As the weeks passed, those photographic images of my earlier years became a dim memory on a distant shoreline as I pulled away in my unsteady boat. I was powered by emotion and necessity to head towards the maelstrom of raging colours and soaring lines that would transcend all representation and give me ‘pure art’. That exhilarating journey would never end because I was experiencing my destination through its unfolding. My spirit was speaking to me for the very first time. My paintbrush became my guiding force.
It was both exciting and unnerving to discover all this. For the very first time, from beneath all those layers of disorder, I was unearthing another reality, another self, an inner self I never knew existed. Here was my coded diary in riotous paint, the dull entries of a conflicted life given vivid testimony which had the power to pull spectators in. I found that there was nothing more rewarding than being able to paint in this way. You presented the viewer with the challenge of having to interpret your message in his own way. No two people can have the same experience when they look at an abstract painting; they have to struggle to find meaning. That’s why the bourgeoisie will invariably choose the chocolate-box image; it’s safe, it’s easy and above all forgettable.
So out went my anodyne landscapes. I abstracted my way from the serenity of those mountains and lakes, the mute vases and bowls of fruit, the lifeless portraits and cute cats. I crushed and milled the very essence out of them, to sweep form and colour into totally fresh directions on the canvas. My love of poetic lyricism found its way into these compositions, too, as I struggled to become accountable for every mark I made and every pigment I used. I was coming to realise that, just as poetry was the quintessence of language, abstract expressionism was the quiddity of pure painting.
The more eager I grew, the more my output increased as I tried to paint myself to new heights of discovery. My canvases became bigger – the extreme being 6′ x 4′ – and bolder, and more intense as time passed. As the poets of old sought inspiration in absinthe so I was trying to paint myself towards the definitive canvas; I sensed that at some point in the future (I did not know when) I could back away from the ultimate masterpiece, with brush in hand and the answer – in all its persuasive glory – before me.
Oh, the passion and fury of those days! I began to understand why painters sometimes go mad. They glimpse infinity through the lens of the paintbrush and attempt the impossible: to try to capture it all in a single lifetime.
The poetry of MacNeice and Heaney was now replaced by the spiritual visions of Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky.
Born in Russia in 1866, Kandinsky is considered to be the father of abstract art. He first studied law before emerging as one of the most original and influential artists of the twentieth century. He was also an accomplished musician as well as a deeply spiritual man. A spiritual lawyer? Now there’s an interesting juxtaposition to conjure with! At 30, Kandinsky gave up law to study painting. It turned out to be a very wise move.
I was heartened, during my studies, to discover that his introduction to abstract painting happened in much the same way as my own. Upon seeing one of his figurative works lying on its side on the easel he was struck by its beauty, a beauty far exceeding that manifested by the canvas when upright. So moved was he by the abstraction he saw that he set about painting the ‘emotion’ of that experience. The result was the birth of abstract expressionism, a movement that was to change the direction of art in the early years of the last century.
Kandinsky’s paintings carry the emotional power of a musical composition. In fact he asserted that he heard music in colour. ‘Colour is the keyboard’, he stated. ‘The eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.’
So Kandinsky became my inspiration and my mentor during my college years. He caused a revolution in my head. As he had painted through his love of music, so I was attempting to paint through my love of poetry. The poetry I’d written – trite as it was in those early days – was my spiritual message, and I worked to get across in paint that spiritual part of me. My fear and confusion swirled and collided within the confines of every canvas, while at the same time freeing me from the limits within myself.
Running parallel on this frantic journey of discovery was the slow evolution of my own personality. Margaret and I were not party girls. We had yet to become acquainted with the liberating effects of alcohol, so we rarely got invited to the bars and discos of the student’s union.
Truth be told I never felt part of that artistic coterie; it required you to chatter endlessly about the reasoning behind your work and pontificate on the trends and influences that appeared to be of the utmost importance to you. Surely art should make its own statement without having to be explained. Often in the art studio those wise words of the Buddha came to mind: ‘Only speak if you can improve on silence’.
I loved art but hated the pretension. It usually followed that the bigger the ego the more mediocre the work and the more convoluted the discourse to justify it. Quite a number of very good students did not get the recognition they deserved simply because they weren’t voluble enough. Nor did my own reticence endear me to those hip tutors. So with very little instruction from any of them I attacked my canvases, fighting my silent war, using brushes and paint as my weaponry.
It came as no surprise that my mother’s reaction to the new ‘abstract’ me was not favourable. She couldn’t understand any of my canvases and I knew it was pointless trying to justify what she chose not to understand. She blamed those mad tutors at the college for ruining everything. So for her sake I did not become a complete turncoat, and continued to do her commissions at the weekends and at holiday time.
Whenever I had a free day from college she liked nothing more than to take the early bus to Belfast to shop. She’d stop off at a supermarket on the way, and arrive at the dingy flat bearing enough food to keep us going for a month.
She’d have dressed up for these occasions, and usually wore her favourite dress: the yellow one. This garment was all the more precious because she hid it from father. It was too bright, too expensive, too good to be true and too wicked to go unnoticed, so she’d conceal it under her dowdy raincoat until she left the house. Once aboard the bus she’d shed the coat along with the deception. She was sunny and carefree at times like that, taken out of herself for the day and heady with the thought of freedom and escape.
Mother, like most women, had what she called her ‘fat’ days and her ‘thin’ days; today we call them bingeing days and dieting days. Those visits to Belfast were more often than not of the fat variety, as she threw caution and that Playtex girdle to the winds and feasted recklessly. And I was the all-too-willing fellow conspirator. We’d have a sugar-rich ‘Eddie Bradley’ breakfast with perhaps a slice of scarcely thawed cheesecake thrown in. We were like naughty schoolchildren left unsupervised. For her it was release from drudgery; for me it was freedom from college for a day. After the gorge we’d pile onto the nearest Citybus and head for the clothes shops.
Marks & Spencer was my mother’s favourite. She never seemed to tire of exploring its clothes-rails, with me checking the size and price of any garment she fancied. Then it was into the changing-room and I would wait for her as I’d done all too often in Burns’s shop – my words of blandishment at the ready – waiting until she emerged into the light. At lunchtime we’d eat our way through another mound of food, washed down with – very daring! – a glass of house white.
Mother lived for these excursions. For a whole day she was free of her vituperative husband. She felt buoyant and took risks, eating and buying what she wanted, before being reined in again to the drudgery of being a country housewife. She was eating and spending to dull the ache of that drudgery, while at the same time praying to be released from it.
She probably realised that release would only come through that most ultimate of departures. For now she’d make do with these snatches of
happiness, holding on to them like pools of essence in her hands, the inevitability of their transience enabling her to keep at bay for a while the sorrow of letting them go – just for a little while.
I sensed her fear too, that undercurrent of foreboding that tugged at the most innocent of rituals, made me realise how unworthy she felt, and confirmed the same feelings in me.
I could glimpse it in her face and in her actions: at the bus-stop getting the fare out of her purse too soon; in a restaurant putting up with inadequate service; in shops not asking the assistant for a receipt when it was forgotten. She never wished to incur displeasure, in case she drew attention to herself. She was afraid to engage fully with the world and to take her rightful place, because no one had given her the acceptance she was entitled to or the validation that should have been hers. The Church had rendered her practically powerless and father had finished the job.
As mother tried to pray her way out of her distress, I painted, sublimating pain with my paintbrush. Those days at art college were important inasmuch as they focused me on my emotional incompleteness, and created a need in me to explore and search for answers.
JOHN HENRY AND THE MALTESE BROAD
In 1979 Margaret Thatcher became Britain’s first woman prime minister; the newly elected Pope John Paul II visited Ireland, and I graduated with an honours degree in painting from the Belfast College of Art.
I also became aware of a far more important qualification I needed to study for, and one which would serve me better than any piece of paper. To acquire it I knew that I must travel beyond the accepted standard of what I had become, to apostatise the dogmas that had reinforced it. I knew in short that, in order to see the light beyond the shadows, I would have to piece together meaning from the fragmented truths and fictions I’d grown up with.
That year will also be remembered for less laudable events. On 27 August Earl Louis Mountbatten, the queen’s cousin, was killed by an IRA bomb at Mullaghmore, County Sligo. A few hours later the tranquillity of the beautiful seaside town where I once lived was torn apart; the bombers had struck again, slaughtering 18 British soldiers at Narrow Water, one of Warrenpoint’s most picturesque spots.
On 30 September the pope addressed an audience of 250,000 at Drogheda in the Irish Republic and made an appeal for an end to violence in Ireland.
To all of you who are listening, I say: Do not believe in violence; do not support violence. It is not the Christian way. It is not the way of the Catholic Church. Believe in peace and love, for they are of Christ. On my knees I beg of you to turn away from the paths of violence and to return to the ways of peace. You may claim to seek justice. I too believe in justice and seek justice. But violence only delays the day of justice. Violence destroys the work of justice. … Do not follow any leaders who train you in the ways of inflicting death.
Two days later the IRA responded to the Holy Father. ‘Force is by far the only means of removing the evil of the British presence in Ireland,’ they stated. ‘We know also that, upon victory, the Church would have no difficulty in recognising us.’
Such arrogance in the face of righteousness! Yet it is true to say that men who create war do not live by the laws of a higher power but by the selfish dictates of a lower one: their own ego.
My days in Belfast’s war zone were numbered however. My last summer holiday from art college ended with my graduation day. In many respects this day resembled my First Communion, but I’d swapped the white frock for a black robe and the artificial piety for real pride. My mother and brother John came to witness my big moment.
Father could not be trusted to behave himself among the academic elite; we were sure he’d go out of his way to embarrass us. I had visions of him challenging the strength of one of the tables at the post-reception buffet, sending the food to the floor and us into hiding.
Our fears were not entirely groundless. Just such an incident had loomed at Helen’s wedding when my parents were guests. Mother was alerted to danger by the sound of shivering cutlery, and saw the wedding cake leaning at an angle to rival the Tower of Pisa. She found father in the nick of time, crouched by the top table, examining a leg joint.
So my graduation was father-free and therefore risk-free. He couldn’t have cared less anyway. When asked if he’d like to attend, he responded with the evasive enthusiasm that characterised his whole life.
‘Naw,’ he said sourly, ‘I’ll not bother me head.’
That this occasion would be a one-off event did not seem to impact on him. He was not a man to mark the success of his family.
He was as predictable as the seasons that he never tired of commenting on. My landscape paintings would be held up for his approval, and rejected one by one. The skies were too blue, the mountains too flat, the houses too big, too small, too this, too that. Early on I realised that it was impossible to win his favour, and simply gave up trying.
Mother was forever the go-between, smoothing the way and trying to keep the peace. She ignored his criticisms and was so proud of my achievement. In the end that was all that really mattered to me.
This time around, thank heavens, she did not suggest Station Island, Lough Derg, as a reward for all my efforts. Instead I got something far beyond anything I could have imagined: a three-week holiday in California. We were off to visit my Uncle John, mother’s long-absent brother whom she had not seen in 33 years.
Her five brothers were the complete opposites of my father’s family. They were kindly, light-hearted men, who had gone out and engaged with the world at an early age, doing backbreaking work to sustain themselves while following whatever youthful dreams they had. Unlike the McKenna boys’ situation, there were no pots of money or acres of land to detain the Henrys at home, or stanch the course of their lives until death took the parents and delivered the goods.
The two youngest, John and Peter, had emigrated to the United States in their early twenties. Dan, Frank and Paddy had married, raised families and, like mother, chosen to remain close to their roots.
Dan was the uncle I came to know best; mother and he were very close. His calm, endearing personality showed me how mother could have been had she not come under father’s baleful influence. Being in Dan’s company was like being near a warming fire; he melted any reserve you might have, and brightened your spirits with compliments and praise you felt you didn’t deserve. What I never heard from father I heard from him; Dan’s generosity of spirit made up for the shortfall. I was always told I looked well, even when I didn’t, and given smiles to lift me when I was down. Truly spiritual people are a rarity. Uncle Dan had achieved his serenity through an effortless acceptance of himself. There were no masks or barriers, no rigid viewpoints to be strenuously defended, no need to be always right. He had managed to subdue the ego so that his spirit was fully alive. The memory of his humility has left a lasting impression on me. He was living proof of Emerson’s belief that ‘the best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence.’
So I was looking forward to meeting Uncle John. Mother had a fund of stories about the devilish young prankster. He had been the joker of the family, the life and soul. His CV was impressive: he’d left home at 17 to work in a factory in England. From there he travelled to Australia where he stayed for a year. On his return home he discovered he couldn’t settle and set sail for America with little money in his pocket but big ideas in his head. He worked his way across the Land of the Free and finally settled in Sacramento, California, where he married a Maltese-Canadian by whom he had three children. John had always promised mother that he’d visit Ireland, yet she knew he never would. If she were to see him again she’d simply have to bridge the distance herself.
Quite naturally mother wanted to look well for her brother, and that meant dieting. She had a month to lose a stone and knew from experience that willpower was not always enough.
She therefore enlisted the help of her GP, who prescribed for her a course of slimming pills. In reality they were amphetamines, a
nd were very successful. She lost the weight – but she lost sleep as well. She soon developed a non-stop urge to continue talking and working into the small hours. I used to hear her at four in the morning, washing and hoovering and singing to herself, a tornado in a housecoat, capable of amazing feats, sweeping all before her. She might have been going crazy but the pounds were falling off and her self-esteem was rising. John Henry would see a svelte Mary after all.
The pills worked, that is certain. Just how effective they were was shown to me at a rock concert at Slane, County Meath, later in the year. I observed the ageing lead singer of a headlining band leaping round the stage for a full two hours with the energy of a ten-year-old. I suspected where that lean energy might have come from: mother had it in a bottle under her bed.
The countdown to our departure began, and she still wasn’t losing the weight fast enough. A sweat suit seemed the answer. As long as there are overweight people wobbling about this planet of ours there will be no end to the gimmickry that is peddled with the empty promise of a quick-fix, minimal-effort solution. Mother’s sweat suit was one of them.
She bought it by mail order from the back page of a Sunday supplement, believing the dubious claims of the snake-oil merchants that you could lose ten pounds while you slept. Each night she retired to her bedroom looking like a Soviet cosmonaut, ponderously moving down the hallway before climbing into bed to sweat. In fairness, the pounds did disappear but I fear this was due entirely to water loss. After several cups of coffee she’d have regained it all. I didn’t dare tell her this of course. She was very pleased with the result, convincing herself that the ‘needless’ expenditure was worth it, and I willingly colluded in the fraud to keep her happy.
We were unused to air travel, mother and I, and the journey to Uncle John’s home was a gruelling one for us: ten hours in total with a night transfer in New York. We finally arrived exhausted, legs and feet swollen like figures in a Beryl Cook painting. At Los Angeles we changed in the airport toilets, re-applied our make-up yet again, trying vainly to cover the cracks of that sleepless journey. Mother donned her yellow dress for this very special moment; we walked out into the hazy Californian sun and waited to be claimed.
My Mother Wore a Yellow Dress Page 18
