art action: living with ptsd

i'm jumping around a bit in time here as i'm trying to catch up with thoughts and posts i really wanted to write during the exhibition but didn't have time to start, let alone finish. but new and exciting things are happening daily and so this is an immediate response to a private view i've just been to a few hours ago.

on august 30th (a few posts ago) i wrote about meeting and chatting to a young soldier due back in afghanistan. tonight i went to the opening of 'art action: living with ptsd' at the poly, falmouth. it's an exhibition of artwork by combat veterans who are experiencing post traumatic stress disorder and there's also work by their wives and friends.

what was great about this private view was that there were brief talks by jayne howard, the director of 'arts for health cornwall', rich emerson from 'surf action' and one of the founding artists, steve woods who manages their art studio at heartlands. these two charities have worked together to facilitate this exhibition and it was really interesting to hear a little of the background story. the aim is to raise awareness of ptsd and to highlight the work of 'surf action' in supporting people with this condition.

it was inspiring to hear how the art group gradually evolved from getting veterans together to go surfing. steve woods also explained that images within the pieces had not been painted in order to shock but to help the sufferer expel them from their mind. 

i couldn't help thinking about the young soldier i met on the train...... and what his fate will be.

'escape' by ian wilkes, combat veteran- concrete and slate
and a poem by "a wife of a soldier with ptsd".

I Have Never Been to War........

I have never been to war

I have never held a gun

But I feel the repercussions

I have never smelt the burning 

But I can see the fear

I have never heard machine gun fire

But I can see the shake it causes

I have never been to war.

I have never fought for my country

But I can see the scars it leaves

I have never been a soldier

But I hear the marching of his dreams

I have never been on a battlefield

But I feel like I am on enemy lines

I have never been to war

But I live through it every day.

the funkin' art radio show

the weekend before my exhibition i was invited to be interviewed on source fm's 'the funkin' art radio show'. every saturday sarah-jane marsden has a chat with a local artist about their life, work and favourite things. there's a round up of the week's art events and exhibitions in cornwall and roving reporter, lizzie waddling is out interviewing from a mystery location! all in all it's a great show.

i was very nervous and never having been on radio before i wasn't sure if i'd go all quiet and monosyllabic or be quite chatty. fortunately it turned out to be the latter.... and the show actually over ran by half an hour. but this was ok as the following programme was pre-recorded music so luckily it didn't mess up the schedule for the day.....phew!

having found the portacabin that houses source fm tucked away outside the local adult education centre i ventured inside and made a cup of tea. the recording room with it's egg box style decor is home to an alarming array of buttons and switches. it was a huge relief to find that i didn't have to wear any of the big head phones or be wired up to any switch boards! 

sarah-jane is a great interviewer which made things easy from the outset. very soon i relaxed into it and there was no stopping me. i'd been asked to choose two tracks (exciting- a bit like desert island discs....) and i think i was really concerned about trying to provide enough background information to put these music choices into context. so much so that i nearly forgot to mention my exhibition dates!

i admitted to liking to sniff my old singer sewing machine live on air!! (my favourite smell). and whilst trying to describe my porcupine quill (my favourite object) i amused myself by holding it up to the microphone to 'show' it to the listeners! 

it was a really fun experience- next stop tv. well, i am going to the antiques roadshow in falmouth this week so you never know......

you can follow this link and listen to the show HERE

the poly members show

going back in time to mid july i was busy painting away in my studio. all members of 'the royal cornwall polytechnic society' (locally referred to as 'the poly') were invited to exhibit up to four pieces in the annual members show. i'd painted my first twenty or so pictures which i really wasn't happy with. i had started '100 birds' intending to work my way through 100 different species of sea and coastal birds spotted and recorded in cornwall since the 1950s. i painted 19 different species of gull! here they are for the record......

1- sabine's gull, 2- kittiwake, 3- bonaparte's gull, 4- black-headed gull, 5- little gull, 6- laughing gull, 7- franklin's gull, 8- mediterranean gull, 9- audouin's gull, 10- common gull, 11- ring-billed gull, 12- lesser black backed gull, 13- herring gull, 14- yellow-legged gull, 15- caspian gull, 16- american herring gull, 17- iceland gull, 18- glaucous gull, 19- great black-backed gull.

that's a lot of gulls! although i thought my paintings were terrible i definitely learnt a lot about gulls. i also looked up their eggs and included those in the pieces. i moved on to an oyster catcher and a chough. i'm not really sure if you can count the chough as a seabird but it seemed crazy not to include the national symbol of cornwall in the 100.

it's strange how things turn out. i would never really have considered painting a chough as pictures of them are found frequently down here and i think i felt that it would be a bit obvious, something for tourists, not quite as bad as pasties and piskies but edging towards that terrain. they are however stunning birds and in painting the chough i made a bit of a break through.

i really didn't consciously think of the title '100 birds' or know how the exhibition would evolve. every time i thought about what to do i came up with many ideas which all seemed ok. every time i went out walking, not thinking about the exhibition at all, the phrase '100 birds' kept repeatedly coming into my mind. i have no idea where it came from but each time it grew louder and louder until finally i listened, and adopted it as my title. my instinct was just to start painting birds and see where it went. but i guess i thought about it a little too much and came up with the idea of the 100 different cornish seabirds. that seemed like a good idea and so i set about my research. however, things weren't going well and i couldn't tell if it was because i hadn't painted properly for about 15 years or something else. i persevered and moved on to the chough. finally things started falling into place. the poly show came round and the only piece i felt happy with showing was the chough . i hastily dropped it off and walking past the building the following evening i was both surprised and happy to see it in the window. almost immediately i was getting inquiries from people wanting to buy it. this was encouraging. after much thought i realised what had happened differently with this painting. i had a strong image of a chough in my mind so didn't have to refer to photographs as with the previous gulls. this gave the painting a spontaneity, an immediacy and it was all coming through me, from me. i felt a huge sense of relief as i scrapped all the lists, all the photos and all the research and returned to my original instinct to paint birds- any birds, just birds.

a personal pasty!

well, the good news is that i finally seem to be able to upload photos again. we've not done anything to the internet, it has just started to mysteriously work again of its own accord - probably because i am not so desperate for it now (a bit like a cat- i find when i really want one to come and sit on my knee they won't stay yet when i'm trying to work they become all purry and affectionate and try to rub themselves on the pencil i'm trying to draw with!).

it's a bit daunting trying to decide where to begin with writing about the exhibition- there's so much to say. so i thought i'd start with something totally irrelevant and procrastinate a little longer!

on friday i was helping some friends with some painting and decorating. about mid morning they asked me if i'd like to put my pasty order in. so i went a long with it and said i'd go for a vegetarian one. at lunch time cousin glyn turned up with a baking tray fresh from the oven with an array of steaming pasties. i've met glyn before- a mechanic in his sixties, also a gardener.... and as i'd just discovered, a very accomplished pasty maker too! and what's more, all the pasties had our initials on them!

a sad story...... of love and war

since the beginning of my exhibition i've been on a bit of an adrenaline rush. in just one week there was a radio interview, a private view,  a newspaper article, and non-stop talking to lots of friends, family and new people everyday. it's all been amazing. i'm tired, my voice is going but it's exciting. today i came crashing back down to earth.

i was on my way to my studio and waiting for a train at the station. a youngish guy came up and sat next to me. he was agitated and shaky and asked me, his voice full of urgency, when the next train was coming and how long it would take to get to truro. i reassured him that it was soon and would only take twenty minutes. he told me he'd just found out that his girlfriend was in treliske hospital, that she'd taken an overdose and had "tubes rammed down her neck". he said he was meant to be in afganistan today but had missed his flight.

we chatted. he is a soldier from redruth but based near oxford and has been living there for the last 5 years (when he's not in afganistan or iraq). i put him in his early twenties and his girlfriend still lives in redruth. he comes back to see her at weekends when he's not away. and when he is, he can only contact her through facebook once every four weeks. i looked shocked and he said, "trust". he'd left his wallet with her as he has no use for english money out there. i gave him the train fare realising very quickly that this wasn't a scam. also he didn't mention it. 

i asked him what had happened. he said that he was due back in afganistan today and they were going to create a "hornet's nest". he explained that a road needed to be built so they were going to "stir shit up", cause a diversion so the taliban would fire directly at them. he spoke with a crazed energy constantly tapping his hand on his thigh. he was excited, couldn't wait to get out there. he was going for six months and after that they were going "through the back entrance" to iraq to do the same again. with a gleam of pride in his eye he announced that last time they returned with 2 dead and 3 injured. apparently he'd kept the "hornet's nest" bit quiet but one of his troop started bragging about it on facebook last night, his girlfriend read it and took an overdose.

i asked him if he was scared. in the same wide-eyed frenzied manner he replied, no, that it was exciting, that he couldn't wait, that he loved the adrenaline high. but his girlfriend was terrified. he said he liked the architecture, the way people live in huts. the previous time he was out there he was filming and a bullet came whizzing through the air narrowly missing his head. it was caught on camera and when he  came home all his friends were round watching it. but his girlfriend walked in and saw it. i said i wasn't surprised she was in treliske.

he was totally removed. totally shut down. he just kept saying, "i've got to get out there, i've got to get out there". i asked if he was in trouble for missing his flight. he said it was fine, they'd booked him another for a few days time. i got the sense that he felt he was missing out on the action. his girlfriend was in hospital but he was so pumped up to fight that he was in another world. he spoke with such a   fierce obsession, it was frightening. in his head he was already out there. he bragged about living in osama bin laden's hut, the most dangerous place to be stationed as obviously it infuriated the taliban. but  he loved it. "i love the buzz".

we got to my stop. i said i hoped his girlfriend would be ok and that he would be ok too. he thanked me for the money. the train trundelled off and that was that.

five minutes later i was in the studio wrapping and packing pictures. i felt so sad for his girlfriend, so sad for him and so incredibly lucky to be doing what i was doing.

pictures to come soon!

my poor blog has been sadly neglected and is also sadly pictureless at the moment..... never have i had more i'd like to write but absolutely no time in which to do it. there is one more day of my exhibition to go (monday) and tomorrow is my first proper day off for the last 3 months. all week there has been a mixed forecast for falmouth but sunday has consistently had a reassuring yellow sun..... until this evening when it became a grey cloud....

i feel as if nature has been with me throughout this exhibition. i wrote earlier about finding the dead blue tit outside my studio the week i started painting. well, just half an hour after hanging the show i found a dead but perfect kingfisher near my studio-  dazzling turquoise feathers with exquisite markings and a pair of vivid orange feet. i don't know if finding dead blue birds is exactly fortunate but i've certainly never found any in cornwall before so it's all a little strange. i've been lacking a blue pigment so maybe there is some clue to something here.

and while it feels that nature has been with me, i feel that technology has conspired against me! my internet connection is only half working and won't upload any photos, and strangely none of my text messages had been coming through. after turning my phone off to watch a play when i turned it on again about 30 messages that must have been stuck out there in the ether came through all at once! many lovely messages from far flung friends wishing me well for my private view and others from people trying to organise payment for my work.......all so frustating wondering why people hadn't got back to me when actually they had.....

once the exhibition is down i will be able to sort these things out, finish photographing the pictures and finally get them up online.....and then i will be happy! i don't like to write posts without pictures.....

(technological break through! so here are some pictures....)

'100 birds' synopsis

“100 birds” is an exhibition of one hundred small paintings of birds, using pigments sourced from local beaches. It captures my emotional response to my walks, observations and interactions with the Falmouth coastline.

I'm drawn to the fragile beauty found in the tiny details of the beach; the subtle colours of the rocks, shells, sand and earth; the delicate patterns and markings on a crab shell; flaking paint layered on driftwood and the salt encrusted rust on discarded metal. 

Some of these colours are used literally as I take pieces of shale, slate, clay and earth from the cliffs and grind them into coloured dust. Others form collections of carefully selected objects; driftwood, seaweed and pebbles, which are brought back to the studio for reference. All of these natural materials are changed by the sea; worn, smoothed, faded and graded over time. The colour of the water, the light in the sky and the feel of the day are carried back as memories.

For me these objects represent a frail beauty, the embodiment of passing time and impermanence. Tiny pebbles are fragments of larger rocks worn smaller and smoother with every tide, empty shells are reminders of their long gone inhabitants, and the sea erodes the land exposing layers of colour and time once hidden deep.

I love watching flocks of birds wading, diving and gliding around me; flashes of white as the sun dapples their backs, or misty shapes barely discernible. I've always felt that birds symbolise a freedom of spirit. They are often experienced as a flash of colour or form, fleeting and transient. Few of the sea and coastal birds I see live here permanently but visit for a season or pass through on their migratory route. They are our feathered tourists. Over 100 different species have been spotted in Cornwall since 1950. Some travel many thousands of miles and in doing so connect Cornwall to the wider world. Many of them are increasingly rare and rely on a delicately balanced environment for their survival. 

Observing these things brings me into myself and to a place of serenity. It reminds me who I am; both absorbed in the present and connected to the past.

“For whatever we lose (a you or a me)

its always ourselves we find in the sea”.

(E.E. Cummings)