Nick Willing

And art, in a way, was her method of trying to alleviate that suffering, that depression.

She said it wasn't, you couldn't exercise it.

It just made you feel better about yourself if you made a good painting.

It didn't cure the depression, but it helped you cope with it.

You know?

Yeah.

Poor thing.

She had long, long spells, sometimes two or three years of shutting down and really suffering.

Absolutely right.

And there's a lesson buried there that I had to learn as a filmmaker.

The most important lesson I think that I learned from my mum is that she didn't try to make pictures for what we call universal reasons.

You know, she's not trying to connect with people in a universal sense.

She's not, in fact, making pictures for people, for others.

She's making pictures to try to get to grips with something inside her.

And in so doing, she needs to focus on something very specific, very nuanced, very particular, very contradictory in her psyche.

Who knows who would identify with that?

It's so kind of weird.

And in so doing, she makes a picture that we all understand.

And we go, yeah.

And it becomes universal.