RECENTLY, IN LONDON, WE CAME ACROSS A CURIOUS PICTURE THAT IS AS ODD AS IT IS ENCHANTING
by Edward M. Gómez, with Cathy Ward
LONDON — During a recent working trip to England, I caught up with Cathy Ward, brutjournal’s well-connected, London-based artist-correspondent, who seems to know just about everyone — well, just about everyone who’s thinking about and contributing to the culture whom we would like to get to know, that is: artists, musicians, writers, curators, educators, and communicators of all stripes who are pursuing interesting, innovative projects. Cathy kindly took time to show me many of her own works from past periods of her career at her studio in East London. Later, at her home, she pulled out a curious little painting whose maker remains anonymous; Cathy cannot recall exactly when or where she found it.
Something about its strangeness seems appropriate to the current moment of anxiety-provoking uncertainty, in which some powerful, seemingly unstoppable forces, including ever-more-destructive war-making, the United States’ enthusiastic turn to fascism, and the rise of artificial intelligence, are changing the world in inestimable, perhaps irrevocable ways.
Cathy Ward said, “I recall that I bought it inexpensively but, honestly, I can’t remember where. It could have been from a vintage-market trader at one of our London antique markets. It definitely wasn’t from a boot fair, but I feel that it must have come from a source here in the U.K.” [Editor’s note to American readers: A “boot” refers to the trunk of a car.]
Cathy added, “It was unframed and unsigned, and it could possibly date from the 1970s. It’s a small, gouache-on-paper painting. I traveled a lot in the past and bought things wherever I went, especially in the U.S., but I don’t think this piece came from there.”
Examining this picture, we tried to make sense of its depiction of two men in long robes, standing on a hill, from where they look out over the arrival — or unexpected crash landing — of a NASA space-shuttle rocket in a dry, hard-to-locate valley.
Cathy observed, “It’s a strange painting with a strange narrative offering a marriage of two themes I really love: in it, biblical imagery meets science fiction in what feels like an image relating to time travel and a potential clash of cultures — the old meeting the new. If so, then it also feels as though trouble may lie ahead in this kind of confrontation.”
An accomplished painter herself who has often been inspired by mystical, occult-related, or historical themes, Cathy noted, “In this picture, too, there’s an H.G. Wells-and-Jules Verne vibe. Does it portray a magical, subterranean, inner earth located far away from the technological outer world, into which, in the form of the NASA spacecraft, the troubled outer world has crashed through?”
Referring to a British artist who is well known for his colorful, fantasy-art album covers for the progressive-rock band Yes, Cathy added, “This anonymous picture seems to convey a classic, Roger Dean-like vision, too, with its far-off rock formations and winding roads hewn into the cliffs. The green organic mounds that are also visible remind me of giant ribbons of folded kelp washed up from deep-sea kelp forests, as if to suggest that an ocean might lie somewhere nearby, even though, here, it’s out of sight.”
Cathy said, “I love the robed figures and the detail of the earth churned up by the landed spacecraft.”
Ultimately, we decided that we had no clear, sure understanding of what this painting might intend to depict or about what message its creator might have wanted to convey, but that was okay. In these uncertain times, we could always ask an AI software program to weigh in and give us its interpretation of this mystery image. Or just sit back, ogle it, and savor its delightful, inexplicable weirdness.
