Silence and Quiet (and kale)

 

 

Some snapshots from the last few months:

1  |  The perfect book pair. I had been meaning to read Susan Cain's Quiet. The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking ever since its publication spawned myriad articles, talks and interviews. This summer I finally bought it in a small independent bookshop in West Cork (sometimes it is nice to wait for serendipity - I will always remember where I got this book). It has helped me focus on the positive sides of my (often extreme) introversion instead of beating myself up for the downsides, of which there are many: to name just one example, in my thirties I still have a phone phobia that means I have to settle and prepare myself in a quiet room to ring places such as the dental surgery, and I will shake when making those calls.
My sister-in-law gave me explorer Erling Kagge's book Silence in the Age of Noise, and I read his philosophical vignettes parallel to Quiet. 

2  |   Light-and-shadow patterns in the living room

3  |  Kale is officially this year's polytunnel star - it has been thriving. I add it to nearly every meal I make and we have been giving a lot away, yet I still cannot keep up.
Cut off in the corner of this photo is my paperback of The Dutch House by Ann Patchett, another book that had been on my list for a while and that also 'came to me' when I was browsing that new-to-me bookshop on holiday. I had given my mum a hardcover copy a year earlier. Patchett is one of my favourite writers, and this may well be my favourite novel of hers - it also fit perfectly with my ongoing preoccupation with the symbolism of houses (I still have strange dreams about my childhood home). I love the story behind the painting on the cover: Patchett commissioned an artist friend, Noah Saterstrom, to paint one of the main characters for the book jacket, and the mesmerising portrait has taken on a life of its own.
Speaking of paintings, I only realised after I had taken the photo of the kale bouquet that John is in it twice - on the couch in the background and in the painting on the wall, both in profile and in the same shirt!

4  |  More light at play. An (indoor) plant that hasn't been thriving is the money plant a friend and former housemate gave me over ten years ago when she moved out. It is down to a stump, with some struggling tiny green leaves that I won't give up on. I am fairly certain that where we put it is not the correct location according to Feng Shui, but refuse to worry about what this might signify. But the citrus trees are doing well, thanks to John's green fingers and my nephew's diligent watering (it is one of the first things he will check whenever he visits - he loves refilling the drip-watering glass bird planters). 

We have the late Tim Robinson's Burren map in the living room (from where we can look out across the bay at the Burren) and his Aran Islands map in the guest room.

In the studio

 

 

Just a few glimpses of my studio/office (a spare room in our house), where I am spending even more time now that I am also teaching remotely:

 1  |  I have four of these bamboo picture ledges in two rows on one wall, with finished canvases and paintings that are drying. On the wall opposite I put this one up behind my desk to keep pencils, pens, small brushes and other supplies I use frequently within reach, but where they don't clutter up my desk. This is currently the backdrop for the majority of my video calls and classes.

2  |  One of these skinny drawers (which are great for storing work on paper) holds an antique letterpress tray I got John as a gift, with the type pieces he had bought. We use these to make cards and similar and are going to create the text for our next picture book with them. The plan is to get a glass lid made for the tray and put it on a frame with legs, so it can be used as a side table, but for now it is stored away in this drawer.

3  |  I have a couple of desk easels for smaller canvases and one standing easel. I try to paint standing at the large easel as much as possible, and the desk easels are great for displaying work-in-progress, as I tend to have several paintings on the go at any one time and like being able to have them all in view.

4  |  For oil paintings I mainly use water-mixable oils, for environmental reasons and so I don't have to breathe in turpentine fumes and other toxic solvents. Cleaning up is much easier with these, too. I bought a Dyson purifying fan heater (with a cooling function and a detailed analysis of potential pollutants) a few months ago, as I was worried about the air quality in the room, but it tells me everything is in the green range, so that is reassuring. We also had the house tested for radon after I was diagnosed with lung cancer as a young non-smoker. I try not to worry too much about all the external factors that may contribute to cancer, and some, such as electromagnetic radiation, are beyond my control to a large extent, but it gives me peace of mind to have these tests done. 

5  |  Marion Milner's books have their own shelf (most of my art books are kept in this room). I have started using my ink pen (not pictured) and bottled ink more again. The beautiful glass pen was a present from my aunt - I had kept it at my mum's house for years and finally took it with me after my last visit. 

6. We have plants in every room of the house and I am trying to keep these two happy. The vegetation in the self-portrait is a field with thistles close to my childhood home in Germany.

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The window is to the right of my desk and I can see a large part of the garden, including our three new hens and one of our bird feeders. There is a white horse in the field across the road, which offers some consolation in the wake of the departure of 'our' beloved donkeys that used to come to the wall in our back garden. They must have been moved to a different field, as that land was sold recently. We miss them a lot.

I have rituals around working from home that I have been using for years to mark some sort of division between work and home life (though the lines are blurred), but now they have taken on extra significance. At the moment I am recording videos for some of my classes, and I plan my outfits, jewellery and nail polish for those, whereas on days nobody will see me I put on my large painting jumper or apron (I am looking into sustainable boiler suits and dungarees for more coverage, even though I am not that messy a painter, but I still manage to get stains on unlikely areas of my clothes).

In any case I attempt to generate a 'going to work' feeling by getting ready as if I were leaving the house. This also involves a few morning routine clichés such as meditation, a yoga sequence, making celery juice and writing my morning pages. I air the room for a few minutes and clap to clear stagnant energy, and I mix essential oils for the diffuser that are stimulating and help with concentration or create an uplifting atmosphere, so a lot of peppermint, rosemary, clary sage, geranium, lemon, orange and lemongrass. There are endless mugs of (mostly herbal) tea and some of them get spoiled by accidentally dipping my brush in them, but I try not to eat in this room (as I want to eat mindfully - nothing to do with weight control; I am trying to put on weight!), though snacks will find their way in here.

I have my laughing Buddha on a bookshelf to the left of my desk and a stuffed elephant my younger sister made for me on my desk for a similar reason (or up on a shelf when I am recording videos for children and the elephant represents my audience - this was a tip we were given) - it keeps me in touch with my inner child and the playful side of life and is a reminder not to take anything too seriously.

Walking, swimming and Sufjan Stevens

"Going barefoot in nature immediately helps clear your energy. Stepping out onto the sand, putting your feet into the ocean, hugging a tree, all of these clear your energy. Nature is an incredible neutraliser of energy." Anita Moorjani

A lot of my routines have fallen by the wayside. The fatigue has been acting up quite a lot lately and I am technically on holidays, so I took a break from my normal day-to-day, including elements of my healing-from-cancer regime. I am aware that I put a lot of pressure on myself to do all the right things, and that pressure equals stress, which is what 'all the right things' are supposed to ease... I am still trying to find a rhythm that allows me to trust the process and not beat myself up when I fall short of my often unfeasible expectations. 

Exercise is an antidote to fatigue, though I have a tendency to overdo it and then pay for it the following day(s). And sometimes only proper rest will help. But while I haven't touched the dumbbells and haven't done any running for a few weeks, gentle exercise such as walking and swimming has been a salve.

Stripey symphony: My sister and nephews in the Burren - hats made by my sister

 

 

John and I went away for a few days (within Ireland) and did a lot of hiking - since the lockdown walking has become a huge part of our life. In recent weeks I have walked around islands (Cape Clear and Omey Island, Inis Oírr - we cycled around the latter), in forests, on beaches, Greenways, the karst landscape of the Burren, on the loops near our house, 5km along the rocky shoreline to a pub and returning via the coast road. We have walked together (often in silence) and each on our own, with family and friends, with dogs, and with strangers: I took part in a forestbathing session with a lovely group and two wonderful guides and hugged a lot of trees on my personal forestbathing forays.

The old runners I have been wearing in lieu of hiking boots are now falling apart, and on the recommendation of a friend I am tempted to buy a pair of recycled barefoot boots. Feeling the texture of the ground is like a foot massage (I also regularly walk barefoot in the garden or on the beach to ground myself) and the balancing act of walking on a rocky shore or any other uneven surface makes you use different muscles in your legs.

 

I still go swimming in the sea at least twice a week, and it was a joy to explore other beaches and find hidden swimming spots. We took my nephew to Inis Oírr and swam in clear turquoise water. On Cape Clear I waded into the water among rocks covered in shells and emerged with bleeding scrapes all over my legs, from what had felt like lightly brushing against the stones as I floated. I loved even that. Being in cold water makes me feel so alive. 

 

 On the ferry to Inis Oírr

 

I spent the Irish heatwave of 2018 indoors suffering the side effects of aggressive chemotherapy and radiotherapy and unable to handle the hot weather. Last year I stayed covered up (the advice was to do so for a year following radiotherapy) and didn't swim until September. This year I have been exposing the surgery scar on my back and my radiotherapy tattoos with abandon (and SPF 50). Sometimes those souvenirs catch me by surprise when I see them or when my hand touches the scar in the shower - it all still feels unreal - and I marvel at what my body has been able to do since I finished treatment.

 

The soundtrack to these last few months has been at least 50% Sufjan Stevens, an all-time favourite. One of the songs I have been playing on repeat for the past couple of years ("Casimir Pulaski Day") is about remembrance and cancer and I connect with it on so many levels. This concert from 2006 is one I keep returning to. I almost feel I am in the audience when I watch this, and something about the overall aesthetic and the atmosphere - the wings, the uniforms, the group dynamic on stage, and of course the music - gets me every time ("Casimir Pulaski Day" starts at the 6-minute mark).

Books: On Chapel Sands by Laura Cumming

"The Misses Williamson inspired in her the gift of transforming the everyday that has enriched my whole life." Cumming, Laura: On Chapel Sands, Chatto & Windus, London 2019, p.145*

Laura Cumming writes about art like no other critic and with great sensitivity and empathy towards her subjects, evoking the life behind the work. Her books on self-portraits and Velázquez were both outstanding, and her most recent, a memoir about her mother and thus a deeply personal project, is no exception - I read it in April and still think about it almost every day.

The photograph shown in the last image above is reproduced early on in the book and then again at the very end, with a revelation that moved me to tears (not the only time while reading this book) and that has been hinted at in some articles and reviews, but I don't want to include any spoilers here.

Cumming's art critic's eye is evident throughout and she brings alive the art of famous artists (Bruegel's "Fall of Icarus" is central to the book) as well as artworks by her relatives, some acknowledged and celebrated during their lifetime - her father's, who died prematurely of cancer -, others hidden and only freed from obscurity through this labour of love - the photograph that looks like a Vermeer painting, taken by her grandfather, a "travelling salesman who would like to have been an artist", with dreams unfulfilled and buried. Her mother was a gifted artist who gave up painting when she got married, as she felt there "was only room for one painter", but she took up weaving instead, painting compositions with wool.

Cumming unravels her mother's life and the secrets around her disappearance as a young child (when she was abducted from the beach) with the help of images, constructing a biography via the interpretation of pictures both real - photographs, paintings - and those formed in the mind. She also quotes passages from her mother's own memoir, which like her daughter's is beautifully written and was a birthday gift to Laura. The book is suffused with her mother's artistic sensibility and ability to "transform the everyday".

I don't write detailed book reviews here, and I am hesitant to sum up the content. I noticed that a lot of the marketing centered on the kidnapping, a sensationalist approach that is misleading and does the book a disservice. While the book does relate a real-life mystery, there are so many layers to it: It is about family and memory, community and the individual, the psychology of identity and consciousness, art, the power of images and objects, silence and lies, class, the sea, and most importantly, about love in its many forms. It is a delicate and intimate piece of life writing and an exquisite meditation on loss.

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*The US title is Five Days Gone: The Mystery of My Mother's Disappearance as a Child

See also: Laura Cumming talks about On Chapel Sands in this interview in The New York Times

Portraits

I have been painting and drawing a lot of people and animals, especially portraits of family and friends. If anyone is interested, I posted some work-in-progress photos of two of the paintings above on my long-neglected art blog (though the plan is to merge the two blogs in an effort to simplify). At one point I had all my nephews keeping me company in the studio, albeit in 2-D!

While I sometimes have people sit for me, the examples shown here were all based on photographs and screenshots of paused videos - the latter works very well, as I can choose the 'pose' from a much wider range. I tend to start out with a very rough sketch and let the face emerge gradually.

In Enda's portrait (third picture above - when he was one year old and pre-haircut, for those who know him only with short hair) he is wearing a soft knitted top my sister had made for him that is tied at the back with a ribbon. I loved painting the stocking stitch and the ribbon and the light in his hair. With Henry (fourth picture) it was the oval of the snap fastener on his little shoulder that caught my attention - sometimes it is those small details that I find particularly poignant.

Love, compassion, light: Celia Paul's Self-Portrait

This memoir by the artist Celia Paul has accompanied me for the last few months, moving from bedside table to coffee table to dining table to my desk in the studio. I read it almost in one go, but I have been going back over certain passages and revisiting the reproductions of her work and the photographs.

While substantial parts of the book are about Lucian Freud (another artist whose work I admire - Celia Paul was one of his lovers and muses and they had a son together), she emphasises that he is made part of her story instead of the other way around, "as is usually the case".

I was more intrigued by her relationship with her family and her mother in particular and the work that arose (and continues to arise) from those family bonds. Her paintings of her mother and of her sisters are very moving and tender. Paul does not consider herself a portrait painter, but rather an "autobiographer and chronicler" of her life and her family, telling their story in images.

The memoir charts finding her own voice as an artist and breaking away from the role of the muse. So many artist couples have played out the dynamic of the woman making sacrifices that enable their partner to thrive. Paul shares a lot of insight into the challenges and obstacles to becoming an artist that women face and offers up her experience of working out "a strategy" to carve out the solitude that is essential for making art. This involves not living with her husband, as she needs to have her own private space*. She also talks about the conflict between motherhood and artistic creation, how being with her son makes her unable to work, as "all my concerns are for him" when he is present, and how she feels the guilt and separation acutely.

This interview includes interesting observations about Paul's connection to other artists (I love her voice; she emanates such calm and poise). She feels "this moral quality to Constable, this kind of love and compassion that comes through...", informed by familiarity with the subject matter: "you can't do anything unless you understand it".  As she writes in her memoir,

"I only ever work from people and places that I know well. This insider knowledge gives me freedom to take liberties with the forms and structures of the faces and figures, the clouds, the waves, the houses. [...] If I know my subject well, it's almost as if I don't need to look at them in order to give them intense attention, and yet I need their physical presence."

(Paul, Celia: Self-Portrait, Jonathan Cape, London 2019, p.3)

This is what gives her paintings their intimate and empathic quality. Even in reproductions in print or on the screen the spectral light in her paintings is powerfully conveyed - her work contains a "juxtaposition of the mystical with direct observation" (p.5). Her mother would regularly travel to London from Cambridge, climb the 80 steps to Paul's flat and pose for long periods of time, during which both artist and sitter would enter into a meditative, elevated state. Paul often uses spiritual language to describe the process of painting people, and her sisters and husband also give their perspective of what it is like to sit for her, by all accounts a transcendental experience.

In the interview the curator asks her about the evanescence of her seascapes and Paul reveals that she only really started working from water after her mother's death, when "forms broke up, nothing seemed permanent. So my subject seemed to be water, in a new way." She also talks about her "struggle between dark and light", with the light always emerging from the darkness, and the influence of Goya, how the light behind the figures in his family group paintings seems to be the subject of the painting, and how there is a "melancholy feeling about that, that the light will actually outlast the figures".

The language in the book is often sparse, and this minimalism, coupled with clear-eyed honesty, carries an even stronger emotional impact. There is one passage, when describing her mother's childhood, that relates a tragedy her mother was witness to and haunted by, and it is something I haven't been able to get out of my head.

Gwen John was another inspiration that is apparent in the two paintings above and below, in the containment and stillness of the self-portraits (John is also another example of a female artist having an all-consuming affair with an older male artist - Auguste Rodin. It appears Freud expected a similar subservience from Paul).

The book is also a meditation on the intersection between the written word and visual art. Paul says writing the memoir - she had not written much previously, apart from early diary entries and poems, and found 'freedom of speech' in painting instead - has affected her art: "I feel a new assurance in my painting, through a growing confidence about using words again."(p.5)

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* Her husband Steven Kupfer wrote this essay about Celia Paul's art: "Celia Paul - Painting her Life"

On scanxiety

Photo taken in Italy last year - my first swim in the sea since my diagnosis

the marks on my back after a session on my 'bed of nails'

"All patients have complicated relationships with their scans [...]. We first learn we have cancer from scans, then learn from them if that cancer has shrunk or disappeared, then learn if it has come back. Scans are like revolving doors, emotional roulette wheels that spin us around for a few days and spit us out the other side. Land on red, we're in for another trip to Cancerland; land on black, we have a few more months of freedom." - Bruce Feiler

I am so relieved that I have 'a few more months of freedom' before my next appointment.

Cancer - or rather my own cancer - hadn't been on my mind that much until the scan date approached. Other things, both in the world at large and my personal life, have been taking up a lot of my mental energy, and when I veer towards fear I ground myself in activities I love, such as painting and reading. My cancer-related thoughts are mainly with people I know who are facing tough decisions or are running out of options. Right now I am lucky.

And yet, knowing too much about my diagnosis, the awareness of the high risk of a recurrence is always at the back of my mind. My therapist once said that any fears we have as humans, when peeled back, ultimately reveal a fear of death. And scanxiety is pretty close to that original fear.

While I was calm overall, the week between the scan and getting the results I felt the familiar tension, and since the scan the fatigue has been acting up.

 

The scans that fall into June are also a painful reminder of what could have been, as my due date was June 30, 2018 - instead, around that time I found myself at my lowest during chemoradiation for the inoperable lung cancer I had been diagnosed with as a fit 34-year old non-smoker (I did have surgery as well, but it is not the standard protocol for the type of stage III the cancer was). I was propped up on our daybed, unable to move and with excruciating side effects that many people would find TMI.

 

In December 2017, after a week of bleeding, I had braced myself for the 12-week scan at the gynaecologist's, willing the image to show growth. Fast-forward to my regular oncology scans, and it is the opposite - staring at different black-and-white images at appointments during treatment, looking for shrinkage and disintegration; the fear when the lymph nodes didn't respond as hoped; and now, post-treatment, always wishing for a 'nothing'. And repeatedly having to confirm I am definitely not pregnant each time so I can have the CT scans.

But all of that is a small price to pay for being able to live a fairly normal life, or a 'new normal' post-cancer life. 

Something that isn't talked about that often is how scanxiety also affects those close to the patient. In fact, it can be worse for family members or spouses. My deepest worries are about how my diagnosis affects John and my family, though I try not to entertain the spiralling thoughts about what might happen. And I am no stranger to what it is like for close relatives - my dad died of cancer and my mum was diagnosed after me. The feeling of helplessness and the fear are definitely worse when it is somebody you love, and I am feeling both right now, as my mum has to have a biopsy because her last check-up didn't go as we had hoped, so there is more waiting.

These days I am frequently reminded of 'lifeshocks' - they keep coming. 

My coping mechanisms include my usual rituals and this time especially the return to sea-swimming and my new 'bed of nails', aka an acupressure mat, a birthday present from John, who knew I wanted one. I sometimes do yoga nidra while on the mat and often fall asleep on it.

Creativity is another tool, and Julia Barnickle's wise words soothed me when I felt overwhelmed. This is what she has to say about scanxiety and anxiety in general - I aspire to her serenity. She also uses the exercises from The Artist's Way and believes creativity to be an important part of her healing.

I read an interview with an actress whose brother had died, and she talked about how around the same time work got very busy for her and the shock gave her a surge in energy. Looking back over shocks big and small I find that to have been true for me at certain points - trauma often paralyses you, but sometimes it can fuel your creativity and productivity.

Speaking of creativity, I am grateful for all the commissions coming my way and am donating half of the money from art sales since my return to work to charities and to our local cancer centre, which has been a great support for the last two years.  

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Here is another article on scanxiety, including tips on how to cope with it.

Also, it would be lying by omission if I didn't admit that sometimes the only thing that works to pause the thoughts is binge-watching a series (most recently Self-Made).