Christine Wilson sits notebook in hand, lost for a moment in the intricate sketches each turn of the page reveals. The pencil drawings cover every space - gossamer tracery on a butterfly wing, the soft petal outlines of an unfolding rose, the fleecy shapes of clouds - all with handwritten notes jotted alongside. They bring back memories—of travels, sojourns in distant lands and adventures untold.
The notebooks, though not for public viewing, reveal a little known side of Christine Spittel Wilson. Christine, the writer we all know from her many books both fiction and non-fiction, her memoirs released just last year-- but Christine, the artist?
At the age of 95, she is with the help of friends putting together an exhibition of her paintings. This is the first time her work will be exhibited in this country. Which begs the question, why now? The answer is not for herself but for the St. Nikolaas’ Home for Elders which was founded by her father, the legendary surgeon and anthropologist Dr. R.L. Spittel, which is in need of support.
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| Mount Kilimanjaro |
Seated on the verandah of her home looking out on the shady green of the garden she loves, she talks of this propulsion to paint that was one of her twin interests, though perhaps eclipsed by her greater need to write.
Art was part of the fabric of her life from childhood. On her mother, physician Clarie Van Dort’s side there was the famous J.L.K. Van Dort (her grandfather’s brother) and her mother’s sister Aline, a skilled artist. As a child she would illustrate the fairy stories she wrote and later as an adult had lessons from other well-known names – Donald Ramanayake and Ivor Baptist.
Her father, didn’t paint, “Daddy didn’t have the time”, but she recalls him in his study at Wycherley, their home, making many detailed drawings of his pioneering surgical operations. He had a great love for drawing, she says, adding with conviction, “If he hadn’t been a surgeon, he would have been an artist.” That brings to mind, the famous portrait of Dr. Spittel by that reclusive artist David Paynter which Christine gifted to the National Art Gallery in 1991. How it came to be is well documented in her memoir as she describes how Paynter, appeared at Wycherley, quite unexpectedly and asked Dr Spittel if he would sit for him as he had long been an admirer of his work. The busy surgeon acquiesced, and this famous study of Spittel, completed in three short days, was one of the Paynter’s personal favourites.
In Christine’s collection, though, we see no portraits. Hers are essentially landscapes, proof of her love for nature. They capture a different world- one of the early paintings -the Dhobi quarters at Navam Mawatha is a scene of wide open spaces with a bright Flame of the Forest tree in the foreground, a place so changed that few would recognise it today.
Many are from a very happy time in her life- her stint in Kenya where she lived for twenty years when her husband Alistair Wilson worked for the World Bank. They travelled widely and Christine, having put away her pen, was seldom without her sketchbook, noting with eager eyes, the vast panorama spread before her. The mountains, the savannas, all are painted with intensity. “I had an anxiety to fill my life---to put it all down on paper, pen and ink or pencil,” she says, and indeed her strong brush strokes reflect this in no small measure.” The mountains fascinated her—there is one of Mount Kilimanjaro, another of a distant but mesmerizing peak of Mount Kenya.
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| An early portrait of Christine by John Napper |
Christine today |
If Africa was indeed a shining spell in her life, the pull of her island home for her has never paled. The love for the country and its wildlife, for its dark mysterious jungles was her father’s gift to her.
Occasionally Christine travelled with him when he took off in search of the Veddahs, trailing behind him as he traversed paths others feared to tread. He would teach her how to see not just the trees and the flowers but the wonder of creation in the tiniest of insects. She smiles, remembering those expeditions, even the times when she went off alone, accompanied only her trusty driver John Sinho.
Just as she did a course in advanced writing in Scotland where she lived for a while soon after marriage to Alistair, in Kenya, Christine embraced painting taking several courses under teachers like Keith Harrington who would recognize and nurture her talents. She exhibited thrice in Nairobi and had her works snapped up, then went on to learn porcelain painting, “my favourite”, and speedily progressed in this delicate art, taking part in conventions abroad, only regretfully parting with her kiln which she brought all the way back from Kenya with her in 1997. Her last two paintings on porcelain, dainty studies of butterflies, sit on a shelf in her study, close to her desk.
The Christine Wilson Collection, some 35 of her works and other paintings from her personal collection — a few by Donald Ramanayake, a Collette cartoon etc. will be on at the Dutch Burger Union Hall on September 6 and 7 - a glimpse, if you like, of the remarkable talents of an inspiring woman of our times. |
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