John Horne - "Papa". A New Painting Of A Lovely Man

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A New Painting of John Horne, "Papa" .

29 November 1911 to 5 September 1999

Papa  (by Kate Massey, Papa's Granddaughter)

John Horne (29^th November 1911- 5^th September 1999)

My Papa was born in Grangemouth, Scotland, just before the first World War.  His childhood was poor but very happy.  Growing up during the depression, there was no money for extended education, so he left school at fourteen and became an apprentice painter and decorator.  This suited his naturally artistic temperament and he enjoyed his work.

He married my Grandma, Isa, just four days his junior when they were both 25, and she was the love of his life.  Shortly after their marriage, they were separated for over five years during WWII as Papa served in the army as a driver.  His tales of war-time were never of conflict or hardship, but of how his painting skills were used to make scenery for their amateur dramatic shows, or of how he once drove from Italy to Belgium without stopping, constantly eating dry biscuits in an attempt to stay awake!  At one stage in his service, he was involved in looking after POWs and befriended a German painter from the Black Forest.  Papa got some oils so the POW could paint, and in return the POW painted a scene from his homeland for my Papa.  It was one of his most treasured possessions and was displayed above his fireplace for decades after.

After the war, he resumed his quiet and unassuming life, working, looking after his family including his two beloved children - my uncle, Jim, and my mum, Isobel - and serving as an Elder in his parish church.

I didn’t meet my Papa until 1977.  He’d just retired, and a demanding little granddaughter was just what he needed to fill his time.  My little sister, who arrived two years later helped too.  Papa and I were very close.  I have so many memories of him teaching me to play cards and dominoes, taking me to the park, watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies with me, drinking endless pretend cups of tea when I was playing with my plastic toy teaset, drawing pictures for me, covering the formica coffee table with pencil lines so we could play shove ha’penny.  He never got bored of playing.

Papa had the worst sense of humour in the world – he was the only person I knew who found the jokes inside crackers genuinely funny – and every visit brought another quip he had collected from the radio.  We were always laughing about something.  Grandma would just tut at his nonsense, then go and make him another cup of tea, with lots of milk and practically a ladle-full of sugar, before finding some lemonade and biscuits for me.

Dementia and then cancer slowly stole my grandparents away.  Soon, they were in a residential home together, most often found sitting on a little double sofa by the front door, greeting any visitors.  My Grandma’s memory loss made her increasingly difficult, yet my Papa loved her to the end, and was practically bursting with pride the day they celebrated their Diamond wedding in 1997.  My Mum maintains that when Grandma died in early 1999, it was only because my Papa’s own memory loss gave him some respite from his grief that he survived her by as much as seven months.

We were lucky.  As Papa’s mental and physical health deteriorated, he became almost more himself than ever.  He covered his memory lapses with jokes, funny sayings and songs.  He couldn’t play cards and shove ha’penny anymore, but his love for us still shone out of him.  He may have taught me much through his life, but it was in his death he taught me the most profound lesson.  A human’s dignity is not based on what they can do, but on who they are.  My Papa was a good, gentle and loving man.

This portrait is based on a photo taken of my Papa weeks before he died.  He was so tired.  I knew we didn’t have long, and I took the camera with me that day because I wanted a few last pictures.  His leaving us was such a painful yet precious experience, and I wanted to hold a little of that forever.  Now, through Antonia’s work, I can hold it with the full beauty it deserves.  He died his own Graceful Death.  The day he died, I visited him.  He was asleep and looking so peaceful I couldn’t bear to wake him so I simply kissed him and left.  Later that night, the carers walked him to his room, and he was singing to them.  Once in his room, as they prepared him for bed, he slipped away.

Papa’s was a fairly ordinary life, lived quietly and without show.  Yet it was transfigured by his love.  At his funeral we chose for the reading the famous biblical treatise on love, and so I quote from it here:

Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking,
it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.
But the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8a,13 (NIV)

Kate's Grandfather Papa will be joining the A Graceful Death exhibition in Dublin in October. 

Why Am I Doing A Graceful Death Exhibition?

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What Is It All About?  What Is A Graceful Death For?

A Graceful Death is an exhibition of paintings from the End of Life.   The story begins with the death of my partner from cancer in November 2007.  I painted him in his last few weeks, days, and the day of his death, and have produced some very raw, powerfully real and beautiful paintings of the human body as it folds away into death.

The exhibition has grown over the last year to include other stories, images and experiences from those who are moved by the paintings to want to include thier own loved ones to be remembered.  I have been working on portraits of people no longer with us, painted from images loaned to me by relatives of the person concerned, for inclusion in the A Graceful Detah exhibition.  I have poetry sent in to me and I have now, at every exhibition, a small pot of flower for a young man called David, from his brother, who misses him and didn't want a painting or poetry to represent David.

Wy am I doing it?

I am doing it because I feel so passionately that dying is the most important part of our lives. I am doing this because I can communicate and reach out through paintings.  I lost the man I loved, but, I am not the only one to have suffered bereavement.  I know how it feels and I know how surviving it feels, and I can use these paintings to go far beyond that which words can say.

It is not a comercial venture. It makes me no money and the paintings cannot be sold.  Somehow, the exhibition is growing and is travelling from place to place, and somehow it is being supported.  The only way this exhibitioncan and does surbibe, is through donations and funding from indiiduals who have bisited the exhibition and have understood the importance of enableing this conversation on Life and Death.

The paintings are about Love and Loss and about How We Die.  I will carry with me forever my loss of Steve.  I will never forget how it feels to watch him die;  there will always be a Before Steve and an After Steve.  The paintings are meant to hold you.  They are to strike that buried chord in your stomach, of recognition and understanding.  I am doing this so that your experience is givern a small shock of empathy, and to ask you to Remember.  The love is present in the care, the compassion and the detail that I paint into each picture.  The love is in the fact that I want to honour those at the end of their journey, and that I am not afraid to do it.

And there is always the survival of those of us that are left behind.  I have one painting which is dedicated to the fact that we do carry on, and life becomes good again, and happiness is not only possible, but right.

Our lives will end.  We will die.  After someone we love dies, the pain we feel, and the difference in our perception of life and death, is horribly real.  These paintings are abut that pain and that difference.  They are also about the Power of Life that continues regardless, whether we wish it to or not.  I am painting dying, death, loss, illness, hope, love and redemption.

I Am Thinking Of How It Feels To Be Bed Bound

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I Am Wondering About Illness and Being In Bed

Sometimes I lie in my bed, tired and a little fractious, and think that if I was fighting an illness, how would that be for me?  I imagine Steve feeling so exhausted during the day that he needed to lie down and sleep.  He was full of energy and liked to go fishing in his beloved boat Illusion, to get things done, to be active and to participate in the day.  For him to be tired enough to have to go to bed in the day was very unusual.  So did he feel like I do sometimes; uncomfortable, dissatisfied, unrelieved?  I can feel the lack of peace when I lie down in my bed.  I can feel that my limbs are too weary to relax and I can feel that I am not benefiting from my rest.  But I can get up later and move around without questioning how my energy levels will cope.  There is always a point at which I can gear myself into action and get back into the swing of things as if I had never had to pause and rest.  But for Steve, and others who are ill, there is no change.  There was no moment that Steve felt that he was rested enough, and that it was time to get up and join in the day to day routines around him.  the exhaustion in his body kept him lying down, and when he decided to get up and join us, it made him move slowly and pause for breath, and to decide to do as little as possible in order to stay in the loop with us.

But sometimes, as I lie in my lovely bed, anxious and unrestful, I think What if this was the best I could feel?  What if this is where I would stay and the world out of my window was gone for me for ever?  How would I feel if I could no longer get up, dust myself down and drive off in my car to meet someone, do the shopping, get something done?  I find it very scarey.  I think that if I had to stay here, no matter how red my sheets are and how many wonderful pictures I have on my walls, I would feel frightened and trapped and terrified that this was as good as it could be.  I would remember with longing how I took for granted the moving around the house, the choosing of clothes, the way I could just Do things.  I don't think I would be comforted by the lovely things that surround me in my room.  

What is it like to be ill in bed?  If you are terminally ill, how do you think?  What do you think?  What are the silences like when no one is coming to visit you and you have to endure yourself inbetween distractions?  I imagine myself into a state of mind that is as near to this as is possible in a healthy inexperienced person.  I find my focus changing utterly.  I feel my body much more profoundly, and feel it as if it is not a part of me.  When I am dispirited and lie down at night to sleep, and don't feel any benefits, I think Ah.  So this is a fraction of what it must be like to have your body slowly succumb to an illness that will eventually kill you.  If I were in that position, I may find the memory of how I took for granted my health and life before it began to fade, almost unbearable.  Or would I feel so physically weak, ill, unwell, that I would find the lying down in peace in my bed a relief?  Would I concentrate on how I felt now, and not find time to remember how it was to do as I pleased during the day?  I know that when I try to imagine how Steve must have felt as his symptoms became more and more obvious, that I was not as understanding as I could have been.  I was simply ignorant.  I had had no experience at all of such a thing as cancer and the inevitable decline and eventual death it brings in the sufferer.  Nor, I have to say, had Steve.  Between us we had no real idea of what to expect.  We feared that he would die, but until the disease had rendered him visibly and mentally incapable, we hoped he wouldn't have to.  I knew he would die before he did.  I think.  But as I sometimes try and imagine how I would feel if I had a terminal illness, I think that perhaps Steve always knew it was the end and that he would die.  He just would not admit it.  I wonder if I would?  If I were in his position?  

Lying restless in my bed sometimes, in the night, with my limbs finding little relief from exhaustion from lying down, and worrying about it, I think This is how Steve felt.  All the time.  And for him there was no getting better.  It wasn't just a temporary discomfort, it was total, and constant and forever getting worse.  This, for him, was never going to improve.  

And how is it for anyone who is bed bound?  Anyone who contemplates their own death?  I may be in that situation one day.  I hope I don't drop dead or die in my sleep.  I think I would like to prepare myself to die.  I think I would like to know it is coming and get ready for it.  That is what I think now.  Not having ever had to deal with my own mortality, everything I write is just theory.  And this is why I am writing this - what is it like to lie in bed and consider your own end?  I just do not know.

A Graceful Death Is Going To Dublin in October

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My Next Showing Is In Dublin In October

The paintings will all be going to stay in Dublin for the next showing of A Graceful Death.  I am interested to see how the Irish will react to the exhibition.  The paintings will be shown over the half term week and I will post the reactions and comments I get then.  There is a chance that the paintings will then go on to another Irish destination, for a Festival.  But as that is not finalised I will say no more just yet.

What is happening in A Graceful Death at the moment?   It is a time of organising, of painting and of expanding.  I have two more paintings to complete, and some more poetry to write up from people who have come to the exhibition and want to participate.  I am looking to find ways of making the paintings reach more people, and am researching new and interesting venues. Along with this, I am finding much new support and help in the finding of new material and assistance in the whole organising of the work.  I still make no money from it, so funding has been important.  Donations to the A Graceful Death fund have made a huge difference - even the travel costs to the places in which we exhibit is huge.  There is enough now to take the paintings to Dublin, and to Manchester in February and to Birmingham again in November of next year. This is excellent.  

The exhibition is no longer just about me.  It started with my story, of the death and the loss of my partner Steve, who died so gracefully in November 2007.  All the paintings I needed to do to help myself in my grief are done - except for one more.  I want to paint a large self portrait of the Survivor.  The pain of loss is devastating but it does not always remain as bad.  You can and often do, move on and surprise yourself with how normal and happy your life can be.  I want to paint myself at the other end of this experience.  I want to paint the next stage in the life of a Person Left Behind By The Death Of A Loved One, and I look forward to seeing how that will turn out.

After this final Steve painting, I will be concentrating solely on those who want to be included.  I am open to suggestions.  I would love to paint those at the very end of life, but they would have to know about this exhibition and agree to it.  It has happened, with Anne and Peter Snell.  That painting features in a previous  post; Peter wanted to  be included in A Graceful Death before he died, so that his death could help others.  He did not live to see the painting finished.  His widow, Anne Snell, is now an ardent supporter of this exhibition.  I would like to paint those who have just died if the relatives wish it and give permission.  Each person in the exhibition will be given a write up, to explain their story and their involvement in the A Graceful Death.  Every image will be true entirely to the person involved, their story will be very specially documented to be shown with their painting, which of course, I will do.

I am also helping with a project on Angels at a hospice near here, in September.  That I very much look forward to, and will find myself learning more and more, from the people who are taking this journey into the end of life.

A Graceful Death at Milton Manor near Oxford - Eccentric but Good

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A Very Loving Exhibition At A Very Eccentric Festival

The Festival of the Nine Muses at Milton, near Oxford, was a wonderful experience.  It was slightly batty, slightly shambolic, but they pulled it off and gave A Graceful Death a huge central space in which to do its magic.

I sat on the sofa here and was joined by various lovely people who wanted to talk, or sit, or discuss life and death, or just remember someone. 

There is a more lighthearted account of the Exhibition and the Festival on my other blog, http://www.antoniarolls.blogspot.com/ .   In this account, I want to tell you about some of the experiences the Exhibition gave me and others during the weekend.

More of the paintings, on show in this huge old tea rooms, once a kitchen or a brewery, depending on who was telling me about it.

I set up the exhibition on the Friday, late.  I wanted to get it all ready so that on the Saturday I could concentrate on the visitors that were due from 10am onwards.  We moved all the clutter that we could, all the tables and chairs, all the urns and bowls, the stuffed animals, the papier mache dragons heads.  All the old rocking horses and table legs, the copper suacepans and the piles of handy cleaning rags.  When the room was as clear as possible I began to set up the piantings.  The room is full of history.  It is full of the smell of centuries, and the slightly musty smell of old wood and plaster.  There were cobwebs and old books and old disintegrating prints everywhere.  And, beautifully, little pots of fresh wild flowers in hidden spots, like on the hearth and behind old bits of wood.

The first surprise came as I was setting up on Friday.  A young man, a healthy tanned hansdome young man came and stood in the room and looked around him.  People often come in and look and then turn and leave, and have no reason to stay.  This young man seemed to be having a very slight reaction to the paintings, so I asked if he was OK.  After a little while, after some talking, he said he had lost his brother a few years ago.  This brother had died suddenly and utterly needlessly at the hands of some unscrupulous people in dreadful circumstances.  My young man was remembering him and feeling his loss.  He didn't like to talk of him, he said, it isn't something anyone can undersand.  But he misses him, regrets his death, and keeps a picture of him so that he can at least see his image daily.  I asked if he would like to add something to the exhibition?  No, he said. It wasn't his thing.  He didn't want to write and he was very private.  But he did want his brother remembered.  So I asked him to choose a teapot from the millions on display, and I would fill it with flowers, and put a little sign saying "David.  With us today with love" and leave it at that.  My young man knew exactly which teapot to chose, an elephant one because David had loved animals.  (This young man rented a flat at the Manor, so knew the tearooms and the teapots very well.)  So that is what we did.  David will come with us for every exhibition now, and I will make a little memorial using anything animal related and flowers and add the little sign, "David.  With us today with love" and explain nothing.  David's brother's face lit up when he saw the display the next day, and I feel that the strength and love that David inspired in his brother is not only a testimony to David's importance while alive, but a real testiment to the gentle, quiet, strong and wonderful young man that is David's brother.  Incidentally, another connection here - I wrote up the essay that I was sent by Liam Tullet, on Change, Emotion and Life, and made it into a booklet.  Liam is a plumber in his very early 20s, as was David's brother.  David's brother found Liam's little booklet and took it away with him with interest.  Liam Tullet connected with another young man through similar experiences and  profession, through a piece of writing he was brave enough to send me.  A very very good piece of writing, I may add.

Most people wandered in and out of the tea rooms and some looked at the paintings, some did not want to see them.  Those that stood still and looked and read were the ones that needed either to talk or to come and sit for a while. I was invited to the Festival through a very passionate and loving young girl called Jessica.  Jessica is in her twenties, and is a powerful personality, and was deeply moved by the exhibition when it was on in Wimbledon.  Jessica arranged for me come to the Festival of the Nine Muses, and had faith that the A Graceful Death would balance well with the theme of Love that was behind the Festival.  Jessica came and bought two of her sisters and bought her mother.  Jessica's mother, Mary,  is someone I loved on first sight.  She understood everything, she looked at and read everything, and came and sat in tears on the sofa.  Her tears were of understanding, not grief.  She is an artist too, a writer and director having been trained first as an actress.  She, like Jessica, just Got It.  We talked and she was very interesting indeed.  She has asked me to join her Theatre Company at the Edinburgh Festival next month, and I said, of course, Yes.  Of course!  But whether or not it happens at such short notice, is another matter.  If it does, then wonderful.  If it doesn't, then Next Time.  Whatever happens, I look forward to meeting both Jessica, her mother Mary again.

David's brother chose the elephant teapot from this selection.

Then there was the Musician and his Girlfriend, who sat and talked for a long time.  He was a fascinating character, and spoke of his own artistic journey.  He was moved by one painting in particular - this one of

Steve sitting and waiting in the Hospice chair to die.  Holding on minute by minute.   The Musician wanted to create in his lifetime a moment of real impact through his music.  I expect he will do it, but he is very self critical, I wonder if he will know he has done it. 

Finally, a lady I met and liked so much, I hope to goodness she contacts me again.  She is a very tall  Ethiopian lady, wearing a brilliant turquoise kaftan and gold jewellery.  When I first met her she had just lain down on the sofa, looking so very regal, but when I said I needed to sit there she leapt to her feet  apologetically, looking deeply embarrased.  I thought I had mortally offended her. I was making tea so I made her a cup, and she tried to pay for it, but I did not want payment so there was another interesting moment.  I told her she was very welcome to sit, and I sat next to her.  I talked to some other people, and she sat quietly and texted and looked around her and said nothing.  Then, she started to join in.  She was so interesting and so clever and so insightful.  I looked at her with amazement, aware that I thought she thought I was mad and that I thought she was offended - not a bit of it.  We talked for ages and I found her the most uplifting and encouraging lady, so very very nice.  She is related, she said, to the Emperor Haile Selassi and sure enough, that is her name.  She had to leave after a while, but came back later to talk some more, and we agreed to keep in touch.  She wants to help A Graceful Death and had some excellent ideas and suggestions.  There is just a Feeling about her.  She is very switched on indeed.

There were many other interesting people, and many other interesting converstations.  A man called Paul dropped by and spent some time with me, and he was very profoundly moved with his own tale to tell.  I was very glad to meet him.  My cousin and her little girl came and was so supportive. 

The final view of the A Graceful Death in the wonderful old Tearooms of Milton Manor.

To leave you on a bright note, I packed one of my many spotty teapots and six spotty mugs for the weekend.  No matter where I am, the Tea Standards must be Maintained.  So here is my bag dedicated to Tea Standards.

The Festival of the Nine Muses was a truly unique experience.  It was a wonderful weekend, and I am deeply grateful to have been included. The A Graceful Death is a powerful, deep, raw, loving and passionate exhibition.  Once again, its impact was profound and the lessons I come away with, the people I meet, make me think that Death is a very unifying experience.

A Graceful Death Goes To Milton Manor Near Oxford Today

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Milton Manor Today and A Graceful Death in a Greenhouse with No Glass

I believe!  I am told this is where I will set up, or it could be in the Tack Room with Lots of Straw or the Tea Room.  It doesn't matter, the exhibition will be set up wherever it is given space, and will be just as powerful.  The paintings will reach a different public today and tomorrow, in a kind of chaotic festival set up around the theme of Love, and we will see what happens.  I am camping with other Fesival Goers in the grounds of Milton Manor, and will have friends and family with me.  We will be there till Sunday morning.

I hope you will be able to come, and come and find me and talk to me.  

http://www.miltonmanorhouse.com/ 

I look forward to it! 

Update On Oxford

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An Update On Oxford.  And Then ...

Manchester February 2011 with the Rev Rachel Mann

A Graceful Death will be showing for one day only at a rather fascinating and chaotic festival of Love Poetry in Oxford this Saturday.  The Festival of the Nine Muses takes place at

Milton Manor, near Oxford.

The Festival of the Nine Muses


Hosted by Anthony Mockler, the Nine Muses, and members of the Chelsea Arts Club


From 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. on Saturday 10th July 2010, at Milton Manor, Milton, Oxfordshire 0X14 4EN



A Graceful Death will be showing there, with the unifying theme of both the exhibition and the festival being Love.  The Festival charges for entry, so be prepared for that.  Have a look at the website on the following link -
http://www.miltonmanorhouse.com/

It will be interesting and fun, and I would love to see you there.


The next firm booking I have is with the wonderful Rev Rachel Mann in Manchester.  She will host the A Graceful Death in her church, St Nicholas Church, Burnage.  The date so far will be around February 2011.  We are hoping for a two week exhibition in the church itself.  I will, of course, fill you all in on that when I know more.

The next big question is How To Pay For The Exhibition To Travel.  I am beginning to be sent donations to A Graceful Death, which is absolutely wonderful and vital.  It costs me a lot to take it around and show it, not least to paint it all and provide all the images for the exhibition.  This is my passion, that is understood.  A Graceful Death means everything to me, and it touches so many lives as it tours.  So many people that have seen it have so much to offer too, and I have poetry, images that I will paint, and prose to add to each time the exhibition is mounted.

If you can donate to the A Graceful Death fund for its production costs, please do so.  If you wish to sponsor it then I will add your name to the list of sponsors. If you wish to make a donation without sponsorship, then please do.  Contact me on antonia.rolls1@btinternet.com to arrange any donations or offerings that you wish to offer.  I am grateful for all help.  The exhibition is beautiful, it is profound and it is full of love and life and hope and the miracle of death and dying, and the pain of our loss.  And our life still going on whatever we may feel.  Hope.

Come to Oxford if you can, and come and find me and talk to me.  Bring me your stories, tell me about yourself, come and see the paintings, come and take part.

Finally, the Festival may well be the only time I get the exhibit in an old Greenhouse With No Glass.  I believe I am going to be in there and I can't wait.  Hope to see you on Saturday.