Our Art Mothers

In gratitude

Hello Friends

Mother’s Day (March 15th in UK) is a reminder, for many of us, of tangled emotions, of loss, of a far from straightforward relationship with motherhood. I’m not going to go into all that here - I wrote a whole book, The Clearing, to tease out my own tangle.

No, because today I want to celebrate some of my art mothers, older women artists whose work and lives inspire me, and, I hope, you too.

For me, foremost among them is the painter Agnes Martin.

I wrote about the experience of spending time with an exhibition of her paintings in The Clearing:

One room is filled with the twelve square paintings of a multi-panelled work Martin called ‘Islands’. As soon as I walk into this room I give a little quiet gasp, and as I stay longer a wordless joy blooms in my chest. I feel it pressing outwards and upwards, like a rose opening. My eyes start to fill, and I think, Yes, this, just this. It’s enough.

It’s very rare that a painting brings tears of joy to my eyes, but these paintings lift me up like music. I stay for a long time with these twelve paintings. Sitting on the low bench in the middle of the room, I consult each painting in turn, giving each one my full attention. I lose all track of time. Everything else falls away. These are plain paintings, even by Martin’s standards, square and white with subtle bands of palest grey underpainting and an air of absolute silence.

A square is content. It doesn’t need anything. It rests within itself. Each painting in here is as simple as a nun. They are still and contained, and yet seem to hum with energy, as if Martin has found a way to paint the luminiferous ether itself, to paint light and formlessness, to paint attention balanced on the head of a pin, to paint the open, luminous space of the stilled mind. She was right about the square, the grid, yes, you can go in there and rest.

I look at these paintings and find myself thinking, I am so glad these paintings are in the world. I am so glad this artist found her way through suffering to make these paintings. I am so filled up with gratitude I want to tell someone, like it’s spilling out of me. But people drift in and out of the room, not really seeming to be much impressed, not paying much attention.

A woman sits by me for a few moments on the bench, ignoring the paintings, peering instead into her bright little screen, tapping and scrolling, tapping and scrolling. I want to say gently to her, Please, put that away, just let yourself be still, let your mind settle, and then these paintings will shine for you. They will shine with such a calm, plainspoken joy that you will be grateful too, and will go smiling out into the day.

Etel Adnan, like Agnes Martin, made paintings imbued with a sense of beauty and joy that, though small in scale, just sing with colour. Here she is, captured aged 96, still painting, still finding and responding to the beauty she saw in the natural world.

The film-maker Mark Cousins recently made a brilliantly personal and insightful response to the work of another of my art mothers who, like Agnes and Etel, had a long and prolific career, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham.

”I want the painting to express something in the will of nature” says another art mother of mine, the ascerbic New Yorker, Pat Steir, whose monumental ‘Waterfall’ paintings allow the paint itself to make its marks as it trickles down the canvas in layered washes created by gravity.

And, closer to home, Victoria Crowe, who actually taught me when, at the tender age of 17, I started out on this path as a first year student at Edinburgh College of Art. A couple of years ago Victoria spent time gathering material here in Orkney, and now, aged 80, is forging ahead with new paintings, many of which are inspired by the land, sea and skies of Birsay, that I know so well and that shape my own work.

[Click the image below for a link to Vicky’s website with a recent video about this body of work]

“Shepherd's’ huts, war bunker and shining sea” Victoria Crowe, 2024, oil on linen, 102 cm x 107 cm

I am thankful to these women, and many others, for their long years of devotion to their creative work, for their seriousness and depth, for their example and inspiration.

Happy Art Mothers Day!

Join the Life Raft Creative Co-Working Session

You are welcome our creative co-working session every Wednesday from 3 pm to 4.30 pm UK time. It’s very simple. We say hello, say what we’ll be working on, then leave our cameras on and work together in quiet companionship for an hour, then sign off at 4.30 with a quick check-in chat. That’s it! If you miss a session or can’t make it live, a recording will be made available to paid subscribers for two weeks after the session. You can find it in the subscriber chat HERE.

until next week!

Sam

P.S. Here’s my book: