Why Not Paint a Nun? ~ by Bhat Boy

My fascination with nuns goes back years. They have become ever more mysterious and fascinating to me even as they vanish from the landscape like a species at the edge of extinction.

Years ago, just after I graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design, I was living with my Mum when I got a slot for an upcoming exhibition at a gallery. I was the new face in town and I wanted people to know what I do, but as an emerging artist, I wasn’t sure myself what I did. I did know I was desperate for funds and really needed to sell some paintings if I was going to be an artist at all.

I came home for tea a week later, announcing that my upcoming show would be about nuns.

‘Nuns!’ squawked my mother, ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing?

She took a sip from her cup of steaming hot tea then turned to me asking, ‘You are a starving artist, are you sure you want to paint nuns?’

Nuns had become mysteriously fascinating for me during the previous twenty-four hours (for reasons that I can no longer remember) and I confidently assured my mother that nuns were the future, and asked for more tea.

That solo exhibition, Nunwear for No-one, went on to be a smash success, selling more than half the exhibition in a week. My mother never questioned my artistic judgement again and nuns, a subject intended as a passing fancy, became a staple of my artistic diet. They have followed me from decade to decade though out my career.

At that exhibition I had discovered that everyone has their own idea of who nuns are and what they should be doing. Whether inspired by Hollywood musicals, school teacher disciplinarians, or sanctimonious Saints, each person reacts in their own way to my singing, skating, flying nuns depending on their own experiences and ideas. The secret to their success is how the viewer relates to them.

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