My journey:
my love of writing and (visual) art and my lament of how the writer’s words can only be seen when they are published, and still they have to be plucked from a bookshelf and opened, as apposed to the work of the painter, the sculptor, the photographer, that can be easily seen, whether on the wall of an art gallery, or a bedroom wall, or on the floor leaning against the wall… I see now that I was being somewhat simplistic, for example Van Gogh who was tormented by the fact that the paintings that he had sent to his his brother Theo, were left neglected under beds, in cupboards, collecting dust and moistures, damage. And also, there is the fact that a painting is a singular creation that cannot be reproduced in its original creative form on the canvas, once sold, the painter no longer has their original work, it belongs to someone else who may show it in a private home or, hopefully, loan it to museums to be seen by a wider public, so there is a kind of death here as opposed to books that, once printed and published, can be disseminated far and wide, and in sense the author never loses possession of their creation, it is out there, to be bought for relatively small sums or downloaded from the internet (for free). A painting has to been seen to be felt.
So paintings, too, can be unseen, unloved, but still I insist, by the virtue that, once hung on a wall, whatever wall it is, famous or obscure, they exist, in a way that a work of literature, buried deep in the archives of a computer, or in a printout in a desk drawer, does not; it is not seen. How then to broach this quandary, this desire for my works to be seen, when they are in a closed place.
I enrolled in an art class where I made a tent out of Fresh Direct Bags, creating an ironic (hopefully artistic) narrative of the 100 percent happiness their logo promised at the height of the pandemic. I learnt there the wonders of the hot glue gun and how to create art out out of unconventional materials, how to find and put meaning and rhythm into a piece, the question always nipping at my heels, did I have the sensibility, even a fraction, of an artist. I foraged through art books, so many of them, Rizzoli, my favorite haunt, although my most prized and illuminating ones have come from book and flea markets, and, of course, the galleries and museums, blessed to be in New York with its treasure trove of modern art and the great masters. I fell in love with Louise Nevelson, stood for the longest time in front of the two pieces from Dawn’s Wedding Feast at MOMA, marveling at how scraps of discarded wood found in the grimy streets of Manhattan could be turned into such objects of serene beauty and form.
I was drawn also to Louise Bourgeois, whose home and studio in Chelsea I visited, and whose personages, spiders, cells and strange dogs moved me so much. An exhibit of her work at the Faurschou gallery in Greenpoint (free!) left me contemplating the effect of shadows and form, and what art is and can be.
And then, at the Vintage Thrift Shop, I picked up a dusty copy of a book, which opened a new pathway, a new way of seeing.
This gem published in 1973 introduced me to the wonders of acrylic emulsion and showed me how collages, pieces in galleries, have that professional look. I had a whole cardboard box of Advance Readers Copies (ARCs) that my then publisher, Little Brown, had sent for The Boy Next Door, way too many for me to give out to would be influencers, and so they had sat there in the cellar, and suddenly inspiration struck - they would be the basis of my collage, the way of my writing being seen, up on a wall, my bedroom wall, the wall of my lounge, the kitchen…it didn’t matter, it would be SEEN.
So, up in a little cottage in the Apennines, where there is only the sound of birds and cow bells, the occasional nuisance of flies and the beauty of dragon flies, and the wary fox or deer, I set up my studio on the verandah.
Previous summers here, Van Gogh, Nevelson and Bourgeois had been my companions. This summer it was Picasso and Braque. I fell head over heels in love with cubism. With collage. I dived in and sought to bring The Boy Next Door to life.