For twenty years I had a wonderful little cat called Betsie as a companion. We had a close bond and when she died – just before we moved house – I missed her. I wanted to do something in remembrance of her. So, I bought a grapevine and planted it with her ashes so that the vine would become a living memory. I chose a hardy blue grapevine called ‘Beta’ that would be resilient to the winter frosts in the Midlands region and with grapes the same colour as her fur (she was a Burmese blue). I thought these small, sweet dessert grapes would be a fitting reminder of my small, sweet exotic cat.
A Living Memory
With careful research I spent four years caring for it. It bore no fruit in the first year, and one tiny bunch in year two, a few more last year. Then this year, perhaps aided by the long hot spells, there was an explosion of large, rich bunches of grapes all over my vine and extending along the long south-facing wall that ran from the pergola across the garage. They were a deep indigo berry blue. I let them ripen on the vine and just before they were fully ripe, they turned to an even richer mouthwatering blue-black colour. They were ready to pick.
I decided to turn them into juice as the grapes were relatively small (about 1.5 cm in diameter) and had pips in, but they tasted delicious, and I wanted to capture and honour their yield. I had to do this by hand: picking the small bunches; pulling the grapes off; squeezing them down with my hands to break all their skins and collect their juice, which they seemed to give up so freely. Finally, I strained them through a sterilised cloth that I made from a linen shirt. They gave me about 3 litres of delicious juice.
I was struck by the exquisite dark blue and purple tie-dye stain left in the cloth, and I produced some abstract photographs with it, layering multiple images to create an abstraction. I then layered this with an image of the vine itself and was very happy with the result. I could see the pale outline of a vine layered with rich wine and indigo and patches of black. The texture of the linen material broke through like skin. It seemed like a beautiful and fitting tribute to my vine.
The image felt rich, dark and mysterious. It seemed alive with deep glowing blues, indigos and purples that surfaced from the depths of blackness in which the vine’s stems twisted and swirled. The recognisable leaves, translucent with the textured fabric of the cloth, seemed to be struggling to surface from the depths of the black negative space.
Then, in my art group one of the teachers suggested a prompt for us to work with for the month – to take an image that we were fond of, make a virtual copy of it and to conceal, remove, obscure or darken to remove or soften 30-50% of it to take it to the edge of recognition in an attempt to engage the viewer in a dialogue of their own with the piece.
Removing the Image
I noticed my resistance to damaging this image, so made a virtual copy and noticed myself feeling a little sceptical that it would improve the image. Was I too attached to it as it was, or was this something else? I decided to layer on more of the colour and texture of the cloth and dramatically darken it down. Much of the botanical information disappeared into black. I then scraped back some of the vine and leaf details to only reveal spectral sections. As I looked at this image now, one leaf on the right seemed more visibly intact and brighter, in contrast to its receded surroundings. The composition seemed divided between a bolder presence in the surviving leaf and dissolved forms on the left. The central region was especially appealing in terms of what my teacher was asking because forms danced between recognition and dissolution. The eye had to work.
But the survival of the right-hand leaf appeared to raise a difficult question. Was I working too hard to protect this? Was I cherishing it too much? So, I layered texture and dark colour to obscure it, thinking of the task at hand. But immediately it felt like the image had lost its connection to me. So, I undid this last act of covering.
Then as I looked a strong emotion came over me; I felt very moved, by both grief and deep love. It was a powerful response to this image; in it I saw death and decay inextricably interwoven with deep indigo and violet lifegiving energy. Suddenly the image’s grief was no longer an aesthetic effect created by darkening and removing. The covering and uncovering seemed to reveal an emotional history already held within.
Betsie’s ashes lie in the ground where the vine’s roots are buried. From this ground the vine produced a rich yield of grapes that I turned into nutrient-packed juice. The linen cloth remains as an image and one leaf insists on pushing through.
It appeared that the process of creating the initial image then removing recognisable visual information encouraged a deeper visceral perception. The fabric of the cloth pervaded this image like an imprint. In practical terms it had separated the juice from the skins and seeds of the grapes, allowing something to pass through whilst holding something else back. Within the abstract artwork it became a kind of skin; a membrane between presence and absence.
Doing and Undergoing
The altered image acted on me. I understood again, in making abstract art, this experience of an unconscious process happening that is creating an image in juxtaposition, even in conflict, to the one I think I am making. And if I obscure or remove something, let go of an attachment to what I think it is, a deeper meaning is revealed to me that has the power to really affect me.
This is the philosopher Dewey’s idea of doing and undergoing in a particularly vivid form. The artist is both acting and receiving in doing the work. The intuitive artist thinks in an embodied way; thought itself becomes embodied, perceptual, and responsive. In working as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, I have a sense of working without trying to control, in advance, what comes through; acting without predetermining the result, whilst remaining attentive and responsive, and affected, by what each action of psychoanalytic interpretation brings into being.
The resistance I experience during this process is not only normal, it is a crucial part of the process – it may contain anxiety, doubt, conflict, anticipation, and relief – but it isn’t smooth, that would make it aesthetically dead. Many of my strongest painting experiences (in the eight months I have been painting) have often involved a rush of an initial attraction, followed by irritation or disappointment at what I had created; an image becoming too obvious; covering up or destroying something valued; waiting; returning; and discovering that what felt like failure had created the condition for the work.
This is a lived experience of being in relation with the art I am creating, and I need to be prepared to be surprised by the artwork – to have a place within me that can tolerate not fully knowing the outcome. In psychoanalytic psychotherapy this links with Winnicott’s ideas of play (D.W Winnicott Playing and Reality (1971)). Winnicott understood psychotherapy as a shared area of play in which discovery must remain alive enough to surprise the patient, rather than becoming compliance with the therapist’s knowledge.
The Edge of Recognition
I took Dewey to mean that it is not enough simply to recognise something, we need to remain in relationship with the object long enough for it to be taken in and affect us. We need to have an experience of it, rather than simply labelling it as something recognisable. The exercise that my art teacher gave me allowed me to realise that the emotional temperature of the experience may be apprehended before it can be articulated. The surviving leaf and the ghostly veil surrounding it held the image’s emotional life between them, creating a hinterland between recognition and dissolution. This kept perception alive as a lived engagement with the image – space in the mind to know and not know at the same time; space to think. In psychotherapy, this resembles the difference between an interpretation that fills the available analytic space and one that opens a space in which another mind can think.
What began as an exercise in relinquishing control became a lived experience of mourning, nourishment, and continuance. This is an extraordinary experience when it is allowed to happen. Sometimes the work knows what it contains before we do.