothebys.com 7/1/25)

It all comes down to the uncomfortable relationship between the creation of art and profit, which Gompertz deals with early on in his book, and which I wasn’t planning on covering, but as I seem to have found myself here anyway…

On money:

At it’s very simplest, if you are a professional artist then you need to earn an income from your work to survive. But the relationship between art and money raises so many questions. Is the problem the amount you earn and what you do with it? Which is more worthwhile – the work of a penniless artist slaving away in a garret, or an artist who plays the game and exploits the brand conscious wealthy consumers? Does the need to earn an income compromise or limit an artist’s ability to express themselves authentically? Sophie, in her post reflecting on the first term, refers to the new sense of creative freedom she has experienced, away from the conveyor belt of producing work which would appeal to past and future buyers of her paintings. It is a subject we’ve touched on briefly in our weekly sessions, and it seems a very delicate balance to get right. I think Gompertz probably sums it up best:

“The intellectual and emotional motivation isn’t profit, but it is an essential component. Profit buys freedom. Freedom provides time. And time, for an artist, is the most valuable of commodities.”

In his book, Gompertz explores the issue of artistic entrepreneurism by starting with the artist who didn’t shy away from the subject of money and materialism by making his art all about them: Andy Warhol.

“Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.” Andy Warhol

He then covers the likes of Reubens, an expert salesman, who went off ringing the doorbells of the aristocracy and royalty of Europe whilst his minions worked endlessly in his workshops; Van Gogh and his money man, Theo; and American artist, Theaster Gates, who uses the proceeds of his art to buy and refurbish buildings for use by the community in the South Side of Chicago, where he grew up, thereby regenerating the area and effecting positive social change.

‘Chorus’, 2016, Theaster Gates

I had hoped to have covered much more of the book in this post – it may end up having as many parts as The Godfather! The fact that I have had so much to take note of and comment on, is proof that I am finding it incredibly insightful. I am aware that, at the moment, I’m using this blog for note-making. I have to, otherwise I’ll forget it all. I have lost count of the number of times I’ve read a fact and thought, oh that’s interesting, I must remember that, only for it to disappear again. It infuriates me that I can’t recall facts and statistics at the drop of a hat when having a discussion about something, whilst the other person seems to be able to pluck them out of thin air in support of what they are saying. Or maybe that’s exactly what they are doing – they do say that if you say something with enough confidence people will believe you…

Reflection

Kate McCalmont-Woods 2 Comments

I’ve decided to take a leaf out of Sophie’s book and formalise the thoughts I’ve had since we finished our first term.

I don’t think that I have felt more like myself (whoever that might be) than I have over the course of the last 3 months. I can’t pinpoint why exactly; I’ve just felt like ‘me’.

It has been overwhelming (I suspect that I use this word an awful lot) in the sense that I have been totally free to create and, more importantly, to think about creating. I feel as if I am at the start of an important journey – I don’t want to rush into it; I want to take my time and be prepared. I don’t even know where I’m going – there are no limitations – but I know that I will discover something by the end of it.

I think that I have mostly engaged in the preparation side of things rather than the physical manifestation of work, but that’s been the best bit. I’ve been collecting ideas, inspiration, and information. I think about it most of the time. I’ll have a thought and think, yes, I could use that, and then it’s gone. I need to find a workable way of recording my thoughts – I can’t really open a notebook or Notes on my phone whilst driving – maybe I’ll have to call someone (hands free, of course) and get them to record it for me. Funnily enough, I used to do that: if, whilst at home, I thought of something I needed to do at work the next day, I would call my work phone and leave a voicemail. Just writing that has made me think about what voicemails I might leave younger versions of myself at various points in my life. And that is how it’s been, going off on tangents, suddenly striking up a conversation with whoever I’m with, on the thought I’ve just had.

It has also made me feel anxious – I don’t want to miss anything. I have amassed a large pile of books which I ‘need’ to read. I haven’t really tackled the online library resources with any conviction just yet – the thought of it makes my heart race – all that information out there – how can I take it all in?

The preparation of my study statement has come at just the right time. I need to marshall my thoughts and commit them to words, but in the knowledge that it is a living document which can change over time. I’m actually really looking forward to it as it will bring a sense of calm and order. I hope. Who knows, I might be feeling differently come the beginning of February.

Thinking back on the work I have done over the last few months, I think I have become much freer – I’ve been leaving things as being what I would term as ‘unfinished’ and managing not to go back to them. Making them public by putting them on this blog has helped tremendously. I’m now enjoying the process of making much more than I have previously – it was often an ordeal.

I think I have identified areas which I would like to explore in more depth: I have invested in a book on Procreate (it’s not going to beat me) which I’m working my way through, and I have some ideas in my head as to a series of three digital collages on the subject of motherhood which I may or may not develop further. I like the number three: I am one of three; there are three in my immediate family; there are three trees which together form one tree on my favourite walk near my home; and three is the smallest number by which you can seek the input of others and still avoid a deadlock. Having said that, it’s probably not so great for a friendship group.

I would also like to experiment with printing techniques, photography and a previous obsession, cyanotypes. This term I’m determined to book some sessions and get into CSM on a regular basis.

I’m now able to look back at the three monotypes that I made of my mother. I feel that it was the right thing to do. It was something that I always knew I would have to address and it was something that I had to tackle early doors. I think it has helped. I went back to my mother’s house not so long ago and I didn’t feel the usual sinking feeling of dread as I walked through the front door. I was actually able to sit down by myself in silence and remember some of the good times when we all lived there as a family, even when it became dark outside. A small positive step in the right direction.

As finished pieces of work, they are what they are, vehicles by which I transferred debilitating thoughts into another space. Could I have done them differently or executed them better? Yes, obviously, but I don’t look at them that way; it is what they signify and make me feel that matters: despair, confusion, sadness, resentment, helplessness, isolation and fear. I chose monotype because it is, as soon as it is, and there is no way back. It was all about the process, not the result. If I had to make a change I would change their order – I made them in the order of the conversations – they would work better as a series if their order was reversed, with each one making more sense of the one before.

I took my daughter back to uni at the weekend, and she phoned me up earlier, chasing me for some information I was supposed to give her. My husband chipped in that it wasn’t any wonder that I hadn’t got round to it as I seem to spend all my time blogging – well, if I don’t have anything else to show for the next year and a half, at least I’ll have this blog!

Sniper’s Alley

Kate McCalmont-Woods Leave a comment

Well, it’s official – I’m now closer to 60 than I am to 50. Ugh!

I seem to have swapped the paraphernalia of parenthood for a bag of drugs, which I routinely plonk in the tray at airport security, hoping that no-one’s looking too closely – two asthma inhalers (a preventer and a reliever), omeprazole for my acid reflux, progesterone tablets, oestrogen gel, and 4 eipipen adrenaline auto-injectors for my tree nut allergy (yep, sorry – I’m that annoying person who prevents you from eating your nuts with your overpriced inflight drinks).

I’m well and truly in the thick of that period of life known as Sniper’s Alley, when one is constantly dodging the bullets of diabetes, heart disease, stroke, cancer and much more. My mother and her brother both died of oesophageal cancer, their brother basically suffocated to death from ‘pigeon fancier’s lung’, their mother nodded off whilst sitting on her sofa and died of a heart attack, and my father and his mother both died after having strokes. Well, it’s a rather limited menu, but if I really have to choose, I think I’ll go for the sofa option, please!

Having said that, life itself is Sniper’s Alley. I was driving my husband to the train station the other morning; he was late and not a little stressed. The traffic lights changed – shall I be an ambler gambler? I don’t think so. There was a deep sigh and a hand raised to the head on my left as stress levels increased. Luckily the lights changed to green quite quickly. As we rounded the bend, a truck had shed its load of scaffolding poles into our lane, only shortly before. “We could have been under that, had I not stopped at the lights”, I observed.

It was a ‘Sliding Doors’ moment. The idea of an alternative life based on the decisions I have made really intrigues me. To a certain extent, I think that I was meant to make the choices I did, when I did, in a nod to fate, but, nevertheless, imagining my own ‘Midnight Library’ has its attractions.

I recently read a book called ‘The Gentleman from Peru’ by André Aciman. I saw it in Waterstones and bought it just because I liked the cover. A group of American college friends are on a sailing trip in the Mediterranean when there is a problem with their yacht, and they have to stay at a hotel on the Amalfi Coast whilst it is being repaired. They meet an elderly gentleman, and the book centres on their relationship with this mysterious character. During one of their conversations he says:

“We may no longer be the person we once were, but what if this person did not necessarily die but continued his life in the shadowland of our own, so that you could say that our life is filled with shadow-selves who continue to tag along and to beckon us in all directions even as we live our own lives – all these selves clamouring to have their say, their time, their life, if only we listened and gave into them…

…The old self, the new self, the shadow-self, self number seven or eleven, the self we always knew we were but never became, the self we left behind and never recovered, the might-have-been self that couldn’t be but might still be, though we both fear yet hope it might come along one day and rescue us from the person we’ve had to be all our years.

But as I said, it’s not just the past that haunts us. What haunts us with equal magnitude is what has not happened yet, for there are shadow-selves and shadow-lives waiting in the wings all the time. We are constantly reworking or reinventing both the past and the future. Sometimes we’re in the street or in a crowded bus, and we just know: that one day this person whose glance we caught or whose path we just crossed is another version of someone we know we’ve loved before and have yet to love again. But that person could just as easily be us in another body. And the beauty of it is that they feel it just as much as we do. Is this other person us or is it someone destined for us whom we keep missing each lifetime? Us in others, isn’t this the definition of love?”.

How happy am I that my ‘might-have-been’ 18 year old shadow-self has finally caught up, and rescued me? Better late, than never.

The Cost Of Living

Kate McCalmont-Woods Leave a comment

One of my favourite actresses, Lesley Manville, was on Desert Island Discs a few weeks ago. On her divorce from one of my favourite actors, Gary Oldman, who left her a few months after she had given birth to their son, she said:

“I thought we’d be together forever and have a big family. But maybe if that had happened, maybe, I wouldn’t have had the career I have now. I think I’d have given up a lot for a good long marriage, but the price would have been something – I don’t know what.”

This reminded me of ‘The Cost of Living’ by Deborah Levy, in which Levy refers to the relationship between the French philosopher and writer, Simone de Beauvoir, and the American writer, Nelson Algren.

“Algren had written to her when he feared their transatlantic love affair was ending, to tell her the truth about the things he wanted: ‘a place of my own to live in, with a woman of my own and perhaps a child of my own. There’s nothing extraordinary about wanting such things.’

No, there is nothing extraordinary about all those nice things. Except she knew it would cost her more than it would cost him. In the end she decided she couldn’t afford it.”

‘The Cost of Living’ was my choice of inspirational text for our last session.

After listening to the actress, Billie Piper, speaking about it, coincidentally on Desert Island Discs, I thought I would give it a go. I have re-read it many times since, and gifted copies to friends at every opportunity.

Deborah Levy is South African by birth; her father was a political activist who had been imprisoned during Apartheid. The family subsequently relocated to England when she was nine years old.

It’s the second book in a series of three living autobiographies. It covers the period in her life when her marriage fell into difficulties, although her career was on the up having been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She decided that her marriage was a boat to which she didn’t want to swim back, and so she and her husband divorced. Her family home life no longer fulfilled her need to create, and so it was slowly dismantled.

“We sold the family house. This action of dismantling and packing up a long life lived together seemed to flip time into a weird shape; a flashback to leaving South Africa, the country of my birth, when I was nine years old and a flash-forward to an unknown life I was yet to live at fifty. I was unmaking the home that I’d spent much of my life’s energy creating.

To strip the wallpaper off the fairy tale of The Family House in which the comfort and happiness of men and children have been the priority is to find behind it an unthanked, unloved, neglected, exhausted woman. It requires skill, time, dedication and empathy to create a home that everyone enjoys and that functions well. Above all else, it is an act of immense generosity to be the architect of everyone else’s well-being… To not feel at home in her family home is the beginning of the bigger story of society and its female discontents. If she is not too defeated by the societal story she has enacted with hope, pride, happiness, ambivalence and rage, she will change the story… To unmake a family home is like breaking a clock. So much time has passed through all the dimensions of that home. Apparently, a fox can hear a clock ticking from forty yards away. There was a clock on the kitchen wall of our family home, less than forty yards from the garden. The foxes must have heard it ticking for over a decade. It was now all packed up, lying face down in a box.”

There was a cost to this freedom; this way of living. She moves into a small sixth floor flat at the top of a hill in North London with her daughters and has to teach, and write pieces which she wouldn’t ordinarily choose to, in order to earn a living. She finds that she can’t write in the flat: she needs her own space, so she rents her friend’s garden shed in which she wrote this book and two others.

“It was calm and silent and dark in my shed. I had let go of the life I had planned and was probably out of my depth every day. It’s hard to write and be open and let things in when life is tough, but to keep everything out means there is nothing to work with.”

The book also deals with the death of her mother from cancer. This resonated with me profoundly when I re-read the book after the death of my own mother. There is a moving account of Levy having a meltdown in a local newsagents which had run out of the ice lollies which had been keeping her mother going, as well as her subsequent apology to the three Turkish brothers who owned it.

Another poignant moment is when she reflects on a postcard received from her mother:

“Love did find its way through the on and off war between myself and my mother. The poet Audre Lorde said it best: ‘I am a reflection of my mother’s secret poetry as well as of her hidden angers.’… My mother had made a biro’d X on the front of the postcard and written’ X is where I am’… It is this X that touches me most now, her hand holding the biro, pressing it into the postcard, marking where she is so that I can find her.”

She goes on to say:

“I lost all sense of geographical direction for a few weeks after my mother’s death. I was disorientated, as if some sort of internal navigation system was drifting… It was she who had raised her children and most childhood memories were twinned with her presence on earth. She was my primal satnav, but now the screen had gone blank.”

I love her way of writing: she can create an impactful image with a few words. Whilst on Eurostar to Paris, she is talking to a teenager sitting next to her, who is using a laptop to learn French, when a man gets on the train and asks the teenager to make space on the table.

” She moved it to her lap. This was a small rearrangement of space, but its outcome meant she had entirely removed herself from the table to make space for his newspaper, sandwich and apple.”

When she is asked to provide a list of the minor and major characters in one of her novels for film execs looking to option it, Levy considers the minor and major characters in her own life.

“If I ever felt free enough to write my life as I felt it, would the point be to feel more real? What was it that I was reaching for? Not for more reality, that was for sure. I certainly did not want to write the major female character that has always been written for Her. I was more interested in a major unwritten female character.”

And that is what I take away from this book, what inspires me: I should be the major character in my own story. It is for this reason that I am on this course, that I am making a change and adopting a new way of living.

This struck a chord with Dalal, who has been thinking a lot recently about the possibility of marriage and family, but is concerned how this might fit in with her need to be an artist. Alex had already established herself as an artist by the time she married and had a family, so her artistic practice had already marked out its boundaries. Pritish is not thinking long-term: his main concern at present is to concentrate on his artistic practice.

I was fascinated to hear about what inspires everyone else. Pritish is inspired by London, in particular, he likes the anonymity it provides and he referenced the photographer, John Deakin; Dalal is inspired by Kerouac’s ‘Satori in Paris’, Murakami’s ‘South of the Border, West of the Sun’ and Muayad H Hussain’s thesis on Khalifa Qattan and circulism; and Rachel Whitehead’s Turner Prize winning House (1993) inspires Alex, a sculpture formed from a concrete cast of the inside of a house condemned for destruction – something made out of nothing containing the past life of the house and its inhabitants, without utility but fascinating.

Now that I have cast myself as the main character in my story, how do I play her?

Three Conversations With My Mother

Kate McCalmont-Woods 4 Comments

Some were surreal, others were sad. Sometimes she was lucid, sometimes she was delirious, sometimes it was morphine. Three in particular have lodged themselves in my memory. My logical brain tells me that she wasn’t herself, that her brain chemistry was all over the place, trying to cope with the enormity of it all.

It’s just that the last conversation I had with her, was the last.

I suppose I could talk about them to someone, together with the rest of it, but I’m not sure the spoken word will work: the words will come out of my mouth and vibrate through the air to enter someone else’s head. Then they are gone. I need a more substantial, tangible way of dealing with them, through the written word and imagery. I need to be able to confront them, physically.

I’ve had some inner conflict as to whether I should publish the image in which her face is visible; when she was ill and at her most vulnerable. This was a woman who dragged herself through the house, after breaking her leg, in order to phone for my sister to come over and make her look presentable before calling for an ambulance. She was a very private person. But she is no longer here. If it helps me come to terms with it, I think she would be ok with it. My sister’s on board – she reads this blog. She has her own conversations.

Three Conversations With My Mother No 1, Montotype on A4 Cartridge Paper

Three Conversations With My Mother No 2, Monotype on A4 Cartridge Paper

Three Conversations With My Mother No 3, Monotype on A4 Cartridge Paper

I don’t need to reflect on them. I don’t want to reflect on them. Not yet.

Reflecting on Resentment II

Kate McCalmont-Woods 3 Comments

I’ve rewritten this post so many times. It has become progressively shorter. Sitting back and reflecting, I can see what is important. The first version was just a rant.

In late 2022, my mother was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer. No treatment was offered. At best she had 6 months left. Her GP had messed up. The hospital messed up. My sister and I cared for her full-time. It was the worst, and darkest period of my life.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Six months to live? Well, we could go places and make the most of it, create some new memories. But she was already too weak. Instead, the memories I have of that time seep into my mind when it’s not thinking of something else, usually before I go to sleep; then I can’t go to sleep and I sit up alone in the kitchen turning it all over, reliving it. Nothing makes it feel any better.

My mother died at home in the spring of 2023, three days before her 85th birthday. I cannot say with any honesty that she experienced quality of life in those last months. She was waiting to die, and I was just watching her gradually turn into a skeleton.

I resent that medical professionals have failed my family, not just in respect of my mother, but also my father – I made formal complaints in both instances – lessons will be learnt, apparently – but this has done nothing to ease my resentment.

I resent that because she was old, my mother was effectively written off.

I resent that everything was such a battle and I had to spend so much time chasing and making sure things were done.

I resent that there are old people in hospital who are overlooked, and who don’t have a voice or someone to speak up for them.

I resent that my sister and I were left to deal with everything, both before and after my mother’s death.

I resent that in the last few months of my mother’s life the days were short, and the nights were long.

I resent that those last few precious months were stolen from me.

I resent that the last words my mother spoke to me were when she wasn’t herself.

But, most of all, I resent the resentment that I feel: it’s preventing me from moving on.

The Invasive Sibling

Kate McCalmont-Woods Leave a comment

My daughter turns 21 next year and my husband and I have decided to throw a bash not only to celebrate her birthday but also some milestone ones of our own which have gone by not properly celebrated.

I was chatting to my daughter the other day about the fact that my brother, who lives in Belgium, has declined the invitation. I explained to her that I felt really quite upset because the last time I had seen him was when we interred my mother’s ashes in April this year and before that, at her funeral in May last year.

My daughter is not one to get into emotional discussions, despite (or maybe because) she is studying for a psychology degree, and in response she informed me that I shouldn’t worry about not seeing him because he’s inside me. Inside me? Yes, she informed me as I tried to quell the rising tide of nausea – when he was born he left some of his DNA behind in the womb and that then ended up in me.

Microchimerism, it’s called – I looked it up. It means the presence of a small number of cells in an individual that have originated from another individual and are, therefore, genetically distinct.

As I understand it, on my very limited research, when a baby is in the womb the umbilical cord can act as a two-way street – the mother’s cells travel to the baby, and vice versa, so that some foetal cells can remain in the mother, even if the baby is not subsequently born. As they are effectively stem cells they can travel to parts of the mother’s body and grow as other cells eg cardiac cells (so the baby is forever part of the mother’s heart) or they can hang around and become part of future offspring. From what I can tell, the research has mainly been in terms of cells left by male babies, as it is easier to distinguish rogue Y chromosomes in the mother’s body, however, it is generally thought that it equally applies to female cells and that female babies may leave more cells behind than male babies. This process can play a part in autoimmune diseases and also the sex of the baby may influence the development of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. All exciting stuff!

I was talking to my sister about it and the possibility of expressing this by making something akin to a set of Russian dolls with her as the outside one, and my brother and me on the inside – she wasn’t keen. I fear that our conversation may have been a contributing factor to her dream that night in which she was being chased by an artist who wanted to possess her body!

Caught In A Paradox

Kate McCalmont-Woods Leave a comment

I’m typing this just as I’ve finished my tutorial with Jonathan, whilst I can still remember what we discussed – I did start taking notes at the beginning but ditched them as the act of note-taking became too intrusive. Consequently, I will probably forget bits, but this is the gist.

I explained that I’m feeling really positive about the course – just to be in the process is enough, and anything over and above is a bonus. Jonathan asked me what I wanted to get out of the course. What I would like is to find out who I am, which is a bit of a cliché, and to develop a rhythm of working so that art becomes a major part of my life: up until now I have had to carve out time to spend making art.

Jonathan asked me what my life is like in terms of whether it is ordered: no, it’s totally disordered with no real routine, fire-fighting issues and dealing with lots of things at the same time. Jonathan commented that the idea of spinning plates has its own rhythm. It has, but I feel that I need to develop a discipline in my artistic practice – I have no real self-discipline in many areas of my life.

Jonathan then asked me what my strength is. It’s getting things done: I can be determined, persistent and I don’t give up. The downside to this is that I’m goal driven (which causes issues in terms of concentrating on the end product, rather than the process), and I tend to jump right in. Thinking about it now as I write, not giving up can result in me being relentless and not knowing when to walk away and leave something – my mother used to describe me as a terrier.

Jonathan mentioned the story on my blog about my shopping habits: the act of wandering from shop to shop contradicts the idea of jumping in. I agreed that actually I should shop more like my husband in terms of reaching a goal, and that the act of wandering is not enjoyable but full of pressure: to find something which meets the criteria by the deadline. Not buying the first thing I see which would suffice, may indicate a reluctance to commit before exploring all the options.

What does it feel like to be working at my best? I lose all sense of time. I’m lost in time. Nothing else matters. I can look up and find that it’s dark and it’s 9.30pm and the dogs and my family haven’t eaten. But then I can look at what I’ve done and, if I’m not happy with it , think how I’ve wasted those hours of my life which I’ll never get back and which I could have spent doing something more productive. Jonathan commented that there was a paradox in terms of being lost in time and losing time. He asked me to describe the sense of loss of time: it’s huge and full of resentment in the moment, but then dissipates as everyday life starts to take over again, until it eventually disappears.

We talked about some of the things that I’ve been trying out, and I explained that I’ve been purposely not viewing things as good or bad (although I did on my last post!) or as a success or failure. You can only fail if you have an expectation and that every experience, whether good or bad, is a valuable learning experience. Jonathan agreed and commented that the purpose of the act of mark-making is to tell us what to do next and if it does this, then it’s done its job, even if it is to tell us not to carry on. He sensed a real frustration in my experiments with the iPad. I did feel frustrated but even though I had reached the view that it wasn’t something for me in terms of producing a final piece of work, I did appreciate its usefulness for preparatory work. Jonathan mentioned that a lot of artists use it for this purpose in terms of working things out, like composition, and referred to Justin Mortimer who produces large oil paintings.

I explained that I have been doing a lot of thinking recently and have a lot of ideas inside my head – In fact, I can’t stop thinking about it. I’ve also been getting a lot of inspiration as to how to express these ideas in terms of producing work. If we had had this tutorial a few days ago I would have been excited and energised, but I now seem to be less so, as I feel a resistance to attempt to translate the ideas into actual work. It’s not a fear of failure as such, but a reluctance, or maybe a fear that once I try to capture the idea it won’t be as good as it is in my head. I would usually jump straight in and, more often than not, end up feeling frustrated or disappointed. I’ve recently found that thinking about and planning a work results in less dissatisfaction in the end result, but it seems that the act of stopping and thinking creates a barrier, an inertia, to moving forward. It’s a bit like how I would imagine doing a parachute jump: I check that I have everything I need in order to jump safely, but I still can’t get myself out of the plane. The other side of me would just jump. I mentioned the blog: I’m not on social media and I like to keep myself to myself and fly under the radar, yet I enjoy the process of writing the blog and this is fine as long as I don’t think too much about it ie that it’s public (as an aside whilst I’m writing this, I have actually searched for it on Google and it doesn’t come up so that makes me feel better!).

I then told Jonathan about a proof-reading distance learning course I signed up for many years ago, as I thought it could be something I could do whilst my daughter was young. I received the first couple of modules in the post and did the first assignment. The feedback was good but finished with a reminder that the marks from all subsequent assignments would count towards the final mark. That was it for me, I couldn’t carry on. We discussed why this might have been the case. I think it was because I hadn’t done perfectly on my first assignment and that I might not even do as well in future assignments. When I was young I would come home from school eager to tell my mother how I had done in a test – then she would ask me how everyone else had done – I didn’t understand at the time, why she couldn’t just be pleased with my result, like I was. I grew up to be a perfectionist, with a view that if you are going to do something, you should do it to the best of your abilities – I have since realised that what is your best can be influenced by the circumstances at the time. Jonathan reassured me that that is why the course is the way it is – there is no assessment of a final work or comparative approach for the very reason that it would cause students to freeze up.

Jonathan commented that my perceived weaknesses are actually also strengths in that the tendency to rush in, would deal with this issue. He observed that I had mentioned the word ‘fear’ quite a lot and asked me to describe the fear. It’s like a barrier in front of me but it’s not insurmountable and it’s transparent in that I can see beyond it, to where I need to get to. Having said that it clearly wasn’t insurmountable in terms of the proof-reading episode, but that was a long time ago! To get past it I need to act, and in this respect, Jonathan said that’s where I need to draw on my strength of jumping right in without thinking about it.

We concluded that there were many paradoxes in what we had discussed and that perhaps the solution is to try and combine the two sides of me in terms of moving forward in my art practice. I commented that perhaps the paradoxes are caused by me thinking that I’m one version of me when actually the real me is someone else, which is what I want to explore. Is the real me the baby who was born, or the person I now am with all the baggage I’ve collected along the way? I recognise that my strength of getting things done is probably as a result of my career. Jonathan commented that it is the question of nature and nurture and who they are is something artists ask themselves, so it’s far from being a cliché, it is actually what art is all about.

I then asked Jonathan about something which has been niggling at me: I draw inspiration from various sources to help me see ways to express my thoughts in work. I gave the example of the Two Fridas and the passage I had come across in a book I had seen in Waterstones about siblings and the primal connection through umbilical cords. In drawing on these sources, am I creating anything new, unique, or will someone just look at it and think ‘that reminds me of the Two Fridas’? Is it enough that it is coming from me and about how I feel? Jonathan assured me that it is ok to draw inspiration from others – the Two Fridas was personal to Kahlo and painted 80 years ago – I would be making it now, in 2024, and it would be personal to me.

What will I do for the next hour? Go away and write up my note of the tutorial before I forget it, which will be a useful process to consider what we discussed. Jonathan pointed out that at the beginning I had said that I had wanted to make art a bigger part of my life and that during our chat I had said that I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so I’m on my way and I should just keep doing what I’m doing.

I’m still feeling positive, and I would venture to say, even more so. I need to cogitate on what we discussed to move forward, but for the moment, everything is all ok.

Sisters

Kate McCalmont-Woods 2 Comments

“A sister is not a friend. Who can explain the urge to take a relationship as primal and complex as a sibling and reduce it to something as replaceable, as banal as a friend? Yet this status is used again and again to connote the highest intimacy. My mother is my best friend. My husband is my best friend. No. True sisterhood, the kind where you grew fingernails in the same womb, were pushed screaming through identical birth canals, is not the same as friendship. You don’t choose each other, and there’s no furtive period of getting to know the other. You’re part of each other, right from the start. Look at an umbilical cord – tough, sinuous, unlovely, yet essential – and compare it to a friendship bracelet of brightly woven thread. That is the difference between a sister and a friend.”

‘Blue Sisters’, by Coco Mellors

I stumbled across this passage whilst I was having a mooch in Waterstones on Saturday. It cuts right to the heart of what it is to be a sibling. I find the imagery particularly strong – the inhabited space of the womb, growth and development, umbilical cord, connection. Lots of food for thought.

‘The Two Fridas’, Frida Kahlo 1939 (oil on canvas)

On the subject of thinking, this image above has been floating around in the back of my head whilst I’ve been contemplating my role as a sibling, and as a mother, but more on the latter some other time. In this painting, Kahlo’s traditional identity is connected by an artery from her complete heart to the heart of her modern identity which has been torn apart by her divorce from Diego Rivera. I find it a very powerful image: full of pain and conflict, but, at the same time, resilience. It’s already informing some ideas for a piece of work.

I’ve been experimenting with pressing charcoal drawings onto a gelatine plate and then printing – the archival quality it produces is interesting – and also applying paint onto the plate randomly. It was all done in a bit of a rush as I suddenly thought: less thinking, more doing. I didn’t find the process satisfying: the colours are really unappealing and murky – in fact they are just varying shades of grey. I’ve been meaning to try this process for sometime now, since I saw it on a facebook reel, so I was really quite excited at the outset but I ended up feeling underwhelmed – the subtleties inherent in charcoal are totally lost. Maybe starting with a cross-section of an unlovely umbilical cord inadvertently set the tone, but my quickie self-portrait certainly expresses how I felt!

So, here’s the bad and the ugly…

If You See It, Just Buy It.

Kate McCalmont-Woods Leave a comment

This post has been sitting in draft for a while now. I’m not sure why I’ve been delaying in publishing it – maybe a reticence to commit in case something better comes along. Rather like the way I shop: I like to browse in every single shop to see all the available options, and for the most part end up going back to the first shop, several hours later. My husband, on the other hand, sets out with a list and buys the first item which fits the bill – his advice to me is that if I see it, I should just buy it, and save myself the aggravation. So what if I do have a better idea further down the line? That’s part of the process isn’t it? To reflect, adapt and recognise the need for a change of direction.

I’ve been giving further thought to what I would like to explore over the next couple of years. I’m afraid it’s not a laugh a minute, but it’s something that’s been on my mind for a while.

Not to be egocentric about it, but it’s ME! Then again that’s not a surprise as everything I make, even within the constraints of my art class, is subconsciously about me in one way or another: how I see the world; what matters to me; what interests me; about me; my experiences.

I remember sitting in the back of the family car as a child, probably on one of those Sunday afternoon drives in the Black Forest my parents used to like, with my brother on the back seat playing my dad’s favourite Elvis Presley and James Last songs on his double deck cassette player and thinking to myself: Who am I? This is me. Here. Right now. I almost tried to climb inside myself which messed with my head a bit. I must have been about 7 years old.

Who am I, as a person, as an artist? Hopefully by the end of the next two years I might have a better idea.

I’m particularly interested in my identity in the sense of nature and nurture: who is the authentic me – the one that drew its first breath? As Z recently mused on her blog ‘we will never be as unmarked as when we were born’. How has that version of me been influenced by my life experience, in particular, the roles I have had in my life?

This line of thought was prompted by the death of my mother in 2023. As my father had passed away in 2013, she was my lone parent. It struck me that my role as a daughter was coming to an end. Arguably it had gone on hiatus sometime earlier when I started to care for her following her cancer diagnosis, whereupon my role became that of carer. Some roles in life are mutually exclusive and in my case this was more or less true of my roles as daughter and carer – maybe it was a coping mechanism. As a result, I have issues in processing that brief, but cataclysmic, period of my life.

My mother’s death also made me consider my role as a sibling and the subsequent sense of estrangement I feel from my brother and, conversely, the closeness I have with my sister as a result of our shared experience of caring: sometimes only someone who has gone through the same experience can truly understand how it feels.

What effect does the ending of a role have on identity? What if I feel that I have failed in some roles? What if others think that I have failed? What if my roles conflict or were not mine by choice?

In being a mother I reflected on my experiences as a daughter to try and be the best mother I could be, and so the cycle will continue, perhaps. I’ve been a career woman, a homemaker and, still am a wife. At some stage I have lost the sense of the real me, if there is one: some roles allowed others to prosper whilst I took a back seat. Words which particularly resonate with me are from Deborah Levy’s “The Cost of Living” :

“It requires skill, time, dedication and empathy to create a home that everyone enjoys and that functions well. Above all else, it is an act of immense generosity to be the architect of everyone else’s well-being.”

In my head I’ve been Norman Foster.