Ishbel Myerscough’s Meditations on Time
Installation view of Transhumance at Flowers Gallery. Courtesy of Flowers Gallery.
Ishbel Myerscough works in the tradition of psychological realism, focusing on the texture of domestic everyday life and the transient nature of representation, allowing for moments of intimacy between subject and artist, mediated by our innate drive for storytelling. For her debut solo exhibition in Hong Kong, Transhumance at Flowers Gallery, Myerscough presents a body of works concerned with her domestic reality, elevating the theme of familial connection and its subtle relation to philosophical meditations on the nature of time and memory. The artist’s self-portrait and portraits of her children map the intergenerational mechanisms of remembrance and nostalgia, which negotiates the desire to faithfully represent the original event and the semiotic infidelity of representation itself. On the occasion of Transhumance, Qingyuan Deng spoke with the artist on her aesthetic philosophy.
Qingyuan Deng: Should we start with the title, Transhumance? Could you talk more about the relationship between transience in your painting and the history of portraiture?
Ishbel Myerscough: Painting my children reminds me of the pastures I grazed on earlier in my life. Watching someone grow and change is very different to living it. Life is usually summed up retrospectively; I can’t assess the present or see the shape of it. So living my life and watching my children crystallizes an understanding of the shape of living: overlaying my memories with new experiences and new observations.
Portraits try to encapsulate that person at that period, the whole of them—what is known about them at that time. Looking at someone like Helene Schjerfbeck who famously painted herself from youth to very old age really inspires me. Schjerfbeck’s body of work is an extraordinary record of a person/artist, not only revealing how the artist physically changed, but also showcasing how her painting decisions changed, which in turn informs me about so much more about her.
Ishbel Myerscough, Bella on Sofa II, 2018. Oil on board, 16 1/8 × 12 1/8 in (15.5 × 30.5 cm). © Antonio Parente, courtesy of Flowers Gallery.
QD: I’m interested in the idea of polarity in your works. Can you talk about how you focus on both youth and middle age and the relationship between the two?
IM: This world—this life—is very difficult to process. The more I live it, the more knowledge I try to acquire, the more I realize I don’t know anything. So I start with what I do know: what is closest to me, and I put a microscope on that and try to simplify and distill what I have observed. It’s all about trying to understand. I understand what it means to be young, but when I was young, I had no idea of what getting older could be.
When we are young, we think we know everything, but all of our experience is gleaned from other’s experiences and stories. As we age, all that youthful bravado recedes. At the same time, I am aware that memories distort. We all change history, especially our own, because we all remember differently. I enjoy painting my children with the knowledge of what I know now and what I think I knew then while factoring in that they are not me. They are their own person, with secrets I will never know.
Youth is huge, youth fills a room. It fizzes, has clarity, has bursting freshness. It sucks the attention and glows. Middle age gets fuzzy, undelineated, less defined. We become smaller, both physically and in all ways. Ironically, we are more powerful because we have knowledge and understanding. We have honed skills and experience. With age, I and many women artists become more competent and confident. My self-portrait is inspired by the Tudor paintings of Queen Elizabeth I. She knew that she needed to illustrate her power in those portraits. It’s not about beauty or allure; it is not sexual. It is all about power.
Ishbel Myerscough, Ishbel, 2024. Oil on canvas, 47 1/4 × 31 1/2 in (120 × 60 cm). © Antonio Parente, courtesy of Flowers Gallery.
QD: I am also interested in the way your paintings are episodes of memories: they are not naturalistic recalls but rather emotional renderings of important moments in life.
IM: I can’t paint the past—I can only paint the now, what I am experiencing at this time in my life. I spend my time watching and looking, collecting data and visual images in my head. I focus on the minutiae—one portion—in attempting to see the whole, like trying to take an x-ray machine to my life. Each painting records something that I need to capture before we move on, before life changes again and it’s no longer relevant: a post-it note on my experiences. Life feels fleeting, even more fleeting watching others close to you grow and have their own life.
The impetus to paint is borne from an innate sense of requirement to record what I live. Although my paintings are memories, they only become memories once they are painted. Until they are painted, they are what I am living.
QD: You have two unfinished drawings in the exhibition. Can you tell me more about how they relate to ideas of impermanence?
IM: One is of a house plant that won’t live for much longer. I have found I don’t have a green thumb—house plants come into my home to die. I try to nurture them, but they all eventually die. I love them and I want them to live; I will them to live, but I have no power to stop them from dying. I wanted to capture the beauty and the sadness of knowing they will all die.
The other drawing is its wild sister. I am amazed, frustrated, and awed that plants will grow through cracks in a wall, in grit and dirt in pavements. They decide to live and thrive in the most inhospitable places. Fields of daisies spring up where people want a lawn, but I can’t keep a houseplant alive. The pair illustrate the frustration and the wonder of life, purposefully unfinished to illustrate a sense of constant change.
Installation view of Ishbel Myerscough’s Houseplant (2024) and Daisies (2024). Courtesy of Flowers Gallery.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Transhumance, featuring Ishbel Myerscough, is on view at Flowers Gallery in Hong Kong, from October 31st, 2024 to January 4th, 2025.
