Through An Artist’s Eye

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