Random Writes.

I Can See Clearly Now The Rain Has Gone. Song by Johnny Nash 1972

Last week I was all set to write my first ever rant about the contemporary use (or misuse) of the word sketch. I did my research and made the notes but something got in the way of me actually writing it. That seems like a long time ago now.

For some while there have been slight changes in my eyesight and I was long overdue for a visit to the opticians. Small things, at first easy to explain away as part of ageing but then recently something more sinister. When I sit down at the computer the screen it appears to bow outwards towards me-it is so real that I have put my hands out to touch it-all a bit Alice-in-Wonderland. Also not recognising old friends in the street, or worse still being convinced that they are someone else and having a completely one-sided conversation with them while they stand there looking bemused.

After ruling out Alzheimer’s and early onset dementia, I put the symptoms into Google and up popped Macular Degeneration. The penny dropped, my Mum has it and is now at 93 registered blind. She was diagnosed with AMD about 30 years ago and has always coped remarkably well. I recently bought her a Paperwhite Kindle which has a lit screen and giant font size and she uses it every day.

I was still scared when my husband finally made the appointment last Friday morning, within the hour, at Vision Express. The optician was very thorough and ran lots of tests including a photo of the back of the eyeball that looked like an exotic planet. Eventually he put a piece of gridded A5 paper into my hands and told me to focus on the spot in the middle. Around the dot all the previously straight horizontal and vertical lines began moving into badly aligned boxes. Horrified I said rather too loudly: “That’s it isn’t it, I’ve got it haven’t I?” The optician said soothingly that we mustn’t get ahead of ourselves and that we should finish the tests. But I knew.

I came out of the examination room with the little piece of gridded paper and the name of the vitamin supplements that will (hopefully) slow the progression of the course the disease. I blindly and hastily, bought a horribly expensive pair of glasses and then stocked up on vitamins and a delicious turquoisy-grey coloured eye pencil.

I told my mother, she is from the School of No-Nonsense and although sad for me, has helped me put it all into perspective. Around me people I know and don’t know, struggle daily with worse things. I want to do as much as possible while my sight is good, I am greedy for art to look at and to read about and to write and to make. I got a bit stuck when I thought about writing the blog, to tell or not to tell, it felt like an awfully big thing to not say. Well I have done it now and already it doesn’t seem like such a big deal. Where are my paints?

Curiosity- Overspill. Part 1.

What is it about exhibitions at Turner Contemporary? The latest one Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing and I are made for each other. As with the Munoz figures that I have warbled on about in these pages, Curiosity has quietly pervaded my brain like a happy virus, one of the best things about it is that in mixing everything up and questioning categories it validates some of my weirder work for example: To Augment.

On my second visit yesterday, looking closely at previously missed African dolls, I realised that they had come from Quex Park Natural History Museum, and collected by Antoinette Powell-Cotton daughter of the Major responsible for the collection. Q P is situated half a mile from my childhood home. The first visit aged ten piqued a lifelong interest in natural history, anthropology and of course taxidermy, as QP is stuffed to the gunnels with stuffed animals. It is where I learned the importance of context and understood that the Victorians saw the taxidermy of a limited number of wild animals for education and display as a better option than trying to bring back and keep live animals with the huge loss of life that would entail.

By the age of sixteen as frequent visitor, always drawing the exhibits I was given a pass that enabled me to go in free, I still have it. Years later I was approached by a group of local supporters and commissioned to make a portrait of Antoinette Powell-Cotton, (daughter of Major Powell-Cotton founder of the museum) known to all as Miss Toni. I was so excited to meet her here is an extract of an article written at the time:

“Miss Toni took me on a tour of her small stately home to find a suitable place to paint the portrait. I found the large rooms too formal, and eventually settled in the nursery where the scale was decidedly more human. We then had to select what Miss Toni was going to wear and opened up her cupboards full of formal clothes. I urged her to choose something she felt comfortable in and that best represented her, she shyly admitted to liking best, a beautiful yellow African robe, she came alive in it.

We spent several pleasant hours in the nursery on small chairs and she told me about her incredible life. She had travelled around Africa with her father collecting specimens and becam an archaeologist of note. In WW1 when the estate was turned into a Red Cross hospital, she nursed wounded soldiers, laid out amongst the stuffed animals. It was one of the recuperating soldiers, also an artist, who painted the first back drop that gave the idea for the diaromas for which QP is famous.

Unfortunately the portrait was never finished due to Miss Toni’s failing health and this pastel sketch is all that remains.”

In retrospect I can see that Miss Toni was in some ways an anachronism and out of kilter in the latter part of her life, as could be said of Quex Park. But oh how lucky I am I to have the memory of those conversations. Curiosity has re-framed and re-awakened my feelings of nostalgia and curiosity; I think it’s time I went back.