Goodbye for Now

My artistic process has always relied on a strong sudden impulse to create. My paintings suffer under much pre-planning and from attempting to visualise a clear narrative. I was overjoyed to find that music was a perfect catalyst for me. It is not just a visualisation of a sound that I was able to paint, but a tangle of sensory associations - from the stories, the feelings, the colours of the landscapes which frame the music. Song is always unified with place but never set in stone. I have created art works which link the songs with a place in my own mind, such as the aerial landscape painting of 'Down in the Valley', works which link to the actual place of the song, such as my 'Banks of the Ohio' painting, and from imagined places which entered my mind from listening to the songs, such as my dream-like landscape of 'Barbary Allen'.

While we were all given the same stimulus for our projects each week, everybody's work was so incredibly different. And although we were all working from a second hand source, somebody else's songs, every piece of work felt amazingly genuine and personal. Perhaps this is why we love music so much; it does not exist in a sphere apart from us but forms a part of our memory and our sense of place.

I could say so much about the history of the songs we have sung and loved, but I think the best part of this class is the way in which we have created our own personal histories together as a group. From the often bizarre connections and experiences we have drawn together to form our own collection of songs and storytelling.

Sailors and Cowhands

Cowboy songs and sea shanties collided this week; a strange combination of land and sea. While cowboys control vast herds, sailors confront a power much stronger than their own. However, in my mind there is a link to the places that are the background to the songs we listened to this week. The sea and the great plains seem like strange and lonely environments and to me the songs provide a way of dealing with this loneliness, as well as an aid to their singers' works.

I wanted to create a painting of two contrasting parts, as I saw the separated environments of land and sea. However, I tried to give a sense of continuity in the repeating form of the circle. I'm satisfied with this painting to a point. While I like the strong black against orange of the desert half of the painting, I would like to work further upon the sea's colours. The top of this painting is at the moment too unresolved for me - the form needs to be less confused and more defined.

Chicago Blues

Didn't nobody seem to know me
everybody pass me by
Mmm, the sun goin' down, boy
dark gon' catch me here

This weeks painting was the most instant reaction I've based my work on so far. My colour association with these city blues wasn't actually blue, but purple. To me, purple fits sadness and joy equally well.

After painting this piece, I stopped to look at it and saw many references to the songs and story that were probably unintentional. The thin scraped lines appear as a river-like form while the vertical brushstrokes reminded me of skyscrapers. To me, the painting represents a solid realm, a definite place, overlaid with a ghostly spirit form. I made this painting to be a pure representation of a musical sound, yet its interesting to me that I still read this as a landscape. I think it's more interesting this way, as the city is so inextricably linked with the music it produced.

A few weeks after listening to the Chicago blues I visited Chicago itself. Here are some photographs of the city which I took on my trip:

Woody Guthrie

I'm a dust bowl refugee,
Just a dust bowl refugee,
From that dust bowl to the peach bowl,
Now that peach fuzz is a-killin' me.

This week is in three parts and I didn't really expect that to reveal as much about me as it did. My work here came together in many unexpected ways. The pencil portrait was my first attempt in this class to look straight at history, a Walker Evans photograph of a 'dust bowl refugee' and capture an expression or strong personal feeling, which can so often be diluted by the passing of time. The collage is more expressive in its fragmentation. The disembodied legs, the blue jeans, the listening at the keyhole.. This leads on to the overpainted piece, which I now see as a nod to the Leadbelly painting last week. These two parts were loosely based on This Land is Your Land. It's such a beautiful song, but I didn't really believe the sentiment. After learning that this song was intended as a kind of parody, it seems bittersweet the way in which it has been appropriated as a bastion of American patriotism. 

In the Pines

Tell me where did you sleep last night?

According to the Alan Lomax, Lead Belly learned In the Pines from an interpretation of the 1917 version compiled by Cecil Sharp, and by a 1925 phonograph recording made by a folk collector. Even though Lead Belly's version is an interpretation of an old Appalachian song I was struck by the complete rawness and power of his playing and singing. The forest is often seen as a metaphorical realm of enchantment and terror. In this song, the depth of the woods seems to express forbidden sexuality, death and loneliness. It is a shadowy place, echoing the things we reject and suppress within ourselves.

In the pines, In the pines, Where the sun never shine

I shivered the whole night through. 

The sun, an ever-present symbol of truth and goodness is absent here. The shivering can be seen to speak of jealously driving you mad.
I found it very difficult to paint this week. I repeatedly tried to paint a figure into my mess of tangled trees, but the figure would never come and by scraping it away I destroyed my forest. Life definitely interrupted my art making when painting this, but through the frustration I found a way to connect with this song which I didn't expect. 

Let The Mermaids Flirt With Me

When my earthly trials are over, carry my body out in the sea. 

Save all the undertaker bills, let the mermaids flirt with me.

Mississippi John Hurt's version of this song is charming, yet as with many other songs we have looked at, it's about death and sadness. He sings of his desire to float amongst the mermaids at the end of his life. However, I imagined the sea and its creatures, untouched by Hurt's 'earthly trials' being inflicted by his 'troubled and worried mind'. 

Barbary Allen

Sweet William died for me today

I'll die for him tomorrow

Barbary Allen speaks of the cruelty of lost and unattained love. I wanted to try to resolve this is my painting - perhaps because of the idealist in me. Barbary Allen and Sweet William are joined together in my painting, entwined within each other as in the rose and the briar, in an imagined landscape. I was thinking of a deathly yet beautiful place. The white sands and gentle colours suggest a peaceful afterlife. The couple are suspended gently above the contingencies of space and time. They are placed in a space which is intangible and out of reach but joined together eternally. 

I wanted to take the song back home to England, so I found inspiration from some polaroids I took in St. Ives. I love the feeling of small British coastal towns, the sense of loneliness and separation, slight mystic qualities of the sea and the rain, the flow of the waves and the (sometimes) peaceful blue of the sky and the water.

Banks of the Ohio

I took her by her lily white hand

And dragged her down that bank of sand

There I throwed her in to drown
I watched her as she floated down

My paintings this week tried to address an opposition I found in the Appalachian songs. I began listening to the music and was immediately drawn into the warmth and the collective joyful spirit of Will the Circle Be Unbroken and Banks of the Ohio. However, the lyrics to these songs addressed dark subjects of death, funerals and murder. I chose to paint my impressions of Banks of the Ohio. I had strong associations with colour. The yellow evokes warmth, the happiness experienced by walking along with someone you love, whereas the deep maroon colour of the second panel links with a feeling of being overwhelmed and betrayed. The river, seen flowing in the first panel, consumes the viewer in the second.

Oh Mary Don't You Weep

O Mary, don't you weep, don't you mourn / O Mary, don't you weep, don't you mourn / Pharaoh's army got drowned / O Mary, don't you weep

It is perhaps the hope that echoes throughout this song which makes it quite so heartbreaking. It has elements of longing ('If I could, I surely would..'), powerlessness, resistance ('people gonna rise..'), optimism ('Mary, don't you weep') and faith ('When I get to heaven'). 

The unification of old and new testament biblical passages is interesting. The song refers to Mary of Bethany, whose tears over her brother's death affected Jesus - "When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled." (John 11:33). However, this song encourages Mary not to weep; God is merciful and rewards his believers. Indeed, Jesus performed the impossible act and Lazarus was resurrected. The line repeated over and over references the old testament, and acts as a reminder to Mary, 'Pharaoh's army got drownded'. God protects people and punished enemies. Christianity was no doubt used by the slaves' oppressors to justify their actions and inspired the slaves to break free from their oppressors. The slaves align themselves with the children of Jesus, the chosen people. These beliefs, presented through O Mary Don't You Weep, provide great comfort and promise of redemption and salvation.

When I began to paint, I thought of the repetition of the command 'Mary don't you weep, don't you mourn'. I thought of all the times I have been told not to cry and how this only ever triggers an influx of tears. Yet I thought how comforting it is to be told not to cry, to be told all your problems will be resolved. I painted a woman on the verge of tears, head bowed with sadness. She turned out to be a very beautiful woman. The blue, the precious pigment, references another Mary in the Bible. The rapidity of the brush strokes, the fluidity of the paint try to evoke the fleeting, fluctuating emotions on the point of weeping and a sense of serenity in the face of despair.

Spirituals, Works Songs & Gospel

"the music was our history"

The songs I have been listening to this week possess incredible soul and beauty despite being born out of the most supreme ugliness. Leroi Jones writes how the black music tradition was shaped out of necessity: stripped of all other forms, music was the only means of expression which was unable to be controlled. Any cultural form which resulted in an artefact did not survive, yet the musical legacy from this period is incredibly strong. The sense of disconnection on all sides is heartbreaking. The slaves were torn away from Africa and taken to a radically different country and culture - 'the complete antithesis of the African's version of human existence'. However, any sense of Africa is immediately displaced amongst the new generations. They were Americans with no hope of assimilation, belonging to nowhere. This is a feeling that I think is echoed in Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child. 

I have been thinking about the prevalence of bible passages within the spirituals, or 'sorrow songs'. The Christian religion was forced upon the slaves by their Western masters, and even though this is reflected in the songs' lyrics - there is still a duality to the message. The Christian ideals are not suited to the hardships faced by the slaves. The people were blinded their enslaver's own religious convictions and their focus on freedom and deliverance. The songs therefore, seem distressingly futile. However, these spirituals are not reworkings of biblical passages but an entirely new cultural arrangement; one that is very distinctly African-American.

This week I found it difficult to focus on one particular song due to the breadth of material I had before me. I found that the emotions I experienced when listening to these songs are more easily expressed through sketching while listening - formed through a very immediate connection to the music.

Down in the Valley

Down in the valley, the valley so low

Angels in Heaven know I love you

Build me a castle, forty feet high

Singing Down in the Valley, the lyric 'angels in heaven' made me imagine the land from far above, and I remembered being filled with wonder from seeing America for the first time out of the aeroplane window. The heightened perspective abstracted the land below me, creating fields of colour that stretched for hours and hours. Yet I felt disconnected and wistful: 

longing to be within the landscape, rather than to be gazing down upon it. Down in the Valley seems to have a yearning feel to it; it is at once content and melancholy. For me, looking down upon the valley holds a similar possibility for contemplation.

First Song

Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle shells,
And pretty maids all in a row.

Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing,

Onward! the sailors cry;

Carry the lad that's born to be King

Over the sea to Skye

Loud the winds howl, loud the waves roar,

Thunderclouds rend the air;

Baffled, our foes stand by the shore,

Follow they will not dare.

Collages exploring the process of remembering the first songs that were sung to me as a child. My early memories are filled with old English nursery rhymes and lullabies sung to me by my mother. I have strong associations of these songs to the colours and fabrics of the house I was born in, the pink of my bedroom, the awful patterned curtains, the softness of my grandmother's knitting... I particularly remember hearing the Skye Boat song - a scottish folk song - and it transporting me away to foreign, wild landscapes away from the safety of my own surroundings. The process of creating these montages of reminiscent imagery forced me to fragment together the essence of these childhood emotions. The undertaking of a collage, like piecing together a memory, is a negotiation. Yet it is still difficult to know for sure what is real and what is pure nostalgia.