HEADS UP: AN ARTIST’S EARLY, ENIGMATIC PORTRAITS

FOR CATHY WARD, REDISCOVERING A CACHE OF OLD PAINTINGS HELPS MAKE HER FEEL WHOLE

In recent months, brutjournal’s London-based artist-correspondent Cathy Ward (Instagram: @wardsisterward) has been clearing out and reorganizing the storage area of her studio. The task has been time-consuming and daunting, she told us, and has ended up stirring up some strong feelings as she has come upon certain paintings, drawings, sculptures, and other works she produced many years ago, each one a reminder of the circumstances — physical, professional, economic, emotional — in which it was made and of the stages of the creative life she long ago chose to pursue.

Cathy Ward, “Blu Doo,” 1994, acrylic paint on paper (card stock), hand-size sheet. Photo courtesy of the artist

Here, in particular, Cathy shares her observations about a group of early, small-format portraits she made a few decades ago. We’re interested in what an artist thinks and feels when rediscovering and evaluating anew an older work or a group of his or her earlier creations.

Cathy Ward recalled:

The paintings that appear here — I made them between 1993 and 1995. I was living in London at that time, working on my art in a disused laundry room on the ground floor of a housing estate in Haggerston, East London. It was a very run-down, mostly boarded-up council housing estate that had been left to rot. The term “sink estate” was used to describe the demise of such a property.