The Last Day of Her Life

An article about me Chasing Joan has just been published on Vasari21.com - an excellent arts & resource blog run by experienced arts writer, Ann Landi (any artist who does not know about it, should. It is ad-free and supported by membership). VASAR21 ARTICLE

So her idea of trying to (in abbreviated form) show a visual timeline starting in 2001 of the Joan of Arc work was a good one. I'm almost finished updating my website sandrafilippucci.com, and now I will add a graphic timeline to the work on Joan going back to 1995. It's instructive to me if to no-one else. I forgot how much work I've made.

Sometimes, we need to be reminded about how much work we produce. Sometimes, we are dismissive about a body of work and yet they are all important. This is a good reason not to destroy work so quickly. I've done it too many times. Patience grasshopper, patience. Put it away and leave it alone. Keep going. It will lead somewhere.

Because all of that work led me to Rouen. Rouen references the last day of Joan of Arc's life. It ended in Rouen. It evolved from everything I had ever done and emerged from the long, difficult winter of 2019.

I was given a book on da Vinci, and he got into my dreams. Then I noticed an odd object on a high shelf in my studio - an object that has hung around waiting for my attention for 20 years at least. I bought it somewhere long ago not knowing its use but knowing that I needed to have it.

So da Vinci's mechanical designs + this object + a dark winter = Rouen. While adept at technology, my work had always been a hybrid - a confluence of skills. It was never about perfection but rather emotion. That was the intent but I believed I could go deeper. Much deeper.

For me, Rouen carries the autobiography of things long suppressed. The hoop skirt-like cages are the entrapments not always put upon us, but what we put ourselves in.

This work burst out as though it were the last day of not just Joan of Arc's life but my life. And if that had been so, I believe that I would have felt a little less reluctance to leave because I had gotten down...down deeper.

And even deeper still beckons.