A Life in Art

Part One

Clay tiles, a 5-year-old with heatstroke, and a famous painting of a horse

It has been a week since Reem Gallery (where I work) opened its newest gallery in Soho. The new pad is nestled just between Piccadilly Circus and Brewer Street, moments from Carnaby Street and the Whole Foods (if you know the one). It’s in the courtyard of Ham Yard Village, a peaceful oasis in the shadow of the Ham Yard Hotel which was founded by interior designer Kit Kemp. The space includes a storage room, a kitchenette, and a galley which currently houses the 250 emptied (and rinsed) bottles of beer from the opening event. It is hardwood floors, a black panelled ceiling, and white walls, with floor to ceiling glass at the front. It’s where I am now. The gallery space is 4.7 x 5.7m. A lovely almost-square.

I am the Creative Director and I often get asked how I ended up here: aged 22, standing in a gallery in Soho in a jacket I bought from a charity shop for a tenner, selling art that adds up to more than a year’s rent. I decided to begin a new series to answer that. It will be called 'A life in art', which can be read in a few ways: It's my life in the art world, as part of it, but also my life told through the art that I've made and seen. It's my life in, and in, art. Got it? Lovely.

Part One.

I want to start with sunflowers, one of the most important British paintings of the 18th century, and a classroom in which I got heatstroke aged 5.

Children are born creative. They are born explorers, curious and excited, adventurous, and with an ability to find methods of communication that don’t revolve around language, because they haven’t fully developed that yet. Until they’re told they’re not good at something, they don’t care and in fact they think they are very good at it, they have no reason to believe otherwise. It doesn’t come down to being ‘good’ or ‘not good’ so much as ‘do I like doing this?’ and if the answer is yes, then you are good at it. Or something like that. By that metric, I was good at drawing, painting, collage, making, writing. Creating. I enjoyed doing it all.

One day in art class we were making little clay tiles with the the imprint of a sunflower, we let them air dry and then painted them with glossy greens and yellows all straight out of a big plastic bottle. I remember using the handle of my paintbrush to press into the clay and make small indentations where the seeds in the middle would be, I was standing under the enormous skylights feeling my face get hotter and hotter. 

I made a lot of art. and my parents were very encouraging, but also realistic, they didn't keep everything I made and certainly made it clear when something wasn't their favourite. Mum kept the sunflower. She kept it even when it fell off the windowsill in her study and the corner broke off, she just set it back up there with it's little broken corner and the powdery, grey insides exposed.

She always said that she wanted to frame it to protect it, that hasn't happened yet and it's been 17 years, but there's something very special about how fragile it is and yet how robust. A bit like a 5 year old.

I'm not sure if that was the day that I came home with heat-stroke, but if it was, then that was the day I had to sit in my pants and vest eating ice lollies watching TV with frozen flannels on my arms and legs and my feet in a bucket of water.

My sunflower is one of my first memories of art that I made.

One of my first memories of art that I saw was a little bit before, aged perhaps 3 or 4. I was taken to the National Gallery by a family friend and I felt so tiny. I remember craning my neck back to look up at the ginormous gilded frames, the battle scenes, ships, and people who I didn't recognise. I felt so at peace, so excited, and overwhelmed all at once. I have always felt completely comfortable, and energised, surrounded by art. My favourite piece in the National aged 4, and my favourite piece still, is 'Whistlejacket' by George Stubbs. A dog-eared postcard of it was on my bedroom wall throughout my teens, I bought the postcard on a trip to London with school and when I stuck it on my wall my mum remarked that it had been my favourite since I was 4. What can I say, I'm consistent.

’Whistlejacket’ is a mighty oil painting that measures 292 x 246.5 cm and stands apart from other equine portraits of the time due to its scale and the absence of background. Stubbs completed it sometime around 1762, whilst spending several months at the Marquess of Rockingham’s country house in Yorkshire where he was to paint Rockingham’s racehorses, of which one was the magnificent chestnut stallion, Whistlejacket. Many stories have surfaced as to why there is no background, but my favourite is that while it was being painted Whistlejacket was led past the painting by a stable boy and reared up aggressively thinking it to be a rival stallion. Rockingham was allegedly so delighted and impressed by his beloved horse’s reaction that he ordered it be hung immediately, sans background. The painting was bought from the Fitzwilliam family (heirs to Rockingham) in 1997 when funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund allowed the National Gallery to purchase it for £11 million. It is part of the main collection and can be found in Room 34.

There’s a magical moment when you turn a corner and you have ahead of you these deliciously high ceilings, arches beyond arches, tiled floors, and they all frame ‘Whistlejacket’ perfectly in the distance. Walking towards him I always feel slightly in a daze, I don’t notice if there’s anyone around me, I feel like I am floating. I float right up to him until I have to lift my eyes higher and higher and tip my head backwards. The sage background, a perfectly flat space that pulls me in and looks as soft as kitten fur, surrounds him. I don’t even notice the brushstrokes, the changing tones in the tail, I just see Whistlejacket: resplendently powerful, poised, suspended in perfect beauty. A symbol of great wealth, but more importantly for me evidence of the close relationships that man and beast have had throughout time. A possession sure, but Whistlejacket was more than just a possession, he was a treasure, and now he gets to live forever.