The Summit of Her Ambition (2023): The Story.
When you connect with a client for an art commission, you often expect to find out a little more about their world: their lives, their motivations, their tastes, and their interests. Sometimes - if the conversation gets deeper - you can find yourself becoming privy to much more sacred and vulnerable parts of a person. Parts of a person that are often hidden, or unknown to others. Parts of a person that the surface doesn’t see: that Instagram doesn’t see.
Through my journey as an artist, it is really you - people - that motivate me to create: your journeys, will, courage, strength, resolve and ambition continue to fuel the fires of abstract creation - in short, you keep me going.
When Vicki’s email landed, I set about reading in eager anticipation of finding out more about her motivation for us to create art together. She’d explained how she and her husband had fallen in love with the Alps following a life changing 2 week trek from Chamonix to Zermatt.
“We turned up in Chamonix having never experienced or seen anything like it before. The views surrounding the town were truly awe inspiring: to coin a phrase; ‘it was like standing on top of the world’. The trip was a full on experience and we were smitten.
They continued to enjoy the region for years following that trip: their special place. I’d been carried away with her inspiring introduction of this wonderful and magical place, not realising what a drastic and devastating turn her story was about to take. “Our lives changed suddenly on the morning of 22nd November 2015” She wrote:
“It was sub zero temperatures and there had been a water leak on the main road. Driving home from tending to my horse I didn’t see the black ice by the water leak; and whilst I was only doing around 30mph I lost control of my car.
It happened to be on a bend. It just so happened that another car was coming in the opposite direction as my car crossed its path. That was the last I remember.
I sat silent and wide-eyed: the pace of my reading gathered momentum quickly, galloping ahead as line after line her story fell from the pages to my eyes in disbelief:
“My car was hit and spun southbound to northbound. I broke my neck: suffered multiple bleeds on my brain, partially dissected my vertebral arteries; I wasn’t conscious…and I was airlifted to hospital with life threatening injuries.
Two surgeries later, following various complications, including a stroke and the loss of my right side, I settled in for some serious rehab and time in hospital as I learned to regain use of the bits that didn’t work. After 7 weeks of trauma and hospitalisation, my only objective was to go home. Mentally, emotionally and physically I needed to be home.
I was off work for 2 years in total. Slowly but surely with rehab and sheer stubbornness I got stronger and walked again. Having my horse was the best rehab. I couldn’t do much but she forced me to get out and move… My husband was my lifeline (as was my horse).
Summer of 2017, we returned to the mountains. We kept open minds with how I would be. We went for mountain walks. I remember Neil saying to me, ‘in theory you shouldn’t be able to do this’ “.
And yet she did. She surmounted her ambition to climb the peaks again. I was awestruck.
It took me some time to compose an email reply that quite conveyed how shocked and inspired I was to have read such a momentous story; not to mention nervous to do any kind of artwork justice.
Vicki and her husband eventually bought a small apartment in the region using some money that she received from the water company who ‘apologised’ for their contribution to the accident. A sort of serendipitous ‘nightmare come dream’ scenario where they now finally enjoy their precious place as much as they can - along with my artwork, which now lives there.
The Summit of Her Ambition (2023) celebrates the strength of female power and resilience through the darkness. To the ones who love us and nurture us in times of trauma, grief and hardship: And to those who raised us and equipped us with the strength, resilience (and stubbornness) to beat all odds.
Despite everything that they had been through, Vicki carried a lot of guilt around acquiring their piece of the Alps: she felt a sort of ‘weight’ accompanying this ‘gift’. She worried that it seemed to appear extremely ‘privileged’ to own a second home, despite the traumatic and life altering events which have enabled them to acquire it - some of which will never ever leave them.
Her story finally reminds us that as humans we are all too often consumed by ‘what others might think’ (I certainly am); when in reality nobody from the outside knows what any other human has been through to acquire and achieve everything that they have. It will most likely be a complex alchemy of joy and circumstance and luck and grief and pain and disappointment and disaster. A reminder to us all that you just never know the path that another human’s feet have walked; nor the traumas and grief their hearts carry.
To chat about bringing a story to life get in touch via email, or simply sign up to my newsletter where you will be the first to find out about new work , events, exhibitions and sales.
Nikki