When something is ready to be discarded as it is no longer required, it is ready for a new start. Things never really disappear; they transform into something different. 

​

Hi I’m Lenadar I have reinvented myself now that my daughters have grown up and I have become a Grandmother.  I have always lived in the West Midlands and I have always created art, although when my children were small, it wasn’t always easy to use certain art materials such as paint, so changed my methods and materials for creating art.

​

I still did a bit of sketching and used different means of art making such as knitting, embroidery, sewing and cake decorating which I did when the children had their afternoon naps, were in bed or at school. I didn’t believe that becoming a mother should stop me creating art, I wanted to do it, so I just need to adapt by creating portable arts.

​

I grew up in relative poverty in Birmingham where we had to make the most of what we had, and nothing was wasted.  Later in life, this led to my interest in political, economic, and social history, and increasingly noticed the gaping maw between the haves and the have nots. George Orwell’s 1937 book The Road to Wigan Pier, and the 1914 book The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist by Robert Tressell, Hobsbawm’s Age of Extremes, and E.P. Thompson’s The making of the English Working Class, were a great influence on my political views, and my views on equality.

​

I believe that I am versatile, not afraid of change and will have a go at almost anything.  As well as being a mother, over the years, I have worked in many jobs.  My first job was working in Birmingham’s jewellery quarter just opposite the school of jewellery, waitressing and bar work, worked in a shop, office work for British Gas, the Teaching Council, and in more recent years working for the Probation Service. 

​

In 2017 after attending an art club in Redditch, then aged 57 I decided that I need to change my life and do something different that had to do with art, something I really wanted to do, but circumstances of life made it difficult.

​

I was sick of office work, couldn’t do much manual work anymore because of arthritis, and my daughters had all left home, so I decided that I would try to get into university to study fine art.  Something I could not do when I left school and couldn’t go to college as I unofficially left aged 14, so didn’t sit exams, and aged 16 I had to go to work to give my mother my keep.

As an adult, I took up studying at college, got a few qualifications including an access to university course, but ended up working again, as I needed money at the time.

​

I really wanted to challenge and broaden my knowledge and skills and was of course delighted to be accepted at Birmingham City University at Margaret Street.  As a teenager I remember seeing the building and thinking how much I would love to study art there.  

After reading John Berger’s 1972 book ‘Ways of Seeing’ where he says “The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled,” in my first year at university, I decided to link this to an art work of how some people fall into debt yet give the appearance of wealth.

​

 It was my first piece of art I did at university, and was of a reclining woman made out of cardboard and paper, and she was surrounded by screwed up bills, companies offering her credit and a court summons for non-payment, she wore a designer watch and clothes covered in brand names, and company slogans where in effect, she was using her own body as an advertising board.

 I also made a ‘brexit bomb’ made from some wood I found stored in the loft.  I made it to look like it was a recycled ballot box used for the Brexit vote, but now it was a bomb with a plunger through the top with a nail on the end to burst a balloon to make a bang.  At the time, there was much talk about the negative impact that Brexit could cause, so seemed an appropriate piece to make.

Last year, at the very threat of the coronavirus outbreak reaching the UK, I was going to do a performance piece about the virus and the fear it was creating.  I only got as far as making a mask and was starting on my costume when lockdown happened and I abandoned the idea. 

Another project I was working on had to be changed. I was working on ‘performing the archives’, a project using Birmingham City Council’s archives. As I could not get into there because of lockdown, and was feeling rather fed up, I decided to make my own to be found in the future.

It was very tongue in cheek and humorous. I was going to make myself a fabulous coffin in readiness but decided against it in case it was a bad omen, and in any case, I was running out of pieces of wood, so only had the base.  I guess it was what they call gallows humour.

​

My recent work is about fertility, transformation, and more recently transformation of woman into motherhood.  My contextual and lived experience along with researched subjects about motherhood and artists has greatly influenced my recent work.

I extend the use of the life of materials; I experiment with them to find how they can be manipulated and research different ways of displaying the art objects.

​

My principle is making use of what you already have and spend as little money as possible.  I am currently working on a body of work using air dried modelling clay to represent fertility.  I am also working on a life-sized stylised exaggeration of a fertility goddess made from a bed duvet, sheet, pillows and papier mache. 

My influences for fertility in art come from a wide range of sources including Louise Bourgois and fertility goddess’s art and artifacts. I started this during the most recent lockdown, and as I was unable to use the university studio, I used what I had to hand.

Influences for the displaying of my art comes from Cornelia Parker, Tim Noble and Sue Webster as I use a variety of materials found in my garage, shed and loft, and like to display them in interesting ways.

 I transform the materiality of objects such as plumbing materials,  plaster of paris, wood and papier mache, and transform them into something that only on close inspection may the materials be recognised, and then suspend or display the transformed objects in a way that would not normally be shown.

To transform objects, I use grit, paint, hot glue and use heat to distort materials so that the original objects are not easily recognised.

​

One of my past works exhibited in Margaret Street was a gold painted installation, set in a dark room illuminated slightly by small lamps and mirrors, there was also a fan and a wind chime to give it movement and sound.

 I also set a ladder so viewers could climb up and look down onto the installation to see the reflected view of the suspended gold objects hanging.

My inspiration for this came from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein where his creation came from old body parts and experimenting with science to create a new life.

I have also exhibited at the Hyperstew Exhibition in Centralla Gallery in Digbeth.  After visiting Liverpool Tate and seeing Bridget Riley’s op art, I created an appropriation of an optical illusion by MC Escher as I wanted to create an illusion of a tunnel, which of course on close inspection was just paint on a board.

​

I like to make three-dimensional artwork and created this with a painting in order to change the perception of space.  My painting received mixed reviews, of viewers loving it and finding it quite trippy, to not liking it as it made them feel dizzy.  Either way, it made most people feel something.

I have worked collaboratively with fellow students over the past 3 years, last year, for our project, we agreed that we would make a recreation of the ‘Tulip Festival’ which was an annual event that I attended in Cannon Hill park in Birmingham as a child in the early 1970s.  For my contribution to the project, I made a copy of the miniature railway called the Tulip Express used to carry passengers around the park.

I used an old large table top, a plastic bucket, an old oil funnel, left over paint, and other bits and bobs found around my house.  It was very successful although I could not show what I had made live, I had to show photographs of my work which were taken in the garden because of the pandemic, we were in lockdown.

​

I have been through my own transformation discarding old cells, and making new ones, from girl, to mother to grandmother, and I will continue to experiment, learn, transform and grow my art.

In the future, I will be making more art about motherhood, the joy and the sorrows, physical pain and mental strain that it can bring, the guilt and the love of being a mother and being loved by your child.

​

You can find out more about me and my work on my website: https://arwen247wixsite.com/lenadar or drop me a line to: maxlen247@gmail.com

​

​