HOME SWEET HOME
Solo exhibition
at The Bank, Beacon Centre North Shields.
The space is an old branch of a bank shopfront, all the fittings and fixtures have been removed and the floor covering has been lifted to reveal a distressed concrete surface. The window is large and open and can be seen prominently when people enter the indoor shopping area. There is a communal space outside that is arranged like a village green although due to Covid people are not encouraged to congregate and it is now separated by a one way system. As people enter the indoor shopping area they are corralled towards The Bank front window.
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| The Bank, The Beacon Centre, North Shields |
During the Covid 19 lockdown 2020, I started drawing and painting puppets and toys from my childhood. I wanted to evoke feelings and emotions from childhood and relate them to adult relationships. Lockdown has been a different experience for everyone and I am so happy that I had the studio space to go to. But the images have surfaced due to some degree of introspection due to our enforced isolation.
I started painting the female Pelham puppet, The little Dutch Girl. I have depicted the puppet in a position that suggests that it has been dropped by a child after having played with it. The position of the puppet suggests despair and sadness in collapse. I prepared a substrate of recycled calico and vintage fabrics using wax to capture the fabrics and bond them together.
The vintage fabrics evoke a feeling of home life and simple pleasures like embroidered details but the surface is distressed and worn. I enjoyed the sensation of applying oil paint to the wax surface and my art is always about surface in some way but the tactile pleasure that I get out of merely applying the paint also evokes childhood and and a sense of absorption in an activity that children can experience.
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| Little Dutch Girl, Pelham, Oil on unstretched canvas |
I paired the Little Dutch Girl with the male Urchin and depicted it in a similar pose. The painted expression on his face remains the same whatever his body expresses. the fixed smile can be read in more than one way. To me, this depicts experiences from my childhood where, when hurt physically by bullies I continued to smile and refused to show the pain that was being endured. It was my way of standing up to the bullies by not letting it show that I had felt anything. It also evokes an experience I had of being hit by my father and by teachers. When very young the feeling that I had done something well was always rewarded by physical pain and I think this has affected my self confidence in adulthood with feelings of failure.
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| Pelham Urchin, Oil on unstretched canvas |
The hanging pieces I decided to hang from a beam that runs down the centre of the space. The beam boxes in electrical cables but is open at the top. I made hooks from steel rod that I stitched onto the side of the calico on the large unstretched canvas.
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| View through the window |
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| View from the door |
These larger canvases, I also treated with a wax, as I used the wax to absorb into the calico and fuse the vintage fabrics onto the calico. The subjects of these images can be seen on one level as still lives. The Robot toy image 'Sorry Not Sorry' was in response to the figure of the robot but also the broken Pelham Mother Dragon toy. The robot represents for me the idea of gendered toys, this was something I wanted but could never have because I was the wrong gender, but also the idea of a male presence that may be controlling in a relationship.
I wanted to express the feelings of desire that children can have about a certain item. Those feelings of desire are the same that an adult feels but the object may have changed. The emotions are just as strong and as wilful.
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| Don't Touch, Oil on unstretched canvas |
The porcelain doll I chose to depict as an expression of childhood instructions "Don't Touch" but this obviously has, she is broken. Will we be found out? As a child this kind of thing was always seen as old fashioned and strangely feminine in old auntie's houses. I never aspired to this type of femininity and found it alien, still do.
The egg painting was done rather quickly as I had worked out an easier way to prepare the canvas with the wax capture. The substrate was created and left unprimed before painting directly with oil paints onto the surface.
This piece is titled 'All I ever wanted' representing the fragility of mental health and the reversal or parental/child relationships. The egg is a comforting food but in this case has not been prepared correctly by the child for the parent. The egg can also represent the feminine and the mother figure. In this case broken through poor mental health.
This piece has come about through an inner dialogue during lockdown of my relationship with my mother and how the roles have recently been reversed as she has been suffering with dementia. She still asks me to boil her an egg! I think it represents a time for her when maybe she was cared for or when she felt happy.
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| All I Ever Wanted, Oil on unstretched canvas |
The double puppet painting is more traditionally prepared on a stretched canvas substrate. I had used a black gesso to prime the canvas and enjoyed working away from the dark ground.
The double depiction of the toys I want to start the feeling of a dialogue between the two and create a narrative of what has happened between or to them. This one is titled 'It can be our Secret'. I have observed children talking through their toys and felt that it is a powerful medium for children to express themselves in ways that would be more difficult face to face.
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| It Can Be Our Secret, Oil on canvas |
The nest painting is one of a series of studies of a nest that I found in my garden. I had to move it as it was not in a safe place for the birds to be raised. I of course allowed the brood to fledge and for the nest to be abandoned before moving it. When I did I found a single unhatched blackbirds egg inside. I felt a sense of wonder and delight with this simple finding.
The painting is again on unstretched cotton, this time the cotton had been treated first with a mixture of clay and lavender cuttings which was all captured with a layer of wax again before painting on with oil paints. A multi sensory one, this, as the lavender oils were released as I was working on the surface.
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| Nest, Oil on unstretched cotton |
The roses painting, 'They were for you' is about a bouquet of roses from the garden that I had planned to take to my primary teacher as a gift unfortunately on the way to school they fell out of my hand one by one and what I actually presented to my teacher was an empty twist of tinfoil. Oh! the shame and embarrassment ! I can still feel it to this day.
This is simply painted with acrylic onto unstretched cotton using some collage of vintage fabrics. I merely primed with transparent gesso and this time did not use the wax.
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| They were for you, Acrylic on unstretched cotton |
The Bank has a deep window revetment which I used to display the titles to the paintings and I placed some smaller works on paper there too, studies of the male Urchin puppet. They maybe weren't in the best position for display but served to catch people's eyes as they passed the shop front.
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| Pelham studies, Little Urchin, Acrylic on paper |
On the whole I feel it has been a successful exhibition as I have tried to make the best of things in the Lockdown times where there is limited footfall through the shopping centre. There have been quite a few people who have stopped to look but also I have been able to have socially distanced private views where I am able to arrange with other building users so there is not a clash of people moving through the space. I have have some interesting feedback and conversations with my guests and actually it has been a nice way of doing it as at an opening night you don't always get to talk to everyone.
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