Svalbard: i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
On one of my last nights in Svalbard, I lay awake, the light of the midnight sun still bathing the room of my hostel in a grey cast of light, my neighbouring bunks a melancholy kind of empty. I felt struck by the overpowering feeling that anguish is the one emotion that undercuts all life. When we are born, anguish pierces the shrill of our cry. In the playground, the anguish of abandonment. In autumn, the anguish of a falling leaf. At graduation, there is anguish. At a funeral, there is anguish. On a mountain top, anguish is there. Wherever there is love – for a person, a place, a state of being – there is the anguish in saying goodbye, in letting go, in surrendering to the transience of life. Perhaps anguish is too harsh, too sad to describe the feeling that is far more nuanced in my head and my heart, but it’s the best vocabulary I have to describe so much of how I am and the art I want to make. Anguish is as beautiful as it is painful, it tells us what we care about, what we long for, what we adore. And when anguish is felt deeply and comprehended fully through painting or music or poetry, the art that results is some of the most profound and moving that one can experience. I’ve never ceased my affinity with the devastatingly beautiful painting by August Schenck showing a ewe mourning over her dead lamb, while ravens encircle them, awaiting their feed.
Anguish by August Schenck
Where there is love for a place, there is the anguish in letting it go. And, let me tell you, did I fall in love with Svalbard. I loved the remoteness and the extremeness, the adventure, the simplicity, the colours and the light. And I adored the community, the diversity of stories, spontaneity and curiosity. I fell in love with polar bears and sleeping reindeers and eagle cries, with blackcurrant juice and brown cheese and camping food. The groan of an icebreaker. The beat of a fulmar.
By delaying my writing of my time in Svalbard, I have allowed myself to selfishly indulge in the fantasy that I never left. To daydream of glaciers and fog, to let thoughts wander and meander through memory, to play and pretend, to lay in an endless blue sea, arms and legs outstretched, while life washes over wave, upon wave, upon wave, upon wave. Not writing has meant I haven’t had to acknowledge how time has stretched out like rubber, pulling my present self from the frostnipped, sunkissed me in the Arctic. That as each day passes, I turn back behind myself to look at that precious time, reaching further out than the day before to pluck the precious jewel of memory, delicate and small and beautiful in the crease of my palm. I want to stretch back, like a cat with long arms pawing sunlight, grasp that time and snap the rubber forward so that I blink and I am back in the grey, melancholy gloom of my hostel room. It feels so close and yet so impossible to grasp, like sunlight through fingers.
But it is now June, and recently the rain has returned, the sky has darkened, and I while the rest of the city retreats into the shadow of their houses, I can feel myself unfurling.
Detail of my latest painting, a contemporary reimagining of Judith and Holofernes
Svalbard, the Arctic, the anguish of saying goodbye, England, family, my Grandfather’s grave, my Grandmother’s anguish, the anguish of saying goodbye again, will all feature in the new body of work I am creating as part of my residency at PS Art Space. Many people have asked “Will you paint the Arctic landscape… what about a polar bear?” and the answer is no, not quite, but the energy and feeling of all these places will permeate across the entire collection. Svalbard will not feature as literally in this body of work as Iceland did in my show for Koort Gallery last year, but my time there has been essential to the development of ideas and meanings behind my work. For example, once I let go of the expectation within myself to paint the Arctic landscape, I began to see how the feelings I associate with it (the sublime, passion, transformation, love, anguish) are all still present in my portraits. For example, my work frequently references mythical and Biblical stories, like the Brazen Serpent or St. Jerome at his writing desk, most recently as a reimagining of Judith beheading Holofernes. I’m drawn to these ancient stories for the same reason that I’m drawn to places like the Arctic, because they unite people across centuries in how they evoke eternal truths about our nature as human beings. Whether you follow the Bible or align with a particular mythology or not, the lessons their stories tell us are ones that have remained as relevant now as when they were written, reminding us that we are not more than our nature, and that we are just as capable, and guilty, of destroying ourselves now as we were centuries ago. We may like to think we have evolved and progressed, but our frailties stay with us for eternity. Likewise, when faced with the sublime in places like the High Arctic, we learn the same truths taught in Biblical and Mythological stories through an experiential means. It is one thing to read about the ineffability of the Earth in a story, it is another to experience it. Through experience, the lessons are known rather than merely known. Knowing this, the best thing I feel I can contribute to the world is to remind ourselves of these lessons by moving people through painting. Thus, while my reimagining of Judith and Holofernes doesn’t literally depict the Arctic tundra, it does speak to the urgency of survival and the passion of the sublime.
The other major component to this new body of work is the motif of the battery hen. There are, of course, no chickens on Svalbard (and no, the ptarmigan does not count), but there are plenty of people, and one thing that struck me was that if people are battery hens, many of the people on Svalbard are battery hens that have taken flight. Without knowing too much about the community, one thing that was clear was the shared sense of resilience, adventure and freedom that permeate the people who live on or consistently visit the island. One of the most obvious reasons for this is the harsh nature of the place. Polar night shrouds Svalbard in the gloom of eternal darkness for four months of the year, while the midnight sun illuminates it in a single 4-month long day in the opposite season. There is limited healthcare and housing, no bank, no agriculture and all supplies must be shipped into the island. And yet Svalbard is a visa-free zone, so anyone could hypothetically live there provided they have a place to stay and funds to support themselves. But in every other way, it’s a difficult place to live. You must have a special kind of determination if you want to stay. For some people that determination is fuelled by a desperate affinity with the wilderness, a curiosity for adventure, or a commitment to research, for others, it’s escape from war. The people I met ranged from artists to PhD students, mushers and skippers, miners to chefs and mechanics. Most poignantly, a Ukrainian soldier at war on his 2-weeks rest and relaxation. His life’s wish was to see polar bears in the Arctic, so when a bear appeared dancing and running along the edge of the sea ice, we photographed it together from the starboard of Henningsen’s icebreaker until it finally disappeared into the white haze like a ghost. When I got back, two Russian nationals welcomed me into my accommodation, kind and timid and gentle. They had fled the war and all they wished for was safety and to share the beauty of their beloved Arctic with their guests. That night I couldn’t sleep, kept awake by the devastating knowing that anguish permeates all life.
A distant bear on sea ice, captured by Svyatoslav
The people of Svalbard inspired me to live my life with the same attitude of resilience, adventure and freedom. Alongside my major paintings, I’m creating a series of battery hens in flight. They’ll be visual motifs throughout the gallery space, calling the viewer to reflect on ideas about transformation, ascendence and the physical and cognitive barriers that keep us enslaved. My hope is that the metaphor of the battery hen will empower viewers to consider the systems of control that prevent our transformation and ascendance, that keep us divided, that keep us at war with one another, that fatten us up for the slaughter, so that we never realise our full potential, so that we sleepwalk through life without fully comprehending it’s beauty - even if anguish is present. The aim is to add to my own mythology of the human story, while building on the same stories that have defined and guided us for centuries. I might have left Svalbard, but Svalbard, and the lessons it taught me, have never left me; it’s in my heart and it’s in my work. I can hear ee cummings whisper in my ear: Svalbard: i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)