Prayer for Steven Kupfer (2021)
Celia Paul (b. 1959)
Prayer for Steven Kupfer, 2021
Oil on canvas
26 cm x 25.5 cm
Current location unknown / not public
April 2022 was roughly one year after this work was painted, and also roughly one year after London’s COVID-19 lockdown restrictions had finally been lifted. That’s when I encountered it. It was one of twenty-seven shown in a solo exhibition of work that Celia Paul focussed on during the lockdowns.
Physically the smallest in the show, it was easy to miss. The only painting hung off to one side in the back corner of the upper floor. It doesn’t appear in any of the exhibition views on the gallery website, and I suspect many visitors may have given it a skip in favour of the life-sized self portraits that presented a more literal visualisation of the sad faced, lonely existence the world had only recently emerged from.
At this point in time I can no longer recall if I had read the gallery handout before I saw the work, or if the stark loneliness of the image is what prompted me to want to know more. I only recall that I was drawn to it, and stayed there with it, grieving, for an unnaturally long time. As you may have already realised by the title, the painting is a tribute to Celia Paul’s husband.
“The period from October 2020 to April 2021 was one of profound sadness for the artist. Paul worked in complete isolation and saw no one other than her beloved husband, Steven Kupfer, who died of cancer on 29 March 2021, the day lockdown restrictions began to lift.”
This painting might not look like much of anything. From a distance it appears to be a wayward brushstroke on canvas. Except that little brown scrape of paint is Paul’s husband, Stephen, rowing a small boat on a lake in Altaussee, Austria. Immediately after his death Celia Paul painted a series of him rowing, and this particular scene filled me with sadness unlike any other artwork I’d ever encountered. Was it because I knew the backstory of his death, or was it because the isolation in the image was too harsh a reminder of my own painful lockdown experience?
I believe there is an artwork for everyone, but resonance with a particular piece is often dictated by the time and circumstance in which you see it. One year after the lockdowns I wanted to be unencumbered to walk mask-free through galleries, no longer having to sanitise my hands on entry and stay 2 metres away from the next visitor. I didn’t want to be reminded of the never-ending year I’d just spent feeling like I was adrift at sea, rudderless and alone with no horizon in sight. And then this work caught my eye.
The visual of the tiny figure, solitary on a body of water and dwarfed by the environment, could easily be dismissed as a far too obvious metaphor, but some emotions are powerful enough to forego nuance. Learning this work was about the recent death of Paul’s husband was the gut punch that tightened my focus, except the fuzzy details provided little clarity. Memories fade far too fast once someone leaves your life, and the things that stay lodged in your brain often seem to have been randomly selected.
It’s painfully hard to let go of someone you love. Maybe that’s why our minds relegate so many of our memories to the deepest archives, certainly the painful ones, leaving just enough to enable you to reminisce without remorse. Paul’s small painting of her husband drifting away is both a loving tribute and a desperate attempt to hold onto someone who is no longer there to hold. A lover grasping a memory she doesn’t want to fade away.
That’s why I like it.
The only cure for grief is to grieve.
Previously, on Why I Like It:
Jul — Winged Figure (1961-62), Barbara Hepworth
Jun — David (2004), Sam Taylor-Johnson
May — Maman (1991), Louise Bourgeois
Want more? Here’s a list of the first three dozen articles in this series.