Provence
‘Painting is a stupid job. Do something useful and train to be a nurse,’ commented a man beneath a column I wrote last month. Although well used to the vitriol levelled at artists from some quarters, I found this particularly annoying. I was a general nurse from 1981 to 1985, after which I completed psychiatric training and spent five years working in acute psychiatry in the east end of Glasgow. That was followed by a year as a district nurse and seven more as a practice sister. I nursed because my lower-middle-class background, with its discouragements and lack of contacts, didn’t equip me even to consider somehow making a living from the two things I’d loved most since I was a child: books and art.
Before my artist ex became successful enough for me to go part-time and then leave nursing altogether in 2000, I supported my young family. For a short while I ran health education courses for mothers in a deprived primary school, as well as nursing. The odd thing was that when I was still a nurse and began to attend work-related parties with my ex, where I met architects, academics, journalists, philosophers and politicians, sometimes people would turn away and look for someone more important to speak to when they discovered what I did for a living. But when I left nursing and became involved full-time in the arts, managing my ex’s business, this same demographic found me, my chat unchanged, suddenly interesting. Examples perhaps of Kant’s definition of prejudice, ‘will unimpeded by knowledge’.
Recently though, despite having other jobs and a few painting commissions in hand, I have been wondering if the artist-hating chap was right. Fretting over bills is exhausting. Then I was contacted by Polish Ela, a Spectator reader from Paris. In her friendly email, which flitted knowledgeably between literature and painting, she told me that she’d found my website and saw three paintings she particularly liked. She and her husband would be holidaying down on the Côte d’Azur soon and were, by chance, driving inland to have lunch with friends here in the village. Afterwards they’d come and see me and maybe buy a work.
That old frenemy ‘delusive hope’ began whispering in my ear. But I rubbed my eyes, reread the email, and allowed myself some optimism. Two weeks later we met. I was dazzled. Ela turned out to be a stunning, super-smart blonde in a white linen mini dress. She brought me Travels with Myself and Another by Martha Gellhorn, and introduced me to Richard, her muscular French ex soldier-of-fortune husband. My best friend is married to a retired American colonel who served in the second Iraq war. I’ve known him for 36 years and like him a lot although I find there’s something both reassuring and scary about being in his company. I experienced the same vibe from Richard.
Following a bottle of rosé on the terrace, it felt to me at least that the three of us were simpatico. Afterwards we went inside for a tour of the paintings. I was surprised when hyper-masculine Richard told me he wanted to buy the painting of some almost-cubist white roses on a dark background. He particularly liked how the work was complemented by its dark oak Arts and Crafts frame. I was thrilled. No one had noticed before. Ela decided on an erotic nude, ‘Cinquante et Un’ (the only such painting I’ve done), a monument to afternoon love I painted as a gift for Jeremy. Letting it go was a wrench but needs must and I have a giclée print of the work.
Selling extant art works from home is much preferable to gallery sales, where they take at least 50 per cent and aren’t always honest, or even pleasant, to the lowly artist. Commissions can be problematic too. In the autumn of 2022 I was commissioned by a posh hippy woman to paint her grandson. After I agreed, she insisted on my including her dog in the work. A double portrait for the same fee. When the work was finished, I sent her images. She was delighted; relieved, I set the work aside. Not long afterwards Jeremy became very ill. All my hours were taken up looking after him and painting became impossible – for a year as it turned out. The September after Jeremy died a mutual acquaintance was going to visit the woman and said he’d take the portrait with him for her to approve or return, so I wrapped it in brown paper, tied it with tricolour ribbon, attached an explanatory card and handed it over.
A month later I received a response: ‘It’s obvious to me that you were working on this while you were caring for Jeremy when he was dying. Due to your distress, what started out as an accomplished portrait is now an overworked disaster.’ The painting was returned to me by post in a black bin bag. No note. This must surely be the harshest piece of art criticism since Lady Churchill torched Graham Sutherland’s portrait of Sir Winston, proving my theory that more nonsense is talked about art than anything else. I hadn’t touched the work since it had been approved the year before.
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