My Life in Art - Cally Trench
For this month’s My Life in Art, artist, Cally Trench, has kindly shared with us six artworks which represent her life and explained what they mean to her. Cally’s work includes board games, short films, books and drawings. Currently, she is working on a series of ‘Metamorphosis’ drawings in which her hands or feet are transforming into the wings of a bird or the leafy stalks of a tree. She exhibited with her brother, Nick Trench, at The Heseltine Gallery in the 2018 exhibition, Siblings Cannot Agree. Thank you Cally for sharing your life in art with us!
Girl With a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer (c. 1665)
Johannes Vermeer, Girl With a Pearl Earring, c. 1665, oil on canvas, 44.5 cm × 39 cm (Mauritshuis, The Hague)
Cally: This is, of course, one of the most famous paintings in the world, but until I was a teenager I believed that it was a portrait of my Great-Aunt Katherine. A framed reproduction of it hung on the sitting room wall of my mother’s small bungalow in West Drayton, next to an oil painting of my brother Nick (done, according to my grandmother, from a photograph by an itinerant artist). So perhaps it is not surprising that when my older brother Martin told me that the lady with the earring was my father’s deceased aunt, I believed him... until I discovered that my great-aunt figured on biscuit tins, tea caddies, and in art books. I still feel that there is a family resemblance.
Mumfie’s Uncle Samuel by Katherine Tozer (1939)
Katherine Tozer, Mumfie’s Uncle Samuel, 1939
Cally: I was never taken to an art gallery as a child, but my mother’s house was full of books. One of my favourites was Mumfie’s Uncle Samuel, written and illustrated by Katherine Tozer. The pictures were drawn in black line on white paper, with additional flat areas of two colours - pink and sky blue. With hindsight, the technical difficulties and expense of full-colour printing meant that illustrators had to find alternatives; at the time, I was mesmerised by the oddness of the colours - so unlike real life in the early 1960s - and I am still impressed by the economy and the effectiveness of flat colour and a limited palette.
Self-Portrait with Monkey by Frida Kahlo (1940)
Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Monkey, 1940, oil on canvas, 55.2 x 43.5 cm (Private Collection)
Cally: Many adults in the 1960s and early 1970s were keen to tell girls all the things that they couldn’t possibly be - a pilot, a surgeon, an architect, a vicar, Prime Minister... or a great artist. Entire books about artists mentioned no women. The Art History section of my Art O Level (‘Hogarth to Turner’) mentioned no women. It was a tremendous and joyous relief finally to be introduced (through the efforts of feminist art historians) to neglected but truly amazing women artists of the past, including Frida Kahlo. In a series of self-portrait drawings that I made two years ago, I tried to capture the same kind of direct stare - the look I give myself when I am on my own, when no one else is in the room.
Empire of Light (L'empire des lumières) by René Magritte (1953-4)
René Magritte, Empire of Light (L'empire des lumières), 1953-4, oil on canvas, 195.4 x 131.2 cm (Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York)
Cally: I had for many years a postcard of this painting (one of many similar paintings by Magritte). It combines a night-time scene with a daytime sky. It is both beautiful and strange, but I have sometimes noticed this surreal effect happening in real life around dusk. At one time I lived in a shared house and from my bedroom window I could see beyond the garden and through a gap between houses to a street lamp in the road behind. For short-lived moments of summer days, the street lamp lit up and lights came on in the houses while the sky still held some light from the day. It was as if this Magritte painting had come to life.
Hands of Marionette Player (Le mani del burattinaio) by Tina Modotti (1926)
Tina Modotti, Hands of Marionette Player (Le mani del burattinaio), 1926, gelatin silver print, 19 x 23.7 cm (Museum of Modern Art, New York)
Cally: Tina Modotti was an Italian-born photographer, who emigrated to the USA with her family as a teenager. She travelled to Mexico to work as a photographer, and there met and became friends with Frida Kahlo, and like her, was an activist as well as an artist. However, when I first saw this photograph, I knew nothing about her. I was just entranced by its brilliance: the way that the hands stand for the whole person and are a kind of portrait in themselves. Photography can be very problematic; it can turn a person into a spectacle, an object of touristic gaze, but Modotti gave the puppeteer both privacy and respect. This photograph was a direct inspiration of my series of 104 photographs of artists’ hands.
The Haunted Castle (from Six Fairy Tales from Brother's Grimm) by David Hockney (1969)
David Hockney, The Haunted Castle (from Six Fairy Tales from Brother's Grimm), 1969, etching (The David Hockney Foundation)
Cally: This etching, with its intense and varied mark-making, has been a continual inspiration for my own drawings in pen and ink. I love the courage of leaving so much cross-hatched space for sky, the depth of darkness in the shadow of the castle, and the mixture of romance and terror conjured up by the sheer sides and spiky turrets of the tower on its rock.
Why do you #LOVEArt?
Cally: I’m not sure that I do love art. I need art, both to experience and to make. Like air, light, water, food, home, friendship, peace and love, it is a necessity. It makes us human.
Read more #LOVEArt blog features from ‘My Life in Art‘ & more here.