Grandmothers and art making as an encompassing process
The painting I am currently working on, which is not finished yet (the image on the left is something I made in 2019) includes an elderly woman, and the book I have just finished has the title: Grandmothers: Essays by 21st-century Grandmothers, which as the title suggests is an anthology of essays by twenty-four Australian women, edited by Helen Elliott, about the many aspects of being a grandmother in the 21st century. The choice of my painting theme and the book are not due to coincidence, but the result of the way I personally (and probably others, as well) engage with art. As I mentioned in the previous post when creating art the past meets the present, the conscious mind dialogues with the unconscious and daily life may enter the work of art, too. My painting or drawing activity spreads out and touches upon the rest of my living experience and vice versa I would imagine. It’s a process that spreads out and encompasses more than my painting time. During the time that I am engaging with a particular painting or drawing I usually do some research or read relevant things. The artwork occupies my experience during the day, and sometimes enters dreams and meditation. It takes up more space and time than the actual activity,
So, it was within this context that I found this book of essays, which captured my interest on many levels, one being the fact that it is written by Australian women, and in this sense it allowed me to catch a glimpse of the country’s history, current life and politics, and even its landscape. It allowed a sort of mental trip to the place I was born, but have never been able to return. Also, both the book and the painting process have got me thinking about my own grandmothers and the stories that have reached me, even though I only met one in my early teens when I came to Greece, a little before she passed away at the age of ninety six, and also, the universal and inescapable “potentiality”, within all human beings and living creatures, of growing old (if one is lucky…) and eventually dying. Other kinds of human potential might be stifled and buried through interference or lack of nurturance and opportunity, but the ‘potential’ of ageing and passing away is inevitable and universal.
The book contains 24 essays from a broad range of women of diverse ethnic and cultural origins, upbringings, and work backgrounds: politicians, historians, writers, poets and artists, chefs and others, reflecting on their vastly diverse experiences and commonalities. As Helen Elliot, journalist, literary critic and editor of this book, writes: “Our commonality is in being a grandmother, and some of us here are more intentional grandmothers than others. Individuality flows through in grandmothering as much as it does through mothering.”
Major common threads in these women’s stories are their diverse experiences as grandmothers of one or many grandchildren and their love and concern about their own kin, but also, the future of all future generations. In reference to her concern about the future Jenny Macklin, Australian feminist and former politician in the Australian House of Representatives, who has delivered important social reforms, writes: “Grandmothers have such a vested interest in the future. We can, and should, stay active and engaged in policy debates. Luckily for me, and for this generation of grandmothers, there are many ways to ensure our voices are heard. Contact and lobby your local member of parliament. Lead or support a campaign for a cause you believe is worth fighting for. Use social media to bring about policy change, as well as to share cute photos of the grandkids. We hold this power in the palm of our hands thanks to modern technology.” She writes about the women and grandmothers who through their activism and campaigns have significantly influenced her policy-making and invites women to speak up and act. She writes: “As a ‘thoroughly modern grandmother’ whose life was committed to public policy and social change for good, I have a significant amount of both personal and professional skin in the game. Please join me, grandmothers of Australia and beyond, in writing the next chapter.”
Through reading these women’s essays we learn about the Australian landscape, the Stolen Generation, bills and laws that have empowered women and families, concerns about the environment and the future of the planet, different cultures, the struggles and battles women have had to deal with and fight, social issues around inequality and education, food and nurturing, different ways of practising grandmothering, contemporary ways of intergenerational living, the significance of autonomy and authenticity, and LOVE. Also, all the women in this book have written about the women that came before them and their own grandmothers and how they shaped them. Jenny Macklin writes: “these women who focused on raising their nine children each and running their households on low incomes with little to no support from outside their families.” Jane Caro, columnist, author, feminist and novelist, writes:”… the fact that my grandmother remains so vividly in my memory is something that has taken on more importance to me now. Grandchildren give you a foothold into the future, for sure, but they also ladder you back to the past. In a strange way, becoming a grandmother, like becoming a mother, leads you to recognise connections, characteristics and legacies of those figures from your own childhood. Your memory of the grandmothers who preceded you sharpens. And the importance of them intensifies; your memory of them keeps them alive, just as their memory of their own grandparents did and still does.”
Below I will include some extracts from the book that reflect the different ideas and experiences around grandmothering and many other aspects of life.
Helen Elliot writes: “There has been no strong narrative about grandmothering; it is still closeted….. The grandmother narrative is circumscribed, lazily connected to scented soap, lace, lavender, babysitting, caregiving— a latter-day invisibility. Grandmother still suggests a woman whose days of significance in the actual, rushing world are past.”
“…unlike our grandmothers, we had the possibility of an education. Education is a theme in many of these essays, because it transforms everything. Not just us, but our children and grandchildren. Many of us saw the frustrations of the narrow path our post-war mothers had no choice in taking, because men were in financial control.”
Jane Caro writes: “When my sisters and I were young mothers, it was my mother’s feminism that made her so reluctant to give up the space she had finally created for herself. It is my feminism that makes me so determined to help my own daughter as much as possible and never, ever make her feel guilty for asking…… We grandmothers make history, repeat history, carry history and pass on history. We pass on stories, nursery rhymes, family sayings and the unspoken, unacknowledged ripples of long-forgotten events, traumas, twists and turns in our complex lives……..
We know maternal grandmothers are particularly important for the health and survival of their grandchildren, much more so than grandmothers on the father’s side. We also know that it is their DNA that is handed down through the maternal line, from mother to daughter from generation to generation. The chain of grandmothers is not just emotional or practical, it is biological too….. all modern humans have the same great-great-great-etc-grandmother— an African woman who lived 200,000 years ago. Along the way, however, her mitochondrial DNA has mutated many times, creating all the various differences we can see in human beings…..”
As I mentioned above one common thread in these essays is the concern for the future of the planet. Helen Elliott writes: “I mourn the passing of the old natural world, alarmed at the prospect of the new world that climate change has made. If my granddaughters have a memory of a real garden, they might do something practical to help restore the natural world and the creatures in it as they create their own lives.|” and Jane Caro says: “I underestimated just how much I would love these small but vigorous and insistent voyagers into the future— a future that I will never see, a future I now worry about even more. What will climate change do to their prospects?”
Ali Cobby Eckermann, an award-winning writer of poetry, memoir and fiction, describes the Aboriginal kin system and the importance of grandmothers in this culture:
“The adventure of feeling an association with birds was taught to me by my familial grandmother, whom I first met when I was thirty-four, in the red desert of central Australia, at the small community where she was living. Nana was a petite woman filled with warm laughter, with an engaging smile and a shock of white hair. I was the second of her Stolen-Generation grandchildren to return home. Now in her senior years, she was respectfully retired from work and always made time to sit and talk, telling story after story, as if making up for those lost years…… Through the kinship system, I was proud to regard most of these cultural law women as my grandmothers. Those years with Nana before she died were among my happiest…… They explained to me that Grandmothers’ Law should never be broken; it is a cultural law that should remain intact. My new friends reminded me of the importance of my role as grandmother: to mentor a positive and encouraging presence; to affirm a loving companionship; and to foster a long view of family connection, as all children crave a sense of belonging.”
Auntie Daphne Milward, an artist and a cultural teacher, who has worked with a range of Aboriginal advocacy and support organizations, also writes about the important role of grandmothers in Aboriginal communities:
“I am not just grandmother to my three biological grandchildren, I am a grandmother to so many others in my clan. Family is everything to Aboriginal people. …. Traditionally, clan groups were family groups, so you didn’t have just one set of parents, you had two or three sets of parents. The whole group had responsibility for the children. If you were crying or had fallen over, any one of the family members would look after you. We were a very close-knit clan and the nurturing was done by everyone. Love was never limited to your own children.
I also belong to a program in schools where we act as substitute grandparents for Aboriginal children who don’t have grandparents or anyone who is in a position to act as grandparents. This means going to events at school or occasionally doing things a biological grandparent might do. So, you see, I want to spread my arms wide when I say that word grandmother….. I enjoy charming the children with stories and illustrations of the country we all live in. Children find it easy to learn how the land is connected to them. I will speak to them if they care to listen; that way they see and hear someone from a culture that is the oldest culture on Earth……The Roman philosopher Cicero once said, ‘To be ignorant of the past is to remain a child’— that is so true. The past is not ancient history to me. It is living history. I am living history.”
Glenda Guest, novelist, like the women in her family before her believes:
“….. the child was part of a family, not the centre; as did my own mother; as do I. I believe this for more than one reason, but the main one is that if, in a family, all the attention goes to the child, the main relationship cannot help but be compromised. When the child— particularly an only child who does not have to share attention with siblings— is always prioritised, what happens to the vital relationship between the parents? How does the child understand and learn about kind and loving relationships that do not focus solely on her/ himself? The parents’ relationship is the basis on which the child, when an adult, will model their own emotional life; she/ he must be able to see their day-to-day affectionate and caring interaction and know this is love……
She writes about her granddaughter: “I imagine the person she will be when her huge IQ and her burgeoning EQ meet and become complementary. I imagine a person who is strong and a bit wild, who— as long as she has a firm home base— sees the world as her oyster, who understands that her privilege comes with responsibility to the world and acts on it. Who, because she understands herself, understands others. Why do I imagine such a person? Because she wrote this at school: The Best Part of Me. The best part of me is my heart. When I feel sad my heart makes me happy again. It holds my greatest secrets and is full of love. My heart makes me feel brave when I am scared. My heart is the best thing anyone could wish for. I care for my heart more than ever. My greatest wish for her is not academic or professional achievement, for that will come anyway, but that she will understand other people’s hearts.”
Helen Garner, novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist. writes about contemporary intergenerational living:
“It became clear to us that this was a natural way for a family to live. Adults were not outnumbered by kids. Childcare could bounce between us, according to circumstance. I worked freelance and could be flexible. My daughter could go back to university and become a high-school teacher. Her husband could work at night in his bands, and paint in his shed by day, and hang out washing, and prune his trees, and build chook pens, and cook up a storm.”
Elizabeth Chong, celebrity chef of Chinese origin writes:
Nevertheless, it was inevitable that my life as an Australian girl outside of my Chinese home would have a huge influence on my outlook and habits. Unlike my grandmother, I am not held in awe as the family matriarch, nor do I expect or want that kind of status. I hold onto my independence fiercely, including my financial independence. I do not expect my children to do my bidding, although I do appreciate it if any of them offer help…… I can shower unconditional love, free of the stress of responsibility. It is a new and perfect luxury, an unexpected and mysterious thing, but there is no denying the sense of belonging, the sense of continuity when you cradle one of your newborn grandchildren or great-grandchildren who have the same bloodline as yourself. Is DNA the reason for that deep emotional pull that is at once protective and possessive, full of pride and humility? I know that each grandmother’s experience is unique and there are as many different types of grandmothers as there are grains of rice……. My grandchildren will not remember their grandmother as a little white-haired lady rocking gently in a chair. I hope they will remember her as someone who has inspired them to celebrate life in all its richness, and to never forget to give thanks for all the goodness that is theirs……… I hope each grandchild may have been inspired and motivated to be the best person they can be, to contribute to the wider world in their own way. I never wished to impose my expectations on them.”
Alison Lester, children’s author and illustrator and ambassador for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation, describes her grandmothering style as:
“I’m Podge to them, not Grandma. It’s the baby name that I’ve never shaken off and its playfulness sets the tone for the type of grandmother I am, up for anything. The kids love playing with me. I let them sit on my lap and steer as we drive around the farm, we ride the ponies, race plastic trikes down the hill to the orchard, swim, sing, tell stories and ride up the road to find tadpoles.”
Finally, I will end today’s post with extracts from an essay by Gillian Triggs, emeritus professor and activist.
“Today, women over sixty are often well educated and financially independent, having had a fruitful career while also doing a decent job of raising their children. Today, the sixties generation of women is emerging as a political force to be reckoned with. But wait. How can it be that the position of women in Australia has been in regression over the last fifteen years or so? Here are some disturbing facts. The fastest-growing group of homeless people in Australia is not eighteen-year-old youths sleeping under a bridge, but women over fifty-five. How ignominious and sad to have to ask your son or niece if you can sleep on their sofa for a few weeks as you can no longer pay the rent or the mortgage. Women retire today on forty-six per cent of the superannuation available to men. Why? Because we agree to accept flexible, casual and contract work with little job security or opportunities for promotion. We fall off the superannuation ladder and never catch up, despite providing most unpaid caring work across the nation. Women are still at the bottom of the employment pyramid in female-dominated industries…….
Australian women and girls are ranked first in the world for educational attainment. But now the bad news: we are a hundred and third for health, seventy-seventh for ministerial positions in government, forty-ninth for political empowerment and forty-sixth for economic participation….. Too many women have been left behind. The promises of the sixties and seventies have not been met fully for all Australian women. We grandmothers now have a responsibility to advocate, to be politically active in using our education and financial independence to ensure equality of opportunity and outcome. For all women. How dismaying that I should have studied for a law degree, a Master of Laws and a PhD, all at the expense of the Australian, American and British taxpayers, while law students today will finish their JD degree $ 100,000 in debt. As grandmothers, we should be demanding affordable childcare, full superannuation even when on maternity and carers leave, equal pay for equal work, freedom from sexual harassment and bullying in employment, and protection from domestic violence at home.
Triggs writes about her grandmother: “Sarah Jane might have been surprised to know that she has been a driving motivator in my life. As a teenager in the early sixties, I have a vivid memory of one of her visits, when she was sitting up in bed, counting out her small change on the bedspread to see if she could stretch her money to buy a Christmas present for each member of the family. The sum total was pitiful. Sarah-Jane had no means to increase her funds beyond whatever the family’s largesse had provided her………… Even as a young girl, I was mortified by the evident frustration of an older woman who had so little financial independence. I vowed never to be in that position. I knew, instinctively, that to reach whatever potential one might have, it was essential, as Virginia Woolf well understood, to have ‘a room of one’s own…….. I will bring to Sia and Leonard [her grandchildren] that fierce loyalty for family that Sarah-Jane maintained, rightly or wrongly, as well as her warmth and integrity. I hope to be a strong influence in their lives; to stimulate, excite and support them in every way possible. Perhaps I can show them what a woman can achieve in her lifetime, given the opportunity and a dash of determination.”