Fionn Wilson

I studied T.S. Eliot as part of my degree in English and Philosophy (from the University of South Wales) but I’ve only really started to appreciate him in the past ten years or so. After hearing Ralph Fiennes read Eliot’s Four Quartets at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London in December, the appreciation turned to love. The set design for the production was breathtaking (see below — it looked like a huge, all-encompassing Rothko painting).

I hope to, at some point, produce some work around Four Quartets alongside artist Lucy Cox and perhaps also writer and artist Bo Gorzelak Pedersen. This would be quite an interesting mix of responses to the poetry as Lucy and Bo are both abstract painters and my work is obviously figurative.

For now, here is a self portrait from 2013 alongside a quote from Eliot:

‘So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years —
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l’entre deux guerres
Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate — but there is no competition —
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.’

T.S. Eliot (from Four Quartets, East Coker)

#painting #art #poetry #tseliot #lucycox #bogorzelakpedersen #figurativeart #figurativepainting #selfportrait #portrait