‘Mum’ by AJ Lee, 2023 — image courtesy of AJ Lee
Magnolia buds are stretching open, daffodils are bobbing in the breeze, and this is the first time I have managed to write a post in 2023. Life has felt crowded so far this year — an odd concept given we live in a tranquil hamlet with population density of well below a thousand per square mile. The obvious reason is I have given myself more things to do. Turning 40 years old last April triggered a burning desire to get more involved in the community; perhaps I listened to The Archers too much as a kid and have internalized that in middle age I should know everyone in the village. So, as a film lover, I picked quasi-selfish ways to volunteer: helping out with the Woodstock Film Festival and serving popcorn at Rosendale Theatre, probably my favorite venue in all of Hudson Valley. Come say hi!
I’m not really complaining — I secretly quite like to be busy (my husband would gladly cut in half the things I say “yes” to on our behalf.) But the result is that the process of making art and writing gets squeezed into tiny fractions of time left over; extending a three hour task into three months. And these last few months I have consciously dedicated all those fragments of minutes to completing a painting of my mum, which I will now endeavor to self-criticize.
‘Why expose yourself in this way?’ you might ask. Self indulgence, definitely. Plus, in a way, painting is my sports car. I’m not having a midlife crisis: I’m happy to accumulate wrinkles along with achievements, loved ones and memories. But in the same way that people often act out in their forties as they try to grasp on to the youth slash hairline they see slipping away, I recognize that I only have so many years in this life to do the things that I feel in my gut I need to pursue. With limited time to create art, it feels important to mark the moment of finishing a large, challenging piece. To breathe and feel pride in the bits I like, while also acknowledging how far I have to go. I am my own most ruthless critic, so buckle up!
I should start by saying that I am a largely self taught painter; an amateur with very little technical skill and relatively few hours over my four decades devoted to honing what innate instincts I do possess. I cringe to even call myself an artist because I know I haven’t earned it yet… but you have to start somewhere.
I never went to art school. Pre kids, I took several different evening and weekend classes at reputable institutions (Central St Martins, SVA, Brooklyn Museum) to try to absorb as much as I could about figure drawing and oil painting. Funnily enough, however, the person whose instruction I mentally return to more than anyone else is my dad, who is now a retired architect and has always been a talented artist. He taught me the little I know about perspective and proportions. He has beautiful, neat handwriting, often all caps per his training on literal blue prints, with distinct strokes that I always admired and involuntarily imitate in my own drawing and painting style. So you could say that this portrait is inspired by both my parents.
OK, enough about me. Let’s look at the painting.
Detail from ‘Mum’ by AJ Lee, 2023 — image courtesy of AJ Lee
Even I can admit, it’s a pretty good likeness (readers who know my mum can back me up here.) I love to paint people — nothing is more satisfying to me than capturing the folds, plains and tones of someone’s skin; faces in particular offer so much textured landscape for paint to swirl and blend. Lucien Freud and Alice Neel are my lodestars. I usually use a photograph of the person as reference; in this case an image of my mother standing on the street in Lisbon. However, this proclivity for people made me want to push myself to do more than a literal portrait; I wanted to tell a bigger story about mum than her bodily self could convey.
Photograph reference for ‘Mum’ by AJ Lee, 2023 — image courtesy of AJ Lee
Which brings me to the roses. When I was a teenager still living at home, my mum told me that she had had several miscarriages on her path to giving birth to me and my sister. While this is not uncommon, pregnancy loss has for centuries been treated simply as a necessary part of many women’s journey without acknowledging the emotional and physical hardship it entails. It is a loss, and felt as one, for millions. I have witnessed friends go through it, and I recently heard someone interviewed saying how women become mothers even if they don’t carry to term. With the roses in the painting, I wanted to honor the various motherhoods my own mum had experienced: the ones that bloomed, and the ones that remained ghost like. (Thank you, mum, for the permission to share this side of your story.)
Detail from ‘Mum’ by AJ Lee, 2023 — image courtesy of AJ Lee
Painting in black and white was surprisingly liberating, partly because, I will fully admit, I find color daunting— which to choose, blending them accurately, keeping them consistent, juxtaposing them alongside each other. Artists like Nicolas Party and David Hockney who create iconic, vibrant images are in another hemisphere of color confidence, one I can only stare at from afar and hope to take tiny steps towards.
So part of me felt like leaving some of the roses in monochrome, while appropriate for the metaphor of being unfinished, was a cop out. But, I also remembered seeing a Gerhard Richter exhibition at the Tate many years ago that included his large scale, intentionally blurred black and white paintings — they were beautiful and haunting. If Richter could remove color, perhaps I could too? (For the record, I am not comparing myself to a living legend, just using him as post hoc justification.)
Detail from ‘Mum’ by AJ Lee, 2023 — image courtesy of AJ Lee
The biggest challenge for me with this painting was the composition. Despite having zero religious inclinations, I have always been fascinated by the medieval Christian depictions of Mother Mary, central, idolized, in sweeping blue robes up against golden hues and surrounded by spectral beams of light slash halos. The fact that one of my mother’s go-to vacation outfits is a sky blue linen shirt dress was a bonus, and I used the streetscape from the photograph to create the framing. The colors of gold and plaster pink and orange and brown were borrowed from Portugal and the Dutch canon. But that still left me with many options: whether to fill the space around mum and add in details on the walls; and, if so, what with?
Inspiration: ‘The Descent From the Cross’ by Rogier Van Der Weyden, before 1443
On a recent trip to South Carolina with my folks, I managed to sneak a quiet lunch with them both, just the three of us, which gave me the opportunity to ask bigger questions than ‘has anyone seen my phone?’ Mum shared that she wondered how her career would have panned out had she not been told early on, by someone she respected and loved, that she wasn’t smart enough to be a doctor (the very thing she wanted to be.) I wonder too. Anyone who knows my mum will tell you that intelligence is one of her obvious strengths: she is emotionally intuitive, curious to a fault, and also scarily good at recalling detailed information. As a family, we watched University Challenge together in the ‘90s, and while the rest of us struggled to remember the basics of the periodic table — shouting “Oh I know this one” only to be proved wrong at the buzzer — mum would be quietly winning every round, history, anatomy, you name it, from the comfort of her spot on the sofa.
I like the way that the painting alludes to the choices and avenues a life takes, and the fact that mum isn’t looking head on: she appears to be focused on going right, while the main path ahead is offering a road to somewhere unknown. And I wanted to name the quality that mum deserves to be labelled with, other than being a wonderful mother, innovator, community-member, friend, sister, daughter, wife: Intelligence (written here in Portuguese, as if it is graffiti.) That might be a bit on the nose for some — you tell me.
Detail from ‘Mum’ by AJ Lee, 2023 — image courtesy of AJ Lee
But, fundamentally, I believe the painting lacks bravery. I wasn’t brave (or skilled) enough to fill in all the details that make a scene sing, like one of my favorite contemporary painters Jordan Casteel, or (and I’m reaching here to a place I could never reach) Kerry James Marshall. I wasn’t brave enough to mess it up a bit, and embrace the beauty of rough edges and not making everything precise, like the great Henry Taylor. I wasn’t brave enough to play with pattern, perspective and off kilter positioning, like current artist Jammie Holmes; or to step away from reality, and make portraiture into a surrealist art form like the brilliant Hudson Valley-based artist Alejandro Cardenas. As a result, I like parts of the painting, but not the whole — never finding the courage to realize many of my nascent ideas.
The late and endlessly original Thomas Nozkowski said*: “I think paintings have to be seen as totalities. When I go back to a painting I open up the whole surface… just to put everything back into question… When you look at one of my paintings you’re seeing the last day’s work. The entire surface was wet for that final effort.” That’s true artistic heroism and submission to the process. In that spirit, in the final few hours of work before declaring the painting “finished,” I egged myself on to be more adventurous, adding the expressive burst of golden yellow, like energy, around my mother’s body. Now, every time I look at the painting part of me thinks I ruined it.
Painting is hard. I have so much to learn. Why do it? Because something deep down inside me tells me I should, and the small moments of transcendence I find in the trying make it all worth it. Thanks for humoring me.
*Quote taken from an interview with the artist, shared by his son Casimir Nozkowski — a renowned filmmaker and first ever interviewee for Catskill Culture Club.
I promise I will be back soon with interviews with more creators and innovators living in the Catskills. In the meantime…
Watch the brilliant Season 2 of ‘Somebody Somewhere’ on April 23rd on HBO Max, written by Hudson Valley regular Hannah Bos
Check out the latest publications at Postmark Books in Rosendale, including the latest book from High Fall’s own Jai Chakrabati: ‘Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness’
And get ready to rock out at Karmic Karaoke at Darlings in Tillson on 4/26 — the best new night out in the hood, hosted on the last Wednesday of every month in support local charities: this April event will act as a fundraiser for O+ Festival.