I know I said I was taking a break over Christmas but I’m sick and writing is helping me, so here’s a short piece I wrote this morning.
I’ve been sick this past week with RSV, that nasty respiratory virus we’ve all been reading about in the newspapers and assumed (or at least I did) that it’s only bad for kids. It’s been worse than my experience of covid: I’ve made a body-shaped indent on the couch and run out of Hallmark Christmas movies – well, there’s one left but I refuse to watch A Castle for Christmas, the trailer is SO bad. Breakfast has been a couple of DayQuil tablets, which are the size of a horse tranquilizer and need to be washed down with gallons of hot lemon tea but soften the edge of my sweaty fever enough to allow a brief visit to my studio. I often wax lyrical about art and the many roles it plays in my life; sometimes often my thoughts are highly conceptual and convoluted (I love playing with language) but this last week I’ve experienced the very clear, somatic effects of art as medicine and I want to share with you how art has offered me a band aid, albeit a temporary one.
I woke a few days ago with a deep thrumming tinnitus, like someone was revving a motorbike engine and my head was jammed up against the wheel. Yeah, fun. Dad suffered with tinnitus for years, he used to sleep with an analogue alarm clock under his pillow in an attempt to focus his brain on the tick-tick-tick rather than the high-pitched squealing that arrived with his gradual hearing loss. I guess we try anything when we’re in continual distress. I wasn’t prepared to strap a clock to the side of my head just yet, so I picked up my distraction tool, a stick of charcoal, and started moving it across a sheet of watercolor paper, making slow, deliberate marks, carefully observing and following the lines of a previous portrait I’d made. I’ve used observational drawing before as a method of slowing down my breathing and lowering my blood pressure – as a kind of meditation really – and I’ve found it much better for me than chanting or staring at a candle: I’m not good at sitting still. It takes a while to get there but when my hand, eye and brain sync, there’s a dance to drawing that is so sensual and wild it unites all my senses in a balletic symphony: the graceful movement of the arm, the crumbly softness between the fingers, the earthy smell of the burnt wood stick as it scratches and smudges across the paper. Eyes on the original drawing, I let my brain relax and tried to think of the charcoal stick as just another finger, a bony extension of my own hand, and ever so slowly I noticed the throbbing in my head hushed for just a moment, then a moment more, then faded away. Relief.
Just like meditation, this kind of silencing can’t be forced. If I actively try and forget the rumbling in my head then the noise immediately shoots back into focus. This is a gentle coaxing, like I would gingerly coax a butterfly trapped in the house to fly closer to an open window and then finally waft it out into freedom. It’s not a sharp swatting of an aggravating mosquito and this means there’s patience involved, which is something I lack when I’m sick, so the art balm is not a cure-all, rather a welcome oasis where I can rest.
Matisse is most likely the first artist who comes to mind when thinking about the effects of ill health on an art practice - his famous paper cut-outs came about after he became wheelchair bound – but I prefer to look to womxn artists when researching, so British artist, Tracey Emin has been in my thoughts all week. A bladder cancer diagnosis in 2020 completely derailed Tracey’s practice. Unable to hold a paint brush she documented her treatment and long recovery through a series of raw self-portraits taken with her cell phone, many of which she shared on her Instagram account. I saw some of Tracey’s post cancer drawings at Frieze London this year. They retained that sense of vulnerability and edgy honesty that I would expect from her work but also demonstrated a fragility that was new for her and exquisite. They looked like something created in a medicated haze or even a DayQuil induced semi-coma. Ethereal. Ghostly.
I’m seven days into RSV and still have the tinnitus, now accompanied by a cough that rattles my old bones, but I’m warm, well fed, have family around me and meds in the cupboard, which is a privileged place to be. To all of you suffering with short or long-term illness, I hope your own art practice can act as a nurse, a companion, a good friend. I hope the act of creating, however tiny that act may be, is a balm to your discomfort and brings you moments of rest. Wishing you a peaceful Yuletide.
Until next time
JC
RESOURCES
Read about Tracey Emin’s cancer drawings HERE
I recommend this video on YouTube by Sandi Hester (i love all her videos)
Love it the charcoal as an extension of your finger
Thank you for this. When my abilities are reduced due to pain or mental health anguish, I resort to the pen on paper. It's my healing. Letting the lines just move across the page. It is my safe place. When I think of artists with illness, there are so many. Maude Lewis is one! I realize my knowledge of women's art to be much less than men. Perhaps we will find a collection one day of women living with chronic illness, who found art as their balm and pursued it beyond all the odds.