black mustard: interview with endellion lycett green

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Black Mustard talks to Endellion Lycett Green

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Talking to artists about why they make what they make leads us towards a greater understanding of what it is to be human.

interview with Endellion Lycett Green

Endellion Lycett Green(b. 1969)

Endellion Lycett Green’s paintings evolve from her deep connection with nature and plant life. She lives and works on the Marlborough Downs, near where she

grew up, and exhibits with Browse & Darby, London.

© Black Mustard www.blackmustard.co.uk4

Black Mustard: You live and work in the Pewsey Vale in Wiltshire, on chalk land between Salisbury Plain and the North Downs. Does this location have an impact on your work?

Endellion Lycett Green: The delineation of the hills is important to me. It’s that ancient presence. These hills were carved out of the chalk by glaciers. I love to think of the molding of nature by the elements. It’s primordial and creative. We think we are creative and nature is just nature. But nature is so creative left to its own devices. Of course these hills have been trodden by sheep, and shaped by burial mounds and furrows ploughed over centuries, but the Downs reinforce that idea for me that nature is herself creative and adapts to everything. Location. I need to live in the country. I found London distracting. I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t focus. I need the peace and simplicity of my rural life. Marlborough. One wide street. Simple.

BM: You paint plants…

ELG: As I walk I always look down. Grandpapa always said look up and I always say look down and examine the plants. I have always been intrigued by what’s going on under my feet. It was Georgia O’Keeffe who said she wanted you to look twice at a rose. I like to watch the plants and the way they live with one another, how they thread themselves around each other and individually, how they stand or curl. A branch will grow into a space rather than next to another branch. A tree is constantly adapting to its environment. I find it fascinating to see how the plants sit with each other. In my painting of Echi-nacea for instance, the flowers placed

themselves in that way. I didn’t set them up like that. They are so beautifully placed – so attuned to one another.

BM: When you’re deciding what to paint, how do you choose one plant over another?

ELG: When I painted Renewal I was thinking about Spring and how, when you walk into an ancient wood in Winter, you trudge through leaves. It is the so-called dead season, but underneath your feet there are these earthly machinations going on. And the Wild Garlic is one of the products. Like a movie — there’s so much that goes into it behind the scenes. Physically there are curves and shapes in the picture, like the landscape on a smaller scale. The leaves carve up the space. They move and grow and find balance. This painting and the show itself are about lightening up a bit and not being so heavy.

BM: So does this show mark a new departure for you?

ELG: Throughout your life you lose your way and then you find it again. ‘renewal’ is about finding my path again and really understanding what it is I do. It’s not so much a departure. I am healing from my illness and I am feeling different [ELG has suffered from bi-polar disorder for twenty years]. It is about acceptance and resolution. I have gifts. It would be silly to hide your light under a bushel. I feel a new fecundity at the moment. I started these gold drawings. Gold drawings were flying out of me as if I had been doing them since birth. I did a drawing show in the summer, and somehow the experi-ence reminded me of the excitement to be found in drawing.

The hardest path is the most enriching

5 interview with Endellion Lycett Green

Ode to Miss Willmott, 2013


Heaven’s Secret, 2013


BM Tell me about your painting, Ode to Miss Willmott…

ELG: Ode to Miss Willmott is a painting of a particular Eryngium called Miss Willmo-tt’s Ghost. Miss Willmott was a thorough and celebrated horticulturalist who was influential in setting up Wisley at the turn of the 20th century. She had a famous garden and was a vigorous plantswoman. Eryngium is structural and architectural. Very strong. It stands proud. I am drawn to it. I could paint it forever, I think. Strong. I am drawn to plants with strength. I have never wanted to paint plants in a whim-sical way. I don’t want to paint daisies. I am drawn to the way different plants juxtapose. The Eryngium all prickly and strong, the Scabious subtle, delicate and mauve. In Ode to Miss Willmott, The Scabious is almost floating by, which is why I have not emphasized the stalks. It’s like a little shoal of fish swimming past a shark. I enjoy that tension. I enjoy their communication. I find it moving.

BM: So your interest in plants is not purely aesthetic?

ELG: I was chatting to a friend who is a corn circle specialist about plants and he

directed me towards Stephen Harrod Buhner. I was genuinely delighted to find someone who can talk so scientifi-cally about the communication between plants and humans. A plant is constantly rebalancing and recalibrating itself to the atmosphere, so it can sense the warmth of my body. It is actually aware of my presence. It adapts to my nearness. It’s wonderful reading about someone quite so grounded who can take you on a journey towards a deeper understanding of plants. So you are really exploring their sensitivity and your sensitivity and the connection between the two.

I am not a herbalist but I read about the healing properties of plants and I talk to my friend, the Sussex herbalist, Theresa Lahood. Plant medicine is subtle but powerful, yet it has died out in so many parts of the world. I am attracted to this primordial connection with plants. Native Americans, for example, were aware of the plants’ sensitivity. They read it and respected it. I look up symbolism and try to understand how the plant can heal. Wild garlic flushes away your toxins, for instance. I love reading through the lists of names — Indian turnip, larkspur, lavender, lungwort, magnolia, meadowsweet, milk thistle, milkweed, Nasturtium.

Echinacea, 2013


Renewal, 2013


Flow of Life, 2013


BM: Where do you think your love of art comes from?

ELG: I grew up surrounded by paintings. The fact that my grandfather was a poet [Sir John Betjeman], and my mother a writer really allowed me to explore the idea of becoming an artist. Plus my mother actively encouraged creativity, come to think of it, she almost insisted upon it. On the walls of our childhood home was a visual feast. Ian Hamilton Finlay. Patrick Proktor, Peter Blake’s Babe Rainbow. There was a poster of Ophelia by John Everett Millais in our bathroom. I knew that was a great painting. I felt I could touch Ophelia’s dress.

BM: You read English & Fine Art at Exeter University between 1988 and 1991. When did you make a conscious deci-sion to become a painter?

ELG: I chose between the pen and the paint-brush. I made a conscious decision when

I was 19. I was making a painting and I stayed up all night. That morning I decided I was going to be a painter. Before that moment I had thought, “Well, I’m reading English, I could go into publishing.” And I did have a brief spell in publishing. But if you gave me a choice — look at a great painting or read a book, I’d rather spend the evening looking at Vermeer than I would reading a novel. I prefer the paint-ing’s silent language.

BM: Are you a contented artist?

ELG: When I am doing a green work I feel most comfortable. Green is fundamental to my work. I really know what I am doing when I am studying green. It is a diverse and beautiful colour and of course the colour of nature. There are nearly a hundred different greens in Renewal. I use viridian and mix it. But it’s not just green. When I painted the hostas in Flow of Life for instance, I was attracted to the painting of a variegated plant because I never tried.

Early Light, 2013


The challenge appealed to me. How do I get the flow of white in the leaf? What is that whiteness?

In my paintings I am sharing my love of plants. Genuinely. God, isn’t this incred-ible? Look at this! The paintings are meant to be peaceful but they become dominant. I don’t necessarily mean them to be like that. Although my strength isn’t something I am aware of, I suppose it seeps through in my paintings. When I’m actually painting I do feel strong, but like everyone, I am vulnerable. In life I feel like a leaf — I am more likely to feel ‘I’m less than’ than ‘I’m more than’ other people.

I enjoy the painting process and the finished thing. I enjoy the completion. It always comes together and there is a moment when your work flows and gels. There is no better feeling than the one I get after I’ve finished painting for the day. There’s this feeling of satisfaction that I can’t find in people or drugs or food or anything else. There is nothing more to do once I’ve finished my day.

BM: What about Endellion the person…

ELG: I am quite practical. I practice meditation daily. I try and stay in touch with my own heart and to clear it of the gubbins that you collect. Listening to music helps. Chico de Barge, Stevie Wonder, Ray Lamon-tagne, Common. Nitin Sawhney, Jill Scott, Erykah Badu, Al Green. Sometimes I dance around the studio. You respond to a piece of music with your heart and your body. It seizes you and takes you away. I listen to classical music too. Particularly piano concertos, mostly by Bach. Music helps me heighten my consciousness, one would hope. You hope that’s what classical music is doing.

The minute I get into the studio I roll a cigarette. I smoke although I know it is bad for those around me. I don’t drink much these days, thanks to my time in AA and also I have an aversion to the taste of alcohol. I eat the same meal every day, insalata tricolore — tomatoes, mozzarella and avocado. My vices? I love clothing, especially suits, and I love shoes

too, though I keep them hidden from my husband when I buy them, as they are often neither functional nor necessary. I loathe domesticity.

BM: Is family important to you?

ELG: Our family was very close but my mother said I was quite independent, and ‘eccen-tric’. I have two older sisters but when I was a child I preferred to play with my little brothers. My sisters went riding. I gave up riding in favour of ballet. It was a dreamy childhood. Love is everything in my life — love of my husband, my chil-dren especially and the love of family and friends. When I paint I often think of people and how much I love them. My life has been enriched by having children. I am more ambitious since giving birth. The greatest two moments in my life where when those two babies appeared. You’ve had a part in creating a new human being and it’s regenerating.

BM: Can you imagine a world without art?

ELG: Art is necessary. I couldn’t live without it. There must be some other people that feel the same way. Children express themselves through drawing and painting, though some kids aren’t excited by it at all. If people weren’t expressing themselves in the arts it would be a cold world. Prac-ticing art is a way of working out life around you, translating your understanding into a visual language. I am drawn to plants because I see my nature in them. I think all plants reflect our nature if we let them. We all react to them. Who doesn’t react to a bunch of flowers? That burst of colour. You respond. You place it somewhere important. The bunch evokes wonder.

Everything is nature but we forget. A leather couch is a cow. This floor was a tree. My jeans are made of cotton. My necklace is made of precious stones. I even see nature in Sellotape. It is made from the oil that comes from the earth. We are all interconnected and I try to illuminate our interconnectedness in my paintings.


BM: Do you talk to other artists?

ELG: I don’t really. I have quite a secluded life. I need the silence and the simplicity. London was chaotic. People always going out. David Inshaw lives in the neighbour-hood, though. I admire his work so much. I visit him sometimes. We talk about nature and symbolism.

I do keep abreast of what’s going on though. Though I feel I am out on a limb in the contemporary art world. Or a branch, even… I’m an old school painter. It trou-bles me and a while back my worries stopped me from working. Am I doing the right thing? I should be doing abstract work, conceptual work! Five years ago I had a dip and veered off. Now I feel a lot more confident. I say to myself, it doesn’t matter. It is important to show the work and get it out there. I feel that my work is true to me. I am aware of other painters, of course. I love the work of George Shaw and Peter Doig

My favourite dead painter is Vermeer. I love the quality of Chardin’s brushwork. Gustav Klimt was an early influence — I thought he was the best painter in the world. I love the spiritual stripes of Barnett Newman, Francis Bacon’s colour, Gwen John’s purity. I love the work of Anish Kapoor too. Gobsmacking. And Anthony Gormley, so articulate and intelligent. He cast his man as a blueprint of humanity. There wasn’t a huge emphasis on the maleness of his figure. He created man. Here he is. Let’s see him spread across a beach, in a city, magnified or reduced. On the top of a building or in a room with the legs through the ceiling. I loved his piece ‘Field’ which was a series of clay models a foot high.

BM: Have you been to any shows recently that you’ve liked?

ELG: I was blown away by the Damien Hirst at the Tate. It felt like stepping in to my past. He was such a huge artist when I was starting out. It was great to come across the shark again, like revisiting an old writer that you loved when you were twenty — it takes you back to that same time of your

life. It reminded me of learning and when I was working in London, and starting out.

I love reading lives of artists. Interviews. When I listen to some of them talking about their work — even though I’m obvi-ously not a millionaire artist on such a grand scale — I hear them ask questions like the questions I’m asking of life and I feel I am going in the right direction. I am asking what it is to be human. That is all they are asking. I am asking, “Why am I drawn to this subject matter? What is it about me that is responding? How can I relate to the sacred geometry in plants?” Then you realize that you are a piece of sacred geometry.

BM: What’s your greatest achievement as an artist so far?

ELG: Hemelsleutel. It’s my biggest feat of concentration. It took me a year to do. The detail blew me away. I started using gold for the first time when I was painting it. ‘Hemelsleutel’ is the Dutch word for Sedum. It actually means ‘keys to heaven’. I used the gold to point heavenward. Gold is traditionally used in religious paint-ings, for halos, the background in icons. I wanted touches of gold in the painting, as if it had been touched by the divine. I think plants come from the divine. I see the divine in plants. Without any problem. For me, plants are proof that there is a God, or at least an intelligence behind creation. They are numinous. Nature is integral and art is an expression of that.

BM: What do you fear?

ELG: I’m frightened of my stupidity, in company and in my life.

BM: Where will you go from here?

ELG: I want to go deeper into my understanding of plants both scientifically and actu-ally. I am going to experiment more with layering. And memory. It is just wanting to understand my subject matter more deeply. I am pleased at the thought. It’s the hardest path. But the hardest path is the most enriching.


Alium in Bud, 2013

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“I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions

themselves.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (1903)

black mustard: interview with endellion lycett green

Documents

molding of nature

plant life

creative left

marlborough downs

interviewthe hardest

rural life

north downs

enrichingblack mustard