Margaret Rowe has been living on the Isles of Scilly over 20 years. She worked as a legal secretary before moving to St Mary’s to live with her mother after the death of her father in 1981. She has been married for 34 years and has a son Peter. Since arriving on the Islands, she has been a commissioned artist and tarot card reader.
‘I do my artwork because I can’t help it,? she says. ‘I?ve been interested in art since I was four. I remember myself in a field of flower and grain and it was dusky mauve. So I rushed to Woolies to try and find the exact colour because I wanted to paint a big piece of paper, and I was frustrated that I couldn’t find it.?
She soon progressed to painting ?ladies of fashion? and princesses. The turning point came at the age of 17 when she studied under John Tunnard, a Surrealist of the Newland School. The experience opened her eyes. “After a while, he asked if she wanted to see some of his work,” she says. ‘I sat and stared at it with my mouth open. I?d never seen a picture like it before. He said to me ‘I?ll give you one truth. You can do anything in the confines of a canvas.??
An embroidered cushion
From then on, she was no longer interested in doing landscapes and seascapes. ‘I realised I didn’t have to do all the stereotypical things. I started painting gnomes and goblins, things I saw in my imagination.? She was often inspired by the tarot. She would ask people to pick one of the 78 cards from the tarot and when they chose a character, she would do a painting around that theme.
Her father was unconvinced by the new road her art was taking and encouraged her to “churn out sunsets” and make a good living. But at the time she was busy painting Marilyn Monroe as a snail, bleeding over cinders, ?crying because her life was going wrong. I thought that’s what she’d feel like - a snail going over hot cinders, dying and beautiful at the same time.?
As far as making a living goes, other people’s opinions simply don’t come into it. She has no particular respect for people in authority in the country’s major galleries. ‘A real artist paints for themselves. I don’t think wholehearted artists are too commercial. You can never paint for someone else.?
She sees colours swirling around when she goes to sleep at night. Colours are the lullaby that send her into oblivion. She is also an accomplished poet, although she writes mainly for herself, contributing only to the bi-annual Scillonian magazine.
“I write when it hits me,” she says. “Words fall like pieces of cheese from the sky and I think ?that’s a poem.? ‘They usually go well until I reach a big sticking place like a chunk of meat. Sometimes they just don’t solidify. There’s a gestation period when you have to be careful not to chase away the butterfly of inspiration.”
{I dreamed I was lost in a wandering place. Trapped in a maze, in a web of dreams. Drowned in the cream of a curdling dawn, when the nightmare runs with a soundless scream, and I dreamed of a life that is mine to save. And I watched as a beggar man struggled from the grave. Worm in the flesh of a withering vine, stench of decay in a flowering waste, drawn by the sign of a beckoning tomb, driven by hunger,greed and haste. Where the beggar man came from, no one could tell, with a rag and a bone and a sounding bell.Dreamed I was down in a bottomless pit, dropped like a stone to the city’s hell, where overhung buildings strained to meet, and death came walking whence I fell, and I knew that the beggar man read my mind, for mine was the should he sought to find. And the flies came thick and black as coal, and I wept for the man nailed up to die. as they fed on his naked, beautiful place, Combed through his hair and suckled his eye. And the beggar man howled like a fiend possessed. With the mark of Cain on his brow and breast… ~ From Eyes of the Blind by Margaret Rowe }
It is a peaceful life on Scilly. She paints and embroiders flowers, or draws cartoons; increasingly she is asked to paint landscapes, which have commercial value. But her roots lie in symbolism. Her favourite painting is Rozzamajazz, an abstract representation of her feelings about jazz music.
For her, there is nowhere like Scilly; it is a place of spiritual healing. ‘All islands are special. I felt like I?d come home when I came here,? she says. ‘It’s like Cornwall before it became commercial. ‘You can think of Scilly in two ways - that the sea makes it a prison, or that the sea is an embrace. I think the second. The sea surrounding the place makes it really special. Water is the symbol of emotion. Scilly is a fairytale place, filled with legends. And sometimes looking over to Samson, you can believe it. It’s a balm to the soul.?
She has never travelled further than Exeter and has never felt the need. She has a firm conviction she has done it all before, in another life. ‘I?m centred, at rest,? she says.
Margaret still lives with her husband of 34 years. Its a good relationship, although she says they have nothing in common. He is rational and scientific, with his feet on the ground. ‘He walks whilst I fly,? she says. ‘But I need him to keep me organised, to remind me what the time is and that I have to take out the post.? Sometimes she will paint for hours and not even know what day it is.
Rozzamajaz, Margaret’s favourite painting