Kate Celis - The Asses of Evil

By Robert Amos June 15, 2003

} Kate Celis - The Asses of Evil In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell Having put her art aside for twenty years, Kate Celis was driven by recent events to take it up again. The Asses of Evil, a series of 16 chalk drawings inspired by George Bush and his cronies, has just opened at the Community Arts Council Gallery (1001 Douglas Street G-6 until June 11. 381-2787). I became a dedicated follower of Celis's drawings during the late 1970's, when she was married to artist Jim Lindsay (whose work is also part of this exhibit). While Jim painted and lived the life of the artist, Kate snatched moments from the family to create tiny perfect scenes in pastel. I enjoyed their influence, and was also grateful for the meatloaf and mashed potatoes Kate fed me. Kate Celis is one of the most unflinching artists I know. I own a drawing by her which is about as big as four postage stamps. It shows a woman sitting on a sofa with her face in her hands and it's called Suicide Note. The balance of her purple sweater, red hair and green wallpaper is worthy of Edvard Munch. How did she come by this talent? 'My mom was a very artistic woman,' Celis told me in her marmalde-sharp Scottish accent. 'It was stamped on my bum when I was born - Oart school'. 'She entered me in all the competitions and I always came first, winning the stupid prizes.' She was sent to classes at Paisley Art Museum with Duncan Bowie, a retired art teacher. 'He taught me to see colour in everything,' Celis recalled. And he used pastels. 'I don¹t use the medium correctly,' she says, referrring to her chalks. 'It's supposed to be a fast medium, but I layer it.' How does she do such delicate work with the big fat sticks? She just breaks off a bit. 'You have to have a wee thing,' Celis noted, 'a wee fiddly bit for George Bush's ears.' Training at the Glasgow School of Art in the 1960¹s gave Celis a firm foundation; the Ban-the-Bomb marches helped her form a redoubtable attitude toward authority. Before coming to Canada, Celis liked to paint with oils, 'the real thing,' she noted. But she soon found them incompatible with young children. 'You go to the bathroom,' she recalled, 'and when you come back there's oil paint all over the landlord's cupboards. With pastels, you can simply drop it and run.' During the past twenty years Celis has beseiged by an onslaught of life's travails - health, money, marriage, to name a few. In fact, she was said she was happy not being an artist. 'I find it easier not to work. I fight against starting.' Her chalks lay fallow for twenty years. Therefore it was a surpise to be invited to see her latest work. The artist was born on VE Day in a war-blasted Scotland. As a child she played in the bomb craters; with her teenage friends she marched against the Polaris submarines. As an adult, she may have hoped that warfare had been rendered obsolete. But now, with the U. S. military once again revving up its war machine, it was too late to mince words. Celis was galvanized into action. George Bush's build-up to the bombing of Iraq could not go unopposed, and she set down sixteen torrid scenes in response. 'I did all these before the war started,' Celis explained. Driven by a righteous fury, Celis slung stinging rebukes at the vicious delusions of the Bush Administration. 'I wrote letters, but writing's not enough. The anger, the frustration, the despair of knowing what's going to happen... it was going to make my head explode.' 'I used to be able to draw,' she thought. 'Maybe I could do that, to get some of the anger out.' Working in the vigourous tradition of Hogarth and Gilray and Daumier and Goya, she went beyond the quick repartee of the editorial cartoon, heading into deeper waters. The red and white stripes of Old Glory run down into pools of blood where mothers and babies languish and drown. Poised around them, rifles and hand guns at the ready, are the American Chiefs of Staff. She calls this 'U. S. Foreign Policy a. k. a. Terrorism - Shooting Fish in a Barrel'. That same flag appears as prison bars and as the bar code of social control. Again and again, patriots invoke the protection of the Deity for the righteousness of their cause. Elsewhere, a mother in a headscarf lifts a tiny, bloody baby's body to the sky, the down-to-earth result of the distant bombers. Each overturned chair and fallen block of stone tells a tale of anguish. I encourage Celis to publish her work, in part or in total. Her method and means are modest but the message is clear and timely. War is over. Give peace a chance. ________________________________________________________ Related Link The Artists In Canada 'Art of War' gallery contains images and statements submitted to us by artists concerned with the war in Iraq. ________________________________________________________ Copyright © 2003 Robert Amos Robert Amos is an artist and art writer who lives in Victoria, B. C.. He can be contacted by e-mail and you can view his paintings at www.robertamos.com

• Posted: 2003-06-15