Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A figurative painter known for disquieting domestic scenes and fairy tales featuring animals with human qualities.
On the island
Eight records
Dá-me o Braço, Anda DaíFavourite
It reminds me. Everything Portuguese ready. The best.
It reminds me of my grandfather and my playroom in Portugal when I was a little girl.
This reminds me of my father, because my father loved opera.
Gimme a Pigfoot (And a Bottle of Beer)
It reminds me of Vec dancing. He was such a marvellous dancer. And generally everybody dancing at the slade where they play this record, quite often at the hops.
I'm in the summer in Portugal. After dinner. And when we'd had quite a lot of wine to drink, we'd opened the windows to the terrace which surrounded the house, and danced.
This reminds me both of of earlier times going to cinema with my grandmother. and of painting these Disney pictures.
Dancing Cheek to Cheek by Fred Astaire reminds me of doing the Ostrich Women, because that we because we play that record quite often, Leela and I.
It's marvellous. It's about a party. And it has uh Sinatra and Bing in it, which I like both of them a great deal.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:30Are the stories you tell [in your paintings] about you, about what you're thinking and feeling?
I prefer not to have stories about me. They're usually something that happens outside myself. Sometimes they're stories about people I know, their experiences or their people you've met or experiences you've had. They are people whom I know quite intimately. And I turn them into characters and make stories up about them very often.
Presenter asks
3:40What have you been frightened of in your life?
Mostly of the dark. and of hearing footsteps. I mean, just scary things like that, like you're scared of when you're a child.
Presenter asks
9:50How did you feel then as a seventeen year old walking through the doors of the Slade Art School?
It was very existential. I mean, it was still existentialist then. And a life room you see, even going into the life room first of all, the first time I went to a life room and saw naked people in it. And they had a particular smell of naked flesh has a particular smell. And I was alarmed by this.
The keepsakes
The luxury
Presenter asks
15:07Did motherhood replace the creative urge in you, or did it suppress it, or did you carry on painting regardless?
It's got nothing to do with it. It's got they're quite different things. Of course I was very lucky because I had quite a lot of help with children. Um but when and then when I we came back to London to live, I worked when the children were at school. So it didn't stop me working.
Presenter asks
24:11Would you say that your painting has changed a lot since [your husband] died, and if so, how?
Well, the only way it's changed that it is that I use the model more now than I used to. I use the model all the time now. whereas before I did it from my head and from drawings. ... It's with your eyes. Focused out there and not inside yourself or inside your own head. I'm interested in looking.
“If you look the devil in the face. Then you're less frightened of him.”
“The view takes you outside, you see, and the studio is like an extension of your head anyway.”
“The memories, you see, they're all even the bad memories are good. You know, all memory is good.”