Deborah Ravetz - Artist and Writer

My images often have as their starting point the feeling I have in response to words. I do not try to illustrate the words, rather, I try and work out of the feelings they give me.

The group of pictures I painted in early 2003 has as its starting point the words of Lucretius: the flaming walls of the world. For me these words are not abstract, they describe something I experience: between us and the realm of the unborn is an opaque, very strong but infinitely delicate barrier. We are as close to this other reality as we are to ourselves. At certain moments we can feel its heartbeat as clearly as we can feel our own. For me this is not an alien world; it is the world we come from and it is the world to which we will return.

To say that the world has walls of flame is another way of saying that although life is partly governed by necessity, there is another part of the picture. I want to live in relation to the visible and the invisible world and I want to make art about and out of that relationship. We are often faced with polarities and the choice between opposites. I think what underlies all life must surely have more wisdom than that. In this I relate to Goethe who says,

It is said that truth lies half way between two opposing opinions. Not at all! It is the problem that lies between, and that which cannot be envisaged, namely eternally active life, contemplated calmly.

To acknowledge the existence of both spirit and matter and to have a sense of their interrelatedness does not mean to be other-worldly. For me it means having a sense of the significance of existence and a celebration of all that that implies.

Thornton Wilder says the role of the artist is to restore myths. Myths are the archetypal stories that arise out of all cultures. They are about the human soul’s journey to self realisation and responsibility. Myths and archetypes never lose their significance, though their meanings may transform and evolve. Theirs is the language of sign and symbol. Whether painting is abstract or figurative it can be drenched in these signs.

A true sign has its own reality. One can experience, for example, if one looks quietly at a certain sort of blue flower, that it is not surprising that, among other things, it can be a sign of truth, it simply looks like that. So it is with all signs. They may be layered with meaning but those meanings are not constructs, they are true, they are a language which is already there for us to use. In this sense I feel it can never be obsolete to use signs. To me they are simply real; we use them for both what they have meant and what we can add to those meanings as contemporary people.

The third important element in my work is colour. I find that words move me and become starting points for pictures. These pictures are my celebration, the language they use is signs and colour. My wish is to communicate that there is much to build and much to do but that behind the appearances of our world there is a wise and coherent meaning with which we may work and which holds us dear. In this sense I wish my images to have at their heart courage and consolation.

Life

I studied English Literature and Philosophy at York University and Fine Art and Print Making at Leith School of Art, Edinburgh and Grays School of Art in Aberdeen. Since my graduation I have been working and exhibiting in various venues where I have taken part in group and solo exhibitions both in Scotland, England and Germany where I lived from 2000 to 2003.

I was a member of the official body of professional artists in Germany, the BBK, (Bundesverband Bildender Künstlerinnen und Künstler). I have also been a member of Aberdeen Artists and exhibited there when I lived in Aberdeen. I was also an active member of Peacock Printmakers, Aberdeen, where I also took part in exhibitions. I am a visiting lecturer at Leith School of Art.

When living in the Northeast I was a part time lecturer at Bretton School of Art, Cleveland School of Art and the Open University. My subject was History of Art and Human Consciousness. This is still a main area of interest.

Artists who exhibit in a gallery often portray themselves as a great success with a brilliant career. I don’t want to conform to that convention because it is not my aim or motivation in making art. When I studied literature and then art I always felt, in the words of the Randy Newman, the famous singer “Maybe I’m doing it wrong”.

This is because I had thought that I was studying not only in order to learn important facts or skills but also to learn how to live more humanly and more wisely. To have this attitude in a modern educational institution means that one is seen at best as a naive optimist and at worst as mentally ill. Learning has been reduced to nothing more than the hurdles one has to jump over on the way to earning one’s living—to being a success.

The words of the artist and gallery owner Helen Lessore, famous for her Beaux Arts Gallery in London, are relevant here. In 1965, she was asked to lecture to an art school in London. She wrote the following in her letter of refusal:

The whole art world has become like a maison de haute couture—it has become more grossly commercial than it used to be even thirty years ago—even fifteen years ago —more superficial, more vulgar, more greedy… I cannot stand up and tell the students what they must do to be “successful”; nor have I the heart … to stand there and exhort these young hopeful things to take the martyr’s road.

I cannot imagine how Helen Lessore would feel about the art world now, if this is how she felt in 1965! Yet I believe it is in the power of every individual not to conform and quietly to do something different despite the prevailing paradigm. For this reason it is important to explain that for me a career is not a priority. Rather I want to approach my work in the spirit of Victor Frankl, who survived a concentration camp and went on to bring healing to thousands of people. He says about all human work and endeavours:

Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it your target, the more you will miss it. For success—like happiness—cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself… I want you to listen to your conscience and what it commands you and go away and carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see in the long run—and I say the long run—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.

I believe the art of this maison de haute couture will be an embarrassing memory in the near future. We feel a kind of sheepishness on behalf of the art establishment who dismissed the Impressionists or who dubbed the artists around and including Matisse Fauves or beasts. The situation now is reversed, and yet the problem remains the same. When we look back on this period in art history we will look back on the art establishment who celebrated and bought the art of the haute couture, and we will see that they were just as unperceptive, or lacking the courage of their convictions, as those who dismissed the new art at the end of the nineteenth century. Meanwhile it is possible to reject the paradigm and simply work in a different way. This aspect of why and how I work is an important part of my biography.

Since October 2007 I have been studying Social Sculpture at Oxford Brookes. My first social sculpture — “becoming a self in history — becoming a self in my street” is also available online, together with a blog and a space to leave comments. Click here to see this site.

The third important element in my work is colour. I find words move me and become starting points for pictures. These pictures are my celebration, their language is signs and colour; my wish is to communicate that there is much to build and much to do but that behind the appearances of our world there is a wise and coherent meaning with whom we may work and which holds us dear. In this sense I wish my images to have at their heart courage and consolation.