Postcards To Angels

Dad threw paint at the walls when the demons were calling. His brush was a weapon. He painted anything and anywhere - on the walls, the furniture, on old tins and newspapers. Dad painted to quieten that harping neurosis.

His trade was house-painting, wall after blank wall, but he was cursed with a gift, glorious and beautiful, that had nowhere to live. He painted to set himself free.

“I've always said what's the point of having a talent if there's nothing you could do with it?” Mum would say, as if Dad had a choice to be gifted or not. There were times when even as a girl, I thought talent was a curse and opportunity a word better families used, like good linen or best china. It wasn’t for us and it was never for him.

Our house was a Gothic shambles, cobbled around our chaotic family life - five children, Gran, Mum, Dad, mangy cats and motley dogs, broken cars abandoned in the yard, borrowed furniture. But among the shabby detritus of poverty was beauty – Dad's glorious, tragic, yearning paintings.

A seascape above the open fireplace, painted right onto the rough plaster, a nude draped around the door frame, her nipple a light switch, lush lips, sly eyes – who were these women Dad invited into our home, in Dulux pink? The sweet landscapes of Mother England on one corner of the wall, the rude red earth of our hometown on another.

Every wall a gallery, every surface a canvas. As children, we were embarrassed by Dad's wild scribbles and lewd daubing. The themes were adult or eccentric or just plain weird to us kids. We shared Mum's disregard for his talent.

Dad was a Londoner, more specifically, a Cockney. William Bert left the bleak streets of Poplar to join the Merchant Navy, went to war, stoked the coal engines of unarmed ships transporting supplies across the oceans. He survived two bombings, almost drowned. He washed up on the bright white shores of Western Australia, bought brushes and ladders and pots of paint and built a post-war life in Perth.

Home was an old boarding house in the bush and with our tired Mum, he raised his uncomprehending children. We watched him drown in flagons of wine and endured his bitter sarcasm. We were indifferent to his darkness. It's not for kids to be concerned why their parents are unhappy.

I was disinterested in Dad's past when I was a child, but those paintings made me wonder. How could this angry, restless father conjure up such beauty? As I grew older, I understood the depth of his craft and the utter reliance he had on his art to stay sane.

Dad couldn’t sleep and at night we'd hear him reciting Freemason's speeches or passages from Shakespeare as he stumbled up and down the hallway in the dark. He was like coiled wire.

He eventually succumbed to his mental illness. He'd scratch gloomy self portraits on envelopes and scrap paper until he lost his ability to draw altogether. When he died, he couldn't write his name. As a child, I didn't understand that grown ups can have disorders of the mind, or be unfulfilled or fearful. I have come to understand his paintings were messages in a bottle.

I write this now with paint on my hands, in my hair and on my clothes. I have canvases stacked against every wall, scribbles on every piece of loose paper left lying around.

I am my father's daughter, after all.

I paint, not to silence demons but as postcards to angels. Painting feels like singing in an empty room, dancing in the dark. Who cares who's listening or seeing? It's the act of painting that has meaning. I don't paint to impress, or adorn an empty space. I paint images of my grandchildren, my dogs, the view across the lake, the bush and the birds. I paint serenity and I do it with joy.

There is no daughter's regret within me, because in that moment, when wet paint slides on dry canvas, I am talking to Dad. Angels are dialling in and his demons are on the run.