In Love with an Old Woman

Regan O'Callaghan Mojacar la Vieja Andalucia, Spain, art residency

The old woman wasn’t subtle in her approach.   Her method of seduction quick, her spell intoxicating.    I saw her on the first day of my arrival at the Fundacion Valparaiso Mojacar, she seemed to exude an energy that at times felt overwhelming.  The old woman of Mojacar was not to be ignored.    She reminded me of someone else, perhaps it was Tuahara the pregnant woman who I had grown up with in Taupo, New Zealand.  The old woman had a similar presence majestic and mysterious at the same time.   Like Tauhara I began one of a number of journeys to her peak.  At the top an old reservoir constructed by the Moors  sank deep, empty of water but now full of plants and vines.  La Vieja had once been the hill upon which rested the village of Mojacar but that was a long time ago and now the town with its whitewashed buildings and empty hotels looked down on her from the opposite larger and higher hill.   But unlike that hill the old woman still had presence, a magnetic force which drew me to her everyday.

Regan O'Callaghan Mojacar la Vieja , Mountain, mono prints, Art residency, snake

From my studio I had a clear view of her pyramid like shape inspiring me to draw and paint her.   The studio contained an old printing press and so for the first time in many years I experimented with mono-prints rolling out vibrantly coloured pictures which spoke of her life, the animals which lived on her, the fires which had swept over her, the sun that beat down and the stars that shone above.

But more than anything I wished to speak about what she meant to me.  About the time I climbed and sat praying for a friend who had died while a fellow resident played his beautiful music inspired by the peaks of the Andes.    Of how I had been moved to carry up water and fruit to offer thanks for her, pouring the water into the dry reservoir and leaving the fruit for her kin.  How her moonlit shape had etched itself into my mind encouraging me to create so that others could see and give thanks for her, for her beauty and for her spirit.    Indeed Mojacar la Vieja had me under her spell and when the day approached to depart I felt sad and mournful.  One last climb in the middle of the day the sun was hotter than it had been all month.  I gave thanks for the sun bleached snail shells, the scattered paths that led nowhere,  the  insects that buzzed and the birds above.

Regan O'Callaghan Mojacar la Vieja, evening, sun setting, Andalucia, Spain, art residency

Regan O'Callaghan Mojacar la Vieja , Andalucia, Spain, art residency,

Farewell to an old Faithful friend!

“Sitting in a park in Paris, France

Reading the news and it sure looks bad

They won't give peace a chance

That was just a dream some of us had

Still a lot of lands to see

But I wouldn't want to stay here

It's too old and cold and settled in its ways here”

Twenty years ago I arrived in London with £20 to my name.  In the space of a day I had found a live-in job in a pub In Hounslow a place where you didn’t serve bottles incase you got one in the face and you took your tie off at the end of the night so you didn’t tempt a disgruntled patron to drag you across the bar for not serving that last pint.    The Landlady a small but fierce woman didn’t put up with any trouble though so one was generally safe.

Winter was approaching and  this Kiwi didn’t feel prepared.   The landlady’s son knew where I could get a good coat to keep me warm from the cold grey English winter.  Early one sunday morning we made our way across London to Whitechapel Market in the East End.  Within 15 minutes amongst the plethora of things for sale I found my coat.  Thick, heavy and a great fit it cost me £5 and it was British made to boot!   Bargain!

Nearly twenty years later I sit in my friends flat in Paris after having spent 5 weeks traveling through Andalucia.  It is cold and grey outside.  I am here for a few days before travelling back to Mojacar, Spain where I have an artist residency for a month.  When leaving London friends said take a coat as it will be cold in Spain.   I duly took my beloved coat which I had christened my “old man coat” named as I believed it made me look like I had just emerged from down the mines especially when I wore my flat cap.  Wearing it on the plane so it wouldn’t be counted as hand luggage  I felt ready for my next adventure.

Southern Spain wasn’t cold for this seasoned Brit,  the sun shone and it was warm so my coat stayed bundled in a plastic bag carted from Almeria to Malaga, Cadiz to Cordoba.   In Granada where there was snow on the peaks of the Sierra Nevada the sky was bright blue, the sun warm and though at night it got chilly it was not enough for me to put on my old man coat.

My beloved old man coat.  Five years previously I had spent £80 having it repaired. It had become worn in places, the lining was frayed and the button holes torn.   But I wasn’t ready to say good bye to it then, my coat that had seen me through numerous winters including last winter heavy with snow which dragged on and on or the winter of ’94’ when I worked nights returning home in the dark and then getting up to a cold dark sky and leaving to start my next shift.   The coat which I had sometimes used as an extra blanket when staying in freezing rooms with summer duvets.    The coat which I wore to many a dawn service at church, to funerals where grieving relatives hurt and loss stayed with me until the next funeral.  The coat which I wore to my citizenship ceremony, friends weddings and parties.  The coat that kept me warm as  I wandered the streets of London.  The coat which I looked forward to wearing as it hung in my closet during sunnier months.

Traveling through Spain though made me realise I needed to say goodbye to my old man coat  Goodbye not only to the feeling of security my coat granted me, but goodbye to the need to have a protective layer, insulated not only from the cold wind that sweeps by but also the warm whisper that beckons me forward to new places, new people and new life.

Arriving in Mojacar at the beginning of my trip I had my coat repaired for one last time.  The seamstress told me of growing up in the surrounding hills, of caves, of found ancient objects and mysterious lights at night.  A generous and wise woman I listened as she restitched the button holes and sewed together the lining.

“Oh it gets so lonely

When you're walking

And the streets are full of strangers

All the news of home you read

Just gives you the blues

Just gives you the blues

So I bought me a ticket

I caught a plane to Spain

Went to a party down a red dirt road

There were lots of pretty people there

Reading Rolling Stone, reading Vogue

They said, "How long can you hang around?"

I said "a week, maybe two,

Just until my skin turns brown

Then I'm going home to California"

California I'm coming home

Oh will you take me as I am

Strung out on another man

California I'm coming home”

“California”

 Joni Mitchell.

Titanium white pigment

Titanium white pigment: a metaphor for modern times.

I learnt a very important lesson when I started to write religious icons do not use Titanium white for mixing especially for skin tones.  If you do the colour becomes bland and greyish or at best  Miami Vice pastel‚ as I call it.  Instead Zinc white should be used as it mixes with other pigments and lightens and works with colours rather than overpowering them like Titanium white does. Zinc white is less opaque making the coloured undertones more nuanced to a greater degree than pigments mixed with Titanium.

Zinc oxide was first suggested as a pigment in 1782 while it wasn't  until 1916 that Titanium white pigment suitable for artistic purposes was introduced replacing Lead white which had been restricted because of its toxicity 1.   Titanium it seems has become the white pigment of our times.

Titanium white is used in writing/painting icons but only sparingly. Traditionally the very last thing an iconographer would do is apply the highlights to the eyes of the saint with Titanium.  This is done on the edge of the iris but the pupil does not have a highlight for the figure portrayed ‚ is outside the condition of time.2  The true source of Light shines from Divine presence and permeates all things.  This in itself suggests unity, balance and perfection which is what an icon should reveal.

Broadening out this theme of unity and balance consider practices, structures and political and economic systems which when left unchecked or when a mandate becomes too large have a negative or destructive effect on people and the environment.

In his book Columbus and other Cannibals‚  Jack D. Forbes describes the Native American term Wetiko as referring  to a cannibal or, more specifically, to an evil person or spirit who terrorizes other creatures by means of terrible acts including cannibalism.3  Forbes then defines Cannibalism as the consuming of another  life for ones own private purpose or profit.4 Cannibalism as defined by Forbes is not the literal eating of another mans flesh but rather is the act of consuming the other, their values, their culture, their land and their voice by a oppressive regime intent on overpowering and destroying for its own benefit. This destructive culture is understood as rife with sickness, Wetiko.   A major symptom of Wetiko is greed particularly for wealth and power.

I don't agree with everything Forbes writes but I do appreciate what he says about the spread of this sickness.  This greed for wealth and power is not a trait of one particular race or culture but rather can be found everywhere.  But when this greed becomes normalised or excused  a culture becomes unbalanced and the tilt towards the greedy results in the manifestation of huge social injustice, disempowerment, then eventually a slow emergence of  simmering discontent and finally a full blown rage by the oppressed.

Also as a counter to the call for justice, some people in positions of power will use smear tactics and gross generalisations to undermine voices of dissent against greed and social injustice.  Such tactics are the domain of the intellectually lazy and greedy.  Their voice is in part motivated by a fear of loss, loss of wealth and status and yet calls for social and economic justice do not require this but rather ask for a system where people and nature are  not chewed up and spat out for the benefit of a few.  As we all know greed will always be part of this world but when the colours and diversity of this world become muted by a small overpowering element it becomes time to act.

Perhaps if we begin again to understand and believe in this world as an icon of beauty and that its mix of colour expresses a divine truth then we might begin to wake up from this slow destructive illness that can cloud our vision and harden our hearts.  Titanium white has its place on the universal palette but only in small controlled applications.

1:  Pigments through the Ages‚ www.webexhibits.org/pigments/indiv/history/titaniumwhite.htm2:  The Technique of Icon Painting‚ Guillem Ramos-Poqui, Morehouse Publishing, 19903:  Columbus and other Cannibals‚ pg. 24 Jack D. Forbes Seven Stories Press 19794:  Columbus and other Cannibals‚ pg. 24 Jack D. Forbes Seven Stories Press 1979

Star People

We all come from the stars!

We are all star people!  Recently I completed a commission for a priest who had moved parishes.  To celebrate his time in his previous parish he asked that I write  an icon depicting five people from his church.  The five were chosen for different reasons but all had played an important part in his ministry and spiritual journey.  When he commissioned me he said he had been inspired by the 3 Mothers triptych I had written for the Bishop of London.  He especially liked the table cloth decorated with numerous stars.

Stars have appeared in my work for many years mostly as symbols of hope and in the case of the 3 Mothers and this new commission as a symbol of the many descendants of Abraham.  "Look towards heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them..... So shall your descendants be."(Genesis 15: 5).

But it was while working on this commission that I began to reflect on the interconnectedness of our lives with the world and the universe.  I couldn't help but be philosophical as I sat painting star after star and the connecting lines between them.  It took hours of work but after awhile it became quite a prayerful process.   I remember feeling the same many years ago when I was working on a series of paintings influenced by the artist Victor Vasarely.  My mother thought I was going mad at the time because for months I sat painting grids and squares.  I loved it!

After I had finished the stars on this table cloth I reflected on my work.  The stars appeared to support the five people who sat around the table like they were being held up by the universe.  The five were not masters of the universe but rather instrumental parts of it.  One couldn't exist without the other.  I discussed this observation of mine with a friend thinking he would find it a little way out but contrary to my insecurities he didn't.  Instead he agreed and was able to put what I was thinking in a more scientific way.  As he understood the science, all the carbon atoms in the universe, which are of course essential to all living things, had to have been, and can only be forged in the extreme nuclear combustion present in stars, from the original element, hydrogen. From there carbon molecules, and a whole heap of the other elements were/are dissipated through the universe.  In other words we are all made of star dust!

As a child living on a farm in New Zealand where there was no light pollution the stars at night would fill the sky causing me to marvel at their beauty.  Wanting to be closer I would reach out to touch them.  Today I still remember the feeling I had of wanting to be closer to the stars, to be one of them and perhaps one day this will be realized when at my end I become dust carried off by the wind back into the sky towards the heavens.

"For he knows of what we are made; he remembers that we are but dust. Our days are like the grass; we flourish like a flower of the field;  when the wind goes over it, it is gone and its place will know it no more." Prayer of Committal. Common Worship.

Pilgrimage of the heart

Sometimes there is an artwork which stays  in your heart and mind.  The Isenheim Altar piece is for me one one such work.

My first degree was in Religious Studies and Art.  For my dissertation I studied the Isenheim Altarpiece attributed to Mathias Gruenwald and painted in 1506 - 1515. Originally painted for the Monastery of Saint Anthony in Isenheim it is now on display in the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar, France.  The monks at the monastery were known for their work with people with skin diseases and from the Altarpiece's tortured figure of Christ on the Cross you can see the artist had this in mind.

I don't have a copy of my dissertation but I certainly remember writing it.  It was during Lent 1996. I was staying in the house of a Franciscan Nun (third order) who was away.  In Dove Cottage there was no television and few disruptions so I could focus on the task at hand. For hours I meditated on the crucifixion and explored its symbolism, form and theological meaning and of course the house was full of other religious imagery. Deep stuff but also quite poignant as I was myself going through a period of grief and suffering.  I can remember stuffing the stove with wood to keep warm and huddling beside it giving thanks that I wasn't called to be a monk!  My suffering though was not caused by the cold but rather was an ailment of the heart.

I wrote of the arms of the crucified figure of Christ being stretched out to the cosmos distorted by the hatred of man.  Hands that had once been the hands of a carpenter, hands that created. I reflected on the feet of Jesus so disfigured and grotesque a large nail tearing them apart.  It was all very disturbing.  I wrote a letter to Sister Wendy Beckett a famous art critic to ask her thoughts about images of the crucifixion.  She very kindly wrote back saying she found it to painful to spend time meditating on such images.  I cherish this letter. Fifteen years later I travelled to Colmar to see for the first time in real life the Isenheim Altarpiece.  Travelling through beautiful countryside on the train from Paris I shared with a friend memories of my time in the cold little house of the Franciscan nun, my need for warmth and of my inner turmoil at the time.  Memories flooded back. I remembered a retreat to a Franciscan Monastery in Dorset not long after my stay at Dove Cottage. Sitting in the chapel I gazed at the Franciscan Cross. Unlike the Isenheim Triptych the Jesus on this cross is sleek and beautiful. For a moment I visualised him leaning over and surrounding me with his arms in a warm embrace followed by the cross which enveloped us both.  I felt a mixture of love and empathy mixed with a little fear. I wondered about the significance of this vision (if I can be allowed to call it that). Is love never experienced without suffering?

Standing in front of the Isenheim triptych I gave thanks for past lessons. Lessons learnt? Well thats another blog entry but I certainly stood as someone without regrets.  I was also pleased to see the altarpiece had been displayed so that all the panels could be seen. The beauty and vibrancy of Gruenwald's resurrection stood in stark contrast to his crucifixion.  Here Christ dances in the air in a flamboyant display of joy and victory swathed in beautiful colours and divine light.  Fifteen years is a long time to wait to see the resurrection but I was happy.

For the remainder of my time in France I stayed with my friend's uncle and aunt who showed wonderful hospitality.  I sat in their garden feeling the warmth of the sun, ate great food  and listened to my friend play the piano while we sang songs of love and memories. www.musee-unterlinden.com/isenheim-altarpiece.html