I was the Apocalyptic Child. I blazed a different path as a teenager, glavanised by some unique experiences which set me on my life path. Even at school, I had set fire to the minds of friends and colleagues, as I discovered many years later at a school reunion held in 2018.
A Revelation Through Art
At age 16, I produced a drawing, shown above, entirely from imagination and memory. When everyone else was sunning themselves on a hot beach in New Zealand, I was tending to the creative fire.
During a summer holiday period I stayed with family in Browns Bay, Auckland. As the beach was within walking distance, I was quickly introduced to the beach culture – bodies, suntans and the frivolities that go with it all. I much preferred the company of my imagination and spent most of my time creating the drawing while staying there. I sat at the large round dining room table in our hosts’ house. With its smooth top, it was a perfect platform from which to launch a creative idea. Thus the drawing was born.
The Beginning
What precipitated the moment when I became the Apocalyptic child? It began some 18 months prior when I was still living on our farm outside Waharoa. A neighbouring farmer, with his English family, became family friends. He asked me to help with planting some pine saplings on a hilltop which had once been a Maori fortress, or Pah. Hence the name of the farm, emblazoned in iron letters on the gate at the end of the road: Pah Farm.
The purpose of planting pines was to prevent erosion, or so I was told.
Music For a Personal Apocalypse
As a teenager, I fell in love with classical music, ignoring the popular music idioms of the day. So when the planting project was completed, my payment came in the form of a collection of vinyl records, one of which was Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. I was lucky to receive the definitive recording with Hans-Schmidt Isserstedt conducting the Vienna Philharmonic. The majestic talents of the soloists, which included Joan Sutherland, Marilyn Horne and the Swiss tenor Martti Talvela, are the pinnacle of this magnificent performance.
My world was turned upside down. The 9th Symphony shook me awake. It was a spiritual revelation. From that moment I was propelled into a holy quest to remain faithful to my creativity no matter the odds or what life and fate stacked against me. I became equipped to listen to the voice of the god within. I was 15 years old. Thereafter, it became vital to harken to the creative calling and commit myself to forging a path in art. I had tapped into the fire and tempest of the soul. I derived greater sustenance and enjoyment in giving form to the creative impulse than anything else, and that was how I could blithely ignore the trivia typical of summer holidays with attendant social pressures and produce a drawing whose meaning has only become apparent.
The Drawing Reveals Itself
I never gave it a title, but after a long period, I began to decode the imagery woven around the figures. I had come to a slow realisation that the picture is an allegory of the crown of life.
The crowned woman could be a symbolic self-portrait, setting out on her life path, pulled at by the distractions of life, family, marriage – all the things which were entrenched in 1970s New Zealand society – and embodied in the young ‘prince’, riding a horse, whom she resists by pushing him away.
Societal Pressure
Here, something about the individuality finds expression. In Jungian psychology, a rider represents the Self, or the individuated personality. In our society, the expectation of finding oneself through a man and marriage was usually the lot of women. (Here, I would like to point individuality and a fulfilling union are not mutually exclusive. But it is important to discover one’s true self first). These were things which were uppermost in my mind at the time.
The shadowy figures down in the right hand corner appear witness to a betrayal. Who is the woman in the cave holding a pouch, filled with some kind of payment? She gloats – what price for the soul? There is some also kinship between one of the figures and the young woman with a crown, as both are wearing plaits. I see the figures as the ‘shadow’, the all-knowing, intuitive aspect of the personality always active just below the threshold of consciousness.
When I drew the picture, it was simply devotion to the freely flowing images of my mind. I didn’t analyse what I could see and never set out to ‘tell a story’. Looking back, I realise at some level I knew and the wise, eternal aspect of my being was guiding me. Thus, I became the Apocalyptic child, inspired and directed by a personal revelation.
The Final Journey
For many years, the drawing lay hidden in an old art folder. I took it with me to the UK in 1985. It lay in storage for the 32 odd years I lived there. In 2024, it made its return journey to New Zealand, still locked away in darkness between the covers of the same art folder, until one day I brought it out.
Its significance hit me, almost overwhelmingly. What I once dismissed as a childish expression I now treasured. I removed it at once and had it framed under archival glass. Now, it hangs prominently in my studio, ever reminding me of the precious decisions which formed my life path and what I came here to do.