Gillian Haigh

 They Do Not Eat Who Mention Silver and Sweet

2020
oil on canvas 54” x 45”

“Act so that there is no use in a centre. A wide action is not a width. A preparation is given to the ones preparing. They do not eat who mention silver and sweet. There was an occupation.

A whole centre and a border make hanging a way of dressing. This which is not why there is a voice is the remains of an offering. There was no rental.”

Excerpt From: Gertrude Stein. “Tender Buttons / Objects—Food—Rooms.”

I often think of painting as a ‘black box’ system as it brings into play not only human intelligence about material, but the intelligence of material, understood as adaptive, self- organizing and irreducible to other frameworks. My painting practice leans into materiality, and in this sense I come to an entirely different way of knowing something. Painting is my way of thinking through my many encounters with information and material.

The work They Do Not Eat Who Mention Silver and Sweet was created in relation to the 1914 book of poetry Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein which uses experimental language to describe domestic objects. In addition to Stein’s unique history an early queer female writer and a supporter of modernist painting, I was drawn to Stein’s work by her ability to render her poetic descriptions unorthodox and their subjects unfamiliar, yet still leave the reader with the sense that meaning is just out of grasp. What Stein has encountered and described are the ways in which the human subject tries to make sense of a world full of fractured description, forming it into a cohesive whole which can then be responded to in some kind of rational way. My work similarly is a cross section of my attempt to make sense of and mold together the disparate information I encounter. These fragmented & splintered ideas and references are something I work to weave together through the material process of painting.

Being a women navigating domestic spaces as we live out the COVID pandemic, I see an incredible parallel to Stein and my interests and working methodologies. While dealing with seemingly benign objects, Stein also seems to weave in personal issues of gender, sexuality, and identity. As I consider my identity and position in these uncertain and charged times I’ve often found my mind drifting to the layered and shifting form of Stein’s work. While the imagery in my work They Do Not Eat Who Mention Silver and Sweet is a nod to feminist spaces, particularly that of craft, at the heart of this work is a personal embrace of a more tangled, transformative, and unsettled way of thinking