The Herald - The Herald Magazine
Beauty...and the Beasts
HELEN Flockhart is talking to me about Beasts over a Zoom video call. As she does so, on my laptop, I’m feasting my eyes on a series of high resolution images of 27 works for her forthcoming exhibition of the same name. This is the way we art writers tend to roll in 2020, especially during 14 days of self-isolation.
The oil paintings are all destined for The Arusha Gallery in Edinburgh, where Flockhart had a hugely successful show in 2018 based around the life and times of Mary, Queen of Scots. Most of the new works have been painted since the start of the year; a period which has seen Flockhart, a graduate of the Glasgow School of Art, work throughout with her usual focus.
“As an artist, 2020 has not been insurmountable,” she says. “It was good to have the focus of this exhibition. I tend to work on small paintings at home and I was able to work through lockdown,” she explains. “The only problem was getting a hold of new art materials. When things eased off, I’d walk to my studio in Glasgow city centre and work on bigger canvases there.”
Creating a Helen Flockhart painting is a slow burn affair. She is usually working on two paintings at one time and says that, on average, a small painting takes around a month while a larger painting can take up to five months.
One of the largest paintings, Asterion, is just under two metres wide and a little over a metre high. Two figures bookend the canvas, which is dense with deep green foliage and dangling fruit. A red-haired woman in a flowing gown emerges from the undergrowth on the left-hand side of the painting. In the right hand bottom corner a small naked human figure with a bull’s head toys with a ball of twine. He is her son, Asterion, known as The Minotaur, a bull-headed monster born to Queen Pasiphae of Crete after she inadvertently coupled with a bull. It happens. In Greek mythology, anyway.
Our hero, The Minotaur, features heavily in Beasts, trapped in a swirling blood red Labyrinth from which there is no escape.
There is no mistaking a Helen Flockhart painting. Her attention to detail is microscopic but never clinical. Figures are marooned in spartan interiors or set within nocturnal landscapes heavy with foliage. There is very little interaction between figures, be they human, animal or even half man, half beast. The paintings are carefully plotted. They beg more questions than they ever answer. Her rich colour is seductive, as are the swathes of patterns – much of which stems from nature.
Many, but not all, her new paintings stem from Greek mythology, which has provided a rich seam of inspiration to artists for centuries. For this new work, she has been drawn to women who have been sorely used. Eve, in the Garden of Eden, being tempted by the serpent and St Enoch, mother of Glasgow’s patron saint, St Mungo both feature.
Flockhart said that she discovered after reading Gerda Stevenson’s poem, Teneu, that St Enoch – described as “Scotland’s first recorded rape victim” – was assaulted by a Welsh prince, Owain.
The painting, Weep Not My Sister, could be a viewed as a #MeToo moment in painting. A full moon floats in an inky black sky in the background as a flamehaired Teneu leans against a lone rock in a luminous green field, staring blankly at the viewer. Her dress has ridden up to reveal a white lace petticoat. The figure of Owain is partially obscured but a woman’s gown is visible – as is what is clearly a man’s bare leg. In the background of the field, a chorus of beasts with humanoid faces look on.
With titles such as Labyrinth, Daedalus and Icarus, Pallas Athena and Bacchant, time and time again, Flockhart returns to Greek mythology. Influences range from Renaissance greats such as Botticelli and Lucas Cranach the Elder to the 19th century French painter, JeanLéon Gérôme.
“In the case Queen Pasiphae’s lust for a Cretan bull,” she says, “one wonders how and why people came up with such stories. But I often come back to the thought that every monster was once a child. That’s why we are endlessly fascinated by these stories. They are a metaphor for human behaviour.”
Several times during our discussion, Flockhart mentions books which have triggered an idea which subsequently led to a painting. Madeleine Miller’s Circe and Natalie Haynes A Thousand Ships are two novels which have been filling up her head with imagery. “Sometimes a snippet that I remember reading in a book leads to a painting,” she says. “It suggests an image which coincides with another image bubbling up in my mind.”
“There’s a sentence in Sarah Perry’s novel The Essex Serpent in which character talks about wounding the main character, Cora, so that he could mend