You might have guessed that it would not be too long before my perennial interest in T.S. Eliot reasserted itself, especially in view of the fact that this is the centenary of the writing of his great poem The Waste Land. Re-reading it (and watching a TV presentation about his life and work) it might have been predictable that I would start thinking once again about painting projects relating to this material. Sure enough, several rudimentary ideas are buzzing around in my head, and I expect to spend a part of this evening sketching out roughly at least one of these. (I’ve already approached a couple of friends to ask if they can model for me in relation to one of these possibilities.) It is all very positive, and very exciting if (as usual) rather daunting.
This afternoon, as I was thinking about the development of one of these ideas, it occurred to me that it is very important to keep in mind a distinction between two possible approaches to the task. Either I might set out to illustrate Eliot, or I might use his poetry as a stimulus to reflection on aspects of my own experience. I am strongly drawn to the second of these. Certainly I don’t want to turn my work into a kind of “graphic novel”, which simply provides a visual version of the words on the page. In both of my previous encounters with Eliot (and especially in the material relating to the Four Quartets) the visual images all took as their focus elements of my own experience which I believed to be illuminated in some way by the poem. I would like to think that when I used Eliot as a source of titles for my Malta series the focus remained clearly on that element of lived experience. The decision to use Eliot’s words only came after the entire series was completed, which is indicative.
Already, however, I can feel the subtle tug of the possibility of illustrating The Waste Land, in two of the four ideas which I’m exploring at the moment, and I need to be aware of the dangers of going down that route. I want Eliot to enliven perception of my own experience, not to impose my experience on the reading of Eliot.