The Agony and the Ecstasy

The artist didn’t like my artwork, and he didn’t hold back in telling me so. In front of a room full of my peers, he looked at it and said, “It’s so lacking in confidence that it exposes your own lack of belief in yourself…”

He carried on, but I heard nothing more, because the ground opened up and swallowed me whole.

I was 20 years old and an art student in Dublin. The man passing judgement was a visiting tutor from London – an artist of note – and, someone whose opinion carried weight. He had handed each of us a small square of paper and given us 15 minutes to draw whatever came into our heads. Afterwards, we had to pin our drawings to a board and stand by while he critiqued them.

I remember there was a storm raging outside. The wind battered the windows and the sky was heavy and dark, which is why I filled my square with thundering storm clouds.

When the time was up, I pinned my drawing to the board – and then came his storm. Fifteen minutes for me to create it, a few minutes for him to tear it apart. His words hit me hard.

I walked back to my bedsit burdened with self-doubt. I remember repeating the same words to myself over and over: “Why didn’t you just draw flowers?”

My head swam in a maelstrom of embarrassment, disappointment and distress. There was only one person I wanted to speak to, the one who could always put me back together again: my sister, Maria.

There was a payphone in the hallway, I had enough money to get through to Manchester and shout three familiar words down the line, “Call me back.”

Within seconds, Maria’s voice was there. By then, Maria had three small children and helped in her husband’s business. She had more than enough demands on her time, yet she always had time for me.

I sat crumpled on the floor and relayed the tutor’s words. I poured it all out as Maria listened patiently. Then, in her calm, reassuring way, she told me I was being over-sensitive, “He probably saw the lack of confidence in your drawing, and in a way, that’s a good thing,” she said.

Maria had a wonderful way of reaching for our beloved film characters whenever I was down, “Remember what Scarlet said,” she told me.

“Tomorrow is another day,” I answered.

And after speaking to Maria, it felt like it could be.

The following morning I did feel lighter. The visiting tutor’s time with us was over. I told myself I could leave his criticism behind and move on.

Then, later that day, I discovered something that astonished me. Despite the critique that floored me – he’d given me one of the best marks in class. As always, when I was convinced I wasn’t good enough, Maria helped me hold on long enough to discover that perhaps I was.

The years moved on, and with them there came a time when Maria began to doubt herself.

She began painting in her latter years. When she showed me her first painting, I had no idea that as a new passion was beginning to blossom within her, while her sense of herself and her place in the world was beginning to wilt.

The first paintings she showed me were full of life. Poppies – bright, buoyant and blooming with optimism. I was impressed and effusive in my praise. I loved the freshness and vitality in them. And what’s more, I thought they were commercially viable, the type of paintings people would purchase to enhance their walls. I was happy, I’d motivated Maria.

It was only after Maria’s death that her paintings began to reveal something else.

I found them everywhere – under beds, at the back of wardrobes, in the shed – as though she’d been leaving pieces of herself behind for me to discover. Her paintings had changed. The colours had darkened. The flowers that had once bloomed so freely were now imprisoned behind thick, heavily painted black lines. Looking at them now, I can’t help wondering whether Maria had been trying to express feelings she couldn’t put into words.

Maria’s paintings are my most treasured possessions. To me, they’re priceless. Not simply because she painted them, but because they speak to me. They are the closest I can come to hearing her voice again.

I no longer try to read or analyse them. I’m content to look at them and see Maria in every brush stroke: her light and darkness, her joy and pain, her struggles and triumphs.

Often when I look at them, I think of the film ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy.’ Because in her paintings, Maria left me both.