A Personal Calligraphy

Copyright © 2000, 2013 by Mary Pratt.

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). To contact Access Copyright, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call 1-800-893-5777.

Edited by Laurel Boone.

Cover: Pomegranates for a Celebration, 1995, oil on canvas, 76.2 x 50.8 cm,

collection of Kathleen Mitchell.

Frontispiece: Cherries Ripe, 2000, woodcut, 42.6 x 61 cm (studio shot).

Photography by Ned Pratt, with the exception of pages 30, 39 and 122

by Tom Moore and studio shots by Mary Pratt.

Cover and interior design by Julie Scriver.

eBook development: WildElement.ca

Cataloguing data available from the Library and Archives Canada.

Issued in print and electronic formats

ISBN 978-0-86492-316-5 (bound). — ISBN 978-0-86492-792-7 (epub).

Goose Lane Editions acknowledges the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF), and the Government of New Brunswick through the Department of Tourism, Heritage, and Culture.

Goose Lane Editions

500 Beaverbrook Court, Suite 330

Fredericton, New Brunswick E3B 5X4

CANADA

www.gooselane.com

This book is dedicated to

my sister Barb and her husband George

for laughing with me

and to

my husband Christopher and my children

for not laughing at me.

The love, respect and generosity I receive

from them all is exceptional

REPRODUCTIONS

Cherries Ripe (2000)

Dessert Table (1997)

Points of Lemon (1998)

Barby and John (1998)

Reflections of Oranges (1996)

Green Grapes and Wedding Presents with Half a Cantaloupe (1993)

Light Lunch (1994)

Pomegranates and a Knife (1999)

Sun Filling Child’s Rocking Chair (1997)

Lupins in Christopher’s Burned Studio (1996)

Marble Cake (1998)

Ginger Ale and Tomato Sandwich #1 (1999)

Late Supper (1997)

Plums on Styrofoam (1997)

Bowl’d Doultons (1998)

Preparations for Plum Jam (1994)

Yellow Bench in Garden (1998)

Floating in a Pink Bowl (1997)

Water, Spout and Cut Melon (1996)

Big Spray at Lumsden (1996)

Study for Fire with Blue Smoke (1996)

Bananas by the Sea (1996)

Balancing Oranges (1996)

Pears II (1998)

Cherries in the Garden (1998)

Jellies for Thanksgiving (1994)

Pomegranates for a Celebration (1995)

Chocolate Birthday Cake (1997)

Self Trussed Turkey (1995)

Sunday Dinner (1996)

Glass House (1995)

Peonies in Red Glass, Fredericton (1995)

CONTENTS

A PERSONAL CALLIGRAPHY

THREADS OF RECOGNITION

THE FEEL OF THINGS

A PERSONAL CALLIGRAPHY

A visual artist is born with a desire to find what is right, what is perfectly pleasing to the eye and brain and sense of textures — design, rhythm, etc. To find intellectually — to find sensuously — to find a personal calligraphy.

— November 20, 1994

WHEN I WAS A CHILD I wanted to write a book. I decided I’d call it Those Who Go Down to the Sea in Ships. I knew very little about the sea, having only waded along the sandy beaches of Cavendish or trembled at the base of the flowerpots at Hopewell Cape, terrified that the distant sea would come roaring over the long stretch of wet mud and drown me before I had a chance to climb up the wooden stairs to the safety of the top step. As for ships, I knew them only from paintings or photographs. The St. John River did not boast a fleet of sailboats, and I was warned never to even try to step into a canoe — Dangerous, tippy things. My mother, who had spent her teens paddling up and down the river, knew its estuaries well and had fished from its islands, must have had to bite her tongue as my father refused to let me venture along waterways she had so enjoyed. Whatever the reasons, my father believed his daughters should stay in their own back yard and behave themselves. I was aware that this lack of experience was limiting. I could never really know about very much — except flowers and lawns and the games we could play amid such domestic confines.

Every time I tried to write, I found I had to imagine everything because I knew so little. Nevertheless, I seemed to need to write. My cousin Jean Brown had moved to New York, where she had studied briefly at the Julliard School, but she preferred to work at Radio City Music Hall, arranging music stands for the likes of Portia White or Perry Como. She also sang in a trio in various off-Broadway clubs. She was all glamorous success to me, and I worshipped her. When she came to Fredericton to visit her parents, she treated me with great respect. She told me I should write down sunsets and send these descriptions to her so she could imagine she was back in Fredericton while she read them in the subway on her way to work.

The image of Jean reading a letter from me in a New York subway was seductive. I began to write to her — describing, not only sunsets, but beautiful boys who played the piano in music festivals, my own dreary attempts to learn Debussy, my first reading of music from The Desert Song and my subsequent reading of The Sheik.

Gradually I realized that I couldn’t share everything with her — that some things had to be kept exclusively my own. Finding me writing at my desk one evening, my aunt Marjorie asked me if I wrote much. I said that I did, but that I couldn’t write a book. Then what do you write? she asked. I answered that I wrote down things that would remind me of how I was thinking when I was ten years old, just so that, when I got old, I’d be able to read it all and know what kind of a person I’d been when I was a child. She subsequently became interested in my progress and a great friend.

None of these writings remain. My mother, despairing at my very untidy bedroom often just threw things away. I remember very little about these early journals except that I complained frequently about classmates. I was never self-conscious about my writing. I wrote endless essays, sonnets and all the romantic stuff that young teenagers believe is reality. Once, after having been obliged to leave my father’s old home in Coles Island, where I’d been visiting my cousin Joanie and exulting in barns full of hay and kittens and swallows, I wrote with romantic sincerity, If I die, cut open my heart, and on it you will find written — ‘She wanted to marry a farmer.’ Very funny, seen now — some fifty-five years later — but written then with total solemn sincerity.

These writings were not profound. They didn’t indicate a great mind, not were the observations mature or very interesting. They did, however, teach me to respect the art of writing. They also convinced me that I could never write fiction. I was incapable of forming plots or making up characters. I always had to base imaginary people on people I knew well. Those Who Go Down to the Sea in Ships would have to be written by somebody else. I decided I might just as well face my dependence on real life and discuss it. My painting follows the same pattern.

The requirement to write continued into my adult life. Most of the writing found its way into letters to my parents or to Christopher’s mother. My mother didn’t keep many letters, but Christopher’s mother kept them all. They are much like journal entries, describing the pattern of my life, the exploits of the children, my attempts to cook or keep house, the success or failure of parties and the progress of Christopher’s painting.

The writing began to firm up in the 1970s, as my painting career started to take off, but it wasn’t until the early 1980s — with the children gone away and my life becoming increasingly solitary — that the journals became an essential outlet.

Because there is no particular order to my entries, I am forced to realize that my ideas are not logical, nor do they relate to one another even on a day-to-day basis. I am consistently inconsistent. I don’t care about this. I don’t try to change this foolishness. Perhaps the only place where I can be what I want to be is in my journals and my letters. The old adage that actions speak louder than words is true. But the written word lasts longer than memories of the spoken word. And actions are interpreted differently by everybody. So I trust my journals. I am as faithful to honesty as possible when I write. Within their pages I rediscover myself as I know myself to be, or to have been.

When I am working at a painting, I often photograph the work so that I will have a record to indicate how the painting changes as I go along. There are quite a few such studio shots in this book. Sometimes you’ll notice that there are frames — even at this unfinished stage I sometimes have frames made to surround paintings to give me a better idea of how the finished work will look. You will also notice that these studio shots are not as clear or sharp as the photography that has been done professionally. But then, I am not a photographer. My personal slides are like a visual journal.

In preparing this selection from my journals, addresses and published essays, I have received help from many people, to whom I am very grateful. Mira Godard, of Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto, and Andy Sylvester, of Equinox Gallery, Vancouver, kindly loaned slides and transparencies of many of the paintings and woodcuts reproduced in A Personal Calligraphy. Emma Butler, of Emma Butler Gallery, in St. John’s, has given me unfailing support throughout my career. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Corinne Voigt, whom I hired as my secretary and assistant and who has become, in addition, my indispensable housekeeper and a trusted mediator between me and the world. In preparing A Personal Calligraphy for publication, she not only typed all my handwritten entries, but also warned me that some phrases might not be appropriate. Usually she was right. Ned Pratt, my second son and youngest child, is a professional photographer; he obligingly altered his schedule of far more creative work to photograph my paintings. At Goose Lane Editions, Laurel Boone has edited my writing with tact and humour. Julie Scriver has, once again, treated my visual work with care and sensitivity, and were it not for the enthusiasm of Susanne Alexander and the staff of Goose Lane Editions, this book wouldn’t have happened. Linda McKnight provided the security of an agent’s understanding of the publishing world, and my oldest child, John, cast his legal eye over the contracts, calming any fears I may have had that I’d missed something.

As the text indicates, the writing is about my life within my family and a small circle of friends. Without Christopher, Anne and Barby, John and Ned, my life would have been very different. They gave me an aura in which I could paint and write. My grandchildren have given me the opportunity to discover that I am able to love what I cannot control. My thanks to all.

— St. John’s, August, 2000

THREADS OF RECOGNITION

My grandmother West would have the baby in her bed now — to feed. Maybe Frank would climb in beside them — to stay warm. Through the window the last traces of orange clouds under heavy grey