Prosecco, Klezmer and sun at Wilton's Private View!

Invitation to my Wiltons Cafe Private View

Israel Continued up North

Danny, I paint him in a Kibbutz he, my dad and I stayed at on our journey up north. It was called Lavi, had about 1500 members, a hotel, furniture factory and farm. The 3 of us sit drinking mint tea before bed.
Danny's wife, Yafa, one of her many grandsons and her daughter (I'm afraid I forgot both their names!) at Danny's son's military ceremony. She is an extremely warm and positive lady. We later spoke in the car about her love of theatre, the Yiddish language and children (hers especially which she has 9 of)
Many Israelis sat in the outdoor amphitheatre watching the pomp and ceremony, military band and sing the national anthem. It felt strange and had very mixed emotions. I was moved by the collective spirit but saddened that it had to be focused around war. It exemplified the complexities of life in Israel.






We visit Ruth, Danny's aunt and Miriam's only sister who lives in Haifa on the West coast. She two seems to have lived a difficult life too but one very different from Miriam's. Because of her age at war time in Berlin she managed to emigrate straight to Israel as opposed to Miriam who was younger and had to go on the Kinder transport to London. It seemed like it was this point that Ruth and Miriams lives changed and in some ways led them to lead very separate lives away from each other. Even to this day Ruth does not visit the family in Jerusalem very often. She is creative and makes dresses and stitched fabric collages. She seems resourceful, makes do. Vivacious like her sister but a lingering sadness and nervousness peers out after spending a hour or so with her. We talk of the family, shows more photos of my great grandfather. She speaks a mix of German, English and Hebrew so we can all understand.

Meeting my Jewish cousin

Second Cousin Miriam (Bock) Spielman 22/02








This afternoon I arranged to meet Miriam at her flat she shares with her husband of 62 years, Pinchas. Both are in their late 80s. It is in a retirement home housed in an old hotel 10 mins from the centre of Jerusalem. They are both very active and vivacious people even in their late eighties with a huge family and greatly respected
within their community.They hold barmitzvahs
as well as doing alot of charity work.

I tell her about my recent visit to Berlin. I tell her about the house I visited there and painted which I hoped was her grandfather Jacob Bock's. It turns out it was! She lived in 34 Zeitenstrasse for some years with him, her mother Frida and older sister Ruth. It was given as a wedding present to her by her father. Miriams story is bitter sweet, filled with sadness but also incredible optimism and faith. She is deeply religious and we talk at length about each of our views on it. In fact during the meeting I am so overwhelmed by the questions she asks me about my beliefs and my upbringing I can't focus on the painting. She sees her life and religion as one. She cannot conceive of not having family. She is mother to 3 children and Grandmother/Great Grandmother to over 40 grandchildren! Its a revelation and so alien to my upbringing as only child. We look through albums which I later show to my father. He's never see a picture of his Grandfather Jacob Bock or his father when he is younger. We both come to terms with these new discoveries.

In Israel

My visit to Israel with my father, Jack, has so far taken us to Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and tomorrow up north to the Golan heights and onwards. We are 7 days into our travels to meet our relatives, Miriam and Pinchas Spielman (my second cousins) and to learn more about the life and history of Israel. Perhaps its ambitious to do all this in 10 days! However it is also somehow a symbolic gesture of marking the death of my grandmother and to reconnect with a place we both, at different times, only touched the surface of. My father came here 50 years ago and me with my grandma 14 years ago.

Shabat (Friday's Sabbath) at the infamous Western Wall in Jerusalem


There was something very mesmerizing about seeing all these people praying (some in deep rapture) together. The haunting sounds of the muslim call to prayer mixed with Christian church bells and Jewish singing and praying created a scene unparalleled to anywhere I'd experienced before. The Western wall is the most holy of places in the world for Jews yet it is just a wall. It is location that makes it so Holy. Walls are a huge theme in the history of this place. Certain walls are considered holy, some walls divide religions or nations but others have also protected and supported communities.

Some of our time here has been expertly guided by Miriam's son, Daniel. He's given us an overview of Jewish history and Israel's history (no small task!!) which we are still both trying to take in and remember. Miriam's family are orthodox Jews and to our amazement their immediate relations amount to over 80! Daniel has 9 children and has brother has 12. We hope to go to one of Daniel's son's 1st year graduation from the army on wednesday evening.
Today I will meet his mother Miriam, to discuss her memories of her family both in pre war Berlin and her evacuation from there and how this led her moving to Israel Israel.


The sun, med sea and towering hotels of Tel Aviv where we both caught the unseasonably hot sun

New Pieces at a show in The Rag Factory 09/09

Last weekend I exhibited two new watercolour paintings at The Rag factory off Brick lane and included an ongoing piece illustrating stories and symbols connected with my family history.

SWEDISH FAMILY 08/09

Photograph of my great
grandmother Ella
her father Gustav and her first son Johan
taken by her husband Emil about 1920,





These ongoing posts are writings, paintings and drawings from my recent trip to Sweden to meet and document my family. They offer a small window into the thoughts, stories and history of the family and some things each relative shared with me during my stay. All the portraits here are painted from life using watercolour on paper. This is apart from the black and white water colour copies of old photographs.



Lena Spindler my mother, sister of Janne and daughter of Stig Spindler and Britta Alin. Moved away from Sweden in the late 60's to France to seek out a different life away from the contraints of family. Being the younger sister left to live with her parents, she bore the brunt of her parents crumbling relationship and her father's alcoholism. I paint her in Ireland after my journey to Sweden where she built a small house with her second husband Peter. It is a spiritual home in many ways for her and where I was born. Exposed to the natural elements from sea, wind, rain around the house she grows a blossoming garden. I find her difficult to paint. She is notoriously so.. A chamelion like changability in her face, she says friends sometimes often don't recognise her in the street. An astrologer, interior designer (internal as well as external as as she likes to put it) Great with colours, balance and a wonderful, effortless cook.

Janne Spindler is my mother's brother. 12 years older then her. A carpenter and was a salesman. He has built his own houses, makes his own art work which is installed a his Gallery in the basement of his house outside Stockholm.. A storyteller, a funny man, entertainer, has a philosophy all his own.Janne's House which is both Bed and breakfast and has stables for his wife Boel's horses. The right side was a train guards house and Janne copied it and built a replica on the left.

Although I never properly met Stig his father, my grandfather, I could tell his vibrant sometimes troubled spirit flows strongly in the memory of his immediate family. Janne has many funny and sad stories to tell about his father Stig's exploits and misadventures. A charismatic character.. he could sell anything! He worked as travelling Salesman selling woman's underwear and in an ironic twist later in his life ended up selling manure. Janne's says his life would make a great film. He loved entertainment, drinking (alot..too much) eating out, he hosted cabaret evenings with friends.

Below his unusual basement Gallery with his art work and one of his sculptures 'Nature's spine'. Made from a found piece of pine, painted black and white. Seashells he found in ireland with different coloured nipples painted on them are stuck on round plywood boards framed with nautical rope. Painted swedish text across it reads 'Det ar Brost' (These are breasts) Typical Spindler humour but unusual it its form!

He tells me originally he wanted the gallery to be a casino with topless girls as croupiers...he said it was 50% joke - 50% reality. We both laughed about how it could bring in more vistors then there are now for his gallery!


Annette Spindler, Janne's daughter from his first marraige. My cousin. She has a daughter Frederica and a brother Goran who both invited me to dinner at her house.








Bobritta is 92. She was wife to Bosse Spindler (deceased), Stig's brother. Bobritta is Janne's aunt inlaw and is close to him. Once a vivacious and charismatic character. Another storyteller who loved to tell stories about the family and knew my great grandparents somewhat. She found a 'boyfriend' of similar age in the same care home when she was 90! He died a week before I came and as a result she was a changed woman from when I last met her at her 90th birthday. She used to make all her own clothes. She remembered me and spoke some english and while i experimented with my swedish. A photograph of her and her man lay in a plastic sleeve on her zimmerframe so that she could look at it often. She points to him and smiles. She is on good form today but doesn't speak too much. She likes unexpected guests.


Magnus is Bobritta's son and lives in Trolldalen an island in stockholm's archipeligo. He has three children with his wife Kirsten. He very kindly took me to see his mother at the care home and then invited me back to his house for Chinese with the family. I ask if can paint him after dinner. His twin daughters are very warm and talk about finishing high school, making jewery and heart throb actors. a

Magnus' father Bosse and uncle Stig used to sail together and he showed me a trophy they won for a sailing competition when they were young.

Johan Spindler is Neene Spindler's son. Neene is Magnus' brother











Olle Alin is my grandmother Britta's brother. I visited him and his partner Olle Britt. Olle is 94 but is still very engaged, full of ideas and creative energy.
While I painted we talked about many different things. Painting, travelling with his brother Frederik who was a butler on a millionaire's boat. Olle was employed by this man as a sculptor for his house in the Bahamas. He also used to sing in the Royal Swedish choir to the King and Queen of Sweden and in Finland. Olle draws, paints, plays piano, has built his own summer house, was a toom stone carver amongst others things. But his art seems always to be done as a way of life. He will illustrate memories of himself as a child and give them as a present to his grandchild. He tells me when he and his brother were young they found a revolver while digging under a tree at the bottom of his garden. His illustration is alive and full of the energy they must have felt at the time. In this way Olle records his memories His flat and his daughters places all bare pictures like this. Of day to day life or more delicate piantings of cityscapes or nature. In addidition to these he draws and paints fantasy pictures. Plucked straight from his imagination and completely his own creation. There is this honestly and simplicity of expression in his work that really inspires me.




Marianne Alin 1st daughter of Olle













Suzanne Alin,
2nd daughter of Olle.

Musings in Ireland

Rain and mist swath the view of the coastline from the cottage overlooking the atlantic sea here in west cork. A lot has happened over the last few weeks and this week in Ireland has given me time to reflect, gather myself for london life and see how to progress with this project. Two weeks ago my grandmother died and shortly after her son, my father, suffered from a serious heart problem. I broke off my stay in Sweden to return to london for Inge's funeral. Despite the emotional upheaval it caused for us and especially for my father, it gave me a further push to explore the family history. Someone said to me once that 'when an old person dies its like a library burning down'. This is more and more poignant to me as I gather small pieces of information here and there about the family through speaking with relatives. I think of some of my family who have died and the wealth of stories they must have carried with them to the grave. It saddens me. However it reaffirms my feeling that history is how the teller tells it. The stories remembered by others and how they interpret them are what make memories and myths live. A 'red thread' from one person to another. Is it possible to express this catalytic process visually? This is a key question i have in regards to how much or how little I document my impressions of the family. The possiblities are endless. I painted my grandma Inge's funeral from memory the next day on the train ride to Berlin.


It felt liberating to trust my own memory, to not worry if the details were absolutely correct. Does this matter? Do I make records from memory or pure observation? So far I have done both but always with the hope of capturing some truth whether emotional (how the person I am painting is feeling) or 'factual' (where or how they live)....
TLB

On the rails

A very long series of train journeys yesterday leaving london at 7.53am and arriving in Lund, Sweden at 2.24am! It was day full of peculiar little events and things you only notice when the environment feels foreign. A woman got mugged on my train, I had my palms read (apparently I'm going to very very wealthy at 40... quite a while to wait then!), met and drew a portait of a child soap actor and now kipping the night in a strangers house. I await to see what the next day brings!
TLB

Journey to Sweden

I'm leaving tomorrow to travel by train to Sweden. I'll be meeting my family out there and drawing/painting/writing as much as I can during our meetings but also recording my experiences of them and the places they live. There is something daunting but also very exciting about trying to collect my family history without camera or audio recorder. Somethings I am told I will undoubtably forget while other moments will stick in my memory or on the paper.... what will these be? I very much look forward to meeting my Granduncle, Olof Alin, who is 92 now and has some clear memories of his upbringing and family. The thought that perhaps this may be the last time I meet him is a powerful drive for me.

I imagine this trip will force me to listen, to look and to trust my senses more than usual!
I hope to update my blog as much as I can throughout this trip
over and out
TLB

SITESHOW and The Last Bock

My woodcuts reacted well with the natural light from the windows, highlighting the gold leaf
I drew a charcoal line directly on the rough unfinished walls between the pieces and wrote notes. It was a completely spontaneous idea but in doing it, gaves me ideas of how to express the personal narrative connecting these pieces.

The charcoal line goes out the window directed to my mural outside


Work in progress on The Last Bock

Characters/symbols connected with family stories fill spaces left by knots in the wooden wall. My thumb print starts to emerge
Unfortunately I ran out of time to fill the whole wall. However I found the process of creating a piece of work on site was really exciting. I was able to talk to visitors about my work and family history. I recieved very positive reactions and often quite emotional responses in relation to experiences within individual's family.
Photos by Natasha Taylor

SITESHOW EXHIBITION

Thank you to all those who made it to my last exhibition at the Rag Factory and for those that didn't here is another chance to see what I've been up to and this time its free to get in! I'm showing some woodcuts and will be painting live in SITESHOW @ Little Venice (Warwick Avenue tube ).

SITESHOW is a pop up gallery that takes over building sites for several days and this time its in a 4 floor house in Little Venice. When you arrive at Warwick Avenue Station walk towards the canal. Hang left. 9 Blomfield Road is two or three blocks.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=Blomfield+Road%2C+London%2C+United+Kingdom

The best time to come is on Saturday between 12pm and 7pm

I look forward to seeing you very soon
Will

More info:

www.siteshow.co.uk

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=87679993251