When Art Hurts

I’m such an impatient patient that I consider myself fortunate that I have never faced serious illness in my life, so when I was inconveniently struck down with a lurgy last weekend, it got me thinking in the early hours of the morning when sleep evaded me, about how people or artists in particular find ways to work with illness and disability. I had picked up a nameless virus that gave me a headache from hell and a cough that became particularly annoying the second I lay my head on the pillow at night. I was tired and lethargic and then to add insult to injury I woke up last Sunday morning with my eyelids glued together with what I was convinced was super glue… as though some trickster had snuck in during the night like a malevolent tooth fairy to glue my eyes shut. I couldn’t read, draw, write or look at a screen and was reduced to knitting as my sole activity, something that relies on my hands as much as my eyes. Now I like knitting a lot, but not all day and every day, so I was miserable and grumpy and not pleasant company. I’m not someone who sits down much during the day, I’m never still, always busy, always on the move so when sitting all day doing nothing is forced upon me I don’t cope well.

But as I said, I wasn’t seriously ill, I’m on the mend, and I know I have nothing to complain about before you all start telling me to get a grip. But it did get me thinking about artists who struggle through adversity, overcoming illness or handicap with an amazing determination to produce work, which can often be wonderfully innovative and ground breaking.

I have written about the amazing Michelangelo (1475 - 1564) before and my admiration for his sculpture, but what I hadn’t realised is that he had significant trouble using his hands in later life, experiencing pain and limited function in both his hands and feet. Experts disagree whether this was caused by gout or osteoarthritis, although it was most likely gout as the artist was plagued with kidney stones, but despite this he continued to paint and carve until his death aged almost 89 years old

The Sheath, Henri Matisse, Gouache cut outs, 1953

The French artist Henri Matisse (1869 - 1954), primarily a painter best known for his radical use of colour, is considered one of the artists who helped define the revolutionary developments in the visual arts in the early twentieth century, achieving great critical acclaim during his lifetime.

Matisse in his studio, surrounded by cut out paper

Yet when surgery for abdominal cancer left him as a wheelchair user, unable to stand at an easel, he adapted his practice to ‘painting with scissors’, creating an important body of work made from cut paper collage. Using huge decorator’s shears (no fiddly little scalpels for Henri) , he would cut out coloured paper shapes and direct assistants as to where to place the shapes with pins onto large sheets of paper hung on the wall. If you see the original work you can still see the pin holes. He never lost his enthusiasm to create during these last fourteen years of his life calling this period ‘une seconde vie’ or his second life. He felt that being a wheelchair user set him free allowing him to re-think his priorities and express himself in different ways. It’s worth watching him at work in the following short video.

We are all familiar with Van Gogh (1853 - 1890) and his mental health problems. We know he went through manic phases where he was very artistically productive churning out works at an incredible pace, followed by long periods of depression when he didn’t paint at all. It is now speculated that he was probably bipolar. But he also suffered with temporal lobe epilepsy. He was born with a brain lesion, most likely aggravated later in life by his use of absinthe and he was prescribed digitalis to treat his seizures. A common side effect of digitalis is seeing yellow spots and some art historians have wondered if this contributed to his extensive use of yellow in his paintings. It is believed the painting ‘Starry Night’ may have resulted from the actual halos of light Van Gogh could see around lit objects due to defects with his vision. Of course, much of this is speculation but there is no doubt he continually battled many personal demons throughout his short life, whist never stopping his artistic output.

Starry Night, Vincent Van Gogh, 1889

Several other artists have also experienced eyesight problems which has not held them back in their creative endeavours. Edgar Degas (1834 - 1917) suffered with defective eyesight all his life and by his mid-thirties, an inability to cope with bright light (retinopathy) led to him working in his studio in preference to plein air. As his vision deteriorated he worked with broader strokes of colour, abandoning the detail observed in earlier work. By the end of his life he was completely blind, yet would work maquettes as a way of drawing by touch rather than sight. The American artist and printmaker, Mary Cassatt (1844 - 1926) suffered with cataracts and subsequent operations just made her vision worse. Like Degas, she also suffered with retinopathy. She was initially forced to give up printmaking but continued to paint until she too went completely blind. Claude Monet (1840 - 1926) was another artist who suffered with cataracts, but he continued to paint even when his appreciation of colour was totally distorted. And Paul Cezanne (1839 - 1907) was myopic although it is said that his blurred vision gave him the benefit of not becoming obsessed with detail. The painter Georgia O’Keefe (1887 - 1986) developed age related macular degeneration and by 1972 aged 86 she had stopped painting due to only having peripheral vision. But then she hired a live in assistant, Juan Hamilton a potter, who taught her to work in clay as well as encouraging her to resume her painting and she continued right up until her death aged 98.

Self Portrait, Oil on Canvas (102” x 86”), Chuck Close 2004-5

The contemporary American artist Chuck Close, who died in 2021, is another artist who adapted his practice to being a wheelchair user. In 1988 he was paralysed from the neck down by a blocked spinal artery. He was in rehab for many months, regaining slight movement in his limbs, yet could only walk a couple of steps so spent the remainder of his life in a wheelchair. Despite this huge setback, Close continued to paint with a paintbrush strapped to his wrist, creating oversized portraits from low-resolution grid squares. Viewed from a distance they look like a single unified pixilated photograph. The paralysis restricted his ability to paint in such meticulous detail as before his accident, placing restrictions on his photo realistic style, but in doing so allowed him to make more engaging images. Interestingly he also suffered from Prosopagnosia, or face blindness meaning he was unable to recognise faces. The process of creating these huge, pixilated paintings enabled him to understand better what individual faces looked like.

Pierre Auguste Renoir was an artist who also struggled to use his hands, suffering from severe rheumatoid arthritis in the last twenty five years of his life. For his final seven years he was severely disabled but believed in trying to remain active in order to continue to make art. In his studio he would have assistants place his brushes into his hands enabling him to paint which can be seen in the following film was made in 1915, four years before his death. I’m not sure the placing of a cigarette in his opposite hand was such a great idea but each to his own!

But possibly the best known case of any artist overcoming adversity to make art is that of Frida Kahlo. Revolutionary activist, trendsetting icon and incredible painter, she didn’t even set out to be an artist. Although she had loved drawing and had shown a keen interest in art as a child it was always her intention to go to medical school. However, on 17^th September 1925 when she was only 18 years old she was travelling on a bus in Mexico City when it crashed. A metal handrail inserted through her pelvis piercing her torso causing multiple injuries, including a broken spinal column. Her life was to change forever. She was confined to bed for three months following the accident and it was during this time she began to paint. Her mother obtained a specially made easel that could be positioned above Frida’s bed allowing her to paint whilst lying down, her father found her some oil paints and a mirror was placed above her easel. It was then she began a lifetime of painting herself.

“I paint myself because I am often alone and I am the subject I know best” Frida Kahlo

Her whole life was filled with hardship and loss, physical pain and emotional struggle yet she took this and turned it into extraordinary works of art. In the year before she died she had her first solo show in her home country, but doctors advised she was too ill to attend the opening night and should stay home and rest. Instead, Frida arrived in style by ambulance and was wheeled in to greet visitors from her bed, dressed in her typical traditional Tehuana dress, declaring “I am not sick. I am broken, but I’m happy to be alive as long as I can paint.”

I don’t actually like a lot of her paintings, finding them too surreal for my taste, yet they are inspiring for what they represent. And Frida herself, her life and her style are a constant source of inspiration. I have many pieces of art that I have made over the years that have been inspired by Frida Kahlo and I will write about these another time. But for now the point of all this reflection on making art through adversity is to realise that we need to focus on what we can do not on what we can’t do. Today I’m not feeling so great again so I’m wrapped up in a blanket on the sofa, resting and staying cosy, yet with a sketchbook on my lap and my pot of pens by my side, taking inspiration from Frida once again. Today she is the subject of my first 100 day project page in my sketchbook “Exploring Portraits”

Hope over to Instagram to follow my intermittent progress with the 100 day project. And if this afternoon I don’t feel up to sketching there’s always my knitting!