Avis Saltsman - Artist

Genealogy Pages - Origins Essay page 8

Essay on my Origins - Version of May 1997 - Page Eight

In a very full life I have spent forty years studying twentieth century art and visited hundreds of exhibitions. In my studio I have a good collection of books on it and six files of hand-written notes I took when taking a late education degree with art as a main subject and lectures on twentieth century art in 1975. With my first teaching salary I bought a book on Picasso. Gradually I worked myself away from teaching infants to teaching adults and Art in a secondary school. Throughout the age-groups I used my artistic ability to make my teaching of all age groups interesting and that ability gave me a steady living which has rendered two pensions, including the state one in my own right for thirteen years longer than waiting for my husbands. When I came to live in London and took an Education and Art degree course seconded on salary by the London Borough of Hillingdon, I made contact with the Artists Union after going to their meetings at the I.C.A. They later had offices off Cambridge Circus and then in Poland Street and I became the Librarian of the Union. I still hold the archives and am attempting to write a history. After I had secured early retirement from teaching, I gave myself the training I had always wanted by taking short courses in mostly London colleges and got into an exhibition at the Royal Festival Hall with only the third etching I'd ever done called 'Civilisations' and an abstract silkscreen called 'Summer' in the second half. I never looked back and have been a member of the Printmakers Council Committee for five years (1991-96). A list of exhibitions is at the end of this paper.

In August 1993 I visited an exhibition in southern Germany as a member of the British Printmakers Council committee. One of our members had made the contacts, in Landau in the Rheinlandpfalz near Karlsruhe. A good many towns in Germany have organisations called Künstverein which consist of local people who wish to support artists, which is something totally unknown in England. The one in Landau had a turn-of-the-century villa as a permanent exhibition venue and our joint German/English printmakers show was a big event for the whole region, with a regional politician (arts minister) attending, among others and an art historian giving an address. I obtained a copy of the address and a friend translated. It was a eulogy of printmaking from the earliest times with quotes from Goethe and descriptions of all the methods. The show was called Reflections/Reflexionen. The people I stayed were slightly younger than me, with children in their early twenties and they were born after the war. We were wined, dined and feted, taken on trips to the castles on cliffs overlooking the vineyards of this wine-growing district. The Germans bought most of the English work at high prices and the peoples homes we stayed in, were full of adventurous art which they had bought. These people were not artists themselves but think of artists as special people and we were treated with a breathless reverence which was almost embarrassing, being used as we are to rock-bottom status in England with a London gallery Mafia of dealers making a fortune out of selling dead artists' work to tourists and ordinary people not buying art, particularly adventurous art.

Since I remarried in 1983, for all professional purposes I called myself Avis Saltsman, since there were difficulties with people identifying who I was if using either married name. My mother was the only one who insisted in addressing letters to Mrs K.J. Baldry. I do not mind A.A. Baldry for things other than public positions, but the former I regard as an elimination of me altogether and my husband agrees. If he didn't I wouldn't be married to him. Several of the Germans told me I was German and the photoetching I showed in the show was called 'Waiting to Cross' ! All this was sheer chance, but seems uncanny to me now. This piece of work was reproduced, with others in the town art magazine (population only seven thousand) and I sent a copy of the catalogue to my mother. I now realise it was one of a string of unconscious attempts to get her to reveal something to me. The results of our return show in the foyers of the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith, though handsome, still did not sell because, as I said the English don't buy art, but we did give the organising committee some good parties, including a dinner at the Chelsea Arts Club. A night to remember.

I remember clearly when the war was over as we were in St Annes again during the August school holiday and it was boiling hot . We were in one large bedroom, my mother and grandmother in the double bed, my brother in a cot in the corner and I had a single bed by the window. I couldn't sleep because I was sunburnt and suddenly the air was filled with bells ringing and I could hear crowds singing. I said 'Mu-u-u-m, I think the war's over'. All she said was 'Oh, go to sleep. The war will be over for us when your Father comes home' I can now see that the end of war was not necessarily the end of things for my family, as it hadn't been for my fathers. My mothers reactions were always puzzling to me and I must have struggled to interpret them. Who could possibly not be joyful on that occasion? And her answered to me were always bad-tempered. I believed I always felt that something was my fault since she hardly had a good word for me. Children do interpret things that way. Children, especially girls have to learn to break away from their mothers. I know few women who feel they really get on with their mothers and mine certainly made it easy for me. The downside was that I could not stop futilely trying to impress her. I had piano lessons but, when I played Beethoven's 'Für Elise' for her, she stopped them.

In describing my sister's eldest daughter Amy to me over the phone, my mother described her as 'like you-Bright'. She spat out the word as though it were some kind of disease. I now realise it was the German Disease and I was an infection that had contaminated our family. I feel (and I mean deep and hurtful emotion) that it was a very great pity that my unconscious attempts to discover the origins of my personality could not have had a kinder response from my mother. My parents had had to guard my brother and I as babies in paralysing fear that the connection may be held against us, but if we had been able to discuss it before she died it was the only means of having an adult relationship. I am writing this, after Britain had been an (albeit reluctant) member of the European community for years in an attempt to repair the damage that all the contradictions of this history has done to me and an attempt to find greater understanding from members of my family. Having spent a life-time studying twentieth century art alienates me further and further from most English people's 'philistinism and proud of it' even to the point where they cannot appreciate they have the best in the world such a British acting skills, and the farce of the current 'Beef of Old England' pantomime.

At the same time I was sheltered, being a child of the third generation after Mainhart and immigrant artists and craftspeople have contributed much to this country over the centuries.

In 1992, it was Britain's turn to chair the European Community, and aware that they funded the arts abysmally compared to the other European countries, the government suddenly found six million pounds to try to impress them with arts events during the six months (they withdrew ten million the following year.) To get funds you needed a European project, so an artist acquaintance recruited seven other artists, including me, to put on a Euro8Group show. She was English and a painter, there was a humorous Scotsman, a painter, a German woman printmaker, a Greek potter/sculptress, a French sculptor, Irish abstract painter, French sculptor, an Italian muralist and myself regarded to be Welsh as I was three-quarters so and we all lived in London anyway. We got the grant which just paid for a professionally presented catalogue with messages from the Arts Minister and an art critic. We tidied up an empty shop in Lower Marsh, Waterloo, called it the Euro Gallery, had several good parties in our house to plan it with everyone contributing food and were the first visual art event in the official catalogue. My husband Ken composed music to be played during the show and we were visited by John Drummond, the Festival Director. This is my idea of a future I would like to take part in.

I hope writing this may help to make me a more relaxed individual, able to enjoy my life and especially my new grandson without agitation. When you are older you are less able to suppress early memories These realisations have been very gradual and painful, but by writing them down I hope to lay them to rest. They certainly raise questions about international relations and the effect on the individual. There are going to be some pretty disturbed people in Bosnia for years to come. Added 21-2-1999