Feelings For Fenella

Alex Michon visits an exhibition of paintings of the British actress Fenella Fielding and finds herself in a thoughtful frame of mind.

 

Contemplative – that was the curious feeling that overcame me when I visited Fenella Fielding: Actress, an exhibition of paintings at Gallery 286. Fielding, who is maybe best known for her role in Carry On Screaming! (1966), was also a serious actress with a deep husky voice and sensual demeanour. In the exhibition Fielding stares out at the viewer from a variety of portraits by the artists, Natalie Dowse, Sal Jones, Cathy Lomax, Jeanette Watkins and Fionn Wilson (who was also the show’s curator). Each of the artists had captured a different fascinating facet of Fenella in all her 1960s film star glamour. It was therefore disconcerting that I should feel contemplative. It was as if the paintings were thinking at me! Or perhaps it was that the actress was trying to reveal some unknown secret from her past through paint. 

Natalie Dowse, Do You Mind If I Smoke 1, 2021, oil on linen, 40x40cm

 

Natalie Dowse’s dreamy tight closeups are enigmatic and sort of sorrowful. I read in the show notes that Dowse played an audio copy of the Fielding’s book Do you Mind if I smoke? over and over again whilst she was painting. Ah and there it is! Dowse describes this as ‘a contemplative experience’. So perhaps I have inadvertently picked up on this at the show.

Sal Jones, Devastating Darling, 2021, oil on canvas, 60x50cm

Sal Jones writes that she had ‘wanted to paint (Fenella’s) voice’ – her presence, her humour and style.  In Devastating Darling she has used a montage of images of the actress infused with the glamour of 1960s fashion. The added text with its tongue in cheek humour captures the effervescent nature of Fenella as we would like to remember her, all high camp and knowing sexiness. However in amongst the glamour, Jones has included typical 1960s ‘hospital colours’ and as she writes ‘bed textiles’, as some of the images are taken from the film Doctor in Clover. I love the idea of ‘hospital colours’ and ‘bed textiles’ as they summon up all the slap and tickle, of the hospital Carry Ons which serve as incongruous signifiers of a heartfelt socialist dream of a fully funded idealistic Nation Health Service.

Cathy Lomax, Shadow, 2020, oil on linen 40x60cm

Cathy Lomax’s portraits are inspired by two inspirational visits to Fielding’s flat where Lomax was struck by the actress’s vast collection off wigs and makeup products particularly numerous boxes of false lashes. Lomax used the makeup as the starting point ‘layering images, just as makeup is layered on the face’. In Shadow, the fake eyelashes are particularly prominent, a flesh-coloured circle highlights the eye, an eyeshadow palette has become a searchlight on Fenella’s face. Her melancholic side gaze belying the performative made-up-ness of, as Lomax states, ‘actorly femininity’. Fenella does not look at us, instead she looks to the side, as if weary of masquerading. Here the actress looks as if she is longing to be in one of those Russian plays where everyone goes off to the country and is very bored! 

Jeanette Watkins, A Day With Cecil Beaton, Ready or Not, 2022, linen on cradled panel, 30x30cm

 

Jeanette Watkins has painted the actress from a society photograph taken by Cecil Beaton. Her Fenella is the least glamorous. Fenella peeps from behind the frame of her arms which are covering her head. The tones of the painting are muted and subtle and it seems to catch Fenella off guard, un-actressy. There is a touch Bloomsbury intelligentsia about the portrait and it perhaps hints at a more serious side.

Fionn Wilson, Fenella as Collette 1970, 2022, heavy body acrylic on canvas, 60x50cm

Fionn Wilson’s portraits are the most theatrical. Momentary vignettes that are powerful and dynamic. In one Fenella stares out from the painting wearing a black and white Pierrot-like spotty collar. She is holding an old-fashioned phone, her face is framed by her lustrous black hair, her thick black lashes circle her troubled eyes. The painting is like a silent mime, with Fenella as a trouble pierrette enacting a tragedy we can only imagine.

Alex Michon

 

 

Fenella Fielding: Actress 

Gallery 286, 286 Earl’s Court Rd, London SW5

9 November – 18 December 2022