There’s a great line in the book ‘Notes from an Exhibition’ by Patrick Gale, about family life with a woman artist. The children recount a childhood of talking to a mother who, although she replied to their childish chatter, they knew her mind was never really with them but always with her next piece of work. This saddened me when I read it. I’m not sure if I could say I enjoy my work. I’m well aware that it fills up my mind and pulls me away from my children often, not so much physically but mentally. I’m not sure I’m ever really theirs in the way other mothers are.
We didn’t sleep last night. My husbands back to work today and the pressure of life resuming is building up for both of us. It’s early still and I should be packing to take the children to Kent while they sleep but instead I’m scribbling down thoughts about a piece of work which is filling my mind up. I wonder is there ever a way to balance all this?
Back home from a week in Cornwall, our first real proper, grown up holiday, – not the usual house sitting that we do for friends while they jet off somewhere nicer that they’ve actually paid for. All that time to rest. Now that I can see how tired I was I don’t want to go back to how things were.
Our house sitter, Richard, did a sterling job, only managed to break the fridge door, Samuel’s BB gun and injure the dogs hind leg – not bad going for him! (he makes up for it though by fixing other things for us – and we love him).
I didn’t go back in the studio for three days. In all honesty, I was scared – of how the work would appear to me after a break away. But I did – and I’m not sure how I feel… (sorry about the poor qality images, I can’t get them to resize properly and I will lose the will to live if I try again)
It’s always an interesting diversion to google yourself and see what comes up, what other Susan Francis’s are out there doing, living with the same name in some strange pararellel existance.
I have many Susan Francis’s I like, the first is a lawyer, a clever and responsible grown-up of a Susan, the second an astronaut, I see her on google images sometimes with her helmet proudly under her arm.
Another Susan is sadly a victim of mind control, her thoughts controlled by US intelligience using far off brain invasion weapons from outer space. She is often urged into romantic relations with spys/aliens, she’s not sure yet.
More recently Susan Francis, the animal artist, has arrived from the US on google. An example of her work is pictured. This perturbs me. Will curators, scanning for my work assume I have diversied?, perhaps I should assume her identity in the UK, it wouldn’t really be stealing, as I am really Susan Francis and an artist.
I am collecting all these Susan Francis’s for a piece of work, quite separate from the other stuff I do. But for now, I wish them well.
I share Rachel Howfields reticence to label my work, most especially to label it ‘feminist’. I have visions in my head if I do so, of all the people who will instantly shut off. About a month ago, while on a break from the wellie wanging stall at the summer fair, I was introduced to an artist. He asked me what I was up to and I gave him a quick run down.
‘You got funding! he said rather disdainfully, ‘Wow – well, you’re a woman see – it’s easier for you’
‘But you’re an ethnic minority’ I said affronted ‘That trumps me’.
In our house, we’re hotly competitive as objects of discrimination. (my partner is half Trinidadian) This boiled over at a recent dinner with friends. Barack Obama was heard to call a female journalist ‘Sweetie’. I found that offensive, my partner thought I was overeacting, and so the battle was on. Who has suffered most down the ages, gender or skin colour – it makes for a lively debate – but I don’t think I’d recommend it for a dinner party!
