Write With Me Club: June

The theme this month is writing people

Last week in New York I stood in front of this oil painting. For those not already familiar with it, it is A Woman in the Sun and it was painted in 1961 by Edward Hopper.

Hopper was famous for his paintings depicting loneliness and isolation, although that’s not what I saw when I stood in front of this painting in the Whitney Museum of American Art on Wednesday, as a woman who also likes to stand in the sun on first waking, I saw a kindred spirit, I saw a woman standing in her own full power, at one in body and mind.

The woman in the painting is actually Hopper’s wife, Josephine Nivison, who was his model for their entire life together and, when they met, was a more successful artist than the man who would become her husband. It was actually thanks to Josephine that Hopper got his first public display among a collection of other artworks and after that, well you will know he went on to become one of America’s most famous artists.

And Josephine? She put her own talent to one side to support the career of the man she married. She often named his paintings, including the most famous, Nighthawks.

To me, at first glance, the woman in the painting could be my age — late forties — she is holding a cigarette between her fingers, her buttocks are full and round, her stomach yes, slightly soft, and while she looks deep in contemplation there are no visible wrinkles on her face. Yet it was the description of the painting on the wall beside it that piqued my attention, Josephine was 78 at the time that Hopper completed this painting, the pair had been together for almost forty years, and rather than adhere to realistic detail, how her body had changed over that time and now looked in her eighth decade, Hopper ‘depicted her according to his own internal vision and memory.’

And that sentence made me stop and think, and it is for this reason that our theme for the month of June will be writing people.

Because when artists, including writers, are depicting people in memoir or essays, or indeed portraits, isn’t that all we can ever do, depict people according to our own internal vision and memory?

We don’t discard Hopper’s painting because he hasn’t shown a sagging bottom, or criticised him for painting pert boobs where the reality might have been something more influenced by gravity, and clearly when painting Hopper actively disregarded those details and ‘plumped’ — if you pardon the pun — for a younger looking body.

It could be that he wanted to depict a woman in her forties, that was his aim, but I was rather moved by the fact that he may have seen his wife like that, still… after all those years of marriage, even if she didn’t. In his mind’s eye her body remained as he had first known it.

And so as artists ourselves, if we write about people in our lives according to our ‘internal vision and memory’ then we can choose too how to depict them, we can keep them frozen in time, and as we know beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

But what about when we are writing about people in our lives, or who have been in our lives, in a less flattering way? Are we able then to rely solely on our ‘internal vision and memory’?

Well, in a way there is no getting away from that, every day of our lives we process things according to our own views, experiences, values and beliefs. Life is subjective, so then are depictions of people in memoir and essays. Many memoirs now start or end with a disclaimer, a note saying that the writer understands that the events they are describing are those according to their own recollections.

In her memoir about the end of her marriage, You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Maggie Smith writes in a prologue:

“This isn’t a ‘tell-all’ because ‘all’ is something we can’t access. We don’t get ‘all’. ‘Some,’ yes. ‘Most’ if we’re lucky. ‘All,’ no. There’s no such thing as a tell-all, only a tell-some – a tell-most, maybe. This is a tell-mine, and the mine keeps changing, because I keep changing. The mine is slippery like that… There is no such thing as a tell-all because we can only ever speak for ourselves.”

When we’re tackling difficult subjects or experiences, it can be hard to write people – even the good times. So many times when I am ghostwriting someone’s memoir and we come to talk of the moment they fell in love, my authors find it hard to remember if they are no longer together or they no longer feel that way, they need to erase the things they loved about a former partner lest it hurt too much, yet it is not honest writing to do that, it is not honesty to the self, and it not only does a disservice to the reader, but to the love that you once shared which was true and real and pure at one time, at least for one party, and is allowed to remain fixed in that moment for all time, trapped in amber. Or at least that’s what I believe.

Perhaps the book is tackling difficult subjects such as domestic abuse, sexual abuse, or infidelities, perhaps you remember too many bad times and not enough of the good ones. Perhaps you want to write about people but you know it will hurt others, perhaps you are worried that it will land you in court – perhaps you haven’t even considered this. The amount of people who email me and say they want to write their story but I point out to them that, unfortunately, they would not have the proof to satisfy a court of law if an action was taken against them by the other party. People don’t realise that and it is important.

So I thought for this month’s meet up on Monday evening, we could discuss writing people in more detail, the ethics of writing people, the honesty required, the personal decisions that need to be made, and the legal ones. Although, disclaimer, you should never publish anything without a lawyer glancing over it.

But back to Hopper and his beautiful painting. Memory is unreliable, events aren’t always as we remember, people aren’t always exactly as we knew them, truth is subjective, there is their truth, there is yours, but facts are facts.

There is another well-known Edward Hopper painting that I didn’t see at the Whitney, it hangs somewhere else. Cape Cod Morning depicts another woman standing in the sun’s rays looking out of a window.

Josephine Nivison, the muse as always, said of the painting: ‘It’s a woman looking out to see if the weather’s good enough to hang out her washing.’ (This quote alone might give some indication of why she was willing to sacrifice her own career for her husband’s.)

Hopper retorted: ‘Did I say that?… From my point of view she’s just looking out the window.’

Perspective. Subjectivity. Truth. There is no getting away from those words, in life, or art, or writing.

So, come and join me on Monday evening at 7pm (British Summer Time) for our monthly creative chat and we will discuss this in more detail. I’ll send out the zoom details to all White Ink members on Monday at noon, and don’t forget you need to be a paid member to join and you can do that here:

I hope to see you there.