Above – the latest triptych with myself included for an idea of scale.

I’ve been utterly dissatisfied with my paintings on the theme of Luffness, the Carmelite Friary, Aberlady and the entire theme of the last year – it feels I’ve not really captured what I set out to. Insead of authentic expression, I ended up painting what looks like childrens’ storybook paintings.

So as you can see, below, there’s the original triptyche, and below that – whatever it is I painted over it with today!

The top painting is prettier but it’s too literal. Even if it doesn’t matter that it’s very literal, it can’t be acceptable without an aknowledgement, or disclaimer about my intentions as an artist.

The effigy featured on the right of the top, original painting) is of a crusader from the 13th century. The fact that I’m looking at it with one of Europe’s most dedicated arts impressarios on the theme of art, war and the possibility of art as a means of healing dialogue (Richard Demarco) isn’t enough. Nor is the fact that my neice holds her baby tenderly in the bottom right of the painting. To my mind one of the world’s most powerful symbols of a plea for love in the face of military violence.

Today’s viewer is quick to judge. Not only viewers who are strangers to me, but even friends (as I discovered this year) take offense when my intention is to encourage questions. Why are we all there? Why are we witnessing this scene? Why is there a broken arch in the centre of the original painting? Why is the beauty of nature depicted alongside such a deathly artefact? Well, it doesn’t matter now, the broken arch is painted over.

Today’s painting over the original was nothing more than an instinctive splurge of graffiti over my previous effort. Maybe it’s better – or more free. I didn’t think much as I painted, except that a poem by Bejan Matur came to mind (see below) and for a few seconds I cried while I painted. Bejan Matur is from Kurdistan – one of the most militarily beleagured countries in the world. Her poems are full of vivid imagery and they talk of a time of peace and love, in this way she tells us exactly what we have to lose. I quoted ‘A Peaceful Morning’ in this post from 2016.

In a review of Matur’s writing, Anahit Poturyan observes:

(Matur) “writes from a country whose leaders are unkind to dissenters or freethinkers, especially those who remember the ghosts of the country’s past. Her poetry is mystical and tragic — she unearths and acknowledges the secrets witnessed by the stones and poplar trees. Evoking pagans and gods of lost times, she breathes new life into the village, nature, and forgotten parts of history with her words.”

(Original piece In the LA Review of Books)

Roses feature in my over-painting as a worldwide symbol of love. Also on the left, is the outline image of a Persian war helmet I copied as an art student many years ago. When I see these captivating, beautifully made artefacts of war – the effigy of a medieval crusader, or a Persian war helmet – I’m struck by the incongruity – why do these things co-exist? Back then and today, I’m inspired by the thought of what someone from those times might say to us now, if they spoke.

Academically, we can’t project our ideology on to history but rather we need to understand context, as I learned during post graduate studies at St Andrews where I studied museum and gallery curation.

(Above left, created in my early 20’s in 1993, in response to a Persian war helmet, above right).

As artists however, we can meditate on these ideas. So in all those times in these last few years when I visited the remains of the Carmelite friary and contemplated the effigy of a 13th century crusader, the phrase that repeated in my mind, along with a feeling of terrible sadness was ‘It continues’.

It shouldn’t be neccessary for me to explain that I am disgusted by the destruction of people in Palestine, or that I reject violence of any nature, from any group, especially when visited on innocent people. However, because apparently my guilt and sheer war-hawk bloodthirst as a white westerner is assumed, the worst will be imagined if I include the image of a stone effigy depicting a 13th century crusader in my painting, even though I include many references to question the western history of war in the name of religion.

Feeling stultified as an artist, I have given up on the theme that has occupied me for years, for now.

A Peaceful Morning

A time before time
A morning of peace
Of roses
And fountains.
A welcoming
Of the creatures
Of the latecomer
Rescued from the hand of sleep
In the dappled dawn.
So arms
Moved away from a statue’s body
And found a human.
Desired.
What belonged
Far more than words
Was love.

Bejan Matur