I am often asked why I paint and where I get my ideas. A very common question is “have you always known you want to be an artist?” And this is in fact true. It wasn’t a career choice for me – more an imperative from the moment I could grasp a crayon. I feel like a human being who not only shapes art, but has been shaped by it.
So today I will talk about the function of art for me, personally. Through images I’ll illustrate how life events and the works of painters I love have led to my compulsion to paint.
I am realising more and more that although we tend to assume we see life and art in a similar way, we are so often talking at cross purposes.
Child’s Eye View 1992
Of course, all of our life stories form the foundation of our compulsions. Mine has been an intense mix of great privilege and extreme loss. My name on my birth tag was Rosemary.
My birth mother, an English girl from the channel island of Jersey, out in South Africa on holiday, was not even allowed to lay eyes on me (that was the theory of adoption at time).
However she did give me the name Jane, and I was Jane Cazalet in the hospital, until I was eventually adopted by an older couple who had been unable to have children, David and Jean Poynton, and got the identity I have now.
I thus spent my early years in a 1960s house, on a lawn carved out of wild piece of land, next to the anti-apartheid, Anglican conference centre my adoptive parents had founded in Kwazulu Natal.
From a very small child, like most children, I always drew. Here is an early self portrait aged three. I have continued to do self-portraits ever since, as a way of mediating an internal state onto the external world.
By seven the angst, or at least anxiety, seems to have set in. And around thirteen or fourteen I seem to have become very disaffected, as well as having both a Lady Di haircut and a mullet in quick succession!
Here is a pastel self-portrait aged eighteen when for some reason I thought it would be better to be blonde.
This was at my high school graduation dance in 1987. All this youthful angst definitely provided a constant need to draw.
I clearly remember this first attempt to be methodical in my study of human features.
Bizarrely, I have found three different cat studies from the ages of five, ten and twenty-five, all containing four cats.
I remember my very first portrait drawn from life of a friend of my mother’s:
I feel like the themes that run through my work started very early. Questions about who is looking at what, of art as entertainment. Here is a puppet show, maybe I was five.
I actually remember trying to get the perspective on the chair legs. And here’s another kind of puppet show from my 20s, a reflection on being an artist, a show person.
Also from my 20s, this one is called “High Art”, a joke about our reverence and confusion in the face of art.
I had one art book to look at as a tiny child. I still have it.
The reproductions are dreadful, the book is old. I would look and look at the pictures, entranced by this other world in the paintings, a world untouched by time, a world in which ordinary things become beautiful.
At the age of 8 I sat at the dining room table in the countryside, hills rolling away for ever, while my mother was out being a political activist. And I copied these drawings. For example, I copied this drawing which is called “Antique Warrior”. I don’t know why I picked him but from the title I wrote on my drawing, I clearly thought he looked old!
I then tried to imagine how how a middle aged warrior would look from behind.
Then drew this rather fetching young warrior, imagining how he would look from the front.
I tried to copy Leonardo’s self portrait and his figure of a man:
The world in these Leonardo paintings was a world free of loss. My adoptive father had died in a car crash when I was two, and for seven more years my mother continued their shared work, being politically active through the Anglican church.
But when I was nine, my mother and I moved back to where she was from, England, and I immediately attended boarding school.
It was a complete shock to my system, like being transplanted onto another planet, from a warm, carefree life in the South African countryside, to a cold, regimented existence in a Victorian mansion.
I knew nothing about the social system I had entered in this place that ended up being my home for four years, and was of course mercilessly teased at first, until I managed to adapt my mannerisms and way of speaking to the obscure, tiny tribe that is the English upper class. In that alien environment, the need to create my untouchable worlds became a compulsion.
I sat in corners making these tiny heavens on earth, my ideal houses and lanscapes full of animals and birds.
I also began to draw the world around me..a cow on the farm where my mother worked…
…or the boy sitting in front of me at school – I seem to have paid particular attention to his ears!
I was also obsessed with patterns and would be entranced by how a pattern would grow organically, and almost form itself on the paper without me really noticing.
At the age of twelve I did my first drawing of Ilsa, a friend of my mother’s, then my art teacher, and now a very dear friend of mine.
She has since appeared in many paintings over the last forty years. Here are just a couple. I suspect the seeds of most artists’ iconography are sown very early in childhood.
Further disruptions after my mother’s death meant that this constant act of creating was not just a compulsion but a lifeline. I moved to Eswatini, then Swaziland, to live with American guardians, and then to America. I experimented with weaving, and I was clearly a strange fourteen year old who thought it would be very cool to weave an embryo in a womb.
I carved, painted, drew, sewed.
I tried out lots of different materials and approaches as a teenager.
I ended up moving to the States with my guardians, finishing school there, and doing two years of art school in Providence, Rhode Island. At art school I received a wonderful classical training in drawing. We had to sit in the museum and do a lot of copying, for example this copy of a Degas drawing.
And we also did many hours a week of life drawing, which I loved more than anything.
I also began to try out a bit of oil painting on the side, which strangely seems to have been mostly inspired by Gauguin! I think I was trying to come to grips with colour, and perhaps it was also because my mother had some Gauguin posters up in my childhood home.
I would say that it was when I finally decided at twenty to return to South Africa, in an effort to claw together some sort of identity, that I began to paint in earnest. I had stopped studying and just painted all the time, as a way of fighting depression and bringing some structure into my life. I looked at a lot of 20th century figurative painting and tried out many different approaches to an image. I did plenty of very horrible paintings. I had no idea what I was doing.
I adored Stanley Spencer. I saw his nudes with his wife at the age of twelve at the Tate and they made a very deep impression on me. I was amazed by his way of painting, and the extreme fearlessness and intimacy.
This painting of my boyfriend of the time shows my admiration of his poses and intimate spaces.
Of course, I was in awe of Lucian Freud…
…though somehow my versions always came out rather absurd, like this one with flowers all round.
I admired Francis Bacon and tried to do more gestural painting with teeth showing because I liked how he painted teeth
I tried to work out how figures can be placed into space, such as in this one which I kept overpainting and fiddling around with.
I was entranced by Hockney’s male nudes by pools and did my own male nude by a pool.
I was fascinated by the women surrealists like Remedios Varo and Dorothea Tanning
…and tried out a bit of surrealism
I even tried palette knife painting .
I would put all of these attempts – and there were many many more, into the class of failed experiments. No matter what style I was trying out, almost right from the start I was pulling material from my life, my intimate other, my friends, my memories and surroundings. It was as if, by dragging this material into my nest, and stuffing it and mounting it in a new, permanent environment on canvas, something was eased in my heart.
I would say this one, from when I was twenty-four, was the first large scale painting I did, that was the beginning of an approach that has stayed with me. I have painted my partner of the time. There is a self-referential aspect of me, the artist, purveying this image. The elements of domesticity are there, a dog, furniture, a clock, family photos.
And on the wall, a partial copy of a painting “The Kidnapping of the Sabine Women” by the French Baroque artist Poussin. I don’t know why I chose this one to copy, but it certainly adds a level of absurdity.
This one, also from the 1990s, continues the theme. The man is naked, presented as an object much in the way women always have been, but he’s in on the joke. I am oddly red-faced (I’d like to pretend this was intentional but I think it was a mistake) and I am looking out at the viewer as if in collusion. The pets, the TV as the hearth of the home, all teetering on the edge of a hill with the city in the distance, create a sense of foolishness und undermine the very message I am making.
After trying all of these different approaches for about five years, I realised that what interested me most continued to be the remote-feeling world of classical painting. I’d like to show you some examples of the paintings I love, and how I like to echo their feel, the poses, the tropes and clichés of these images.
17th century Dutch still lives, for example, like this one by Ambrosius Bosschaert from 1614, with its exquisite flowers and delicate insects.
Here is a large scale painting I did a few years ago as part of a series called “Land of Cockaigne”, a myth about a heaven on earth.
It echoes flower painting traditions in the most kitsch way, but also has the slight feel of a graveyard.
Here is a German Baroque still life by Georg Flegel called “Snack with Fried Eggs” from around 1600, such a beautiful intimate painting of a humble meal. Bread would have symbolised ordinary life, humility, and perhaps the body of Christ.
Looking around in this exhibition you’ll find slices of bread on plates, objects, plants, flowers, insects, animals.
But I’m not interested in recreating a Baroque still life. It is more just a resonance, without any of the direct symbolism of paintings from that time.
I like to keep referring to this history of realist painting. I love the religious paintings of the Northern renaissance with their static poses, rich colours and immensely expressive, human faces, like this favourite painting, Rogier van der Weyden’s Descent from the Cross, from about 1435, which I saw in Madrid.
It is like a stage, and has a hyperreal quality, more real than real, static, contained, utterly beautiful, full of emotion but also remote.
This was the first really large scale triptych I ever did, called “Betrayal”, which directly echoes these Renaissance religious paintings.
But there is the self referential aspect, where the scene is being recorded and the people’s emotions are not easily understood. There is no simple story to attach to it. It could be a game or a crime.
A recent altarpiece-style work which I did for an exhibition in the Netherlands, set in a part of the museum that was once a church, also echoes the paintings of the northern Renaissance.
However there is no intentional meaning, only the meaning the person looking may bring to it.
I have been enchanted by the knowing gaze of Ingres portraits which look out at the viewer and almost turn us, looking in, into subjects ourselves.
This Victorian painting by Augustus Egg is such a symphony of fabric and texture.
I have echoed these kinds of paintings in my recent self-portrait commissioned by the same Dutch museum.
This was my wedding dress twenty-five years ago – here is a picture. I liked the idea of dragging this queenly thing over my rather ageing body, and also darkened the silk into almost a steel rather than the fairytale silver in which I got married.
But although the painting reflects these traditional portraits, it remains completely of this time now. Here is one showing the scale. Art is definitely not life.
Renaissance images of Adam and Eve have also always interested me, like this one by German painter Lucas Cranach from 1528, because of the myth of the Fall.
The Fall in Christian mythology was the moment when human being were expelled from paradise, because they ate the apple of knowledge. For me it represents this: that our knowledge that we exist and that we will die, our self-consciousness, prevents us from truly inhabiting this moment. We continually weave stories and construct meanings around ourselves, as we are more and more out of touch with our habitats.
Here are a few paintings I have done over the years, which have perhaps have reflected this obsession with Renaissance paintings of the myth of the Fall.
Including one of course from this exhibition.
The historical paintings I adore contain an entrancing materiality. Here is a still life by one of my favourite Baroque artists, Abraham Mignon
It is an illusion, but seems real, it has been translated from what we think of as the real world. It’s this translation that I crave. I would not be interested in an actual nest with fruits, installed in a gallery space. It must be painted, made untouchable, ephemeral. It must be an illusion. I find a lot of relief in this transmutation.
The Baroque was a time of incredible sensuality and absurdity.
In one painting I echoed these erotic paintings by Boucher, but although I’ve used the sensuality of the fabric and the abandonment of the pose, it is more an image of engulfment, a comment on how painting for me in a way is like this red velvet, all consuming, a rich surface into which I can press my face and close my eyes.
I am entertained by casting a female eye upon the male form, hinting at tropes from historical paintings of women. Amazingly, people are still, in my experience, more embarrassed and confronted by male nudity.
And now I will talk a bit about this exhibition, Vertigo.
The classical paintings I have mentioned are beautiful. What that means for me, is that in them, the exquisite world is observed with tremendous patience.
Beauty is an essential part of my need, in the making of these images. I know beauty is subjective and completely in the eye of the beholder. And I fully acknowledge that I am pursuing a beauty shaped by my culture and my history.
Many people would not find a piece of trash beautiful. But I would attempt to separate out beauty from a scale of moral values, if at all possible.
For me, the beauty is to be found simply in the translation from what we would call reality, to the illusion of reality.
I’d like to tell you about the largest work in the show, Meaning and Purpose Triptych, but first I’ll show you a few of my previous “crowd” paintings.
I do mostly use my family as models in more intimate spaces, but from time to time I have also painted groups, I suppose because it accentuates the idea that we are hive creatures, profoundly reliant on each other as we all occupy our little bubbles of hope, sadness, joy, meaning.
This one, Traders, reflects on the transactional nature of our reliance on each other.
I painted this just after I moved to Germany in 2002 when I was definitely suffering from culture shock – I was always amazed by how drab the winter clothes are, and how people don’t smile at strangers.
To me this one, called Safety and Security, is pretty violent in all kinds of ways, mainly reflecting on women and men, race and class, and the brutalism of the urban environment, and how we all document each other.
I particularly like the crowd paintings of the 16th century painter Breughel, who painted people in the context of their environment and society. He was less interested in individuals, more in everyone’s predicament in relation to each other.
This painting is called For Ever and Ever, a kind of mad gathering of frenzied fun combined with loneliness where a man seems to be selling images, or something.
And I wanted to show you this one even though it’s the same two figures, a man and a dog, replicating themselves. It’s called “Slapstick”. It’s a preposterous image really, a kind of daily cycle of self-referential rituals and routines taking place in a humdrum interior. Which to me pretty much sums up the striving foolishness of life.
In order to prepare for “Meaning and Purpose Triptych”, I approached a friend who teaches at City Varsity, and she organised a shoot with the drama students and any staff who were prepared to join in. Some students did not take part on the day, others entered into it with great generosity and enjoyment. The selection of people is therefore random – it was whoever was there and willing. Here are some examples of the reference photos from the day.
I photographed them one by one, or in twos or threes if they were holding each other, and gave instructions like, pretend you are running from something, or in pain, look back, look forward and so on. I’ll take several details and sometimes use one head angle with another body position, depending on what works in the composition.
Once I have all the photos I usually work on a a few drawings until I come up with a more detailed composition. I find that a preliminary drawing is essential with figures. And often, even if it looks correct in the drawing, once it is large-scale on canvas I have to readjust.
I was in my studio in Germany when I started this work, which was lucky because I had the space there to put it all together and step right back.
(133)Some heads will look too large, others too small, so after the first layer of underpainting is on I have to push and pull it around until it is sitting comfortably. Once the undercoat is on I can then start having a conversation with the painting. That means it starts to dictate to me how the textures and colours can work together.
The ground and details of animals and plants are constructed directly on the canvas. It’s not really necessary to draw it all out on paper, and leaves space for the unexpected.
These are some of the reference photos I used for the ground and objects in this work. It can be some rubbish I passed on a walk, something I photographed in my house, the pavement outside, just a leaf from one photo, a stick from another, and then perhaps I’ll make up a couple of sticks and leaves, and even get stuff online like this, by googling ‘red lid’ because I am just too lazy to go and find a red lid and take a picture! So it’s an entirely constructed world.
I have enjoyed doing crowd paintings again. This is another one I did for this series, called “Predicament”. I approached people in the street, the first fifteen who walked past me. Twelve said yes.
I was moved by the generosity of those willing to model, as I am always moved when my family are willing. The exchange I want to attempt, in the face of that generosity, is to pay attention to the individuality of each person in relation to the group and our common humanity, the unique predicament of each of these human beings, even as they, we, our species, are all in it together.
I called this work Meaning and Purpose Triptych because I feel like we sort of act out our meaning and purpose as it comes to us, in an almost burlesque procession through life, helping and hindering, lost in our own compulsions and regrets, believing that we have all this choice, that were will live forever, that we are independent, and all the while completely relying on other homo sapiens for our shelter, food, objects, entertainment, waste removal, for absolutely everything that contributes to our survival. We rely on others for all this concrete help for our bodily survival, and we also rely on others for our context, our meaning and purpose.
As I’ve mentioned, I have always used my partner and family as models, right from when I first started painting. I am not interested in painting people’s portraits, and to me it feels like the more I have been painting these same people over and over again for decades, the less they are portraits. These people, who I am close to, are actors in my tableau. A tableau was an entertainment in the houses of the wealthy in France and England in the 19th century. Family members would dress up and pose out of scenes from famous plays, or historical moments, or even paintings.
So I see these paintings as tableaux, unrelated to the personal stories of each family member, but deeply related to paintings that have come before and to the shared human experience of seeing and being.
And as you can see I’ve continued to paint the same people in this current exhibition, “Vertigo”. Myself and my partner, and my older son and partner, and my younger son.
This is a Käthe Kollwitz etching. I visited the Käthe Kollwitz museum in Berlin last year.
She was an amazing 20th century artist, outraged by the suffering she saw around her. I am not an activist but I really admire people who are, and just people generally who actively help others, like my partner who is a doctor. Of course, it is inevitable that my work will reflect the the political and societal realities of the day and my position within it, for good or bad.
But for me, my paintings are more morally ambivalent. A crowd painting may also reflect on how it is somehow the predicament of our hominid nature to have to create these hierarchies, to profit from others’ pain and benefit from others’ care.
If I paint nature, like the nature in Dutch still lives, I will weave rubbish through it to disallow an idea of perfection. That is nothing new, of course. The Dutch painters liked to include skulls, dead animals or wilted plants in their paintings to remind us of our mortality. Perhaps the rubbish in my paintings is the contemporary version of those memento mori.
If I paint animals, I may be using the iconography of those crazy 17th century paintings of paradise, like this bird painting by Melchior Hondecoeter. These luxurious verdant Edens were painted to transport the mind and heart into an earthly heaven. But my heaven is touched by human hands, my pelican is next to a paddling pool, degraded by us, but remaining dignified, as he gazes out at us with a knowing look.
My large scale nudes are not only about representing human flesh, or echoing past paintings of nudes, but also about who is looking at who, and why, how we represent ourselves and each other, to ourselves and each other. I sometimes feel that historical paintings gives me a convenient cover story, a way to show this translated world without having to justify the mad intimacy of these works. Or perhaps they just provide me with a wonderfully rich language which I can use for my own ends.
For me not only must painting be beautiful, subjective though that may be, but it must also function as a kind of container for our uncertainty, anxiety, for perception itself. Perhaps a beautiful painting can provide comfort, can steady us in the face of the vertigo we probably all feel at some point in our lives.
I would like to share this Thomas Pynchon quote with you. It’s about this Remedios Varo painting from 1961. The quote was given to me by the director of Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin, where I had a show last year. I really love it, it seems to express what painting is for me, both the comfort, but also the vertigo I feel as I create these worlds.
“In the central painting of a triptych, titled “Embroidering the Earth’s Mantle,” were a number of frail girls[…..]prisoners in the top room of a circular tower, embroidering a kind of tapestry which spilled out the slit windows and into a void, seeking hopelessly to fill the void: for all the other buildings and creatures, all the waves, ships and forests of the earth were contained in the tapestry, and the tapestry was the world.“
I will end by reading my text for this show, perhaps you’ve read it, it’s on the front wall.
I am overcome by vertigo.
Vertigo is the dizzying knowledge that I will die, while acting as if I won’t.
It is the unbridgeable gulf between this moment, now, upon which I teeter, and the infinite moments before and after.
It is the jarring divide between the fantasies in my mind’s eye and the hominid of flesh and bone that is me.
It is the unease I feel as I seek heaven on earth, while destroying this earthly heaven.
Clinging to all this meaning and denial, purpose and inertia, my head is spinning. There is nothing below me. I can’t look down to save my life.
Instead, I creep into the safe embrace of images. I tether myself to illusions and ever so slightly release my grip. Perhaps, If I stay here long enough, I will be able to open my eyes.
