A red coloured pencil.

Image still from WindMemory, 2023.

Growing up, I don’t have any memories of conflict with mum, specifically. I would say that in general, she was about as strong an advocate for whatever I wanted to do, within the realms of decency and financial capacity - I had plenty of rope, really. I do remember an incident in my teens though, where our usual harmony was blown to smithereens, in a dramatic and extremely adolescent girl fashion.

I was always involved in our school musical and drama productions, and in my 7th form year, Kapiti College put on a performance of Camelot. This musical adaptation of the story of King Arthur and Guinevere, Lancelot and MY character, Morgan Le Fey, was a dream come true. I lived for all things Arthurian, loved performing, and I was given the very great honour to design the production poster for the school. These were the days before any sophisticated computer design software was made available to students, and I remember my method for design was to first make a soft sketch in 6B pencil, and then to apply fine black ink pen overtop. I chose to create an intricate design, much like something from the Book of Kells, with a border of finely inked vines. There might have been a castle in there. I don’t quite remember. But I do remember that the font I chose for the title of the production. ‘Camelot,’ in large serif letters, ran squarely through the centre of the A3 page.

I decided to colour the design, for the few colour photocopy posters we’d have printed to advertise the show, using soft coloured pencils. My mum had an expensive set of really high quality pencils, with an extensive rainbow of hues. We’d never had very fancy art supplies, and so this set was a particular treasure. She allowed me to use the pencils to colour my very important design, and I understood the gravity of that access, and also, in my very slightly entitled way, thought it was also kind of my right to use them, for something of such great significance.

I chose red, a rich velvety red, to colour that title in. It involved many rotations of the sharpener to get the thing done. What remained of the pencil was less than half of the original unblemished length. When mum discovered it, she was really unhappy that I had used it so exclusively. The precious set was now unbalanced - the rainbow rank interrupted by a much shorter member. What ensued was the biggest fight we ever had, before or since. I remember the evening, as I yelled at her for reacting to what I thought was a totally necessary use of resources. Later I learned that the neighbours way up the hill could hear the whole thing. I rang my friend Kathryn in the town next door to come and rescue me, and I effectively ‘left home’ for the night in a right strop, righteously angry at mum for having her emotional response at my plundering of her treasure, and I waited at the bottom of my driveway for Kathryn to arrive in her family’s four wheel drive. I was absolutely distraught. The next morning at college, Mr Moisa, the art teacher, let me make a phone call home from the art department office, and I sat in there and cried at mum, fairly ashamed of myself and full of wounded pride.

I’m deeply uncomfortable writing about that incident. It reeks of entitlement and illustrates my potential to be such an outrageous brat. However it also serves to convey the depth of my creative obsession. Nothing can stand in the way of the perfect result. I still feel like that. I’ll spend any amount of time or energy, or money that I have access to, to make a project come to fruition. When I go out on a photoshoot, I rarely think about eating or drinking, and never ever think about going to the bathroom. Assistants and clients will attest to the fact that I just kind of go and go until the day is over (not healthy, I know, and I sure pay for it later in the evening when the adrenaline has left my body). The obsession drives me, to find newer and newer ways to communicate a feeling. To refine the work until it shucks off any clumsiness that might be clinging on. I think maybe sometimes that makes it all a bit rigid, and something I’m working on is identifying when it’s wisdom to stop. Let the thing be.

Another thought about this story of the pencil is about how we can save the most precious things for the perfect time, and sometimes that time doesn’t come. You know how you might have a really great cheese in the fridge, and it’s for eating indulgently with those oaty crackers and the quince paste that goes just so perfectly, in front of an episode of Shetland and the house is clean and you don’t have to get up for anything specific in the morning… Well, in my life, the house is rarely properly clean. We’re always up with the birds, whether we want to be or not. And we ran out of Shetland to watch. In the waiting, things can spoil. A similar kind of preservation can be seen in the dinner set we were given when we got married. ‘Rockingham’ Venice. It lives in the china cabinet, untouched except for when special guests come. We’ve kept it for ‘special’ so far for 19 years, and nothing has ever broken until a few weeks ago when I dropped one of the bowls while putting away the clean dishes. As a result, that dinner set, while still lovely and a classic design, is really quite dated, and now one of the eight place settings is incomplete. I still love it, but it doesn’t bring as much joy as it did in 2006 when it came into our life. Now, I’m not suggesting that mum should have just let me burn through those pencils with reckless abandon - I acknowledge that appreciating and preserving treasure is important. But, I am guilty of saving things for the perfect moment, and life just doesn’t deliver those up very often.

In the last week I’ve been actively using some art supplies, colouring-in again. An exhibition call out, wide open to Massey Photography Alumni, asked for analogue photography, and I decided to shoot, print and colour some black and white scenes. I’ll likely share those another time, but that activity of colouring, this time with mum’s chalk pastels, brought back the memory of our fight. I was really careful not to over-use any particular colour, instead swiping it freely and gently over the surface of the photograph, and combining many hues to softly build up. Gestural and decisive, rather than finickity and above all, respectful.

A while after our red coloured pencil incident, I found a way to buy just one colour to replenish her set. I thought I was getting just the one pencil delivered. You can imagine how much we laughed and cringed about it when 12 red pencils turned up.