PASSIONATE AS EVER AT 80
AHEAD OF A TALK AND Q&A SESSION IN KILLORGLIN TO MARK CULTURE NIGHT, ARTIST PAULINE BEWICK TALKS TO MARISA REIDY ABOUT LIFE, LOVE & WHAT LIES AHEAD
HAVING made my way deep into the mountains near Caragh Lake, a radiant Pauline Bewick greets me at her beautiful home with a huge hug. Stunningly casual in cream leggings, ankle boots and a loose jumper over a silk blouse, it’s hard to believe this lady is 80 years old. I had the pleasure of meeting the renowned artist at a wedding earlier this year and I like to think we clicked. So to visit her studio and have a proper chat was something I was really looking forward to.
I didn’t tell Pauline on the day, but I know very little about art – or artists for that matter – but obviously I knew a lot about her. Like many, I’d heard and seen interviews and knew it was going to be a fascinating morning.
What I love about Pauline Bewick is that she is refreshingly honest. She is an open book and nothing is off limits – but not because she couldn’t give a damn what people think or is looking for a reaction, but because she believes it’s the right thing to do.
“There are so many times it’s so hurtful to tell people the truth but it’s worse by a thousand times to hold the truth because you’re holding a lie or living a falseness,” she says.
“So I face the music and say it. I just can’t live without being straight out”
One such controversial topic which she has always been honest about is having an abortion.
She tells me that she was only 16 years old and was not prepared to have a child. She was the child. She has spoken publicly about it previously and says she is amazed that she hasn’t received a bad reaction.
“What people said about that subject is that I normalised it by saying that every egg of a woman is a potential child and every sperm is a potential child and so you can’t be too sentimental about aborting a very early conception. That was my philosophy,” she said. “There hasn’t been a negative thing said about that and a friend of mine says maybe it’s because I made it so obvious. “
The conversation naturally turns to the issue of repealing the Eighth Amendment and Pauline is as blunt as you might expect.
“Oh I very much feel we should be in charge of our own bodies,” she insists
And not just when it comes to abortion. She is a strong advocate for euthanasia too and makes no apology for it.
“Equally I feel that we should be in charge of our own death. I would love euthanasia,” she says. “I would love to feel that when I’d lost all the joy of life that I could say, or they [her family] would say, ‘she’s lost it’. I definitely feel euthanasia should come.”
And with that, the topic changes again to her passion for work and I get the pleasure of seeing two of her very latest works and one she is still working on. They are typically striking Bewick pieces, but in somewhat of a new departure, they feature writing as well. Not bad for a woman with Dyslexia.
One, she explained, reflects herself in Kerry writing ‘spiels’ as she calls them, living in beauty but with cruelty all around.
“There’s sadness and beauty in it and she [the woman in the picture] has that expression on her face,” Pauline explained. “Basically, it’s what I feel here. I love it and yet I hear sadness and see that nature is cruel.”
She tells a great story about the ‘ help’ she gets with some of her works – from the most unlikely of sources. A story that reveals a side to the world-famous artist that not many would expect and one that proves she’s quite accepting of criticism, despite her unrivalled success.
“My housekeeper Betty and the postman Michael give me great help,” she says, nodding as if to convince me it’s true. “When I was painting this latest piece, Betty came in a said ‘what’s that quare thing up on the left hand corner?’ I looked at it and said, ‘yeah, it does look a little bit odd.’ Then I asked her if there was anything else wrong with it and she said ‘I think there’s too much blue in it.’ She’s amazing,” Pauline says, laughing.
“In the other painting, Michael told me there was too much flesh in it and he was so right, so I covered the flesh. I get great help from new eyes. Their by-the-way comments help me hugely.”
Pauline’s love of Kerry is very obvious, but then again she’s been here since she was just two and a half, when her mother Harry left Newcastle. She ran away from her husband, Corbett Bewick, who Pauline described as a ‘ terrible alcoholic’
Arriving in Stockfield in the North of England with two small children, Harry met a lady from Kerry who ran a hotel. The lady told her that she had a niece and nephew in Kerry who had been orphaned and suggested they run away there and foster the two children. That’s exactly what they did.
Although Pauline and her husband Pat lived in Dublin for some time, she always wanted to move back to Kerry to raise her children – which she did, daughters Poppy and Holly.
“I’d fallen in love with Kerry as a child so coming back was very important to me,” she said.
As we chat, Pauline’s husband Pat and his carer Seamus pass by outside – heading off on their daily walk she explains. She stares at them for a few seconds before telling me that Pat’s Alzheimer’s Disease is rapidly progressing. The situation makes her horrendously sad.
“Poor Pat, he’s 85 and has really reached the lowest now. He was sprightly when he was young but Alzheimer’s has hit him. It’s so sad and I feel so sad for him,” she said. “It can go in swings. At first it was almost fun because he would be so witty. He always made a funny comment so we all enjoyed him. It was a very happy household. But now, it’s at another stage. It’s very lonely because that closeness with Pat is gone. He used to read aloud to me and we would discuss so many things. It was terrific.
“To see him sitting opposite me having breakfast and the real Pat has completely left, it’s like a shell sitting there. I don’t cry very often but I did two nights ago when I realised he really is going now. It’s horrible for him and for all of us.”
While she has no problem admitting that she is a ‘rotten minder’ she says she shows her responsibility by providing him with the best of care.
“But we are always near each other and I never take my foot off the pedal. If I have to leave, I make sure he is looked after. Maybe it’s guilt, maybe it’s not guilt. It’s a funny kind of love. I’m selfish, but I’m as kind as I can be.”
She tells me about a conversation she had with Pat that very morning, when she asked him to metaphorically pick one of four doors he could go through – one leading to Heaven and another leading to his life exactly as it is now. He chose the ‘now’ door, which fascinated Pauline.
“He’s in pain, sometimes distressed and confused, yet he chose the now door. I’d go into the Heaven door, wouldn’t you?” she asked.
I suggested that perhaps Pat would rather be here as he is rather than have to leave her behind. She seemed quite content with the idea.
We began talking about her dad again and she revealed that she’s not 100 per cent sure if Corbett Bewick was actually her biological father.
Her mother, she revealed, made love to another man who called to their house in England having heard there was a house for sale nearby, so that man could also be her dad.
Amazingly, she never longed to find out but says there are too many similarities between her and the Bewicks for Corbett not to be her dad.
He died in a home for alcoholics in England and when she and some family members went to visit his grave in England lately she was saddened to find that he had no headstone. She is now designing a headstone for him which she kindly showed me. He would be proud I think.
“The poor man, whether he was my father or not he deserves a gravestone,” she said.
Having discussed everything from religion to Donald Trump and Barack Obama to a memorable visit to her home by Sinead O’Connor, we somehow get chatting about fame and what it means. Pauline does not understand it, nor does she want to.
“I don’t get it at all and it comes as a surprise if someone says ‘are you Pauline Bewick?’ because I totally don’t bother with it,” she says. “I witness famous people all the time and I think that fame is terribly destructive to people. They are such escapists. Such marvellous people - what is it that’s wrong with them? There’s something awful about fame. If you take fame on board as something you want and must get it’s pathetic.”
For such an acclaimed artist whose work is known around the globe, Pauline says her one regret is that she wasn’t more academically minded
“If nature had given me a clearer brain that would take in education, that would have been great,” she said. “If someone tells me history I don’t take it in. I forget what yesterday held. I just don’t remember. I live so much in the present it’s to a fault, but at the same time I like the fact that I let things just flow out of my head. I love that.”
Clearly content with the life she has been blessed with, what lies ahead for Pauline Bewick?
“I’m hoping my healthy living will keep me going maybe another 10 years because I’ve got so much excitement in me and so much to do,” she says. “What I feel coming is something related to Alzheimer’s. I think I have something to say there. I haven’t formalised it yet but I think it’s going to come. It’s so much part of what I’m living so it must come out somewhere.”
Here’s hoping, because what an incredible lady to have in their corner!