Art isn’t always comfortable, it isn’t always pretty
Interview with Michelle Franklin
So, am I going to see myself today? I ask Michelle in her living room which has an eccentric bohemian style. It's a true treasure trove of photographs, paintings and get this a cuckoo clock that’s just squawked from on top of the mantlepiece.
Well, you make a better embroidery than a painting at the moment, laughs Michelle, referring to the modelling I’ve done for her in the past, where I vaguely remember splashing about in a bath sans water, and very little clothing whilst she sketched and took photos of yours truly -but we’ll talk about that later.
Michelle’s work is not only diverse and thought provoking, the rich art history and innovative family that has surrounded her from a young age is fascinating, but it hasn’t been without controversy… She points to a black and white newspaper clipping of her parents on the wall. This was taken in 1953 when they got married, it’s very unusual because they are a mixed race couple, there weren’t many at the time and it caused a lot of trouble in her family, but they were perfectly happy.
Mum
Dad
Both of Michelle’s parents were vigilant activists, her father an environmentalist, her mother Beverly Franklin a civil rights activist which she wrote about in her autobiography. This common thread of ‘speaking’ up and creativity is intrinsically connected with the people that surround Michelle Franklin, from her late husband Brian Taylor, her former tutor. Oh that’s another scandalous story, I told him I was going to marry him, after that he didn’t really have a choice, says Michelle. Taylor was a successful sculptor, her son Gabriel is a composer and musician, and her daughter Belle a much sought after tattoo artist; so my question is, if she had a part in inspiring her own children, who inspired her?
Naum Gabo
Miriam Isreals my grandmother, was the niece of Joseph Isreals a famous Dutch painter, but also the daughter of Belle Moskowitz who was an important political woman in New York, she was an American and my grandfather Cyril was British and so it was a kind of an arranged Jewish marriage, which they had for about ten years until she divorces him, as she can’t stand it any longer, this causes an uproar. She had my father and two boys, and gets remarried to Naum Gabo, a famous Russian constructivist artist.
His collection of art is owned by the Tate now, he had a Steller career, and had a major influence on my art because I knew him all my life, and I bonded with him as well as my grandmother who was also a painter.
It was then I realised early on, the type of sophistication art needed to be produced, the level you had to go.
With a gene pool of arty creatives I want to get cracking and look at some work, we start by looking at Michelle's embroidery which she’s been doing for about five years, the interviews all going swimmingly when suddenly I get a little tongue tied, but what else was I supposed to say…
Does this cock have a name?, I pointed. Naturally there’s a burst of laughter and yes I’m pretty much mortified. Moving on, moving on swiftly.
The cockerel was a sample piece of embroidery, and yes I really enjoyed doing it…years later I made a bunch of maternity clothes but nothing of much consequence.
The turning point came when I went to Spain to look after my brother who had cancer. I stayed there during Covid and started designing this. Michelle picks up a framed piece of work, an embroidery of a woman she has done who has braids extending out of a beautiful afro. The piece is called “Luchadora”; apparently a lady that Michelle got talking to in Spain about people who look after those with cancer called her this: You are Luchadora!, which translates as: powerful fighting woman, and Michelle loved it.
Luchadora
Artichoke
Mermaid
This comes after our artist has shown me more photos of her family all, of whom are various shades in colour, and features. I ask her if she considers race in her work… I didn’t think I realised that it was that important until I did my self-portrait, my hair was short here, she taps the photograph. It changed my view of how people saw me, because when my hair was longer it didn’t look textured in any way, and I was treated differently.
“The woman of black conch a book” by Monique Roffey, has been an inspiration for a new collection of work. I think the book is really important because it talks about women’s issues, race, and the story is so unique. Michelle pulls off a cloth which is covering a hoop depicting an umbra of embroidered greens, from grassy to teal, with a sea of water in which a woman is immersed and that woman is… You, Sabrina, you are the mermaid with two tails.
For a minute I’m stunned into silence. It’s actually quite emotional, the detail is crazy for a start, the colours joyous, and dare I say it I can actually see myself, not only a likeness but she’s captured a real sense of me. It’s the first time I’ve seen any work, as after I did some modelling for her, I didn’t give it a second thought.
Soon after Michelle takes us for a short stroll to her studio which is ten minutes or so away.
Dead artichokes are one of my favourite things to paint, and when they’re not dead they have a wonderful flower, says Michelle. The journalist in me looks for a deeper perhaps hidden meaning, but I’m happily reminded that sometimes things are there to be enjoyed with no backstory. My father used to grow them and we always used to eat them. I love them, I love still life. They always have to be beautiful, unlike other subjects I’ve worked on, like the holocaust or the tsunami where there’s a lot of horror.
I get the sense that artichokes are the light relief, the reprieve, where the focus can be shifted to an inanimate object with no immediate story to tell, where it just is, and things just are… It’s also an exercise in colour and form. I like making compositions and I’m always learning. I’ll make two or three of the same thing, with the idea that at least one of those paintings is going to be successful and the others aren’t.
Looking around I imagine that her cosy little studio has seen more than one side of the artist. Over the years you learn to pace yourself and how to not ruin too many paintings. I've been known to get in a bit of a temper and stamp on a few!, she laughs. But if you don’t get frustrated with a piece it’s never good, at the time it often feels impossible and other times your past experience helps you.
That experience seems to have led to an exploration of her own grief from the death of her parents, a best friend and a sibling which shows up in works like “Flood” where the charcoal sweeps across the page, pulling the viewer in.
Siblings
When I was 25 my best friend died, we were such good friends, he had AIDS… And when I lost him, that was my first experience of death. I had started painting but none were finished, so I thought for the first time in my life I’m going to try and draw from a photograph, and eventually I did a whole series.
Is there a type of catharsis in choosing subjects such as this? I’m not always conscious of that.You don’t always plan what you’re going to paint or draw, it just sort of comes out, it’s like a compulsion, and you have to try and find out where it’s going.
Michelle also hasn’t shied away from subjects like the devastation and terror in her work “Tsunami” in charcoal and the holocaust in her etching “Holocaust fire”.
Art isn’t always comfortable, and it’s not always pretty.
Holocaust Fire
It’s this kind of acknowledgement that has pushed Michelle to produce the kind of work that she has, no matter what life throws at her, no matter who she may have lost or indeed gained she will not be a bystander and back away into the rubble with nothing to say. No. She’ll make sure to tackle challenging subjects -not forgetting the pure joy she takes in painting artichokes- and when the time is right she allows her work to do the talking. And I don’t know about you, but I’m all ears.
