Peeling and Revealing…

Painting often exposes us as we are…not as we wish to be…

Friday 8th April 2022

Just an orange? Well, yes…and no.

A few weeks ago, I had taken armfuls of still life objects to paint in my friend David’s studio. He took one look at the junk of coffee pots, mugs, cups, spoons that spilled out over the table, and handed me an orange,

“If you were one of my students, I’d say, ‘Do something with that!’”

I bundled my bric-a-brac selection back into my Mary Poppins-type hold all, and looked at my one solitary orange.

As the day unravelled, so did my orange. Piece by piece. First the whole, then the peel, and then the segments, cascading down my turquoise boards, popping with colour and demanding attention.

Perhaps it’s a metaphor of revelation - an unwrapping and revealing of the artist? Any artistic expression is, I think, an unfolding of the self. It’s about showing people who we are on the inside. That outer skin comes off and we are exposed; those parts we would rather hide or make look better than they actually are, are laid out in the open. It’s understandable why most people quit making art - it’s difficult to be constantly laying ourselves open to judgement. Am I good enough? It IT good enough?

It’s for good reason that painters often prefer to work alone, cradling their new born creative endeavours closely, guarding them from ferocious critics who might tear and devour their tentative steps of expression limb by limb. Canvasses rest with their backs to the room, inward and secretive. Not yet. Within the secluded safe haven of a solitary place (any size will do, often the smaller the better) the painter is alone with only her thoughts (which can be a battle zone enough in and of themselves) and is free to explore that which is within and without.