Through An Artist’s Eye

This is an image of my father (yes, the one holding the book as ever!) and his school friends taken in about 1936.

My own scan from an original copy of the Twenty Drawings booklet which accompanied Felicia Browne’s posthumous exhibition in October 1936.

Sometimes dreams really do come true. Barring accident or incident I will be talking about Felicia Browne – my subject and muse – on Woman’s Hour this coming Monday 18th July.

I’ll be part of a feature on Felicia and be joined by Pauline Fraser of the International Memorial Brigade Trust. We’ll see what live broadcasting brings!

Funny enough approaching Woman’s Hour was one of of our promises to the Arts Council, but with enormous good fortune it has been Tate Britain who have facilitated this for us – THANK YOU Tate Britain! They are exhibiting drawings and letters from the archive to mark the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War on 17th July. The programme will be a good opportunity to talk about the archive and the new display, which I urge you to seek out. Don’t miss out on this treat.

The best thing of all – apart from the opportunity to enthuse about Felicia – has been talking with the show’s producer who also has a connection to the history. In exchanging our stories I’ve gone back to a bank of images of my family from the period.

Juxtaposing the photograph of my father with his friends and Felicia’s sketches of head studies does a great deal to reveal the reasons for my fascination with Felicia’s reportage from Spain 1936. This is probably one of my favourites and also one I sample in my responses. I’m extremely happy to see it on the Woman’s Hour gallery, which also features some of my work.

The beret became an important object in my early research for the project and will feature in the exhibition in more ways than one. Ubiquitous headgear in the Spain of the this time, the beret appears with frequency in the myriad photographs available of the Spanish exiles in flight from fascism.

In looking back it’s been possible to make a wonderful visual connection – my father and his friends with Felicia’s assured sketches.

And once more Felicia has blown me away.

So last Friday I opened the doors to a showing of process works from the project – my promise to the Arts Council. The purpose, to enable me to raise my game via peer comment. Based at my studios in East Oxford this proved to be a wonderful location for conversation with my artist peers.

It’s been invaluable to work on a practice exhibition, and a joy to work with our curator, Sarah Mossop. A field trip to our exhibition location proper, in Thames Ditton, earlier last week also enabled us to further our thinking on the curatorial details for the Autumn.

A conversation about objects en route to Thames Ditton, yielded a most generous offer from Sarah to donate one of her vintage (of the period) lead animals to the project! A collection from childhood, now carefully preserved in a suitcase. When offered the choice, I immediately asked for a lion.

Some of you may remember that a lion features in my sketch for the Paris stage of Felicia’s journey – but disappears in the final version.

Of the many things I love about this project, and this way of working across forms (painting/assembalge), are the layers of meaning and association it seems possible to accrue.

It turns out that “Lioney” came to be in Sarah’s collection via Paris.

Currently he sits on the sketch in the process exhibition, but I can’t wait to try him out on the final piece. I wonder if he’ll come with us to Thames Ditton?