Getting Packed For Dublin. Finished Self Portrait. Very Busy

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Paintings Go To Dublin This Weekend

So I am very busy packing and sorting and labelling.  Over this weekend, the Hosts of the A Graceful Death in Dublin are coming over in a large car to collect the paintings and take them back to Dublin.  They do this out of the kindness of their very large hearts, and it is a huge relief and help that they have offered to do this.  But I have to have all the paintings ready and wrapped and labelled etc.  The exhibition always runs with a small Jesus On The Tube exhibition and an Every Day Angel exhibition.  I have found that showing other light hearted works balances the AGD well.  

The Self Portrait now has a chair in it for me to sit on.  Have a look, there are earrings, my ring and longer hair -

This painting is about being out-the-other-end but still real.  I hope to paint others in stages of their journey too.  It is a large painting, to compliment the "I'm Not Going Anywhere" portrait of Steve when he had just received his diagnosis of cancer - Steve will be at the beginning of the exhibition and I will be at the end.

This will be a very new experience in Dublin.  The exhibition is not open to the general public, it will be invitation only.  If however, you are interested in coming, contact me and leave your details and I will get back to you.  The exhibition runs from Thursday 21 October till Monday 25 October.  It will be the first time I have exhibited this AGD outside the UK.  

There are so many different ways this exhibition could develop.  It is full of potential, it is about Us, Our story, yours and mine.  I am aware of so much unacknowledged need to talk about what happened to us, to our loved ones, to our lives when we lost someone.  I want to capture something of that experience in paint and keep it for everyone to see.  I want to make it visible, even if all I do is represent with no frills, the reality of the body as it dies.  The look in our eyes as we make the journey after the death of someone, into the rest of our lives.  

The A Graceful Death will be travelling next year.  In February it will go to St Nicholas Church, Burnham, Manchester and in November it goes to St Martin in the Bullring in Birmingham. In between, I want to take it to Edinburgh and there is now an offer to take it to Yorkshire, to a teeny and wonderful stately home there.  

If you are interested, leave a message on this blog with your email and I will get back to you.  Onwards and Upwards, got to get packing!

The Dublin Date Is Nearing, Organising And Details Now

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Much Still To Do For Dublin Dates

I have finished the paintings.  Yes, the ones that I needed to do for this Dublin showing are done and drying.  I still have some poetry to write up that was sent in by people who visited the exhibition and want to add something of their own.   Apart from that, it is all organisation and detail now.  The Hosts in Ireland wish to remain anonymous, as this particular show is a Private Showing in a Private House.  They are setting up an invitation only exhibition where they have been selecting and asking all those they think will be interested in the paintings.  I have an opening night on the Thursday 21 October, and over the next few days,  the exhibition is aiming to attract at least 200 people.  The Dublin Hosts know and are connected to a lot of people.

I am very impressed with the way the A Graceful Death is being organised in Dublin.  I think it will be a very targeted group of people and organisations that come, and I will need my wits about me, because as with all the AGD exhibitions, questions will be asked as to what exactly I am doing, and why.  Well, gosh, I have answered that so often and because I feel the exhibition is such a fluid and organic enterprise, the answers can get bigger and bigger.  I am doing this show because I can.  It is the only way I can share the depth of the experience of loss and of love.  I am not alone, all of you have a story to tell of love and loss, but for a while I thought I was the only one to suffer in the way I was suffering.  I tried to paint it to make sense of it.  And once I had done that, I found that I was just one of many to have had a bereavement.  I was just one of millions of ongoing bereavements, and all of us felt this bad.  

I will keep you all informed of the A Graceful Death in Dublin.  I will honour my Hosts wishes to remain anonymous, and I will tell you all how it went.  I will photo it and tell you how it was received, which I cannot for the life of me, predict.  

There are two more firm dates that you can come and visit, which are in February 2011 at the Rev Rachel Mann's church, St Nicholas in Burnage in Manchester. More details and publicity on that when nearer the time.  And in November 2011, AGD is going to St Martins in the Bullring in Birmingham.  That will be for about 3weeks, and will include workshops that I will be taking on bereavement and related feelings, with the very talented poet Penny Hewlet.  I have ideas for other workshops, some very unusual, but all very significant.  More too, on that, nearer the time.

Now I must go and Laminate.  All the painting descriptions and the write ups need to be prepared and make indestructable.  Laminate them, I thought, and so now I shall.  I must also send out all the invitations, the related publicity to the selected invitees, and the information that needs to accompany each invite.  The paintings are being collected by two wonderful and dedicated Irish Men In A Large Vehicle next weekend, out of the goodness of their hearts.  All they ask is a bed for the night.  They will get that and a large meal on the hour every hour and many many grateful thanks.  So now I must go and Pepare.  More later.

New Paintings, New Venues - Dublin Hosts A Graceful Death

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A Graceful Death Goes To Dublin

At the end of October, I am taking the paintings to be exhibited at a Private Venue in Dublin.  This exhibition is not open to the general public, and will available as an Invite Only showing.  This is the first time I have exhibited this way, and it is a very good way of asking those who would be interested in the exhibition on a number of fronts.  There will be those who have a professional interest in the subject of End of Life and Bereavement and Palliative Care, there will be members of the medical profession, there will be those representing Religion and others who may be interested in the paintings as works of art.  The organisers of this Private View will also ask friends and family, as this subject is a huge part of every person's life.

I am very happy about this Dublin Adventure.  It will make me aware of a new audience.  I wonder how it will go, and what the Irish and I will make of each other.  I don't know how Irish people view death and dying, I have never asked them.  Maybe they are open to the subject and talk about it more, maybe they are able to cope with it through religion.  Maybe they aren't.  I am intrigued, and realise I will only meet a microscopically small selection of the population, so I won't have all the answers at the end of this showing of A Graceful Death.  I won't ever have all the answers to anything, though.  Much though I would like them.

Here, then, is a new and not yet finished painting for the exhibition.

It shows me sitting as a Survivor.  It shows me as someone who has come through the darkest of times into a happier phase of my life.  Here, I am Transcendent.  Losing Steve has not disappeared, I am not as if it didn't happen, but I am living a life Beyond.  The yellow around me is about sheer life, love, hope, light.  It is Newness, Joy, Heat.  I sit without smiling, I am calm and I am without any props, and I don't need to have any expression, I just Am.  And I Am Better.  Steve lives with me alongside my life as it is now, and my life has moved on to include happiness, peace, laughter and love.  I am a Survivor.  

The painting is not yet finished.  I want to add the chair I am sitting on, and some other little details like my earrings, and touching up my hair a bit.  And the hands need some work and my ring needs to be added.  But I love love love this yellow colour.  It is absolutely the Right Thing to me today.

More on the Private Dublin showing of A Graceful Death as it unfolds.  It will be showing from Thursday 21 October to Monday 25 October.

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.