Inverness Art Gallery and Museum until 22 May 2004

‘Eve after Masaccio,’ oil on board

“EVERYONE has the capacity for creative expression, but not everyone has the courage and support necessary to confront what must be confronted in order to allow their creativity to breathe.”

So says the Edinburgh-based artist Joyce Gunn Cairns in conversation with Julie Lawson, a curator with the National Galleries of Scotland. This remark, contained in a catalogue accompanying her exhibition, Daughters of Eve, is important, and a valid point of entry into the artist’s journey of self-exploration.

I first came across her work in 1996 when working as a reviewer for The Scotsman.  The occasion was the annual SAAC exhibition at the RSA in Edinburgh.  Following my review, Joyce wrote to me saying “You used the words ‘honesty’ and ‘integrity’ to describe my self-portrait, and considering the fact of a lifetime’s struggle to express the nature of my tormented necessity, you could not have used words that felt more affirming, confirming.”

The letter meant a lot to me, not least because as a reviewer, there is often so little feed-back on one’s work. Since then, Joyce’s work has gone from strength to strength (currently, she has a show of portraits of the eminent critic Professor David Daiches at the University of Edinburgh’s Talbot Rice Gallery).

But to return to the artist’s opening remark: that in order to be truly creative a form of confrontation must take place.  In Cairns’ case this has been the confrontation of self or, more accurately, the confrontation of the perception of self.  When I looked into that earlier self-portrait, I saw a woman in pain whose confrontation of her own self-image was both a result of much suffering but also a courageous attempt to address and overcome it.

This observation can also be applied to the various ‘daughters’ Cairns depicts here (although not all are self-portraits).  They are of woman who have suffered (for example ‘Recovery’ – a portrait of someone who lost her hair through chemotherapy) but also woman who are strong, defiant, at ease with themselves and their physical and intellectual ‘imperfections’.

There is a central paradox in her technique, particularly her drawing (she uses pencil, charcoal and acrylic mixes) – although the individual lines are often sparse, tentative and even frail, they constitute, collectively, images of great power, with the ability to both represent and empathise.  Her technique, which one assumes did not come easily, is expressive and highly proficient – as witnessed, for example, but her depiction of the hand, probably modelled in many cases on her own physiognomy.

Joyce Gunn Cairns assumes various guises in her depiction of Eve’s many daughters – a strategy which allows her to deftly sidestep some of the constraints involved in literal self-portraiture.  Thus, in turn, the artist is seen as Eve herself, Dr Faustus, Mary Magdalene – a whole panoply of humanity and complexity.

Highland tour dates:
Inverness Museum & Art Gallery, 24 April-22 May 2004
Swanson Gallery, Thurso, 29 May-26 June
St Fergus Gallery, Wick,  3-31 July
Iona Gallery, Kingussie, 7-28 August

© Giles Sutherland, 2004

Related Links:

Joyce Gunn Cairns at the SSA