Nostalgia - memories evoked by objects
I am currently working on a new body of work that explores the power of objects to evoke memories of the past.
Nostalgia comes from the Greek words “nostos” (return as in Odysseus’s return home) and “algos” (pain). The Greek meaning involves suffering evoked by the desire to return to one’s place of origin. All through Odysseus’s journey home he longed for the things and the people he would find waiting for him. This feeling sustained him through all his adventures, but when he eventually got home things weren’t as he had hoped.
Psychologists have examined the role of nostalgia in the human brain. See, for example an article published in The Psychologist, the trade journal for the British Psychological Society: “Nostalgia - from cowbells to the meaning of life”. It has been described as a compensatory mechanism to protect individuals against the deficiencies of belongingness. As Ian Sinclair says in “Lost London” it may involve “holding on to a past that never happened.” In this sense, memories involve creating rather than recreating the past. Memories for me involve creating my own personal folklore about my origins to compensate for my feeling of being an outsider where I have ended up.
As a child of Irish immigrants growing up in Britain in the 70s I was very much seen, through the prism of the IRA bombings, as an outsider. We were Catholics in a Protestant eco system, we were a potential threat, we were viewed with suspicion. Yet, on our return trips to Ireland in the summer holidays, we were seen as “the English cousins”, we were also viewed with hostility because British involvement in Ireland’s past was still very raw and ever present.
Even now I still feel like an outsider in both Ireland and the UK but I have created my own belongingness through the objects that my mother and father left behind them and childhood possessions which I have kept. These are family photographs, often from generations before I was born, ornaments that my mother collected such as Staffordshire flatbacks, silver objects, my great grandmother’s sampler, teddy bears and dolls. These have an ability to transubstantiate into my story, my origins, my belongingness.
Tarkovsky’s “Andrei Rublev”
My latest painting “Fire in the Farmyard” was inspired by stills from the film “Andrei Rublev” made in 1966 by the famous Russian director, Andrei Tarkovsky. People say that he used the film as a vehicle to express the pressures and limitations faced by artists living in a totalitarian system. Tarkovsky said of the film: “An artist never works under ideal conditions. If they existed, his work wouldn’t exist, for the artist doesn’t live in a vacuum. Some sort of pressure must exist. The artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn’t look for harmony but would simply live in it. Art is born out of an ill-designed world. This is the issue in Andrei Rublev.” What particularly struck me were the images of horsemen and horses set against a bleak landscape - it is set in medieval Russia. I started off with some carbon ink brush drawings of horsemen and horses based on stills from the film. Although I think the horsemen I initially drew must have been Tartars, they morphed into Russian Orthodox knights showing the cross of Cyril and Methodius (the saints who brought Christianity to Russia and Eastern Europe) which has two cross bars rather than the Roman single cross bar.
As an exercise at the Norfolk Painting School Diploma 2024/25 we were given a photo of a bland courtyard with mock classical buildings. The idea was to use this as a starting point to see whether we could employ it as an initial diving board to walk away from the strictures of the image or whether we would feel impelled to stick to the original image. I don’t know why but the buildings in the background reminded me of some of the buildings in Andrei Rublev and that was my diving board moment. It then became possible to imagine those buildings in a Russian farmyard on the Steppes with a horseman arriving suddenly in the foreground brandishing a cross. As I mapped out the picture on the board, the image morphed again to an Irish farmyard with low slung white buildings. Eventually, the image ended up as a lone horse without a rider, no cross and buildings that didn’t belong in Russia or Ireland. What changed everything was the colour choice. I immensely enjoyed juxtaposing pastel colours next to a battleship grey. I also enjoyed creating ambiguity in the background which could show a tree against the sky or could show a blazing fire. I also enjoyed surrounding the horse with a light magenta and suggesting its contours with lines. Originally I included an onion dome on one of the buildings but this changed to a more classical building that could be from a grand stable block or could be a derelict Methodist chapel. I hope this shows how a jumble of images and thoughts can be used to inform the ultimate image and direct random thoughts into conscious decisions about colour, composition and theme.
Origins of Victorian Girl Band I & II
Why do children in Victorian photos always look so solemn? Why do they never smile? I have been researching photographs from the 19th century and noticed that photos were a serious thing. Girls, in particular, appeared to dislike being photographed and looked almost cross.
Move on next to the 2000s and imagine a girl band where the protagonists glare boldly at the camera with what looks like supreme self-confidence. They are daring you to question their dress sense, daring you to ask why they are worthy of a photograph. I like the idea that being photographed in a group gives each individual in the photo more self-confidence. The group dynamic might encourage otherwise shy, retiring individuals to lark about or show bravado. Being in a group or band would enable otherwise awkward people to show their brash side, show that they are “brat”. I get this feeling from the photo of a girl group (image to the right) who are wearing branded clothing in primary colours. They are in your face. Everything about the image suggests a slightly edgy, aggressive confidence (perhaps underpinned by some uncertainty). I particularly like the prominence of platform Buffalo trainers much loved by twenty somethings. Each individual in the group is striking a pose.
Contrast this with the uncertainty and whistful looks of the Victorian photo (image to the left). This contrast intrigued me and led me to wonder how Victorian girls would behave in front of the camera if they were in a girl band. That led to Victorian Girl Band I & II.
I have been looking at the art of R B Kitaj a lot recently. He saw drawing as paramount and his skilful draftsmanship shows through in a lot of his paintings. Something which he transferred over from life drawing was the use of charcoal and pastels to create strong black outlines in his paintings. I have tried to use this technique in these two images to make the individuals in the group stand out as well as to delineate each individual member of the group. I have also borrowed Kitaj’s strong colours but translated into my preferred palate which is more on the pastel side of the spectrum (rather than bold primary colours. It’s interesting that my source photo of the girl group shows those strong primary colours as well). I also got inspiration from Kitaj’s varied depiction of faces. Sometimes he drew faces in detail with great accuracy, elegance and fine lines. Other times his faces are primitive and almost crude. Kitaj also used collage in his images which is something a love to include as well.
As another layer of meaning, if we imagine girl groups, given their young age and probable lack of agency, do you think they are exploited or are they set up to exploit their fans? I imagine a bit of both. Children of an impressionable age are susceptible to being exploited to make money for the people who have “discovered” them. I tried to portray that sense of unease and exploitation in both images, particularly in Victorian Girl Band I where I also referenced Picasso’s “Demoiselles D’Avignon” - the ultimate group of exploited women (prostitutes). Picasso just saw a group of women who were uninhibited and who had a primitive energy. What I see is very different, hence the image of the older naked woman on the office chair - someone who has possibly been exploited but has nothing left to give, nothing worth exploiting anymore.
Maskenfreiheit
Maskenfreiheit is the feeling of liberation and anonymity experienced when wearing a mask. Behind a mask it is possible to act differently because people won’t associate the freer expression and more liberated behaviour with the person who is behind the mask. Poets and writers use Maskenfreiheit as a theme to explore identity, social constraints, the power of disguise, and the desire for temporary freedom. On the other hand, masks can represent artifice and duplicity.
In my painting “Maskenfreiheit” I have shown two kids with chubby legs, wearing bright socks drawing attention to their fat legs, and brightly striped costumes. In the background there is a woman walking in a hijab. The children are unselfconscious. They don’t need a mask. They don’t care about self image. Like most younger children, they are comfortable with who they are. By contrast, the woman in the hijab feels more comfortable going into public covered up. I am fascinated and confused by the battle ground that has developed in Europe over hijabs. A woman’s choice to be covered has become a political issue for a number of complicated reasons. This was particularly highlighted by an incident in France a few years ago when a Muslim woman, in line with her culture, who was wearing a modest swimming costume and leggings on the beach in Cannes, was accosted by angry police officers who fined her. Local people found her costume offensive and counter cultural. The politician who promoted the legislation imposing the fines viewed “burkinis” as a symbol of Islamic extremism which were not respectful of the good morals and secularism upon which the French state was founded. All right, since the Revolution, France has had a particular approach to religion and the state but this just seemed ridiculous. Wearing the burkini gave this woman a sense of freedom and enabled her to go swimming in the sea. Similarly, many people are suspicious of women in burkhas and some Western feminists vilify the burkha as a symbol of oppression. But being covered up may represent liberation to the women who wear them. Why should someone from a different culture feel entitled to tell these women that they are oppressed by being covered up?
Does make up play a similar role? Tik Tok is littered with posts of women saying they felt so nervous when their new boyfriend saw them for the first time without make up. Will he still like me? Will he think I’m ugly? A survey among women in 2014 revealed that a third of them got up early to refresh make up or put it on before their partner woke up because they couldn’t bear the thought of being seen without it. In that sense is a mask artifice or protection? For me, I long to be like the chubby legged kids in the picture but I’m probably closer to being like the woman in the burkha.