The Art of Showing Up
Was listening to something about persistence on my walk this morning… Familiar advice I’ve heard shared in business and personal development; you know: that it’s persistence, consistency, a can-do attitude that inevitably leads to success.
And over the years I’ve seen something similar with artists. That it’s those who keep showing up, beyond talent or anything else, persisting to make work in the studio day after day, despite not making the shortlist or landing the sales… without obvious external endorsement; those are the artists who most often go on to receive meaningful recognition and make a living from their work.
This led me to search its origins, the word persistence, and I discovered that persistence comes from the Latin persistĕre: to stand firmly through challenge, time, or change. The root sistere meaning “to place oneself,” or simply, “to stand.” And there’s something beautiful in that, isn’t there? That to persist is not to push so much as to stay. To sister oneself to the work, to remain beside it, quietly, through all that comes.
And then a random memory surfaced, the way memory does sometimes, from when I lived in Kew… I’d asked a reliable local builder to help with some bits and bobs around the place: to assemble a heavy table, hang some pictures, that sort of thing. And while he was working, a DHL driver had arrived with a parcel, through the open front door, and somehow. in the builder’s natural momentum, he’d mistaken the DHL man for another tradesperson and conscripted him into a practical project.
I hadn’t seen any of this from the kitchen, so a little later, when he came in and said, quietly, seriously:
“Sarah. I don’t think that man has the can-do attitude you need.”
I had absolutely no idea who he was referring to…
And there in the sitting room was the friendly DHL man, crouched under the full weight of the tabletop, looking, if I’m honest, a bit scared…
And it was a bit like that moment. Do you know the one… it’s YouTube gold now. When an accommodating French man was mistakenly interviewed live on BBC morning news, and, through a kind of ambient confusion, had somehow ended up mic’d up, positioned, and introduced as a tech expert; a founder or director of somewhere or other. And despite the mix-up, he didn’t back out; he rose to the moment (or tried to). There was something almost endearing about it: his slightly guilty face, and the effort. A bit like the DHL man: swept in, off guard, yet obliging.
Anyway… apropos of nothing, here are some artists from our Masters section, all exceptionally talented, who have all made an art of showing up.
This is your chance to meet them too.
The Three Flowers
120 x 130 cm | 47 x 51 in
Original painting in oil on linen.
Dancing At the MoMA
75 x 75 cm | 29 x 29 in
Original painting in oil on wood panel.
Stepping Stones – (The Isle Is Full of Noises)
100 x 150 cm | 39 x 59 in
Original painting in oil on canvas.
"Memories have a way of overlapping in unexpected and seductive ways, in this painting I'm exploring my own memories of travelling through various real places, - the east coast of Canada, the lakes of Sweden and the Hebridean Isles. All have echoes of each other in the geology, the plant life and the northern hemisphere light, I'm always looking for the point at which these experiences collide and I try to explore the emotional state that links places psychologically as well as the geographical similarities. I like to use figures as a way into some works, here the family group seem totally at ease and oblivious to the strangeness of the place, guiding us as a viewer in and offering an invitation to follow them."
Far and Beyond
Nicola Wiltshire
36 x 50 cm | 14 x 19 in
Original painting in oil on fabric on canvas stretcher.
The Beautiful World
49 x 66 cm | 19 x 25 in
Original painting in mixed media on canvas.
Tree of Umnollidge
120 x 150 cm | 47 x 59 in
Original painting in oil on canvas.
