Eat and sleep

 

Two things I hadn't been doing right for a while. Returning to proper food and proper sleep (I tried surviving on six hours - I am not one of those people) feels so good. Eating real food* at home without looking at the time (and yes, I do read while eating, at least with breakfast - my mother would always read the paper over breakfast and tell us we were not supposed to do that with other people present) and napping in the afternoon with the window open and the sun on my face are my two favourite things this week.
 

* Chocolate is real food. 

Black and white

It's not mine, unfortunately, but it is living with me for a while. I don't feel it as a burning hole, that I desperately need something that is missing, but a cat and a piano would make my home complete, and I have been close to getting both before chickening out when it came to making a decision due to financial and logistic reasons, respectively. This is one step in the direction of piano-ownership, and I might try fostering kittens before committing fully. 

The Piano is one of my favourite films, and the soundtrack has taken up residency in my brain and heart. 

Yesterday I submitted the last few images of a series of black-and-white illustrations and I am now looking forward to revisiting some unfinished projects that need to go out into the world soon.  

Harry Clarke's fairy tale illustrations

 

 

 

Classic Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault; Illustrated by Harry Clarke, 

Gill & Macmillan, Dublin  2012

A friend of mine told me about this beautiful edition of Charles Perrault's fairy tales illustrated by Harry Clarke and picked up a copy for me. Harry Clarke (1889-1931) is a well-known name in Ireland and beyond, and his stained-glass windows adorn many churches and other buildings around the country. He was also a prolific illustrator.

This book contains colour plates as well as black-and-white illustrations. I get very excited about details such as endpaper (second picture) - the book equivalent of a coat's lining. This edition is an artwork in itself.

Temporarily sedentary

One more week, and then one of the busiest times of the year will be over. I love working in the arts, but I am looking forward to having actual food in my fridge again and not just eye cream and a plate with acrylic paint (storing leftover acrylics in the fridge makes them last for days when usually they would dry straight away). 

This year I am exhibiting as part of the festival we are organising. It has made me go back to painting and colour after working on black-and-white illustrations, and while I will always love drawing and don't think of it as inferior to painting, I am enjoying the tactile quality and creaminess of working with paints so much I want to go out and paint murals. (I won't. I do tend to work in rather small formats.)

Today was the first time in weeks that I walked for the sake of walking, under a blue sky after days of apocalyptic weather. I want to run a half marathon in May or July, on Inishbofin or Achill - I am still undecided -, but I haven't been for a run since I got back from Germany. At least it is good to know that I crave exercise. 

One early morning this week I had a decadent bath with rosemary oil instead of a shower before going to work, because my muscles ached from doing nothing. I am usually an evening bath person, but I have a feeling there will be more morning baths from now on. 

Back at the easel

 

Large chunks of this weekend have been spent painting, adding and subtracting layers, with cups of tea going cold, a sign that I really forget everything else when I am immersed in the process.

I was reworking an old painting that I no longer liked, and the face that emerged this time around is happier. While it isn't a self-portrait per se, I have put myself into this figure and feel an attachment to her - painting this was more cathartic (or rather celebratory) than anything else I have done so far this year.

Boats keep appearing everywhere, and crowns and cats. After working in response to words for the last few months - which is also enjoyable - it is nice to have completely free reign. I had missed painting. A new talisman is this miniature lighthouse I was given recently. I focus on it when I need to think and when I need to stop thinking.

Sometimes I wonder whether I should have more of a plan, but then I remember this John Cage quote that is pinned to the board in my studio: "I really think that it's important to be in a situation, both in art and in life, where you don't understand what's going on", and I am reassured. Because it is very much the case for me right now in both areas, and maybe I need to yield to that and not try to actively figure anything out.

Joy

wet day, joyful creature

"Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children's letters - sometimes very hastily - but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote: 'Dear Jim: I loved your card.' Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said 'Jim loved your card so much he ate it.' That to me was one of the highest compliments I've ever received. He didn't care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it; he loved it; he ate it."

~ Maurice Sendak

Tara Brach (whose treasure chest of a website I found via Sarah, only to realise Tara is the author of Radical Acceptance, a book my counsellor lent me seven years ago - I have been meaning to get my own copy ever since) quoted this in her talk "Committing to Joy" shortly after Maurice Sendak's death last year, and I keep thinking and smiling about it. There is so much to learn from children and animals when it comes to just being in the moment - though I probably wouldn't go as far as eating paper!

And I love the synchronicity here: that these days working on illustrations fills me with so much joy and with the sense that this is where I belong.  

Herzzeit - the correspondence between Paul Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann

I finished Herzzeit before I came back to Ireland and now regret that I didn't take it with me, as it is a book for re-reading, especially when revisiting the two writers' literary output. It is the correspondence between the two most important German post-war poets, Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan. Celan's poetry has at its centre the Holocaust and language as the one thing that "remained secure against loss" (both his parents died in the camps), whereas Bachmann's work hinges on the struggles of a woman in a male-dominated world and her search for truthful expression. They are among my favourite poets, and my sister, who knows me well, recommended this book. I had been oblivious of this literary sensation - publication of the letters was supposed to be blocked until 2023, but released by the heirs in 2008.

This was a devastating, difficult read, particularly bearing in mind the tragic deaths of Celan and Bachmann, but also because of the palpable pain - often between the lines - that pertains to their doomed relationship: the misunderstandings, mistrust, missed opportunities and loneliness, and the hurt and subsequent arguments over the reception of Celan's work (critics attacking him; the Goll-affair, when Claire Goll accused him of plagiarism; him becoming a target for antisemites - all of which led to him feeling more and more alienated, angry and lost and made him fall out with friends who did not agree word-for-word with his response).

It may be almost unbearable to read at times, but it is also rewarding - there are a lot of passages where the language can compete or at least comes close to the impact of the poems. Ultimately, the letters provide insight into the dynamic between these two writers, lovers and friends, who came from such different backgrounds, and into their personalities, and how this relationship and the way it shaped them informed their work.

The book also includes poignant letters from Celan's wife Gisèle Lestrange-Celan to Bachmann (in the original French as well as the translation) and correspondence between Celan and Bachmann's lover of four years Max Frisch.

(There is an English translation.)