Reflections on Character fuelled by my P3 art piece

 My Mum is a custodian of epic proportions.  Things from decades even 50 years ago, of worth, are carefully stored.  In her garage, there are even the school exercise books of my children with their early writing, poetry and stories.  My grandfather’s old medals, certificates, and awards for shooting etc are all on shelves safe and sound.  My father’s letters of reference as a young teacher, his qualifications and his many letters are wrapped up with care.   The very first letter he sent to my mum over 70 years ago can still be retrieved and read.  The pages worn thin, with lines from folding and unfolding, show my father’s handwriting and thoughts.  On the wall opposite me is an oil painting by my grandmother which is around a hundred years old.  I’ve known this about my mum for years that she takes care of things and people with tenderness.   In her attic, above the garage, there is even a huge bag of my artwork from school.  It includes work from my primary school years P3 and P4.  Today, for the first time in almost 60 years I got a ladder and braved the spiders and their webs, to get the bag down.

As I took out one of my earliest pieces (see above) from P3 in primary school the art took me back.  Made of material stuck on a sort of canvas, I can actually remember making it.  It is indelibly branded in my memory. I did it in the room used for sewing and knitting.  That must sound odd to a modern audience but there was a time when very young primary students would spend hours mastering all kinds of stitches (both in sewing and knitting).  As our artwork required material we were making our creations in this room.  

The teacher was the wife of the headmaster a man who had suffered from polio as a child and limped badly.  His father had been a captain of a tea clipper (merchant sailing vessel of the 1860s) which shows how old I am! Anyway, Mrs Philips, his wife, mostly taught P1s those innocents to whom school must have seemed a bit of a shock.  In Northern Ireland you start school aged only 4 and if you happen to have a birthday in July you would be a 3-year-old who had just had turned 4 a matter of weeks previously. 

Mrs Philips was terrifying indeed.  She seemed permanently furious with all children.  I am not sure if she was born like that or had morphed into this type of enraged teacher with age but the end result was awful.  This particular picture, of mine I remember so well because while I made it one of her P1s was locked in the sewing box room adjacent to the class and roared and wept the entire period.  Someone whispered that he had wet himself with fear and as punishment had been locked in the storage cupboard.  The sound of his howls and his suffering was heart-breaking and being young myself the horror of it went deep.  Sometime during that endless class, I promised myself I would never become immune to the suffering of others.  As I stuck material with a shaking hand onto my board I pledged that if there was any other choice as an adult I would choose not to inflict pain such as this.  

In later years I could rationalize and tell myself that perhaps Mrs Philips had not always been like this.  Maybe, she had been a good mother and treated her own children well.  Indeed, it was possible she had taught primary school for years and did a tremendous job and this present version of herself was not characteristic of the real person she had been for most of her adult life.  I began to think of people like a graphic line with goodness on the y-axis and time on the x-axis, sometimes down and sometimes up.  Perhaps, Mrs Philips was in the abusive phase only at this point in her life?

Then, at university, I suddenly thought that a simple line is not adequate to reflect a person. Perhaps instead we should use an extra dimension, making an area.  What if a person’s character is proportional to the area under the line.  That would be much harder to determine but be more accurate because if you stayed loving for 40 of your 60 years then you would have a larger area under the curve.  It makes sense, doesn’t it?  If you had been a vicious person for 60 years you could end up with an area of roughly 120 but a loving person for that length of time would have a tremendous score of 600!  But, what if you are a hurtful teacher but a loving mother? 

Obviously, we need another dimension.  What if we added a three-dimensional approach to our diagram? This could represent all the other aspects of our lives, how we treat our parents, grandparents, neighbours, our dog etc.  Instead of an area, we would be looking at a volume where that line is rotated through 360 degrees in space. Here it is shown for a simple line rather than our jagged line but it gives the principle.  Our character is now represented not by a line or an area but by solid volume.

But though this might reflect much more about a person’s character it still fails to take into account all the interactions that happen to each of us as we pass through life.  You can meet an amazing person who inspires you to be better than you ever were before.  So perhaps 3-dimensional shapes that interact with others to substantially change would be closer to reality. Not a totally solid volume but a more malleable shape. 

Then, we have had occasions when religions have come along and changed not only individuals but whole civilizations.  It often seems that at the start of a religion dramatic positive changes happen to a whole populations' spirituality and then with time corruption can set in. Meaningless rituals and corrupt clergy can play too big a role.  Perhaps, then the character can be represented as malleable solids/volumes interacting with each other in a liquid (representing for example religion).  When religion is a dense, deep, inspirational contribution to life the molded volumes/solids all float higher on top.  When, religion becomes corrupt, materialistic, divisive, and fanatical the liquid becomes less dense and lighter without meaning or sense at which point the shapes sink into its depths far from the surface above.

Knowledge is praiseworthy when it is coupled with ethical conduct and virtuous character ...

Bahá'í writings

Uplifting Words For Life

all quotes used are from Writings of Bahá’u’lláh

https://www.bahai.org/

Art in Valetta, all shapes and sizes

Entered the St James Cavalier Centre and was rather confused by an art exhibit.  But to be honest, I am no artist so take my opinions with a pinch of salt.  So here goes...

I found the rather long explanation on video by the artist unconvincing.  I reckon if you have to emphasis simplicity and witter on about the hidden meaning in each brush stroke you are stretching the margins of artistic endeavour a little too thin.  Looking carefully at each one I searched for what I could find and came up with very little.

Moving onto the galleries upstairs I really enjoyed the photo display on exhibition.  I urge all who haven't been to check it out before it goes.  To entice you I am showing a few with my own captions (apologies to wonderful photographers whose work this really is).

Running down sand dunes with kites is something only kids think of doing - but we all should.

Children make such wonderful subjects of photography.

Real beauty cuts across all cultures and boundaries.

Some photographs are so good they become paintings in our heads.

You can never have enough colours.

A whole new meaning to the expression, "The train was packed this morning!"

A new way to use old bottle tops and carry it off with style.

Making art is about getting down and personal with your creation and becoming part of the joy of it.

Transporting nuclear warheads in an ecologically sound manner. (only joking)

Why are you looking at me? it is purely circumstantial evidence, I am totally innocent.

Leaving the galleries I am confronted with the beautiful square outside and wonder why someone thought it a good idea to put a pillar with what looks like part of someone's colon on top!  (see white monstrosity on black stone underneath) There are some modern art sculptures that seem criminal in their ugliness.  The surrounding beauty serves to only stress its hideousness.

On leaving Valetta through its main gates I check out an exhibition in the Parliament Building on diversity and loved the Maltese children's take on this topic.  Their pure hearted expressions won me over completely and filled me with hope for the future of us all.

Squeezing oranges - undiluted self, pips and all

I write, I pour out my angst,

My guts, my blood.

This is no way to earn a living

It is an opening of the heart

For no reason, but passion.

The need to create,

To let the energy flow.

Not because the world thinks it's worth a jot.

But because such outpouring

is beyond its creator’s control.

I do not ask myself why be creative?

I ask myself, how can I stop?

So judge not, if crap flows.

Or at times worthy insights emerge.

The need to pour

Oneself undiluted, 

good or bad

Is a call to be alive

All must answer in their own way.

Rogue and genius - Caravaggio

Caravaggio was a rogue. At least, that is the mild term to describe this irritating and flawed artist. Putting a list of his activities on paper would make you think we were describing a street thug and not one of the most remarkable painters of the 16th century. Here’s a typical account of him,

“Much of what we know about Caravaggio's life comes to us through police records and legal depositions. During his time in Rome, he insulted his fellow painters, quarrelled, fought, broke the law, defied the police and was subsequently imprisoned. He was sued for libel, arrested for carrying a weapon without a license, prosecuted for tossing a plate of artichokes in a waiter's face. He was accused of throwing stones at the police, attacking the house of two women, harassing a former landlady and wounding a prison guard.”

He got involved in street fights regularly and used the street characters such as prostitutes and beggars in his paintings regularly.  He even killed a man (over a wager on a tennis match!) and had to flee for his life. He grew up in a rough area and was shaped by the social life around him.  There is hardly any written work by him in existence.  He usually never even signed his work.  He earned money on the street selling paintings at one stage.

His work has grown in popularity especially in the last century. That is no mean feat, because he was hated by so many respected voices for 300 years after his death. In fact, he and his work were completely forgotten and overlooked for centuries. It highlights how even in the 16th century bad publicity can smother the best of artists.

Poussin, a leading painter of the classical French Baroque style, upon viewing Caravaggio's Death of the Virgin, cried: "I won't look at it, it's disgusting. That man was born to destroy the art of painting. Such a vulgar painting can only be the work of a vulgar man. The ugliness of his paintings will lead him to hell.”

Another Italian Baroque painter, Giovanni Baglioni was Caravaggio's direct competitor and arch-enemy. Although he himself was influenced by Caravaggio's style, Baglione virulently attacked Caravaggio's personal life as well as his artworks continually.  Following Caravaggio's death, Baglione maliciously authored a biography that criticised the artist's works and described Caravaggio as "a degenerate failure".

Even in the 19th Century, Caravaggio was getting attacked by the art critics.  John Ruskin, an opposer of the Baroque style described Caravaggio's paintings as filled with "horror and ugliness and filthiness of sin. " 

He became an artist forgotten and his works were even attributed to others.  It was not until fairly recently that there has been a resurgence of interest in this unlikely artist and his incredible work.  There are now a growing number of people who go on Caravaggio’s trails to visit each of his paintings wherever they exist in the world.  There is something incredibly powerful about his pieces and it is hard not to be touched by their potency.

He certainly didn't make life easy for himself and his actions undoubtedly lead to disgrace, exile and eventual death. I first discovered his work in St John's Co-Cathedral in Malta. 

In the opulent cathedral with its huge gold ornaments, aged gravestones underfoot and beautiful intricate tapestries, Caravaggio's painting of the beheading of Saint John the Baptist shines like the work of a real genius. Listening to the audio presentation of Caravaggio, as I walked around, they explained he was thrown out of the order of the Knights for his indiscretions. Perversely, his powerful painting easily outshines and outclasses everything else in the cathedral. 

This is no angelic representation of Saint John the Baptist's beheading. The violence is evident in the burly man forcing his blade across the Saints neck. The blood flows from the growing wound and boldly Caravaggio signs this painting in the blood running from the gaping wound. Of course he knew that John the Baptist had a real resonance for the Knights of Malta. They prayed before the precious gold plated relic, forearm of Saint John the Baptist, before heading off to sea during the crusades. The symbolism is especially potent because it was the right forearm which was used to anoint Christ. Caravaggio transformed what was a traditional interpretation,  a formal religious painting with the careful halo around the Saint’s head and angels ascending on all sides into a brutal realistic killing. You would believe that Caravaggio’s villain is indeed a murderous killer.  The act of this death is neither celestial or full of grace but ugly and horrific as indeed it would have been.  No wonder his work shocked and appalled those used to more restrained and artificial devices.

In his portrayal of the conversion of Saul on the road to Damascus Caravaggio also took a completely different tack from the common approach.  Remember that Saul had been a persecutor of the early Christians. He had hated Christians. He had made it his goal to capture, then bring Christians to public trial and execution. Saul was present when the first Christian martyr (named Stephen) was killed by an angry mob.

"... they all rushed at him (Stephen), dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul. . . . And Saul was there, giving approval to his death" (Acts 7.57 to 8:1).

After Stephen was martyred, Saul went door to door in Jerusalem finding people who believed that Jesus is the Messiah.

"Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off men and women and put them in prison" (Acts 8:3).

After putting these people in prison, Saul learned about their Christian friends in Damascus by somehow getting letters from the prisoners.

"I persecuted the followers of this Way to their death, arresting both men and women and throwing them into prison, as also the high priest and all the Council can testify. I even obtained letters from them to their brothers in Damascus, and went there to bring these people as prisoners to Jerusalem to be punished" (Acts 22:4-5).

So Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus into Paul was a stunning transformation.  Caravaggio caught it perfectly in his painting,

“He has re imagined Saul's transformation into Paul as a night scene in which the saint writhes on the ground, his arms thrown open, blinded by a moment of illumination witnessed only by a muscular, exhausted-looking horse and a melancholy groom.”   

Who else but Caravaggio would picture such a scene as an inner struggle, eye’s closed with the light indicating where all the action takes place.  How Saul must have suffered when he realised exactly the extent of his previous deeds.  What a rendering of that instant of bringing oneself to account and immediate transformation.

In David’s beheading of Goliath, it is Caravaggio’s features that are on the face of the decapitated victim.  

Caravaggio's behaviour throughout his life became even more erratic and impulsive.  A reason for this decline could have been found recently. In 2010, a team of scientists who studied Caravaggio's remains discovered that his bones contained high levels of lead—levels high enough, they suspect, to have driven the painter mad. Lead poisoning is also suspected of having killed Francisco Goya and Vincent van Gogh.  Who knows?  But his pieces of art startle now even as they did in the 16th Century.  Check out the one nearest to you and experience this gifted artist at first hand.

Exhibiting Oneself

I sit in an art exhibition in Valletta, keeping an eye on the paintings and the visitors.  It suddenly strikes me that art, like beauty, is very much in the eye of the beholder.  But, what do I know, being from a science background, I am in foreign territory here in more ways than one.  Valletta, the capital of Malta is beautiful.  With her elegantly chipped sandstone walls and narrow steep streets, surrounded by the blue Mediterranean she is a unique find.  The streets are laid out like New York in a grid fashion but with wonderful buildings rich in history at every turn.  

The best way to visit her is by sea.  The huge walls of Valletta rise above you as you get closer and its fortifications intimidate exactly as intended around half a century ago.  

Right in the centre of Valletta lies St George’s square, which I am overlooking at present.  Surrounded by the ancient buildings of the Knights of St John there are water fountains laid out in the middle.  It’s lovely to sit eating an ice cream while children frolic in the water jets.

 I watched a four year old, at first, play cautiously with her hand in the shooting water.  Then growing in confidence she carefully lowered her hair in to the spraying jets.  She put her face directly into the jets of water and giggled at the explosive force hitting her eyes and mouth.  A growing audience watched as she explored further.  After lying on top of the many jets, she tried sitting on them.  By now completely soaked and bare foot she wandered through the many jets with arms and legs outstretched spinning in ecstasy.  Finally, she sprawled on top of as many jets as she could cover on the flat of her back and while moving her arms and legs, like a figure making snow angels, she controlled the tall jets blocking and releasing them in turn.  Her delight was ours, her genuine wholehearted absorption, a reminder.  Of how all of us should approach life and art, arms outstretched and spirit unleashed.  Only then can our hearts be touched and art do its magic – a true ladder for the soul.