28/05/2018

Good morning. We're used to hearing plenty of advice on how to look after our bodies.

But sometimes it can feel a bit prescriptive: “Eat five a day!”; “Drink fourteen units max!”; “Exercise thirty minutes daily.”

I find it's light relief to turn from these messages – healthy as they are - and enter the world of artist Beryl Cook, who died ten years ago today.

Her paintings are populated with plump, bosomy, women - drinking, smoking, eating, dancing; high-heeled show girls, middle-aged women on hen nights; women being confident, saucy, playful, outrageous.

Cook's characters don't pretend to be respectable. Posh women swig from beer-bottles; men leer and peer; in bars and cafes people smoke, scoff and snog. With life-affirming humour, she reveals our desires – how we might behave if the rules of social convention were suspended.

But there's more to her painting than a visceral urge and a knowing wink. Arguably, she asks searching questions. How much more do we see through one another than we admit? What's the point of living a long and healthy life, if we don't know how to live in the first place? And why don't high-heeled women bump-start cars?

And there's a redemptive quality about these paintings, as if a great weight has been lifted from the world, and people have abandoned themselves to joy.

It's a sentiment we find in the book of Ecclesiastes: “So I commend the enjoyment of life,” says the Teacher, “because there is nothing better for a person under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad.” No doubt Beryl would raise a glass to that.

God of laughter, love and life,
thank you for this quirky, beautiful world.
As we learn how to live in it,
Help us to enjoy, not endure;
To be kind on ourselves
and easy on others. Amen.