My Writers' Houses in Chichester

I got back Tuesday night from England where I set up an exhibition in the cosy little Lobby Gallery in Chichester's Oxmarket Centre of Arts. The building is a 13th century former church, wonderfully weathered outside, bright and white in.  Above is a (not very good) photo of the poster for the show. Below is one of me looking a bit fierce!

It's a stressful thing to put yourself through, from a practical and physical point of view (I am a migraine sufferer at the best (?) of times) but it's great to see the series (well the ones that haven't already gone to homes that is) up, present, correct and well lit. And to sort out my thoughts about it in an introduction.

Here it is:

The Writers' Houses Project

At about the time I was casting around for a way to interpret Wentworth Place (the Hampstead home of poet John Keats) following a recent inspirational visit, a fortuitous event took place when I found a pile of discarded Vogues put out for the rubbish which I promptly rescued without quite knowing what to do with them. Shortly after came a windfall of dozens of old National Geographics.

At some point as I passed these growing piles it occurred to me I had found my medium: paper, scissors and glue. And I had found myself a project: writers' houses, one which would blend art with my love of literature, buildings, research and a fascination with the past.

It has been said that houses may shape the writers dwelling in them by inspiring or conditioning them. Many of these buildings eventually become museums and places of pilgrimage. In so doing, according to one observer, the house may become a tool that transcends the personal nature of the memories it contains, and grow into a machine to evoke, through remembrance of things past, imagination of a more universal kind.

 

Intellectual conundrums aside, it has to be admitted that a lot of writers lived in some absolute peaches of houses which are a pleasure to portray.

The challenge I have set myself is to reflect their story.

 

 

Dangerously listing actually ....

... that's me at this pre-exhibition moment.

It's all very well putting pictures up cyberwise on the worldwide web but my anxiety levels know no bounds when it comes to the prospect of actually hanging the actual pieces in an actual gallery in an actual location.

Complications arise when that gallery is abroad and I have to add the worry of normal travel details like how many clothes and bits and pieces I can stuff into hand luggage.

The large case will be stuffed solely with writers' houses.

So at least that's simple.

 

My answer to all this is to go into list-making overdrive.

I write everything down on bits of paper.

And given that the studio is naturally awash with bits of paper anyway these lists tend to go under never to resurface ...

 

So the first and last item on these lists now generally begin with "Do list".

 

In between I am darting up and down to the framer.

And revising each image.

And adding bits and changing bits.

Like the latest house above which got two more birds and a bit more foliage before glazing.

 

Anyway, just look at this posting....

 

.... I have made another list.

 

(And you now know why I haven't been around much just lately).

The Eve of St Agnes

 

Finished (again).

After a bit of dithering I decided to add figures in the stained glass sky. It needed a bit of life, I felt, and the cat on its own didn't hack it.

(It is one of young Mrs Dilke's cats, from my Winter Snows collage of Keats House, one of the ones that didn't make it into that picture but was saved in a box on my table and is now having his day elsewhere, but now with the senior Dilkes).

 

So this is "Old Mr Dilke's" house in Chichester where Keats stayed from January 18-23 1819 and where he began to seriously think about and possibly pen the first lines of The Eve of St Agnes, the idea for which had been prompted earlier that week by his mysterious female friend, the sophisticated, elegant and independent Isabella Jones, who had pointed out the significance of the upcoming date.

 

According to legend on January 20, the eve of St Agnes, young women are able to see their future husbands in a dream.

Isabella, a keen reader of Gothic tales, suggested to Keats that it would make a great theme for a poem.

So hats off to Isabella.

 

 

The figures represent Porphyro and Madeline, the protagonists of the poem. But could equally be Keats and Brawne or even Keats and Miss Jones.

 

The pavement is made of fragments of a letter written to the poet's brother in America in which he informs him that "nothing much happened" in Chichester:

"I took down some thin paper and wrote on it a little poem called St Agnes's Eve ..."

 

A throwaway line if ever I heard one.

Solo show in Chichester

You won't be surprised that the title of my upcoming exhibition refers to my current project (or should that be obsession?) .... Cut Paper Places.

It's on in December at the lovely little Lobby Gallery in the Oxmarket Arts Centre just off East Street in the town centre and I'm hoping to have about a dozen writer's houses hanging plus a few small monoprint collages.

There will be a local Sussex emphasis and I am hoping for a blizzard-free fortnight. My last show at this venue was blessed by a mixture of weather that ranged from beautiful winter sunshine to a near Arctic storm which hit on the day I had to pack up and take the remaining paintings up to London. The train journey took the best part of 4 hours.

Anyway, with the publicity at the Oxmarket grinding into motion, it's time to really get cracking. While my Sissinghurst tower continues to languish up at the printer, I am getting on with a house which stands at the end of East Street in Chichester itself, a stone's throw away from the gallery: Number 11, Eastgate.

 

 

A distinctly shabby-looking terraced brick building, with a jumble of ugly tacky shops below, sweet papers and discarded crisp packets littering the entrance last time I was there, hideous neon Nails and Hair signs hanging in the upper windows, this poor neglected house perhaps dreams of former days when it ushered in the beginning of the miracle that was Keats's Living Year, the incredible 12 months which started with the Eve of St Agnes and ended with To Autumn.

A plain, honest sort of building, with no pretensions to grandeur apart from the pedimented entrance which is now smothered beneath layer upon layer of paint, it belonged to the parents of the poet's friend and sometime Hampstead neighbour Charles Wentworth Dilke and during his few days stay, which took place in February 1818 shortly after the death of his brother Tom and his meeting and falling in love with Fanny Brawne, he composed the first lines of The Eve of St Agnes.

The poem was heavily influenced by what he saw about him - the medieval buildings and especially the magnificent cathedral and its stained glass.

My stained glass sky is less medieval than modern. It is a passing tribute to the cathedral's wonderful Chagall window. Only mine's blue rather than red, of course. And wouldn't have been there in 1818!

 

And I am trying to tidy up the building and restore it to what it may have looked like when owned by Mr and Mrs Dilke (now interred and no doubt spinning in the cathedral cloisters at the thought of a Nail Salon in their front parlour).

Still a long way to go on this one ...

I'm back ...

And it was great. Really great.

Hanging the show

The show was good. Five paintings went to good homes, released into the big wide world. I am so happy that someone likes my work enough to reach into their pockets and pay for it with their hard-earned cash, but I have to say a part of me is always sad to see them go ...

Workaday East Croydon Station in the mother of all blizzards.

 The snow was amazing. The stunning new take on familiar, even mundane places in London is almost worth the cold, the slips and general inconvenience. And the sight of the English rural landscape blanketed in white and swathed in sunlight was simply breathtaking.

The Sussex Downs transformed

 Staying with my crazy daughters was fun, fun, fun and catching up with old friends, new friends and an old new friend was really special.

Then there were the cultural highlights: Gauguin at the TM (absolutely stunning); accidentally stumbling upon a whole roomful of Constable's oil sketches at the V&A (golly, what a find); the 400 Women exhibition at Shoreditch Town Hall (one of the most moving shows I have ever seen); Dame Elizabeth Blackadder in Cork Street and, a few doors down, Miranda Moncrieff's incredible sizzling landscapes, all the more sizzling for coming in from the cold and drizzle. Then there was the cosy afternoon spent roaming around Keat's House in Hampstead Heath as dusk fell  ...

Keat's House in the gloaming.

All in all a memorable and energising fortnight.
Now for something completely different: back down to earth and a bit of work, I think.

Angels round my Sussex church

This is a painting which gave me a lot of angst as far as the colours and overall composition were concerned and which was finished in fits and starts.

It essentially follows my original idea, so lord knows why its execution was such a trial. Funny how some pictures just come tripping off the paintbrush, as it were, and others are a struggle. I think a lot of the trouble was that I stubbornly refused to change the angels from their scarlet frocks, for some reason. Once they changed into their gold - or rather Naples yellow - ones it all came together. Like the meerkat says, Simples. I  must say I like the spiralling movement of angels, sheep and clouds around the rock-of-ages-like church.
For the record here is a photo of my somewhat grubby and dog-eared original same size drawing:

Where seabirds soar

I was reading my pencilled in notes in my sketchbook and decided to have another go at the Snowhill mudflats according to the colours I saw at low tide on a darker afternoon.

I am still missing out that almost violent acidic green of the lichen-like seaweed (which probably isn't seaweed at all - I'm not very good on plantlife) that clings to the grasses, pebbles and rusty chains. It's a very difficult colour to cope with so out it went.

Disaster

Dropped my (admittedly pretty rubbish) camera yesterday and it is now officially dead. Just when I was going to put up my revised sheep and golden (formerly cadmium red) angels picture. Or try to. And just when I was quite happy with the result after a lot of repainting and palette angst.

The Sea, the Sea

So instead here's another of my dogs-on-the-Sussex-beach pictures that I love to paint almost as much as the dogs love to run. There really was a family of six brown dogs that day I watched from one of my favourite spots at East Head.
This is acrylic and pencil on paper and will be on show in Chichester in December.