Lingering

One of the main challenges I have faced as a woman artist is the conflict I feel about caring for someone, loving someone, yet remaining dedicated to my art in an undivided way.

I think that generally men find it much easier to be selfish.  And you do need to be selfish.  Ideally you need 'to care and to not care'.  You need to give yourself completely, while at the same time seeing things from a distance. 

Every important creative act has this duality: of giving everything and then of letting go, so that the created work can have a life of its own.

I would like this book to speak to young women artists - and perhaps to all women who will no doubt face this challenge in their lives at some time and will have to resolve this conflict in their own way.

This seems to be essentially a feminine dilemma.  Throughout history, women have too often been seen as subjects of art, rather than artists.  Their natural propensity for giving themselves up to the experience, combined with an aptitude for stillness, has made many women great muses to great male artists.

As a woman painter, one needs to work out a strategy: I feel the need to put up barriers to protect my solitude.  I agree with Virginia Woolf that the vital thing for a woman artist is ' a room of one's own.'  

Celia Paul

 

All the previous text  is from the Prologue to Celia Paul's memoir Self Portrait.  

I loved reading this book slowly over about ten days.  I took my time with it because I did not want to finish it.  I snapped it shut after a few pages, saving its depth and resonance for another day.  I consumed it like dark chocolate, loving it, looking forward to the still unread sections.  

By understanding Celia Paul through her very honest self-gaze, I understood myself.  The book is about a woman artist's interiority.  It is rare to find something so poignant and true.

Self Portrait has had rave reviews, please see here and here and here.

Celia Paul is interviewed by the very intelligent and perceptive Judith Thurman here.  

The way I feel about this book is how I feel about my green quilt.  I linger over it.  I'm so in love with spending time with it, intentionally going at it slowly, knowing I will miss handling it when it is finished, but at the same time wanting to work on it, eager to work on it, wanting to see it done so that I can move on, even though I love it in my lap, under my hands.  Becoming finished.  How can I express this feeling in words?

In my mind the name of my quilt is 'lamentation' and it has only been in my hoop for a little more than two months.   When I hand pieced the squares together a year ago, I un-picked and re-stitched over and over as I worked towards creating a meadow of green that would encourage our eye to keep moving.  Now the double grid of quilting stitches seem to give this field a 'mysterious stillness'. 

The rest of this post continues with more text from Celia Paul's memoir.        

Painting is the language of loss.  The scraping-off of layers of paint, again and again, the rebuilding, the losing again  Hoping, then despairing, then hoping.  Can you control your feelings of loss by this process of painting which is fundamentally structured by loss?

Painting has a unique relation to time.

A painting that has been done quickly has a different energy from a painting that has been done slowly.  A painting that has been done quickly is like a newly decorated room and the air is fresh, empty and echoing.  A painting that has been done slowly is like a room that has been quietly lived in: it acquires a mysterious stillness.

When you are overpowered by loss and grief, you stare at the image, almost uncomprehendingly, not knowing or caring about how to define the thing you see.

Celia Paul