The last few weeks, during the American elections and then during the run-off election period in Georgia, I was already listening to the radio more than usual to try and understand what was going on in the political maelstrom in the States. Then came the aftermath of this week, with all the long and short term implications of that assault on the Capitol and related events in Washington.
Whilst I was listening, I was either drawing or, in the evenings, crocheting, an old love that I was revisiting. And I suddenly realized that unconsciously, I was perhaps trying to create, or at least adhere, to some sense of order for my personal mental balance. Coherence that often contrasted, for me, personally, with what was happening in that roiled country.
I initially thought back to the recent drawings I have done in silver and gold. They have been about different aspects of the natural world – tree barks, feathers, plants. Things that talked to me. But they also have an implicit order and coherence about their growth and form, as dictated by their long pedigrees of being shaped by evolution.
Pine Swirls, goldpoint/silverpoint/Washi paper, artist Jeannine Cook
A feather does not behave like a human being, and just up and do something unpredictable, either impetuously joyous or violent and angry. It has a role to play for the bird’s well-being and flight. The opposite of what many humans do, all around our ever-changing and ever-surprising world.
Long-eared Owl Feathers, silverpoint/Washi paper/watercolour, artist Jeannine Cook
Thinking on, I remembered a painting that Edouard Manet did during the 1870-71 Siege of Paris when he had got involved in politics and ended up in the National Guard, defending Paris against the Prussians. Whilst it is one of his few plein air paintings and definitely somber in tone, perhaps he too was not only trying to occupy the long cold hours of guard duty, but also to right his own internal sense of balance about life.
Effect of Snow on Petit-Montrouge, 1870, oil on canvas, Edouard Manet, (image courtesy of National Museum Cardiff)
Claude Monet was another artist who returned to painting as war drew close. World War I had just begun, with devastating losses of French soldiers and the government decamped to Bordeaux; three of his own family were in uniform and the sound of artillery was growing louder by the day in Giverny. At 73, Monet set about creating his amazing Water Lilies series of paintings, as an act of defiance towards “those barbarians” and, perhaps, a way of coping with the destructive madness of the world around him. “Yesterday I resumed work,” he wrote on 1 December 1914. “It’s the best way to avoid thinking of these sad times.“ Nature, its dancing play of lights and colours, the wind moving water, water lilies and willow branches, were all the antithesis of the mayhem just over the horizon from Giverny.
Water Lilies (detail), 1916 – 26, .Claude Monet, oil on canvas, (Image courtesy of St. Louis Art Museum)
Water Lilies with Weeping Willows, 1916 , Claude Monet,(Image courtesy of Cleveland Museum)
Innumerable artists find that creating art helps bring them some form of solace at different times. The outpouring of art after a major cataclysm like September 11th in the United States, or the increasing emphasis on the power of art to help heal people from severe illness, are again indications of how we all seek, consciously or unconsciously, to achieve harmony and equilibrium. It just becomes a more vital task in times of great stresses.
Fallen #7, 2001-2002, Doug and Mike Starn. It is created from paper carried by the wind from the towers to Brooklyn. They superimposed decaying leaves over the scorched paper, which had landed around the twins’ studio