Bread and Roses: Never Feel Guilty about Art Again!
Last year, I read the brilliant book 'Orwell's Roses' by Rebecca Solnit. I'm not sure how I came across it but things were feeling very 1984 with temporary Covid passports and I'd just started making the porcelain roses so it caught my eye.
In one chapter, she discusses a poem written in 1911 by the poet James Oppenheim, 'Bread and Roses' with a significant line:
'Yes, it is Bread we fight for—but we fight for Roses, too.'
'Bread fed the body, roses fed something subtler: not just hearts, but imaginations, psyches, senses, identities. It was a pretty slogan but a fierce argument that more than survival and bodily well-being were needed and were being demanded as a right.... “The right to live, not simply exist.”
Solnit, Rebecca. Orwell's Roses (p. 85-89). Granta Publications. Kindle Edition.
Basically, it’s an argument in the most poetic sense for the importance of beauty and art in life and I'm more than happy to indulge in that!
I created the Porcelain Roses solely for beauty, there was no other grandiose deep purpose other than, 'I want to, I enjoy them and they're beautiful.'
Because creating your art for no other reason than you want to, or feel called to, is what it means to be alive. People fought hard for that right and reading this book brings a new deeper meaning to having the privilege of time to stop and smell, or in my case, make the roses!
So the next time you feel any guilt about giving yourself the time and the luxury to create, remember, it can't all be about Bread - people fought for Roses too!
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ForM is by far my favourite group exhibition of the year to visit and I am honoured to have been one of artists involved in it this year.
If you missed the exhibition, here’s a round up.