The cats and the cradle - Maeve Gilmore' s beautiful and mysterious painting

Researching unknown to me women artists through strolling around London exhibitions has many times lead me to several small revelations. Not only about art but also about personal stories.

My today expedition took me to Studio Voltaire, a unique exhibition centre in Clapham, founded by artists, very dedicated to contemporary creativity and new artistic practices, projects and collaborations and to giving underrepresented artists opportunities to present their work.

The Studio’s current exhibition is the first institutional exhibition of the artist Maeve Gilmore (1917– 1983)

Gilmore, a writer, illustrator and painter, had this very specific and rather common fate to be the wife of a relatively famous English writer, Mervyn Laurence Peake. Meaning that her creativity was always coming second, especially when Peake got sick and she totally dedicated herself to taking care of him.

Gilmore’s painting has a surrealist air while being representational, reminding thus fairytales’ illustration. Her home scenes with (her) children and cats can be a little awkward, darker than you would expect or with some kind of sadness crawling behind. A strangely desperate gaze, a mysterious victim in a cat’s mouth, a doll-like figure in the attic, a tempest outside the window, the bigness of the house above them. And many cats.

(I love spotting cats in paintings and Gilmore seemed to have a lot of them, white, black or tabby, all around her house, appearing more than often in her images. There is even a picture with the kids playing cat’s cradle. Maybe because cats carry this contradictory symbolism of domesticity and freedom at the same time)