In my last Artlog post while replying to a comment left by my friend Dave Bonta, I was reminded of my wilderness years, the ones that came between leaving the theatre and my later emergence as a painter. I became the assistant custodian at Tretower Court and Castle in Powys. Looking back from this distance I think it may have been my way of quietly having a nervous breakdown without drawing any attention to the fact.
At an impressionable age I’d read how T E Lawrence had reinvented himself far away from the brouhaha of being Lawrence of Arabia, and I’d thought even as boy reading about that part of his life, it was what I’d try to do myself were the world ever to become too much to bear.
Twenty five years later Tretower was where I landed when I threw myself from the parapets of a previous life, rescued by the intervention of a woman I didn’t even know, from circumstances so unhappy that I won’t write about them here. The woman became my friend… indeed I think we were friends from the moment we spoke the day she phoned me out of the blue… and her name is Pat Humphreys. I’m not going to be able to cover this in a single post, and so I shall write more about Pat and her husband Derek later. But for now it’s enough by way of explanation to recount that I stayed at Tretower for seven years, during which time two more extraordinary things happened to me. I met my partner Peter Wakelin, and I became a painter.
I explain all this because in the early days of showing my work, Tretower was a constant presence in it. For that formative period and for some time afterwards, it was the anchor of my life, appearing in various guises in painting after painting. (I often represented the ‘Keep Tower’ in a schematic manner, without the ruined curtain wall surrounding it. But whenever a tapering tower appears in my work… a little like a windmill without sails, you can be sure it’s Tretower. The paintings in this post show it both ways.)
In an occasional series of posts I plan to show works dating from the Tretower years. (Please excuse the small sizes of these images. I don’t have high resolution versions of them to hand.) I shall write too of the people who helped shape my development as I transformed from choreographer to artist.
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What a moving bit of your history to share, Clive. This gives a look behind the curtain in a very personal way. Thank you.
Mmmmm. Behind the curtain indeed. This is new territory, writing about my time at Tretower. It’s good to look back on how things developed for me thereafter, but a bit unnerving laying it all before readers. Thank you for your supportive words Jason. I much appreciate them.
Did you get the high res. image I e-mailed you of the drawing you admired. It was quite a large file. If you didn’t get it you might check to see whether it vanished into your spam folder
I’m utterly mortified, Clive. I thought I responded to your e-mail, but looking at my sent items I see the response was only in my mind. My sincerest apologies.
Yes, I did receive the larger version. And just as I felt with the online version, it beguiles me. The more I’ve looked at it, the more my mind has created a mysterious fantasy, a compelling story hidden in shadow that I need to understand. It speaks to me–and that’s a marvelous thing. It’s a beautiful piece that enchants and intrigues me even more in the hi-res version than it did when first presented. Thank you so much for sharing it!
Don’t be mortified. I’m entirely happy to be corresponded with via telepathy, though I may have to brush up mine or I may miss out on things!
Seriously, no need to apologise. I just didn’t want you to think that I’d said I’d do something and then didn’t.
Glad you like the Black Sheep in a Welsh Quarry Jason. And perhaps you’ll have guessed by now that the building on the horizon is Tretower.
I’d post everything in high res were it not for the fact that this blog would then very soon run out of room!
as difficult as it must have been, how lucky for us–and for peter–that you “broke down” and rebuilt yourself anew. you are having your second full life, now, clive, and most people don’t even have one! these paintings carry a deep silence and a mystery–a narrative even with out human figures in them. they are beautiful, thank you for sharing them, and this part of your story, with us.
You’re very sweet Zoe. Thank you for those words. My time at Tretower was extraordinary, both in terms of how much peace I found there at when I needed it most, and in the way the place forged me as a painter. I don’t think I ever saw things as clearly before I went there, and although whatever I was going through was very painful at the time, I never felt anything other than protected and nourished by the place and the people. Tretower is lodged in my heart.
I’ve been thinking harder about what I wrote in the comment above, about Tretower being lodged in my heart. That doesn’t quite explain it really. (That’s what comes when you stop thinking and resort to clichés!) What I should have written was that it was more as though Tretower allowed me to leave something there I didn’t need. There’s a fairy tale in which the heroine, unable to speak for fear of a curse that will harm those she loves if she breaks her silence, goes out at night and digs a hole into which she screams all her pain, frustration and grief. I think that’s what happened to me at Tretower. It took the repository of the accumulated sadness I’d harboured for too long, and absorbed it for me. The sense of a burden lifted was palpable. And then when I left, the place gave me an unexpected gift, that being the image of it in my work, a constant muse-like presence in my paintings for many years. I’d never before painted buildings in landscapes with any degree of success. Tretower taught me how.
They say you should paint the things that mean the most to you, and that’s just what I did.