TREVOR SOUTHEY - EXCERPTS FROM RECONCILIATION

 

Africa and the Africans are part of my spiritual fibre. I am, in fact, white - British colonial by direct cultural experience. But African people surrounded me. I started portraying Africans and their environs when I was still a boy. I believe that as I internalized the sounds of the native languages, although I never learned them much, I also internalized a sense of their natural beauty: the generosity of their features, the lithe easy way of movement, and all the variety of their colour - some a blue black like the patina of living bronze sculpture, some a chocolate brown, some a creamy ochre.

Johnny Chapinga, the cook and housekeeper, was of this last colour - maybe basic to his Makaranga tribe. He had a lovely lift to the corners of his eyes hinting of some distant incursion by, perhaps, Asian traders. But what do I know of African history or anthropology? Precious little. Ignorance is not bliss. It is cruel. My homeland did not practice such a virulent form of segregation as that inspired by religion. But racism was still part of my environment, albeit ill defined, thinly disguised as benevolent. Nanny, William, Johnny, and others helped to break it in my heart and life.

I tended to relate to them in an "inappropriate" way. Fraternizing, the strict white people called it. Why did I fracture this mold? Maybe it was because part of my generation was already awakened to the reality of black people in a manner that my parents were not. Maybe it was because my father tended to "fraternize" in an inappropriate way too. He genuinely cared for William especially when the latter needed a little extra cash for beer night - Dad liked his "spots" too. He and William would always play a little teasing game. The servant/master thing was still there but also a connection deeper than the prohibitions that society would normally allow. I remember the night when William woke my wife and me when we were visiting home in 1970 so that we could drive his wife, she in heavy labour, to hospital.



I learned well that the essence of a happy life was the traditional family. My own family was intrinsically a very happy one with an easy tradition. Our parents were under-educated but thoughtful. In no way were we ever abused. They seemed to have a kind of tried and accepted intimacy between themselves.

I was well trained in the nature of romance by a scant association with Shakespeare and much wider one with the cinema and the pulp romantic novel, but mostly by my culture. Accommodation and compromise, forgiveness and a blind eye were the tools of marriage as I knew it, but there was also the assumption of a familiar love. That condition seemed to be the case for my parents. But as their later years demonstrated, time invested through difficult days paid off in a closeness which lasted into years of retirement, until my father died a few months short of their fiftieth wedding anniversary.

But I knew I must find a companion, some fine woman who would be one with me through all eternity. Deliberate seeking had proven useless. Then one day I met Elaine. She had a wide and generous face, a smile of perfect teeth with large eyes, clear and certain. We immediately related in a most vital and extraordinary way, sharing ideals and hopes in an openness rare on the first date, and this was really a non-date. We slipped quickly into the decision to marry. I was certain of her but not certain I should marry, haunted by my reality which denied romance for me. My children were, as babies, and are now, as adults, a consuming passion for me. I cannot imagine life without them. Sadly, by the time our last child was born, my capacity to suppress my nature was so diminished that our life together was already threatened. Doubts about religion were now coupled with resentment at its condemnation of what I perceived to be my natural way. But a whole succession of works related to the family and parenthood flowed from me then and even after our divorce. And in spite of Elaine's suffering, she was blessed with a peculiar strength, which made it possible for us to perpetuate a kind of family life.

My hunger for the traditional family was and is part of my paradox. Now I see a vision of a wholly different family embracing its unusual children with joy, as well as those who weave traditional patterns. It is a family of extraordinary tolerance and vision filled with wonder at the uniqueness of each individual. It gasps only a little at differences, demanding no adherence to a strict pattern of normalcy. Its only demands are love, delight, surprise, courtesy, civility, discipline and above all tolerance.



There was something about the vision of Mormonism which resonated with me immediately: the sense of a community set apart, the handsome, sweet missionaries with their squeaky clean personae, theory of eternity, purpose, and centeredness. But there were queer things too: a prophet named Smith, An American church claiming ancient origins; an odd, to me unappealing, new volume of scripture.

Dismissing those responses as prejudice I allowed my euphoria within the bosom of the saints full bloom. I quickly learned that I could hide almost happily here. If I were to simply act the role, marry and settle down, it would all be fine. Practice would make me "perfect." Very importantly, this new religion also gave a focus for the core of my work, which had previously only vaguely made itself present. Work flowed freely and joyfully from me. These early works were made in Africa before I really came face to face with the doctrinal and ecclesiastical limitations. There is a liberty to these paintings which gradually fades once I am inculcated into the "valleys of the mountains" in Utah. I love their earthy, innocent exultation.

In the works which started before I ever came to America, and in those evolving in 1966 and thereafter, I found myself visualizing, with a sweet naiveté, ideas of eternal life, life experience, family and death in a super-human dimension. I blithely ignored the raised eyebrows at the nudity in my work, convinced that only with this timeless, natural, and well-proven device could I express my enthusiasm for the ideas of the faith. I did not know the extent to which I was also being true to myself in a core sense. The Plan, a contemplative cluster of family, emphasizes that ideal with its heroic figure of death and finally the triumphant couple in resurrection, welcoming the bloodied moon which heralds the second coming of sacrificial Lamb. All this was lost on those I hoped to inspire. "Depressing," "dark," and "psychedelic" were just a few of the damning adjectives I heard.

Apart from actual content through figures and symbols, what impact did the church actually have on my form? Of course it is hard to say. But it is possible that formal inclinations evident prior to my conversion were diminished in importnace. Although the basic reality of my representation of the human figure remains much the same in spite of its fragmentation at times, and is essentially real in the academic way, I instinctively use abstract elemenst and color independently of reality.

It made itself most known in my work. Even that work long preserved within the seeming sanctity of a subject like the traditional family would reflect that shunned part of my being. Works done innocently, once they were complete still held the whole truth within them. Perhaps no painting revealed that more clearly than Prodigal. Often while I refused to acknowledge this, others could read it quite clearly. Prodigal was conceived from Jesus' parable of reconciliation and familial love. I feared the sensuality of this work, and indeed, it was gently declined by the clients. At its conception and execution, that sensuality was naive and even innocent, as were the deeper implications of content. Other works follow as a celebration of this new personal "home,' this integration, the comfort of finally being one within oneself and one within a new society. Some of these images are almost embarrassingly overt, though that was by no means my intention.

There was not any abrupt surgical transition. I pined for something organic, which would be as little damaging as possible. Love for my family was not confused, but rather seen with absolute clarity through the terrible dilemma facing me. Trembling on the brink, back and forth I went. So did my work. I had a model come to the studio. Working directly from life on the plate (unusual for me), I made this sketch which I later called Softening. Even for an optimist, however, this is a moment of truth, the softening of a heart, the breaking of the bondage of ignorance and wantan, careless living. But it was the gesture and the box I uncounsciously placed around the figure which to me are the most telling. This is a soul awakening. This is a soul breaking free of self-imposed imprisonment.

In the works which started before I ever came to America, and in those evolving in 1966 and thereafter, I found myself visualizing, with a sweet naiveté, ideas of eternal life, life experience, family and death in a super-human dimension. I blithely ignored the raised eyebrows at the nudity in my work, convinced that only with this timeless, natural, and well-proven device could I express my enthusiasm for the ideas of the faith. I did not know the extent to which I was also being true to myself in a core sense. The Plan, a contemplative cluster of family, emphasizes that ideal with its heroic figure of death and finally the triumphant couple in resurrection, welcoming the bloodied moon which heralds the second coming of sacrificial Lamb. All this was lost on those I hoped to inspire. "Depressing," "dark," and "psychedelic" were just a few of the damning adjectives I heard.

The most directly confrontational image of this period, Birthing, is shocking for me in its sensuality and directness, considering I was still in Alpine, still craving to be part of my Eden dream and my beloved family. But at last, emotionally exhausted, I could no longer beat back that fundamental part of my soul, my homosexuality. Here I welcome it home. I was also beginning to accept that art history is replete with artists of any sexual persuasion who struggled to suppress their impulses, who linked ideal beauty to emotional hunger, even while basking in great spiritual and and religious subject matter. This complex phenomenon is rarely more apparent to me than in the work of my revered Michelangelo.


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