Through An Artist’s Eye

It’s been full-on this week in the studio, with progress on the painterly side. Unusually, my instinct is to hold back on sharing images of the larger painted panels, which will be shown at our exhibition in October. I don’t want to give it all away too soon!

It’s most unlike me to show such restraint! But there is something different going on with this project in my mind – the responsibility of working with Felicia’s archive, and working site specifically are both factors determining how the creative responses are shaping up. Additionally ACE funding informs my choices. Somehow in combination these factors are producing something different in both method and expression.

There are core elements of my practice which don’t change, but I am adapting (without planning to exactly) to the new circumstances this project brings. But then – this is what I do. It is part of my wiring to mould myself and be responsive – and in this work it is beginning to feel like an immense privilege to be able to do so. I’m guided by forces I can’t fully control – the unconscious as compass is a vital element I’ve come to trust utterly over the years, and it allows me to feel unquestioningly close to my material. I can throw myself in and abandon preconception but interestingly not restraint.

The only thing to reveal is that my six initial sketches will become seven larger panels to accommodate a additional narrative element.

The work (to be shown in the place of Felicia’s birth) will be exhibited along two naves of All Saints Weston, which boasts a most beautifully elegant and pared back interior. The panels are taking on elements of a secular stations of the cross, which has surprised me, but I’m excited to go with it. This work is not like any I’ve done before.

I’ve also been revisiting the object work side of things – an element of assemblage will be present and inform each panel.

My early (pre-funding) obsession with the Basque beret has waned a little, though my heart skips each time I see one in the myriad photographs that emerge of the period. A ubiquitous piece of headgear, I was delighted to read in Felicia’s MI5 file that the surveillance officers who watched her board the ferry to France reported that she wore a “grey costume” and a “black beret.”

YES! All my instincts had told me that this was a seminal object and now we know that Felicia not only recorded it beautifully in her sketches but that she also adopted it on her travels. I just know that once my panels are done, the beret will bounce back into my imagination and work hard to find it’s place among Felicia’s painted stages in her journey to that fateful bridge in Tardienta where she lost her life.

A four day headache. An inhabitation? A haunting? My research trip to the National Archive, in the excellent company of Jenny Rivarola (poet and collaborator for the project) proved fascinating but also pretty devastating.

Access to the MI5 files on Felicia Browne and her friend and travelling companion Edith Bone, have brought us much closer in understanding the basis for their relationship (highly committed communist/anti-fascist activism). But it has also brought proximity to the intimate traces of a life cut short in tragic circumstances.

The above detail of a hastily written note may have been Felicia’s last. The simple F in signature caught my eye and brought to mind her wonderful line – so often now in my mind through my dialogue with her sketch books.

In my practice I need to become intimate with my subject – I try to inhabit and perform aspects of what my research uncovers. In doing so I place myself in empathetic regard. I think about Felicia’s actions and choices in the emotional equivalent of a first person narrative. My brief performance as scullion (while cleaning the floor for real) enables me to process what I have witnessed and to try to understand what is happening in my studio.

Felicia Browne spent a period of time in London, after her exposure to the rise of fascism in Germany, working as a “scullion” cleaning floors in a depot cafe. Appalled by working conditions she befriended and passionately rallied to to unionise the women at the cafe and come to their aid. She cared about their ailments and education. One girl of 15 showed a talent in art, and Felicia wished to help her.

Felicia is inhabiting my thoughts and my paintings – so that I don’t recognise these works as my own. I understand that I must let go and allow this process to take place and lead me where I need to go creatively.

I am impressed by the weight of responsibility to capture with sufficient respect and understanding something which the viewer can grasp.

Hello and welcome to the blog!

Our immense gratitude to ACE for making this exciting project happen, by supporting us through the Grants for the Arts scheme.

As we make our way towards our exhibition in October, I’ll be blogging about the extraordinary, yet tragically brief life of Felicia Browne. I’m also extremely excited about introducing you to her glorious drawing practice, which is what remains of her creative work, some of which is held in her archive at Tate Britain. A sculptress principally, Felicia’s political activism and dedication to foreign travel limited her output. She was also deeply conflicted about her own creativity, and it seems that she destroyed much of her sculpture or indeed abandoned it abroad in Berlin after undertaking a scholarship there.

Felicia is most well known for her early death at the Aragon front in August of 1936, on her very first mission as a volunteer in war torn Spain. Remarkably she was the only British female combatant of the Spanish Civil War, and the first British person to die in the conflict. But Felicia was also unusual in her art training. Her time at the Slade was exceptionally drawn out, and so she served many sessions with Henry Tonks as her tutor. This dedication to her drawing practice shows.

I’m entirely smitten with Felicia’s drawings, and her almost compulsive visual journaling. Drawn mostly to animals and working people, she developed a rapid stroke, using both point and flat most effectively in the mediums of charcoal and graphite. It’s wonderful to observe her fluid line and the economy of her hand.

As an abstract artist my mark making is quite different, and I imagined my response would be to abstract from Felicia’s line. But something very different has taken place in the early preparatory works. These are warm-up pieces, experimenting with this new visual language and working out ideas for composition.

I decided to begin with six painted sketches, outlining the seminal moments in Felicia’s life, which led her to her death in Spain. I’m working in collaboration with poet, Jenny Rivarola, and our idea is to introduce our audience to Felicia’s art and life, through word and image. Certain phrases from her letters that we’ve talked about together rang through my ears as I worked out each composition, and drew on her rich stock of sketches.

I should probably confess that I usually work out of sequence, and here too I created the first image and then the last one. I’m interested in the contrast between her beginnings and the end point. The others were also created out of order, as I allowed my attention to be captured by either image or event, or both, rather than approaching my task in a linear fashion. Important to say too that some of these sketches are unfinished, especially Paris/the lion.

If you click on each image you will find brief introduction to each work.

Sketch 1 Home

Sketch 2 Berlin (unfinished)

Sketch 3 London

Sketch 4 Paris (unfinished) I’m not certain a second reference to a the swastika symbol is necessary for the Paris sketch – it emanated from the charcoal ground and has been rubbed away. This image is being worked on last and shows a progression to looser work and applying charcoal to wet paint. Very sensual and free.

Sketch 5 Barcelona – unfinished but nearly there.

Sketch 6 Tardienta