Coronavirus Paintings // Frieda Hughes in Lockdown

Coronavirus Paintings

// Frieda Hughes in Lockdown

It seemed that on a global level, with each country’s eventual lockdown, many were inspired to launch themselves into creative productivity. Painting or writing became an avenue for many to direct fears and frustrations through at this time, but Frieda Hughes does this for a living. As both a therapist and an artist, Hughes encourages her clients to express themselves through painting and sketching, to literally and figuratively draw out their emotions and study them. From 24 May, Hughes has recorded and uploaded this process to YouTube. Hughes began posting videos online eight months ago and has since developed a modest following. Her uploads are generally posted sporadically and vary in length, from an eight second video of her pet owl doing a trick, to a recorded poetry reading almost an hour long. They are all barely edited, nothing but the awkward starting and stopping of the video recorder snipped out. But since late May the uploads have been more regular. Hughes posts weekly updates of what she calls her“coronavirus paintings” in a series titled ‘Painting with Purpose’. Hughes says the aim of this series is to use painted colour and shapes to show how she feels in a literal way, it is the process by which she paints most of her works and one she recommends to her therapy clients because it presents an avenue for alternative self-expression. For Hughes, colour and feeling are linked via a sensory and emotional overlap, possibly a form of synaesthesia. Blue means happiness, yellow and orange are friends, brown is commitment and lethargy. In this series, Hughes is embarking on a deliberate lockdown project, using her talent to create three unique paintings to reflect her experience going into lockdown, during lockdown and her expectations after restrictions in Wales ease. The project is thematically structured like Dante’s Divine Comedy, the journey through hell. From a creative standpoint the process is fascinating to watch. The spontaneity at the beginning of the painting maturing into an abstract vision is artistically inspiring and exciting. Moreso, watching someone in the moments of creation and raw expression is exceptional. It becomes clear that the value of the therapy is the segmentation of feeling and qualifying of emotion. One must ask themselves “what do I feel” and “what does that look like” without fear of self-contradiction or the need to engineer linguistic clarity. There is no struggle to be understood. While at the beginning, the painting starts vague and the emotions seem difficult to draw out, eventually Hughes emotionally fastens herself to the canvas and the paints are something of a conductor for the feelings which become increasingly easy to access. In a sense, the process becomes like mining, difficult and blind at first but when she strikes gold, (or blue, purple or black) it is revelatory and fruitful. The emotions, no matter how dark or difficult, become almost secondary to the painting, they are evoked in service of the painting. It frees her of the weight of her emotions. This smooth and steady outpouring of emotion is magnetically attractive to watch. Hughes talks for the entire length of the videos casually and confidently about how she is feeling while she moves the brush across the canvas. As a passive viewer, I found myself listening earnestly and in solidarity with her feelings. In her frustrations and fears, Hughes echoes the thoughts that many of us are experiencing: the trapped oppression of isolation, the desperation for clarity and eventual resignation that it will not come, and most pressingly, the gratitude and recognition that to stay home and observe the pandemic as an artist is to stay safe and is, as such, a privilege.

WORDS BY SHANE MURPHY