Ella Starling – Painting a Guernica for Today
Pembrokeshire’s Ella Starling whose passionate art and activism we have featured before has launched her most ambitious venture yet.
Here she tells of her recent trip to Madrid to see Picasso’s Guernica and how this iconic anti-war painting has inspired Ceasefire, her own response to the genocidal conflict in Gaza.
She says: “I was amazed how physically my body reacted to seeing Guernica. I’d spent the weeks before the trip staring at it, thinking about it endlessly and feeling deeply conflicted about revering a painting made by such a problematic man. I’d half-convinced myself it would be an anti-climax. So I was completely taken aback when it came into view and my heart started thumping wildly.
“The size is physically overwhelming, but more than that it is the rawness of the pain that is depicted. Somehow in the crude, unrealistic figures Picasso has caught hold of the essence of primal terror. It honestly felt like he’d imbued the very materials with these acute emotions. My reaction made no rational sense, there’s no logic to being that disturbed by something so unreal.”
“Spending hours with Guernica – standing, staring, taking notes and sketching – let me really absorb every detail. Things I’d missed in reproductions now drew my eye over and over. The gravity of what I’m taking on really landed.”
Ella’s trip, supported by a bursary from a-n The Artists Information Company, was the first step of her new project.
“It’s called Ceasefire and it’s what I’ll be doing for the next nine months. That is, if I can fund it,” she says. “It’s the most ambitious painting I’ve ever taken on. Four panels reaching approximately 5 x 2m, in oils – originating from the desire to create a lasting visual record of the seemingly endless horror we’ve been witnessing since the situation in Gaza accelerated into genocide in October 2023.
“Picasso painted Guernica in 1937 in response to the bombing of civilians [by the Nazi German airforce during the Spanish Civil War] and it has become the most famous anti-war emblem of all time. So I’ve just set myself the small challenge of replicating that!
“I’m an essentially unknown, emerging artist with no real recognition, two young children and barely a penny to my name. So arguably I have no business launching into something this size, let alone publicly declaring it’s what I’m going to do for the next nine months. But here I am, doing exactly that because I have a real fire in my belly to make something that lasts. There’s a stubborn, tenacious part of me that wants to prove that this can’t be erased, that they can’t force everyone to forget.
“Throughout the project I’ll be building connections and collaborations to make sure it’s actually useful. That it directly supports aid on the ground, amplifies Palestinian voices and gets publicly seen. I’ll keep finding the ways this work can have the most impact it possibly can.
“I hope that doesn’t sound arrogant. I’ve been worrying people might be thinking: ‘Who the f*** does she think she is?’ But I also know how damn determined I am.
“I’m making this completely public from the very start, because that holds me accountable. It’ll keep me driving through the points where I waver, where it’s hard, or where I get kickback – which is already starting to happen. I hope sharing it rallies a real community around this project and carries it through until I’ve seen it done and made it something genuinely useful.”
Ella has launched a Crowdfunder for Ceasefire. “It’s the foundation the whole project stands on, covering materials and nine months of studio rent,” she says. “A painting this size eats materials – the massive panels, the paints, all the other tools and potions of oil painting. Anything raised beyond that begins to cover my time.
“There are reward tiers too – postcards, prints, preparatory drawings and paintings made along the way. Every single amount is so, so gratefully received.
“If you can’t give, please share this. A personal word from you – why this matters to you – does more than you’d think. It might be the very thing that moves someone else to back it.”
Donations to Ceasefire: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/qr/Yy0Lk4Dy
