Source work:
0806/85
Roger Fry (1866-1934)
Still Life with Omega Flowers
1919
Oil on canvas
Clumsy Interloper & Vanessa Leaving - Faye Spencer
Faye Spencer (b.1974)
Clumsy Interloper & Vanessa Leaving
Oil on board
R 6 000
Both these paintings were created in response to Roger Fry's Still Life with Omega Flowers. While they are not a diptych in any strict sense of the word they do exist together as a kind of suite. In the first, Clumsy Interloper, the artist (myself - not Fry!) has knocked the vase of flowers over. While the work might, in part, be about me and the awkwardness of responding to a work made so long ago that I really enjoy and find intriguing, it is also - more significantly - about the difficulty of group dynamics, the frequency with which people/artists/friends tread on another's toes, have accidents, upset the balance of carefully thought out equations.
The second or companion piece, entitled Vanessa Leaving, is likewise about dynamics within groups. I couldn't help being struck, when reading about the Omega Group, by the complex 'ingewukkeld' nature of the relationships between members of the group. I felt a particular sympathy for Fry when I read (frequently) that he was really heartbroken when his lover Vanessa Bell left him to pursue a relationship with another member of the group. Bell and Fry remained friends but the awkwardness of their relationship ending, and yet continuing within the group must have been hard to bear. Flowers are often gifts between lovers so there is that aspect of the image that took me down this path. Also paper flowers might be especially fragile, and this led me to use cut-out paper figures to talk about the fragility of friendships/relationships within groups. There are other ways to read these paintings too. Both, I hope, have a lighter, more playful tone lurking among the commentary on things that might make a person feel serious and sad.