Lizzy Stewart

John Cheever’s ‘The Swimmer’ is the most well known of the stories I’ve chosen to illustrate so far. I thought about taking it off the list, wanting to avoid any of the images from the Burt Lancaster film from creeping into my brain as I drew. But then the weather in London got so hot and all I could think about was swimming pools and suddenly it became inevitable. The Swimmer is a majestic piece of writing, initially one thing and then quite another. The deterioration of Neddy, the Swimmer of the title, as he slides from pool to pool seems to transfer onto you as you read, chilled, dizzying and confused. Metaphors for alcoholism aside, one of my favourite things about this story is the evening summer sun that hangs over the latter part of the story. The world is woozy and hazy and desperate for a swim.

Alice Munro’s ‘To reach Japan’ is a two-hour Todd Haynes film disguised as an impeccably constructed a short story. There is a kind of plain-ness to Munro’s stories, they happen in grey and brown and green, and yet they are so immersive, so emotionally accurate. She falls in with Lucia Berlin, Grace Paley, Lydia Davies and Lorrie Moore, not only as one of my absolute favourites, but as one of those masterful writers who write about lives you have not lived and makes you feel like you know them precisely. Short stories are cinematic because the reader is so aware of the space they occupy (a single page, six pages, fifteen pages) and thus is able to view the whole story from start to finish. Munro is especially good for this. Her stories could be novels, could occupy more space, but so deft are her strokes when describing her characters and their situations that they have no need to be any longer. In one sitting you can live a whole life and then observe it, from its conclusion, view it as the marvel it was.

Lucia Berlin writes vivid, wondrous stories filled with gravel and spit and blood and glorious good-humour. Many stories cross over with Berlin’s own tangled life making the whole book feel like late night tales, told over a whisky in some place you shouldn’t be. In “Melina,” a handful of men tell the narrator of their love for a woman who “wasn’t like anyone in this world,” her skin like white silk or milk glass.” Melina drifts, somehow, into the narrator’s life and she too falls, to some extent, for the fair-haired woman. Melina is not my absolute favourite of Berlin’s stories but the one I felt I had an image for first. There are, possibly, certainly, more to come.

Thomas Morris’ collection ‘We don’t know what we’re doing’ was one of my favourites books of last year. ‘Fugue’ was, probably, my favourite story of the bunch. I balk a little at the thought of saying that the reason I like it is because I relate to it because there is so much good stuff going on in there to recommend it more than just the fact that it felt a bit like an experience I’d had. But its hard to read Fugue without feeling, acutely, the intense familiarity of Bethan returning to her parents’ home for Christmas. Home forces her to face the past and the present, or at least observe it. For me illustrating this story was about trying to communicate her remove, thrust into the heart of an old life but not really a part of it, just sort of prodding at it, like a bruise.

I’ve not read any other Jamaica Kincaid (I should and I will). In fact, I’ve not even read this story. I’ve listened to it, over  and over again, read by Chimimanda Ngozi Adiche (here). The story follows a little girl who is fascinated (and horrified and entranced) by death as she encounters mortality for the first time. As a child I was definitely prone to ponderous anxiety about death and Annie (the girl)’s fascination certainly rings true in its forensic thoroughness. My favourite thing, though, is how  we get such a complete view of Annie’s world. Kincaid’s detailing (down to the specific type of fish each family member likes best) is endearing and in keeping with how a child like Annie might tell such a story. It never feels exhaustive or pedantic, this cataloguing of everything, and it leaves you feeling as though you may, also, have watched a schoolgirl’s funeral in an Antiguan town.

Ali Smith is, almost certainly, my favourite contemporary novelist (I will, definitely, make this statement about, at least, three other writers during this project). All her books are filled with warmth and kindness and a generosity of spirit and knowledge that is just so wonderfully rare. The person who introduced me, properly, to Ali Smith said to me that ‘reflecting on the brevity of life means one ought to dispense with the snark’. (he said it like that, I think it was meant to be funny). Which, I think, goes neatly with Ali Smith’s books, full of life and utterly free of cynicism or judgment.  ‘And so on’ is a short story in her collection ‘Public Library’ in which she writes about a recently deceased friend. She imagines her friend has been stolen by art thieves and sits in some dark store room surrounded by similarly priceless and beautiful artefacts. It made me think of one my favourite friends and that pleased me a lot.

Open Studio!

I have a book coming out this week! Its available from April 7th in bookshops and online and stuff! 

The Nereides. 

tiny paintings. available here

Tiger in the Jungle PRINT

Jungle. January 2016

Come & say hello!

print available here 

Available as a giclee print in my shop. 

12 Days in Europe. A travel diary zine. Available here