Wednesday 8 May 2013

Emma Gifford in Words and Pictures

Wessex Contemporary Arts have collaborated with Dorset County Museum on a reflective exhibition called Encounters. Artists from the group were asked to choose an artefact from the museum’s collection and react or re-encounter it in their own way. The portrait of Emma Gifford, Thomas Hardy's first wife, painted by an unknown artist hangs in the Hardy reading room and I have always been fascinated by it. This particular portrait seems to have something to say, and along with my school girl knowledge of Hardy’s poetry, and as a figure painter myself I immediately knew that my encounter would have to be with Emma
My work often explores subjects/individuals through repetition, and I feel that this process reveals the unintentional; something beyond myself. Therefore I decided to tackle Emma’s portrait in this way. I also visited the Tracy Emin and Louise Bourgeois collaboration and as I suspected found in this 21st-century confessional outpouring had links to the Hardy's 19th-century partnership.
With the help of the museum (and in particular Jasmine, Helen and Jennifer) I also set about collecting evidence of what remained of Emma.  Unfortunately there wasn't much, some old photos and drawings, but these were deeply touching. I was also pointed in the direction of a number of helpful books, including Emma’s later writing; Some Recollections. This small publication, written at the end of her life, looked back at her early years and time spent with Hardy, and had influenced some of his poetry. From all this I decided to focus on their early years together. This seemed to have been an important emotional time for them both, when Hardy was just about to become a writer.  
I wanted to bring the fragments of what remained of that time together, and overlay them on top of the studies from Emma’s portrait, and so I set about pulling together what I could find. There were Hardy’s love poems to Emma, written after her death, many of which looked back to this early time; I stripped away the emotional landscape language in an attempt to reveal her.
I also wanted to use the drawings of one another from that time, reference artefacts, things that seemed important because they revealed Emma’s identity. The daisies I felt were particularly significant. Emma had mentioned them in Recollections and Hardy had seen them on her grave, and written about them in a poem. And then there were the violets they collected together from Keats’ grave on a visit to Italy. There was also much more. My sketchbook tried to pull the strands together and I worked back and forth trying to cross-reference ideas – sometimes getting lost in it all - but always trying to reveal thought-provoking and emotional encounters. The sketchbook also allowed me space to then bring these strands together with the new Emma portraits.  I played with printing on the surface of the paintings, exploring the personal through handwriting, sometimes backwards as part of a discussion between the two. The process was often intuitive as well as rationally, considered and an on-going attempt to reveal something of Emma’s identity, their time together, as well as exploring the space left when someone has gone.
After nearly 18 months the project feels like only part of the first stage is complete and ideas linger and new ones are emerging -particularly ideas to explore the later Emma. Yet the intention to allow someone to surface from the past – particularly those all too forgotten secondary figures in the making of history - felt like a worthwhile task.
Encounters Exhibition runs until 7th June 2013 at Dorset County Museum Dorchester with free entry. There is also an opportunity to practice your figure/portrait drawing on Saturday 11th May in the Museum hall at 10.30am for £7.50 booking can be made at shop@dorsetcountymuseum.org

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