Feeding our creative hunger
HAVING JUST published my first novel, I finally understand the true joy of creativity. A late starter to writing books, I spent many years as an art dealer and collector alongside my mother, a veteran art connoisseur. All this time, I was immersed in a glittering universe of other people’s creativity, observing how artists’ interpretation of their surroundings was successfully translated on to canvas.
My visit to the studio of Mary Fedden, a Royal Academician, whose art I was continuously collecting, was a landmark moment. She welcomed me into her rustic, airy ‘‘Durham Wharf’’ studio in Chiswick, right on the bank of the Thames. The studio was overflowing with her props — ceramics and shells — and crowded with her paintings, most of them vivid, colourful still-life fruit and flowers, cats and coastlines, perched on easels and sideboards, and sat on the floor. They were deceptively simple, bright and clear-cut, and truly lit up the room.
I was in awe of this sprightly, 89-year-old, widowed artist, in her paint-spattered butcher’s apron. What was the mysterious source of that creativity which allowed her to see a different, brighter, happier world from the one we all perceive through indifferent, jaded eyes?
Sourcing and securing artists’ work and creating collections for collectors was hugely rewarding. But a nagging feeling remained that something was missing from my life. I envied the artists who, in my view, had real talent — expressed through their creativity on canvas or paper. Would I ever be able to achieve this?
Eventually, I did try, and put pen to paper to tell the story of my mother’s childhood experience in hiding in wartime Amsterdam. Excitedly, fired by the longing to tell her story, I wrote the dramatic opening paragraph, then suddenly stopped. It was impossible to continue. Delving back into this tragic history would be too painful. Seven years passed before I was ready to embark on the story properly, and a year later my debut novel, Two Prayers Before Bedtime was completed. But it had been a great challenge.
Writing faction — fiction based on a true story — had its limitations. You have to stick to the true-world script and do it sensitively so as not to offend real people. So the project hindered my creative and imaginative potential. That’s not to say it couldn’t be powerful or beautiful, just that I was forced to paint in a severely naturalistic style, rather than in the dramatic or expressionistic style in which it might have been fun to experiment. Nonetheless, the writing bug had bitten me. All that Dutch Holocaust history prompted me to tell another story for young adults — a fictional one, although based on true, historic facts. This time, I’ve really appreciated the freedom of telling a tale in my own style and structure, my own characters, my own plotlines, my own adventure, and above all, my own ending.
Recently, I went to a talk, given by Rabbi Moshe Levy of Chazak. He addressed around 50 women on a beautiful sunny Shabbat day. We were sitting in the garden, where he prompted us with a thought-provoking question: How are we feeding our souls? “Are you accomplished,” he asked. He didn’t mean are we successful in our careers but rather, on a more personal level, to what extent are we fulfilling our own personal ambitions?
The theory goes: the more we feed our souls with the accomplishments of our personal talents, the happier our lives will be. It was at that moment it came to me that, as challenging as writing can be, it’s also so very rewarding. So do I feel accomplished? Yes, absolutely.
The original meaning of ‘‘art’’ is ‘‘something made or fashioned’’. There’s a sense of achievement, of starting with an idea and concept and transforming it into a work of art, on to paper or canvas, for example, so that it can be shared with and understood by others.
Mary Fedden, my original artistic inspiration, celebrates her centenary this summer with an exhibition at Trinity House Gallery in the Cotswolds and London. Having lived to almost 97, she was the artist who came closest to making me connect to my own creativity, as I explored and connected with hers. Like her, I am trying to bring a story to life, simply and effectively, and hope the reader will be drawn to it.
The choice of every word is a little wonder — as Shakespeare says, the poet brings to life before us the forms of things unknown “and gives to airy nothing/A local habitation and a name”. Mary Fedden’s centenary exhibition, www.trinityhousepaintings.com
Inspired: Nadine with a ‘Fedden’