Joyce opened our first meeting on this topic with her definition of art as “creative expression of communication of ideas and something, in my opinion, to be treasured”. We enjoyed seeing examples of her textile art she had brought with her. In the lively discussions which followed, both in person and online, we shared varied experiences and thoughts about art, but all agreed on its importance in our lives. We shared how other people in our lives helped us in the past or help us now to appreciate art in all its forms.
On 18th May, as part of Chorlton Arts Festival, we gave participants in our session a taste of what we do in our meetings. Some of us then read out our writing from the blog post which follows. We hope you enjoy reading our thoughts and welcome any comments of your own at the end.
Joyce Lindley
The meaning of art in our lives
We seem to have a need to make our mark, record, and change things in our world and this has been happening, in some degree, from the earliest cave drawings onwards through different civilizations.
I sat down and started to list all our creative work and the list seemed to be never-ending, from music, paintings, frescos, murals, sculpture, tiling, banner and flag-making, stone masonry, architecture, stained glass work, brickwork, tapestries, garden layouts, etc., etc. I thought if I read out all this, we’ll be here all day! When I look around it seems that our world is just full of art forms, to the point when we accept them as part of our environment and hardly notice half of them! As a teenager I used to work in central Manchester and never looked up at the marvellous architecture of some of the buildings there. I do now!!
My own pleasure in art comes from textiles and stitchery. I get great satisfaction from even small pieces of stitchery I have designed myself, and can get totally absorbed in the work involved forgetting all else. It fascinated me to learn about the history of, say, quilting, and what originally was anything warm, maybe quite ragged, to be thrown together for bed coverings, progressing to some of the most beautifully sewn and breath-taking quilts of gorgeous designs.
There is so much history recorded in much of our creative work. In the days before cameras, TV and instant messaging, we wouldn’t know half of the way people lived in distant eras. I sometimes wonder what the original artists, now dead, would think about their worth by today’s monetary criteria and think it sad that to some monied collectors, their value as creative beauty would seem to take second place to their monetary value. For instance, I read recently that Sotheby’s sold a Gustav Klimt painting “Lady with a Fan” for £85.3 million to a private buyer. Aren’t we lucky to have art galleries where we can see some of these actual paintings and to have donors who will contribute to the cost of obtaining them.
I now count myself lucky to have been taken to art galleries and theatres as a child by my father, and also to have been taught painting, sewing, knitting and cookery at school. Also to have music lessons. It was a great start in life I realise now. I hope that other children may also have this advantage. Stitchery has definitely made me look at the world in more detail in later life and I have made things I would never have thought I was capable of before. Here are some examples of my work:
Jean Thompson
What is Art? When is Art not art but The Arts?
An interesting question and one that people in the group had several thoughts on.
Anything creative. Painting. Music. Dance. Sculpture. Theatre. Craft work. Writing.
And so it could go on.
Could our friend Wikipedia help? Not definitively alas.
Quote 1. “Art is a diverse range of human activity and its resulting product……..generally expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power or conceptual ideas.”
Quote 2. “There is no generally agreed definition of what constitutes art”.
Oh, wasn’t that what we said?
From ancient times, people have been creative because they wanted to express their ideas of beauty or the world around them. Is that a somewhat driving force of humanity then?
In later centuries well known patrons of art such as the Church, or powerful and wealthy families did not give the artist freedom to do what they wanted. Artists were expected to glorify their patrons. We can look at a painting now and marvel at the skill but also understand how the content was prescribed in some way. How differently art is seen and portrayed now. Artists have such free rein it is sometimes difficult to appreciate what it is they are trying to say! We may not like their work and may find it hard to accept is as art at all, but art, as life, moves on. Maybe the true value of a modern piece of art is in the imagination behind it, not necessarily what is in the eye of the viewer?
On a personal level, I have not got any artistic ability and can’t draw the proverbial straight line. My father and my mother-in-law both dabbled in drawing and painting as they got older, and my daughter seems to have inherited an artistic ability and took A Level art at school. One or two of her paintings from that time naturally have pride of place on my walls.
She went on to study History of Art at University and seeing art through her eyes helped me to develop my own understanding further even though as a family I hope we have always been receptive to and appreciative of all forms of art. It is a sadness to me that in many schools driven as they have to be by examination results, all forms of art have had to take a back seat.
Shane Murray
A window on art
We’ve had the good fortune to see some magnificent works of art on our travels. Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus in Florence, Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in Amsterdam, Picasso’s Guernica in Madrid, a stunning spectacle of Impressionist paintings at the Musée D’Orsay in Paris. And closer to home and heart – the Pre-Raphaelites at the City Art Gallery. I’m not sure I enjoy the full gallery experience. It can be overwhelming. But several years ago, Manchester’s curators had the great idea of running lunchtime mini tours to encourage discussion of just a couple of exhibits.
This got me thinking about how we experience art. Some time back, we were in Chorlton Bookshop looking for a calendar for the coming year when we lighted upon an example representing the works, mostly water colours, of an artist unknown to us – Eric Ravilious. The images caught my attention because they all seemed slightly off kilter – muted, washed-out colours, unusual objects in a landscape, simple lines and dashes expressing weather, gardens, people.
As soon as you discover something new, it has a habit of finding you in different places. So I encountered greeting cards and books illustrating Ravilious’s distinct style. Intrigued by his unusual name and his tragically short life, I was drawn to the nostalgia evoked by images of England in the ‘20s and ‘30s and pleasantly surprised to read his granddaughter’s insight that many of his landscapes, which included ‘un-picturesque’ elements such as a biplane or a cement factory, were ‘startlingly modern’ at the time. One of my favourite pieces is Afternoon Tea from 1936, a wood engraving depicting a woman in a garden setting a table for tea. For me, this represents the beauty of the commonplace, a celebration of life’s simple pleasures.
Ravilious was also a commercial illustrator, creating designs for books, magazines, glassware, ceramics, furniture. In 1938 he illustrated a children’s book called High Street with 24 beautiful lithographs of shop fronts. Strolling around Chorlton, I have been amazed by some of the stunning shop windows in recent years. The powerful crashing waves painted on the window of the fishmongers, Out of the Blue, possibly inspired by Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa. The Cheesemonger’s striking Advent window scene. The Bookshop’s wonderful Christmas display – a girl on a magic carpet, seemingly flying in her dreams to an imaginary land. You don’t have to travel too far to be transported by art.
Margaret Kendall
I remember my first visit to Manchester Art Gallery in my early teens. It was a special day: a day in Manchester without our parents, an hour and a half’s bus journey from Nelson, Lancashire where we lived. My sister Mary was pleased to be trusted to take her two younger sisters with her on that visit, and her enthusiasm for art was contagious. It’s a powerful memory: going up the flight of steps away from the busy city street and into a hushed space, being thrilled to see the actual paintings by artists I’d learned about, and becoming absorbed in the visual stories they told. That was the first time, but I still feel the same sense of awe in art galleries, whichever city or country I’m in.
Mary once said that an art gallery is somewhere you can be alone but never lonely. You’re surrounded by the thoughts and imagination of other people: paintings on the walls, freestanding sculptures you can see from different angles or even work suspended from ceilings. I like the challenge of engaging with contemporary conceptual art. I’m curious about the ideas and emotions that the artist wanted to communicate, even if I don’t agree with them. I also enjoy the realism of the “Old Masters”. It was such a thrill to be able to see the Vermeer exhibition in Amsterdam last year. He captured the light coming into the rooms in seventeenth century Holland so well. The details and perspectives make you feel as if you’ve stepped into the rooms yourself. The crowds were well managed and the taking of selfies with the pictures was discouraged, thank goodness!
I love art in the open air too, being surprised by huge sculptures when walking in the parkland and woods of Yorkshire Sculpture Park or gazing out to sea alongside the one hundred cast-iron figures of Antony Gormley on Crosby beach. Art can really take you to “Another place”.
Another place, by Antony Gormley
Mark Taylor
You can listen to Mark’s story from the link below, or read the transcript which follows.
Once, at a work summer party, I had an argument with a friend about which ran deeper in the human soul, poetry or dance. It was a good argument for a summer evening and a free bar: clever and stupid; important and pointless; zealous and easy-going.
I’ve thought of that argument sometimes as I’ve watched my son start to move and babble and walk and speak and dance and write. Whatever new thing he does, he plays with. When we grow up, we don’t want to admit we play, so we call it art.
When we play with words we call it poetry. When we play with movement we call it dance. When we play with ideas we call it arguing.
It all runs just as deep in the human soul, because it’s all the same thing, the same instinct. It all runs just as deep in the human soul because it is the human soul. It’s what the soul is made of. Love is the warp and art is the weft and they hold each other together.
We know that these things are good. When we say something is a work of art, we never mean it’s a bad one. When I say your dancing is poetry in motion, I don’t mean it’s bad poetry. When you say I make words dance, you don’t mean they dance like I do, with two left feet and a red face.
We know these things are good and we know that all of them are for all of us. For all of us: even the ones who say they don’t want them, they don’t matter. The ones who cut the budgets and paint over the murals. Maybe they’re afraid or embarrassed or ashamed, like how I argued against dance because I was embarrassed that I couldn’t do it, that I didn’t understand it. Nobody needs art more than someone who doesn’t want it.
These things are even for the people who scorn them, who look at a painting and say, “My five year old could do that.” Yes! Yes! They could! The miracle is, so could you! So why don’t you?
Not long after that summer evening, my friend started writing poetry. I dance a little more these days. My five year old can do it. And so can I.
Pauline Omoboye
CREATIVE…ME?
It’s like…
Putting pen to paper
Or paint on a canvas sheet
Icing on a party cake
Or melted wax made neat
It’s like…
Sewing a pair of curtains
Or knitting a scarf or hat
Making a costume for schools nativity
Or crocheting a mat
It’s like…
Hanging decorations
Planting seeds that flower
Putting paint on paper
It’s like…
Laying out the biscuits
Colour co-ordinating socks
Placing the finished jigsaw
Back in its cardboard box
It’s like…
Choosing what you want to wear
The placing of food on the plate
It’s being quite creative
Waiting for the paint,
To dry and show a picture
Delicately brushed
Bright colours intermingle
Creativity is a must
It’s like…
Laying out the table mats
The glasses, serviettes
Placing ornaments neatly on a shelf
Let’s not forget
It’s like…
The names chosen for our children
The meanings much desired
The way we dress them lovingly
Our work to be admired
This creativity lark is wonderful
We all have a touch inside
Just bring it out and shake it up
And wear it now with pride.
P.Omoboye©
Jolene Sheehan
Discussing this topic with the group has made me realise that I once viewed creativity and art as exclusive, confined to galleries, theatres, or publications, requiring advanced skills to appreciate or create. Now, thanks to our group discussions and work over the past five years, I understand that art, like good food, should nourish and bring joy to everyone. As we prepared our presentation for the wonderful Chorlton Arts Festival, we found ourselves celebrating art and creativity as both ordinary and special, much like a birthday celebration. I think that, just as everyone has a birthday and we each find unique ways to make them special, we should all have the opportunity to celebrate and create art, rather than only a few ‘chosen’ people being celebrated or us having to follow set rules of how we should celebrate.
When we started the Stories of Our Lives project, our goal was to make storytelling inclusive and welcoming. Storytelling can be intimidating, often seen as perfectly crafted narratives. But stories can feel like a community buffet, where everyone brings a dish to share. Some stories might be intricate and full of new flavours, while others might be simpler but just as delightful. Even a simple slice of bread can complement the other dishes perfectly. That’s the beauty of storytelling: it creates a rich and varied meal for all to enjoy. Sharing these stories also helps us gain new insights and ideas to share with our friends and family, and maybe even bring them back to join us.
I want to encourage myself and others to recognise that creativity is a natural extension of who we are as humans and celebrate art as nourishment. This way, we can approach it with joy and curiosity, like gathering for a festive meal. I hope you feel nourished by the conversations and stories we’ve shared in this blog and take some of that creative spirit back to your community.
At the Stories of our Lives session, 18th May 2024
The Stories of Our Lives 