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Lesley Stevas’s painting of Fanya standing on a bridge in Cambridge |
Artist’s ‘poem’ for a neighbour who told her to paint
LESLEY?Lesley Stevas’s
new exhibition pays tribute to the close friend who inspired her, writes Howard Hannah
Stevas, who is curating the art show Poem for Fanya at Camden Town’s Theatro Technis this week, has a tale to tell which is every bit as uplifting as any of those glitzy TV rags to riches shows.
But it is more mundane, with none of the Hollywood hyperbole (and definitely no fabulous riches). It’s a kind of everyday story of urban folk battling against the odds and it began in the fairly unglamorous setting of Una House in Prince of Wales Road, Kentish Town.
Lesley washed up there from a childhood in Slough and one of her neighbours was a woman 20 years her senior, Fanya Harper, who, more exotically, came from Alexandria in Egypt.
Both soon confessed to a love of “brigands” – bad boys! It was a description that fitted both Lesley’s husband Grenville and Fanya’s Turkish friend who was under threat of deportation.
When Fanya’s man was deported (despite her marrying him), Lesley offered moral support. And likewise, when Grenville died in 1990, Fanya was a tower of strength.
By now Lesley had two young children and was up against it, suffering badly from depression. Fanya, who had been a painter, saw that Lesley was creative and encouraged her to pick up a brush.
Lesley started to paint at the Studio Upstairs which used to be based in Osnaburgh Street, but is now part of the Theatro Technis in Crowndale Road.
Then a few years ago, tragically, her daughter committed suicide. Once again Fanya was there to support, console and inspire.
Lesley eventually enrolled on a fine art course at the University of Westminster, but last November Fanya died, aged 84.
As well as her own paintings, Lesley’s show includes work by Fanya and by current members of the Studio Upstairs – some of them, no doubt, battling to overcome the bad hands that life sometimes deals us, as Lesley did.
And that’s the Poem for Fanya who incidentally features twice in the painting we show here of a bridge in Cambridge.
She stands as an old woman on the left in the manner of Salvador Dali’s Gala and sits as a young woman on the right. “I have her with her back to us because Fanya would never face the camera if she was having her picture taken,” says Lesley. “That’s Lesley in the middle.”
• Poem for Fanya is at the Studio Upstairs,
Theatro Technis,
26 Crowndale Road, NW1, until Saturday April 12.
020 7387 6617 |
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