Observables #59

on artist mentors, pleather skirts and vampires in the shadows

My guest writer today is Natalie Davey. She’s a writer, educator and co-host of the Reframeables podcast. For academia she researches and writes about education, narrativity and care. Some of her words can be found in Chatelaine, Teach Magazine, and more on her website.

What I’m reading is often connected to what I’m writing about. Of late that has been female artists like Rosa Bonheur and Hilma Af Klint. I first wrote about Bonheur back in university. But as is the way with retrospective self-analysis, I did not know at 20 that she would be one of the first in my career-long search for female mentors. Only recently, when I wrote about my emotional response to stumbling upon one of her paintings in Paris so many years ago, did I make the mentoring link. She painted her connection to the land and to the people around her, along with her personal losses with such clarity that I cried standing there in front of her cows. In the years since, I’ve had many students cry with me and here’s what I know now: emotions are big when one feels seen.

Hilma Af Klint is another mentor artist I did not know I needed until I was asked to join the Who ARTed podcast for a conversation about her work. Doing a deep dive into her past, I read of a deeply spiritual inclination that impacted how she painted. She was an artist so in tune with her body and ahead of her time that, according to stipulations made in her will, she ensured her paintings would remain hidden from public view for 20 years after her death. She didn’t trust her peers to understand her abstract work and placed her hope in future generations instead.

This week I intend to channel Af Klint’s forward thinking vision and self-assured confidence in the value of what I create! I will also tap into Bonheur’s attuned attention to life as it happens in my everyday. Thank you, mentors.

What a Human Being Is, Hilda Af Klint, 1910

What We Do in the Shadows is my new favourite escape. I love British humour (I mean I married a Manc!) and this show is filled with exactly that: self-deprecating, off-beat, wry humour about a group of Vampires who live in Staten Island. Fun fact: the series was filmed in Toronto so it’s fun to spot places like Humber’s Lakeshore campus in the midst of the ridiculous mockumentary storyline. This show has made me laugh out loud – full on guffaws – and that takes a lot for me and my world-weary spirit. Disney+ wins again with a very un-Disney show.

This skirt from Coal Miner’s Daughter – a store I love to walk to because a) it’s close to home and b) they do good things for the world beyond selling pretty clothing.

Check out their website to see initiatives they are connected to. It just makes sense that for a Reframeables photoshoot I’d wear something from CMD. Socially conscious self-help encapsulated in a 50s style pleather skirt!

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