My Guardian Angel

     In my next few Blogs I would like to discuss the topics of my mother,  sex and religion. Art is an important topic for me too but I have already discussed that quite a lot. Basically what I am setting out to do is describe how I encountered in childhood the values I finally espoused as an adult.

     I have had a strong belief since I was a child in my Guardian Angel. I was taught to say a prayer in bed at night that I still say:
          "Now I lay me down to sleep,
           I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
           And if I die before I wake
           I pray the Lord my soul to take."
     Another one went:
          "Four angels round my bed:
            Two angels at my head:
            One to watch and one to pray
            And two to carry my soul away."
I no longer pray the second one. Instead, every morning, I say the following prayer:
          "Angel of God, my Guardian dear.
           To whom God's love commits me here,
           Ever this day be at my side
          To light, to guard,
          To rule and to guide."

     Having a continuing interest in the occult which I inherited from my mother along with a belief in more orthodox religion, I read the autobiography of the famous medium, Sylvia Browne, several years ago, and was surprised to learn that when she said this first prayer as a child she was frightened by it.  She certainly got over that fear later on as she came to communicate with the dead in public and on a very grand scale. But although I have never tried being a medium, I was certainly not frightened by it. I have always accepted death as a perfectly natural part of life and nothing to be afraid of. This is something I heard from my mother  again and again. There was a little piece of family history she told to inculcate it.

     My mother's mother died giving birth to her and as it was considered improper for her father to have sole charge  of a little girl she was brought up by his mother. My mother much admired her grandmother for her warm heart, her neighbourly ways and her endless generosity. She gave me her grandmother's name of Barbara in the hope that I would turn out to be like her. Certainly my mother wanted all her children to meet death in the same way her grandmother had done because she told us all the same story. When her grandmother was quite old and living alone, her favourite brother came to visit her. He told her a funny story which made her laugh. Then she leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes, smiling, and stopped talking. Half an hour later he realised she was dead.

     We all listened to this story suitably impressed with the exception of my youngest sister, Annabel. When my mother started out, "Now, Annabel, you mustn't be afraid  of death," Annabel retorted "Oh, no, Mummy, I'm not afraid of death. I've always longed to be a dear little worm!" My mother and Annabel were living in Texas at the time and I was living in Illinois. My mother thought Annabel's retort was so funny that she wrote to me about it. But I had never put up the same resistance.

     When I was around ten years old I fell ill with cerebro-spinal meningitis. I could not keep any food down. Every time I ate I threw up. I hated it so much I actually wanted to die. I was quite prepared for an angel to carry my soul away. Or two angels, as the case might be. And I have always been aware since then that life was a gift that would some day be taken away, there was no knowing when. The idea doesn't bother me. Although when the meningitis didn't kill me, my mother and I considered that a cause for celebration.  The doctors had just invented a pill for it.

     Where angels were concerned I had read about Abraham entertaining angels in his tent. Later I was to read about an angel coming to Mary and other angels announcing the birth of Jesus to some shepherds. My mother had handed me the King James Bible when I was six and told me to read it, but without offering a word of explanation.Apparently she thought the meaning was perfectly clear and self explanatory.

     I loved stories so much that my mother had taught me to read at the age of four so that I could read stories for myself and wouldn't be pestering her to read to me all day long. Here was a brand new big book of stories for me to read, so I got on with it. I already knew the Alice books so I followed the advice of the King of Hearts: "Begin at the beginning and go on to the end, then stop." Alice was already my role model, but I was quite prepared to accept other role models. And so I began at the beginning with the Book of Genesis, which rather puzzled me, as at first I was simply not prepared to accept the story of the  Fall.

     My highly trained nursemaid, Nurse Edith Boone, known as my Nanny, had taught me to think and  reflect and apparently she had given me the idea that that was the idea that that was what God wanted us to do. I was sure that God wanted us to know as much as possible and shocked that anyone should maintain that there was anything he didn't want us to know. But I didn't want to be hasty so I went off to a quiet place and reflected on it. Then it came to me that knowing Good and Evil wasn't the same thing as knowing facts as you can't know Evil without being affected by it. So the story did make sense after all.

      Nurse Boone left us when I was six so I hadn't actually discussed the Bible with her, so far as I remember. With the outbreak of the Second World War she considered it her patriotic duty to work in a munitions factory. I have been told that she was a member of a religious sect called the Plymouth Brethren who are apparently not unlike Conservative Quakers, although without being pacifists. They are so staid that they drove Aleister Crowley to rebel against them by becoming a black magician. Perhaps that is what they are generally best known for.

     Age six was an important time for me. The war started, Nurse Boone left, I started reading the Bible and my mother started supplying me with quite horrendous sexual information. Just as she wanted all her children to be prepared for death, so she wanted us all to know about "the facts of life."
As a trained nurse she knew this was important. But she never mentioned that they had any connection with love, which I think was an important omission. The total effect was quite frightening and fitted in with what I was reading in the Bible about Sodom and Gomorrah.  However it turned out to be quite useful in a practical kind of way because when I met a child molester  when I was coming home in the dark along a deserted road four years later I knew exactly what to think of him and his offer to teach me games I'd never played before. I thank my Guardian Angel for showing me exactly how to get away from him and get safely home unharmed. My Guardian Angel is very resourceful. With that I end my tribute to him.


   

         

           "

Previous Existences

     Some  people think I'm crazy but I'm pretty sure I've remembered six or seven previous existences. This started when I was about ten years old.  I was quite sure I'd led a previous existence as a Scots terrier.  I don't remember all  the details now but I did then.  I used to tell long detailed stories about it to my four-year old sister Ann in bed at night.  Apparently I had all kinds of adventures.  Furthermore I also knew that in the life before that I had been a bad human being and had to retrace my evolution by sinking to the level of a dog.  However I had been such a good little dog that I had been allowed to become a human being again.

     If I had been living in the Far East when I had this experience and talked about it my story would have been accepted without question, as reincarnation there is a matter of accepted belief.  There  are all kinds of stories in India of a child born in one village remembering a life in another village, being taken there and being able to prove it.  Remembering previous existences is particularly important for establishing the credentials of certain holy men, as we see from the example of the present Dalai Lama.  And the Buddha went through all kinds of animal existences, as the tale is told, being a particularly noble, self-sacrificing animal in each one.  But I was living in twentieth century England in a home devoid of Hindu or Buddhist beliefs.  My father was a freethinker and my mother a Scottish Presbyterian.   What could have induced me to come up with these stories?

     However I was in fact subject to certain occult influences which could well have excited my imagination along these lines.  My mother might have been expected to be dour, hardheaded and canny.  But it is the Lowland Scots who have earned this reputation and my mother came  from the Outer Hebrides where people believe firmly in psychic powers, known as the Second Sight, and put out milk at night for the fairies to keep them from draining the cows, while my English scientist father tried and failed to convince my mother that all this kind of thing was superstitious rubbish.  My mother managed quite easily to reconcile her religious beliefs with her more magical ones.  So did her best friend, whom I was taught to call Aunty Maidie, who was a Highlander, at the same time as she was sufficiently canny to hold quite an important job in the Civil Service.

     Living as we did on the outskirts of Birmingham, we found ourselves on a Romany travelling route.  On my way to school I would frequently see their painted, wooden, horse- drawn caravans pass by, with the men driving and the women, who were the fortune tellers, walking in the road.  My mother was always inviting these women in, and they chalked their patterans, which you would call hobo marks, on our gate posts.  My mother said "Oo, I wonder what they mean!" and my father said "they mean {A fool lives here.}".  But she was able to defend herself.  One day  my father came home from work and said, "Well Mary we're moving".   He expected her to be surprised because he never told her anything of his plans beforehand, but she just said, "I know." "How do you know?" he asked.  "A gypsy told me."

     My mother also subscribed to an occult magazine called "Prediction" which featured horoscopes by her favourite astrologer.  According to her we were all supposed to do exactly what this astrologer said.  I too read this magazine and believed in it.  I probably learned from it about reincarnation.  So right now I might dismiss my ideas on this subject as childish fantasy if I had not had several memories of previous existences, quite unexpectedly, in middle age.

     I was taking a course in ancient Greek at Brock when I found certain words which sounded Greek but weren't in the Greek dictionary, popping into my mind.  I asked the professor, Fred Casler, about them and he said they were Doric.  Doric was the ancient Greek spoken in the countryside and I had never been exposed to it.  It must have come from somewhere.  Shortly after this I stayed in bed for a week, feeling ill, and spent the whole week watching pictures of former lives flash across my mind as if on a movie screen.  To this day I cannot be entirely sure that they were real memories, but how did I come up with the Doric?

     I would like to write them all up and see if I can get them published.  I have finished one account, in narrative verse, about a descendant of the Witch of Endor who falls in love with Jesus and follows him around Galilee.  I have shown it to an Anglican priest who liked it and even admired it.  I have also done some work on the others.  There is a great deal of variety but this time round I did not see myself being a dog!

Goddess or Witch?

   W hen I held a reception for my May 2019 art show at NAC, some young women artists came up to me and asked if I had any pictures of Goddesses because they were planning a group show of Goddesses and would like me to be in it. I said I had half a dozen, but then when I looked through my collection of my own work I found I had a whole  lot more. Getting quite carried away, I did several more and ended up with an entire show of my own. Not hearing any more about the projected group show, I decided to put mine on.

     I learned about the Greek and Roman divinities in high school and was quite moved by them, responding to them pretty much as if  I were an ancient Greek or Roman myself,  But we did not hear anything about any other religion or mythology  apart  from reading the Bible, which, according to British educational practice at the time, we read without any reference to denominational teaching ,  I do not have any Norse or Hindu divinities in my show. However, although it is very bad theology to call the Blessed Virgin Mary divine, I have included her because I think she is so important and I have such a strong attachment to her.  Taken altogether, my show is a tribute to many feminine aspects of the Divine. As the Kabbalah claims, all the different religions are attempts to reach the Divine, which, in itself, is beyond human comprehension.

     My Goddess show will be viewed in the Community Room of the Mahtay Cafe, September 1 to 15, with an opening reception in the same place in the afternoon  of Sunday, September 1, 2019, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.

      The Book Launch, which is part of the same event, is devoted to a second edition of "The Witch Poems", a book of humorous verse which I first wrote and published in 1995 to a fair degree of local success. In fact it sold out and people have been asking for more copies ever since, so I have set out to meet the demand. The Book Launch will take place in the Community Room of the Mahtay Cafe in the afternoon of Sunday, September 8, 2019,  from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., together with a reception.

     For those who do not already know "The Witch Poems", I should explain that it is a book of poems that are both humorous and at the same time quite genuinely religious, written under the persona of a witch. In my original edition I made some attempt to explain this persona in a foreword in which I referred to certain feminists in Quebec who were calling themselves witches. In fact, a little later, W.I.T.C.H. became quite a popular acronym among feminists all over North America. But simply calling myself a feminist was not a complete explanation.

     Now that I am setting out to give the whole truth, I will say that I had actually been quite strongly influenced  by my friendship with a Gay male witch by the name of Basil Ivan Rakoczi. He is chiefly know for his work as an artist which after his death brought him quite a lot of fame. After running into him at an academic gathering through one of those coincidences which Carl Gustav Jung considers quite uncanny, I spent a great deal of time with him while on sabbatical in Paris many years ago. He took a friendly interest in my writing and painting and it is largely because of him that I have become so productive in retirement. In fact I might almost say that it is only now that, owing to his encouragement, I have embarked on my real career. Unfortunately we parted on bad terms shortly before his death because I was so shocked and frightened by some of his magical practices. I write about this relationship in the completely new foreword to my book.

     Another new feature consists of illustrations of charms and spells which I drew myself and which are much more personal than the otherwise good illustrations done by Lesley Bell for the first edition.

     I owe Basil, to whom I have become reconciled, a debt of gratitude for opening up to me a whole new area of creative independence. On this occasion I ask myself, am I good or bad, loving or hostile, creative or destructive, wise or psychotic, goddess or witch?  But I am really not too concerned about how I may be viewed  because basically I am happy and at peace with myself. I am constantly reminded of my Grandmother's state of depression in old age when she used to repeat "I'm an idle old woman, I might as well be dead." I am so much better off because I am not at all idle and I am glad to be alive, whatever anyone thinks. And so I ask my readers and viewers to accept both aspects of my show: the Goddess and the Witch, and not choose between them.




   

The Rite of Spring

Some people who know my work came to the show Lynne Mawson and I held at the Mahtay 

Café in March to celebrate International Women’s Day. It was such a tribute to women that the same people will probably be surprised to learn that I will be holding a show at NAC, May 25 - June 2, that will be almost as much a tribute to the male gender.

What accounts for this? I have resurrected some paintings I did in Paris in 1974-75 and have not shown before. The show also includes some new paintings, I did quite recently in the same vein. I left for Paris in 1974 to work on a sabbatical research project on Marcel Proust. This plan fell through because I discovered on reaching Paris that the information on which I’d based this project was inaccurate. Other Proust research took its place and did, fortunately, lead to publication because I was spending a lot of time with other Proust scholars.

Other people I met were the man I loved but was obliged to leave, and my artistic mentor, Basil Ivan-Rakoczi, who lived in Paris but whom I’d already met in Canada at a meeting of the Learned  Societies.

He had congratulated me there on the paper I gave on retellngs of the fairy tale The Sleeping Beauty, saying he was very interested in folklore and inviting me to look him up in Paris.

I was very keen to do so because he had offered to introduce me to Robert Graves and  Samuel Beckett. In fact, he never did do this.

I think the fact of the matter was that he had actually got to know both men by mixing in the same cultural circles but they had taken a dislike a to him upon finding he was gay. But I did meet people who know him, quite unexpectedly, by turning up at the Quaker  Meeting House in Paris and finding it full of his pictures.

When I got to know him better, I discovered that he had come to Paris from Ireland where he had worked as a Freudian lay analyst, a poet and a part-time painter.

In Paris, he painted full time, told fortunes and enrolled some young friends in a group for transactional analysis, which I joined,

Irish Quakers had invited him to join the Religious Society of Friends, which he did, although with some doubts about his own suitability.

His Hungarian father and his Irish mother, who was an heriditary witch and had introduced him to witchcraft mixed with Catholicism, had met while travelling in Ireland with the gypsies. He himself was an honorary gypsy and wrote a book on the Tarot, which he illustrated himself, as a means for gypsy initiation.

In English, the title was the Painted Caravan, and in French La Roulotte. Initiatique

He preferred to say Gypsy rather than Romany. I have this book in both versions and frequently use it.

I was not shocked or surprised to hear all this as my own mother had made me quite used to this kind of thing, although she would have been shocked to be called a witch. She considered herself a good Scottish Presbyterian.

The two of them read the same Occult magazine called Prediction.

On a typical weekend in Paris, I attended Basil’s “At Home” on Saturday afternoon, Quaker meeting on Sunday morning and the Louvre on Sunday afternoon. The love of my life visited me on Sunday evening. I also attended when I could a life drawing group led by Basil. He got me painting in watercolours on  very large sheets of paper.

I took these paintings home with me from Paris. Recently, I finished and polished them. And I painted some more pictures in the same size and style.

It is all these pictures I shall be showing at NAC in May.

Basil was known as a symbolist painter, going in for dreams, legends and fantasy. This is very much my own inclination. Recently, I had a visit from a couple of artistic friends who asked me if my own work had been influenced by the Tarot.

I said my first influence had been the illustrations in my children’s books but I showed them the Tarot books by Basil.

The paintings I did in Paris are mainly based on Greek, Roman and Norse mythology.

They represent Bacchus, Phoebus Apollo, Ganymede and the halls of Asgard. Also included are some semi-nudes of male figures.

There are just two examples from the Christian story. That is the Grail and the serpent in the garden of Eden. I have included one angel but angels are found in more than one religion.

I feel I’ve gone back to a time in my life where I was younger, more open to experience, and more poetic.

Basil died soon after I got back from Paris, but his influence is still with me. I think, though, I have finally shaken off the curse he put on me because I strongly disapproved of his using bad magic as  well as good. No wonder he had doubts about his suitability as a Quaker.

Greetings

Greetings to those who missed the Women's Day Art Show set up by Lynne Mawson and me! Lynne brought back all my unsold pictures to my house. If you want to see them, call me at 905 685 6709 any time between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m.

WOMEN'S DAY ART SHOW

     This Blog is being published by me, Barbara J. Bucknall, to advertise the art show that Lynne Mawson and I will be putting on in the Community Room of the Mahtay Cafe  to celebrate International Women's Day which will be taking place on March 8, 2019.  The show will run from March 8 to March 15  and will be sponsored by Bethlehem Housing and Support Services and its Housing Hero Fundraising Initiative.  Two of my original framed paintings will be raffled at the Bethlehem Fundraising "Empty Bowls" dinner on March 6, 2019 and two of Lynne's will be raffled on the last night of our art show.  Both raffles will be fundraisers for Bethlehem Housing.

     Lynne and I are putting on this show together because we share an interest in portraying female figures, whether human or divine. Our dedication to art is deep and sincere, playful and joyful, serious and humorous and might even be called religious in its total commitment.  Not that you need to genuflect when entering our show, but we have both portrayed some women who stand well above the ordinary human level.  Lynne will be putting some actual goddesses on show but not putting them up for sale because they are too precious to her.  My own divinities are much more accessible.  While including some pagan goddesses, I also bear witness to a devotion to the Virgin Mary which is quite unusual in a Quaker.   We also paint plenty of human women and Lynne's are quite humorous.  Mine tend to be more serious.  It was in fact Lynne's sense of humor that endeared her art to me.

     About her goddess pictures, she says: "The goddess image comes to me from time to time.  This is art I cannot force.  I lay down three colours, close my eyes and move my brush around the canvas. Then I walk away.  Once dry, the canvas is observed from many angles.  It is then left on my art table. Walking by from time to time, I give the canvas a quick glance.  At some point, but not always, an image begins to appear.  At that point, I drop what I am doing and put chalk to canvas.  She is revealed!  The goddess pictures are very special to me.  I am delighted that her images cannot be forced.  They form such a personal and powerful connection.  People have commissioned goddesses. Never have they been satisfactory in my eyes."

     Most of Lynne's pictures are very human portrayals of plump Bathing Belles.  They are saved from being repetitious by the intense joy she takes in varying colour, contrasting foreground and background and varying the patterns she uses on their swimsuits.  She tends to go in for circles and spirals.  She says the way she feels about spirals is quite visceral.  Of these bathers she says: "Having had body  issues for my entire life, I strive to present the zaftig human female form in a positive and powerful, yet playful  way.  Working on these images helps me overcome the shame I have felt on inhabiting this body, by making the rounded form vital, strong and beautiful. While working through my own issues, I hope my work brings joy to those who view it.  Most of the images are cropped: perhaps a good shrink could explain that, but for now just know that these cropped images are aesthetically pleasing to the artist.   Perhaps there are issues that are not yet ready to be revealed in my art."

     Lynne and I both paint from our deepest feelings and the inspiration for my own paintings is just as random and comes from just as deep and hidden a place as Lynne's goddesses.  I have been painting since I was introduced to art in grade school at the age of six.   My teacher, unlike Lynne's, gave me great encouragement.  My younger brother Malcolm did the same thing and our mother encouraged us by setting us to work painting Christmas cards.  My art class was the happiest part of the school week for me all the way through high school.  But when the time came for me to enter university and I won a place at Oxford, I was strongly discouraged from doing anything so unintellectual.   Embarking on an academic career, I still loved to view and collect art, but I treated my own art as a mere hobby.

     As we were growing  up, my siblings and I  all paid regular visits to the Museum and Art Gallery in our home town of Birmingham, England.   Our grandfather was something of an artist since he was a silversmith, painted as a hobby and bought original art.  Our father had a knack for drawing but treated it merely as a hobby, as he wished his children to do.  As a child I loved the illustrations in my children's books so much that  I wanted to become a book illustrator myself, but my father denied me the opportunity.  Nothing, however, could stop my brother Malcolm from becoming a full time artist, although our father tried to divert him into becoming an architect and ended up calling him a fool.  But Malcolm's artistic career has proved a tremendous success, little as our father liked  his art and tried  to persuade him to take up writing instead if he was going to be creative.  As it happened, all of us turned  out creative.  Our sister Ann had quite a gift for poetry, which I have worked on together with her, and our brother Bill took his own path, plunging into music and medicine.  Our father even managed as a scientist himself to disapprove of that, telling him that medicine was not an exact science.  Perhaps our mother was the really creative parent, although it was our father who taught us to debate when we were quite young.  She was an excellent letter writer and story teller, having emerged from the strong Celtic oral tradition of the ceilidh or folk festivity.

     I received a strong impulse towards what was later to become in retirement my full time dedication to art when  I was teaching at the University of Illinois  in the 1960's.  I had already discovered the great novel of Marcel Proust when I was a graduate student at the University of  Illinois and had been deeply impressed by what struck me as his truly religious approach to the various arts, especially since I had already picked up a similar attitude from the PreRaphaelites in the Birmingham Art Gallery.  I ended up writing my doctoral thesis for Northwestern University on this topic.  As another religious interest I started attending the local Quaker Meeting which appealed to me by its emphasis on contemplation and meditation and almost complete lack of dogma.  Although I also attend High Anglican services, I have stayed with the Quakers ever since.  Another benefit I got from them was that they afforded me access to the Art and Music Departments.  I actually sold one picture, a fantasy oil painting based on an actual dream, to the Head of the Art Department.  In the Music Department I met Ben Johnston who was a personal friend of John Cage and introduced me to him.  I also took art lessons from Ben's wife Betty.  John Cage came to have a very strong influence on me eventually, although to begin with I was quite shocked by his insistence on the path to musical composition being the creation of random noise.  His final effect on me was to get me to abandon any planning and preparation in my painting  and just paint by inspiration as the spirit moved me.  Of course this is also a very Quakerly thing to do.  What I chiefly got from John Cage was his insistence on what is random.

     Nowadays I work mainly with markers on paper, since I like to draw rather than paint.  Mainly I use Winsor and Newton watercolour markers, but sometimes I use Prismacolour or coloured ink brushes.  I make random strokes with various markers until finally a recognizable picture emerges. This picture frequently takes me by surprise by its faithfulness to my own feelings.  Then I contemplate it, looking for a meaning in it and give it a title.  This seems to me very close to the way Lynne creates her goddess paintings although I had not heard of them until quite recently.  But of course in my own case any subject can emerge. 

     In spite of this similarity we came to art in very different ways.  Let us listen to what Lynne says: "I have been making art since I was a child in Kindergarten, when my teacher informed me that I was not colouring "the right way."  The task was to colour a picture of Santa Claus.  Having been to see the man, I was well aware that his suit had a textured quality.  Happily I set to the task, making tiny, tiny circles that left bits of wax on the paper, creating the texture I wanted.  The teacher, seeing this, took my paper to present it to the class.  I was so proud...until she informed the class that this was the way NOT to colour: we should follow instructions.

     Grade 9 art: we were to use plaster to make a textured painting.  Again, I happily created texture on the board and painted a landscape.  Nope.  The texture was to have the scene within it.

     In university, taking a teachers's college training course on how to teach art.  The instructor was most arrogant and unpleasant.  We were to create a plaster wrapped wire sculpture.  My mistake was titling the piece "So you think you are an art critic."  C minus.  I have been colouring my own way ever since.

     Most of my recent work is oil pastel over  an acrylic paint base.  I've found that good quality oil pastels spread like butter.  I enjoy the tactile experience as much as the end product.  While having had no formal training  (not much luck with instructors) I've picked up many a fine technique from the pages of Pinterest.

     Much of my inspiration was found when teaching art at the primary and junior levels.   During my last two years of teaching not much attention was paid to curriculum.  Having had minimal interest or success with formal techniques, I was not much inclined to go past the basics.  It was more helpful to teach these things as they cropped up or were important to the student.  Spontaneous expression seemed more important.  This was grade 4.  They had years to learn the technical stuff.

     I ran into a student when he was in grade 7. He said art wasn't as much fun any more and had I ever heard of this thing called "perspective"?  I laughed and apologized.  I explained that I was at the end of my career and wasn't much worried about administrative repercussions.  My program consisted of teaching famous artists and creating works based on or inspired by their styles.  The Georgia O'Keeffe lessons?  They were just flowers!

     The enthusiasm and excitement when it came time to create their own pieces was marvelous.  I can still see their faces when they came in from lunch to find that their art paper was taped to the underside  of their desks.  Michelangelo would have been proud.  If he could paint on his back for ten years they could survive eighty minutes.  There is much to appreciate and try to emulate in the work of children: exuberant and unselfconscious self-expression!'

     There is much that Lynne expresses here that is true for all artists.  Of course we all have to learn from great art and I have been fortunate enough to spend a sabbatical year in Paris surrounded by museums and art galleries.  Every Sunday afternoon I spent in the Louvre and I also received personal help and encouragement from a gifted professional artist, Basil  Ivan Rakoczi, who enrolled me in his life drawing group.   But I am sure Lynne learned as much from her students as I did from him.  My brother Malcolm once said, "When you see what a little boy of ten can do, it just makes you sick.  The only thing that consoles you is knowing that he won't be able to do it in a few years."  He himself makes a practice of telling his admirers that he is able to paint as he does because he is in touch with the spirit of his childhood.  As the great French poet Baudelaire once said, "Genius is childhood recovered at will" and Marcel Proust begins his great novel with his narrator's involuntary memory of childhood.

     My sister Annabel has observed that her grandchildren create much more freely than her adult students, who are seriously hampered by fear of not doing "the right thing" and making mistakes.  I feel that I have been liberated from this fear by allowing myself to be completely free and random.  Not everything I paint is all that great, but this knowledge does not inhibit me and I feel that I too may be able one day to recover my childhood.  I have spent many years of my life studying Marcel Proust but the  time has now come to treat him as a source of inspiration. 

     Lynne and I hope you will enjoy our show.  Neither of us has exhibited a great deal.  I have had three shows and have shown in the Pumphouse gallery.  Lynne has shown in church arts and craft shows and in the Pumphouse gallery and also has a Facebook page, titled "Baubles and Babes."   I am not as good at handling technology as she is and I am indebted to her and Natasha at N.A.C. for their technical help. We are looking forward to meeting a wider audience.

      

ART AND POPULAR CULTURE

     A  long time ago I gave a paper at a conference on Popular Culture on the way the word  "lady" is used nowadays.It used to be used to describe a woman of the upper class  who was well behaved  and had good manners.  She was entitled to respect and had to be treated with the same good manners she showed to others.  She was unquestionably superior to the working class and expected deference from her social inferiors.  No special talent or skill was expected from her to justify this deference -- simply the accident of birth  and a certain inculcated code of behaviour.  Talent and skill, if she had them, were supposed to be limited to drawing room entertainment such as playing the piano. For instance, Jane  Austen was known both  in life and in death as a lady rather than as  an author.
     A lady's social role  was largely decorative.  In so far as she was useful, it was in the social arts and in household management.  She was expected to be attractive without being explicitly sexual in looks, dress and manner.  A lady was a person with  whom a gentleman  could find respite and solace when he relaxed from the onerous demands of his necessary duties.  What was considered serious work was incumbent on him, not on her.  All this  set her apart like a luxury article and made her superior without necessarily bestowing on her any further wealth or prestige.
     This view of the role of a particular kind of woman was expressed very eloquently in a Pears soap advertisement of the Edwardian era.  It showed a little girl washing herself to the accompaniment of the slogan "Preparing To Be A Beautiful  Lady."  Physical Beauty was part of the lady's role and had to be worked towards like all her other assets. At this point, I  should add, gentle birth was becoming less of a requisite  for a woman to be called a lady. Talent and skill were beginning to be recognised and becoming a lady was something one could acquire by merit.
     Pears soap advertisements were attractive and even inspiring  and my sisters and I were happy to have them decorating our bedroom.  But there were many other advertisements surrounding us, most of which were equally attractive and ingenious.  For instance our Tate and Lyle Golden Syrup tin bore,  as I think it  still does, the Biblical motto "Out of the strong came forth sweetness." This allusion to one of the feats of the Biblical hero Samson carried  a very loaded message. By devouring Tate and Lyle Golden Syrup, it suggested, we would not only  be acquiring strength of a legendary nature by enjoying its sweetness; we would be performing an outstandingly morally worthy act.  I was born in 1933  and I enjoyed all the advertisements with which I was surrounded as I grew up. The art of the advertiser was sufficiently  recognised in the skill it took that Dorothy Sayers used an advertising company as background for her detective story,  "Murder Must Advertise."
     As Melanie MacDonald has shown in her artistic reinterpretation of the advertising of the twentieth century, advertising took considerable artistic skill. Respected and successful  artists were often  commissioned as was Georgia O'Keeffe by Dole to paint a pineapple. The company paid for her to travel to Hawaii to do it.  She had respect as a working woman rather than for  birth and breeding, but respect was still involved --respect for the artist and respect for the general public. One series of advertisements I appreciated for  its wit and humour appeared on billboards for Guiness. It showed a zoo with a prominently displayed zookeeper. In each poster in the series a different animal was snatching his drink away from him as he exclaimed "My Goodness!  My Guiness!"  I looked forward to those posters although I was much too young to drink.
     Respect for the general public seems to be disappearing and when some attempt at respect is made it is pretty superficial, as when one says "cleaning lady", which is quite meaningless, rather than cleaning woman, and refers to all the women one knows as ladies and all  the men as gentlemen. The African Americans are not the only ones to feel that more respect is needed in our society generally.