How To Be Both

Ali Smith's superb prose has a kind of postmodern - modernist edge that sometimes makes me think of Virginia Woolf. Her subject matter, however, is always pertinent to contemporaneous cultural, political and societal issues. The novels are allusive and intense but also with a fantastic lightness of touch. The books often display an intense interest in paintings and the history of art and there are close readings of paintings within the novels. This helps to make the books very interesting to work with from a perspective of making paintings.

2016: Acrylic on canvas, 150 x 50 cm

photo: Stuart Conway.

Ali Smith - How to be both

How to be Both is a dual narrative: one strand of which concerns a bereaved teenager in present-day Cambridge and the other is about Francesco del Cossa, a fifteenth century fresco painter. A del Cossa altarpiece in the National Gallery links the two narratives which also merge in many other ways concerning the nature of time, art, grief and gender. The background of my painting is an abstracted nod to this del Cossa painting - with a corraline stripe in an azure sky echoing the fantastical clouds common to such altarpieces. Apparently two versions of the text were published, with differing narratives appearing first. For this reason, in my painting the two stories begin at either end of the canvas and merge in the middle. The painting can be hung either way up.

How To Be Both detail, photo: Stuart Conway.

How To Be Both detail

How To Be Both detail