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We all have to learn, at some point in our lives, to walk again. For some that process is figurative, for others it’s literal. For painter Roberta Twaddle, it was both.<\/p>\n
Five years ago her husband, Jim, died. Last year she had hip replacement surgery. Following each, and still, she is learning a new way of being in the world.<\/p>\n
A new show, Learning to Walk Again, <\/em>which opened on October 1 at Partners Hall, depicts Twaddle’s journey from 2013 to 2018 through her paintings and reflective writings.<\/p>\n She began painting in 2008, first with watercolours and then acrylics, and later added some mixed media because she loves texture. She stopped painting for a time\u2014the hip replacement surgery made painting awkward and painful. But when the Huntsville Art Society issued a call for its 2018 shows, she was compelled to apply.<\/p>\n “I\u2019m fairly certain my husband was putting this idea in my head: ‘you\u2019re going to do this, you\u2019re going to apply for a show,'” she says. “And without even really thinking about it, before I could say to myself, \u2018no, you\u2019re not going to do this,\u2019 I sent the application in…and I thought, ‘oh my god, now I\u2019ve got to paint.'”<\/p>\n As you follow the paintings and writings around the room, they tell a story. First are those that got her back to painting\u2014how she started again. Twaddle had numerous paintings that weren’t complete, or that she thought were finished but weren’t really, and so she began by finishing them. They fill most of one wall of the exhibition, along with a few new works.<\/p>\n Then she thought she might paint 15 canvases depicting her life. <\/span>But that wasn’t working. Then, in her daily writings, she wrote something about stepping stones and thought ‘that’s it.’ Ten small paintings emerged.<\/p>\n But what to do with the others? Twaddle wanted to do something to invite viewers to enter the next phase of the story and she thought something representing a door would do the trick. So she selected a tall canvas and put on some music\u2014Beethoven, a favourite of her and Jim’s\u2014and she stood in front of the canvas and listened with her eyes closed. And then she did something she’s never done before. “I thought, ‘you just need an opening,'” she recalls. “I had to let go of the thought of what I was going to do. And I thought, well, Beethoven wrote gorgeous music and he couldn\u2019t hear. What would happen if I closed my eyes and couldn\u2019t see a thing?” She opened them only to drop the colours in, but the painting\u2014done with just her hands and rags rather than brushes\u2014was done entirely with her eyes closed. “I\u2019m convinced I could never have painted that if I knew what I was doing.”<\/p>\n That invitation to enter leads to the final phase of paintings. Twaddle had five larger canvases that she felt could represent the five years since Jim had died. And each time she painted a large one, she decided she would paint one of those smaller canvases\u2014the ones she had left over from the stepping stones\u2014at the same time. Each uses the same colours but they couldn’t be more different. Twaddle soon realized why.<\/p>\n “The small ones are me on the outside, what I show to the world, who I think I am,” she says. “I\u2019ve done all kinds of things to them\u2014I\u2019ve put marks on them, I\u2019ve scraped paint off them to remove things\u2014and to me that\u2019s what I\u2019m doing to release what\u2019s inside.” The larger paintings represent her spirit on the inside.<\/p>\n The final painting, which stands alone, is “just me,” says Twaddle, adding that Jim would be 100 per cent behind her with this exhibition. “He always was.”<\/p>\n\n\t\t