Dearest one,
The past couple of months have been tough, punctured by mental health flare-ups, only leaving room for survival and the stringent self-care needed for it. So like holding an ice-pack to a bumped head, I’ve pressed my paint brushes to textured cotton paper – this year, my art of choice has been watercolours.
You see, all my life, ever since I can remember, I’ve survived the outages in my mind using some form of art. And while I originally intended to write to you about that this Mental Health Awareness Month, I don’t have it in me to fetch those details and make sense of it at the moment.
Instead, I share with you a gift that’s always run parallel to my artistic quests – the journeys of artists I admire.
I want to introduce you to a few artists whose ways of thinking and creating I’ve superimposed upon my own path. Some of you might be familiar with these names, I talk of them often! Either way, I hope this gives you a chance to delve deeper into their work and draw the inspiration and faith you need from it.
1. Corita Kent - Pop-artist, activist nun
Corita was called 'the pop art nun' of the 20th century. When she rose to fame in the 60s, she was a sister and a teacher in a progressive Catholic order, creating artistic commentary about humanity, religion, capitalism, poverty, and the Vietnam war.
Corita saw art as an everyday thing, and made it fully accessible to those who wanted to practice it and those who wanted to understand it. Her art (seeking inspiration from and running parallel to Andy Warhol’s) was vibrant, multi-layered, and deeply meaningful, just like her life.
Although she eventually left the order, some of Corita’s most prominent work was made during her years as a nun. Her spiritual beliefs furthered her love for humanity, her joy in living, and her desire for critical thought and action. She used every bright colour you can think of and poured all the most thought-provoking words into her screenprints – from the Bible to lyrics of the Beatles to passages from literature and Winnie the Pooh! She let making things change her, over and over again.
Corita’s love for art is a legacy in itself. One urging us to look closely at the world, to find hope and hilarity in it, and most importantly, to celebrate the heck out of it.
Stuff I love:
1. Corita Kent’s Art Department Rules
2. Make Meatballs Sing - A joyful biography of her life.
3. Learning by Heart - A book co-authored by Corita, breaking down her art classes and accessible artist’s philosophy.
4. How Corita fought power with joy
2. Mary Delany - Botanical collage artist
I often fret that I haven’t done a smidgen of what I want to at 30, and then I remember Mary Delany, who began her artist arc when she was 71!
Mary was an Englishwoman, born in the 1700s. She was from a somewhat prestigious family and was well-educated for a young girl of the time. Even so, her family married her off to an elderly gentleman when she was just 17.
Two marriages and some basic art skills later, she found herself at 68, widowed, grieving, but also, free. This was when she began living with her friend, a Duchess, and socializing with some of the most talented artists and sharpest scientists of the time.
Mary learnt quickly and created in abundance – needlework, letters to friends, sketches, and most famously, her botanical mosaicks.
During the last decade of her life, she made 985 botanically accurate collages of flowers using tissues, coloured paper, watercolours, paper cutouts, and decoupage. Her depictions were so stunningly precise that botanists described them as the only imitations of nature they had seen ‘from which one could describe any plant without the least fear of committing an error'.
Personally, I believe that Mary was a botanist too.
Stuff I love:
1. More about Mary Delany’s work
2. A postcard set of her botanical mosaicks
3. Maya Angelou - Human extraordinaire
Of course, you know Maya Angelou. You may be familiar with some of her famous poems such as ‘Still I Rise’ and ‘Phenomenal Woman’. She’s revered for her articulation of the Black American experience, particularly the inner turmoils of being othered and persecuted in your own homeland.
But before she became a literary sensation, Maya was (spoiler alert for her memoirs!) a pregnant teen mom looking for a way to raise her son. She became a fry cook, a chef, a brothel owner, a sex worker, a dancer, a singer, a broadway actor, a civil rights activist, an administrator for Martin Luther King Jr., a journalist in Egypt, and she almost worked with Malcom X!
All of the above, she speaks of in her series of 7 memoirs – an autobiography of a life like no other. Maya’s journey is one of extraordinary strength, but also of resourcefulness, inventiveness, and fiery passion. She knew exactly who she was, even when she travelled to a whole other continent and spent years looking for a belonging she struggled with all her life.
I don’t imagine for a moment that I have what it took her to survive and thrive in her world. Even so, Maya’s spirit is contagious, and reading her work always leaves me both lighter and more grounded.
Stuff I love:
1. Maya Angelou’s autobiography series
4. Joni Mitchell - Folk & jazz singer-songwriter, painter
If there’s one person on this list whose artistic genius feels ethereal, it’s Joni Mitchell. As you may know, Joni rose to prominence as a pop-folk musician in the 60s, alongside the likes of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Joan Baez, and Carole King.
Joni grew up in rural Canada, where she contracted polio as a young girl, resigning her to a hospital with little outside contact for months. She often talks about this period in her life as the time where she developed her resilience.
And resilience she did need, for Joni’s career has been prolific and adventurous. Her star exploded with her 1971 folk album Blue, filled with poetic and confessional lyrics, commonly noted as one of the best albums of all time (A 70s Taylor Swift, if I may, and Taylor often speaks of Joni as her inspiration too!).
But Joni, ever the introvert, despised the fame game and would retreat into her cabin for long periods of reflection and creation. Among her 19 (!) albums, she would also delve into jazz music, for the intuitiveness it allowed her in creation. And here’s the fascinating thing – Joni calls herself a musician by chance, believing till date that her true calling is that of a painter!
Joni’s jazz and paintings have never been popular, but they were from an honest place, one that she continues expressing regardless of how far they travel or how deeply they are perceived. And that’s a whole other kind of resilience, noe?
Stuff I love:
1. Songs I can’t get enough of - A Case of You, Both Sides Now, Circle Game, Hejira, Down to You
2. Joni Mitchell’s paintings across the decades
3. Joni’s interview with CBC Music
4. A New Yorker profile on Joni Mitchell
5. Allen Say - Author, painter, photographer
I stumbled upon Allen Say’s work by chance, while putting together a reading list for a friend’s 14-year-old niece. His books seemed to cover a lot of themes that I myself was interested in: memoir, artist’s journey, third culture kid experiences, and watercolours – I had to get a copy!
Say is best known for 2 things: his picture books for children and his series of art-based autobiographies. He writes about his life as a Japanese-Korean-American, borrowing themes and stories from different parts of his heritage and experience.
His work is immediately captivating and aesthetically gorgeous. It is also deceptively simple, soothing reads for gritty times in your life. I’ve gifted way too many copies of his books, and each time, they’ve worked like magic!
Stuff I love:
1. Drawing from Memory - A mixed-media memoir on Say’s early years learning art under the cartoonist Noro Shinpei.
2. The Inker’s Shadow - A follow-up memoir on Say’s first few years in America.
3. Allen Say on his life as an artist
I hope you’ve enjoyed this list! Do write to me or comment on this post and tell me about some of your favourite creators.
Stay well, dearest.
💌
All my love,
Soumya
I’ve been maintaining my sanity through this time with my own watercolour practice. If you’d like to follow along the journey, you can check out my work on Instagram. 🎨🖌
Thank you for reading! 💞
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Thanks for this birthday gift! 😁
These are some of my favourites too. Creating has always been a go to for self healing and peace. Loved your selections