Art... Strangers made friends... & a heady dose of empowerment!

*But first, a disclaimer as a Men Allowed into the 'Treehouse' post!!!

Well...

And we're going back some now!

I had attended a workshop… Organised by some cool Port Elizabeth (now, Gqeberha) peeps, pioneering individuals, who started – let’s say – a support group of sorts for talented novices and established alike in the Eastern Cape area, Creative X.

And at this event, one of these pioneering individuals just happened to be one, and truly the one and only, Christo Noel Booth.

We got chatting.

I suggested an interview sometime.

He mentioned an art work he had in mind for me, for my home.

I figured, I don’t know, a five-minute sketch of sorts (by no means any less priceless!).

But then I was presented with something else entirely...

And little did he know how she would resonate with me!

The very first attempt at personal writing I’d ever published was a piece entitled, Learning to Love Life with Bipolar.

It had taken me a month’s stay as a ward of the state in a mental home, and two years grappling with this new addition to my identity, to be ready to write that piece.

And I wrote. And edited. For four days. Till I had what I felt was the best I could do.

My friend, and a talented writer but more so, friend, Clayton Truscott - now living in the states... It had to be him. It had always been him. He was my sounding board.

He said it was bloody marvellous. Solid job. In him I had to trust.

And if I wanted to get the word out there, he was only too stoked to publish it on his own site, These Walking Blues… But would I like to choose the image to accompany it?

Now, during my stay at the Elizabeth Donkin Mental Hospital, the now rather (in)famous Joff (a.k.a. Steven Carter) had been a stalwart in my corner.

I wanted to choose one of his newer art works as the accompanying image.

So Joff and I had a beer one evening as I looked over his work…

And there she was… A girl, vulnerable yet stoic, poised with a black bird.

He told me she was a figure that returned to him in dreams. On the precipice, death threatening. It was she. Returning in his dreams.

She was it.

So when Christo Noel Booth, later I guess just Christo (!), well he delivered a framed painting of a girl in red – another colour that seems to re-occur in my life (most of my secondhand finds as cars have been ladybug red… and so far have served me well!) – with a black bird… It was like a chance encounter with the girl who had reappeared to Joff…

Perhaps she had found me too.

She’d just taken on a different form this time.

A recurring figure though no less.

A figure of similar empowerment with Prussian blue hair like Pinocchio's enchanted fairy makes a 'familiar' turn in my first novella... She recurs... Or I conjure her!

And I love her.

But I digress...

Everyone so far who has visited my home has been smitten (may I say even bewitched?) by this creation of Christo’s, and well, by that rare combination of imagination and craftsmanship.

But many moons since this all and then some... I liked to pop by when in 'The Hood'...

To visit their studio sometimes, of Christo’s and the rest of the '4 Blind Mice' art collective...

When I craved some respite from my laptop...

When I just had to be surrounded by art works/-in-progress and their makers.

A familiar not a cat!

And on one such occasion, Christo had mentioned, yet again in passing, that there was another piece he had done, a print, that made him think his art and I suitable for each other.

Weird then, having forgotten our conversation over perhaps a little too much red wine on that particular eve… That I instantly stepped into the studio and queried after a spectacularly bold creation. Fate. Kismet. And as you like it!

Apparently she was the print Christo had had in mind for me!

Isn’t it funny how things, how my cats, the art in my home, the books on my shelves…. Inherited costume jewellery…

I sometimes feel they have chosen me and not the other way around…?

I read once, and forgive me if I misquote, I don’t always have my notebook at the ready when I need it… But that art cannot be ‘good’ or ‘bad’.

It can either make us feel something. Or at worst, feel nothing.

So, a true blue Man Allowed... To Christo Noel Booth. An insufficient thank you!

My diagnosis... The depression... Crippling.

I felt little to nothing a great deal of the time. Your art... Her. And her.

They have made me feel something every day.

And mostly, these bewitching but empowering women rendered bold have had the strange but reassuring habit of making me feel empowered, bewitched and emboldened, but first, foremost, empowered.

The gift of art. And a meaningful friendship. When both find us.

For more, follow Christo Noel Booth on Insta and Twitter @CHRISTOBOOTH

Iron-hand Maiden with Bird by Christo Noel Booth