THE
STORY OF THE PAINTING
The
brilliantly-coloured image on the home page of this website is
a section from a painting by Christopher Gilvan-Cartwright. This
painting is used as the final scene in our book, Becoming Me . Some particularly astute readers - usually children
-- realize that many of the other images in the book are taken
from this painting, and they ask me about it. Here's the
story of the painting.
I wrote the story originally without the pictures, but in such
a way that you would need pictures to understand the story fully,
just as when you watch a film. I had some ideas for these images,
of course, but no particular artist in mind. Chris was proposed
by Sarah Slack, a designer at my publisher, Frances Lincoln, Ltd.
Chris
and I had several discussions about the design challenges of the
book (together with Sarah and our editor, Cathy Fischground).
We wanted the book to look modern and avoid the imagery
of any particular religion. The story moves from spirit
to matter to spirit again, so the style of painting had to move
from abstract to figurative and back again. The images had
to communicate that the divine is always present, even when obscured.
The images also had to be accurate philosophically, and cope with
such conundrums as: how do you convey something that is
beyond our ability to conceive it ... something that is, by definition,
beyond form?
One
day Chris came to our design meeting tremendously excited with
a suggestion from his wife Isobel. He brought with him a huge
painting that he had completed before meeting me or knowing anything
about this story. He had painted it on the floor so he could
walk around it, seeing it from every angle, and he had titled
it "Everything". He unrolled the canvas on our
table, and brought out a variety of large black cards, each with
a different-sized square cut out. Placing these cards-like viewfinders-over
sections of the painting, he showed us that many of the scenes
of Becoming Me were already there, and suggested that
we use these for the book. This concept was a perfect match for
the story's main point: that everyone and everything emerges
from one source, and that the 'purpose' of life is to realize
our place the big picture.
In
the end, we took about half the images for the book from this
painting. Chris had to paint the very figurative images in the
middle. But these figurative paintings are still part of the whole,
and are consistent with the colors and themes of the 'big picture'--which
is revealed at the very end.
Chris
renamed this painting'Little Me', the last line in the story.
The painting is now in a private collection in New York .
For
more of Chris' work, please click
here.
To
buy Becoming Me or see the short film version click
here.
