mirror, mirror: my art in portrait mode
If I’d have kept every drawing from my birth to now there is one motif that would reoccur again and again (okay maybe two and a half but that’s for a later post). They may go through different themes - princesses, fashion models, fairies, alter egos, characters for some dark gothic film I created in my head - or - just no one. Anyone. But women - especially their faces have been everything to me. I would draw them while watching TV, listening to music, on the covers of my school books, in the telephone book (remember them?) while listening to my friends go on about some boy in class that they imagined looked their way. I would always find these unknown women appeared while I was in some kind of absent minded state. A trance where time disappeared. I didn’t have the words ‘intuition’ or ‘creative flow’ then - to me they were just doodles: a way to fill in time when you only had four tv channels and no internet.
I feel bad that I didn’t respect those drawings. Being a latchkey kid from a working class family trying to rise socially, art was not on the radar at all. Again, it was just a way to fill time. But what I didn’t realise until looking back is that I was I was processing my thoughts. I spent a lot of my childhood afraid to put a foot wrong. Anxious that any wrong move would make me a social outsider or lose the love of a father intent on leaving his humble roots behind - and I was to be the manifestation of that.
But my drawings were me. On the white paper, I could create a place where I was free. Every drawing looked a little like me. I wasn’t interested in creating new people, they were kind of anonymous and a reflection of me. An ‘every girl’ trying to break out of the expectations of a social ‘reality’ where I felt like I wasn’t enough. Not pretty enough, not posh enough, not thin enough. Just average. But even if the outsider just saw a nice drawing of a woman. To me, the drawing was loaded with emotion and silent rebellion.
After a break of twenty years, I came back to art. And the women came slowly back. But this time they feel different. I’m not sure they are me…they feel more spiritual. Like I am bringing back into being people into existence. And for me, these people are a part of all our stories. These women are every woman. Our ancestors, our current being and our descendants. For me, they are now a reminder that we are not alone. We are tied to one another, through the warp and weft of life.
