I arrived in Camden Town for my meeting with Dolly Alderton in April, noticing her waving to me from the ground-floor window. Dolly is a much-admired author and podcaster, who writes a weekly love-life column for the Sunday Times. She apologised for her apartment being in disarray, explaining that she was moving house the following week. It actually felt rather familiar to me: a clutter of books like my own home.
I had just finished Dolly’s memoir, Everything I Know About Love. It’s always a revelation to read about the relationships of millennial women, with all the party going and independence that entails. I was reminded of the liberated lifestyle Doris Lessing describes in her 1962 novel The Golden Notebook, only what was unusual in Lessing’s day is commonplace now. In the world of my own chaste adolescence, women were supervised by their parents until marriage and generally didn’t drink a lot.
Dolly’s story has a satisfying arc, as she overcomes her insecurities and vulnerabilities, arriving at a deeper respect for herself after turning 30. The importance of sound female friendships comes through clearly in the book.
For the drawing, Dolly sat cross-legged with bare feet on a dusty-pink retro chair. She was wearing a charcoal cashmere jumper, which prompted a conversation about the menace of moths and how to keep them away from our favourite garments. Dolly said she loves plants, so we moved her snake plant (or “mother in law’s tongue” as she corrected me) into the composition behind her. The walls were densely hung with framed posters of musicians, Joni Mitchell among them.
I made two drawings in colouring pencils, enjoying the way her hands disappeared into the sleeves of her chunky sweater. I tried to capture her young and relaxed presence, accentuated by her blonde mane shining in the sunlight that streamed in from the large windows on either side.
Dolly was easy to talk to, and we quickly covered a range of subjects until we came to relationships. After mentioning that I’ve been married for 46 years – yes, almost a child bride in today’s terms – she ventured a personal question: do I still love my husband? Well, I said, not the romantic love you enjoy in your book, but a love that allows tolerance for snoring and for our many idiosyncrasies. When I got up to leave we eyed each other and laughed, both being very tall women.
On my way home, I thought again about my answer to Dolly’s question. I felt I had been too glib. That evening I emailed her saying 46 years is a lifetime, and when I lie awake in the dark hours of the night, I think about this journey of pain and joy my husband and I have shared. The knowledge that this cannot last forever is just unbearable to me. Do I still love him? I should have answered yes, definitely.
I started to paint Dolly’s portrait soon afterwards, with the experience of the drawing still fresh in my mind. I did the preliminary acrylic layer mostly in apple green, thinking this would work well behind the snake plant. I also decided to read up about this plant species – Dracaena Tribasciata as it is formally known – and found it to be an appropriate symbol for the hectic lifestyle portrayed in Dolly’s book. It is said to be a mental health booster, removing toxic pollutants from the air, but is also famed for requiring very little maintenance.
Plants can provide excellent counterpoints to human figures in portraits, creating all sorts of interesting possibilities for exploring spatial relationships; I am thinking, for instance, about Max Beckman’s 1944 painting Quappi in Blue and Grey. But they are also a joy to paint in their own right, with their sculptural and linear qualities, their variations in colour and form. In Dolly’s portrait I used the snake plant to break up the background into a series of vertical stripes, rich green leaves that sprawl across the painting and almost engulf her.
After painting the figure and the charcoal sweater, I found the green backdrop wasn’t working, so I changed it to yellow. Then I took great relish in painting the gleaming marbles of Dolly’s eyes. This is always the first ingredient that goes in when I paint a face: the other features must find their place in relation to the eyes. I am perplexed by portraits where the artist chooses to leave the eyes in the dark, or as hollow shadows. Eyes are more than mere ornaments: they communicate emotion, capturing the most subtle of human expressions. As such, they are crucial for starting a dialogue between the subject of the painting and the viewer.
I hope Dolly’s readers will recognise the different sides of her character when they see her eyes in the portrait: thoughtfulness and mischief, confidence and tenderness.
