Starting in the late 1930s and continuing throughout the early 1940s, Colquhoun’s exploration of gender took on a spiritual aspect. Rather than using stories from the historic or mythic past to disparage traditional asymmetric gender power, she turned her attention to the more fundamental questions of the origin and nature of gender differences, and the possibility of their ultimate reconciliation. She drew inspiration from Christian and Hebrew mysticism and from hermetic and alchemical sources. This rich brew was distilled partly in her writings and partly in her art. The majority of these works form a number of interconnected series. There are over 30 works of the period with Alchemical Figure; Androgyne; Diagrams of Love; Christian Marriage; Monogamy and Homunculus, either in their titles or inscriptions. Diagrams of Love is a particularly important phrase, being the title of two verse sequences as well as at least 16 art works.
The paintings are mostly in ink and watercolour. They possess a dazzling iridescence and luminosity. Some have an automatic element but the main image is almost invariably deliberately and precisely drawn. Qabalistic and Golden Dawn associations are common. Taken together they form a serious and systematic exploration of love and sexuality, physical and spiritual, Christian and pantheistic. Only a few were exhibited in her lifetime: she may, therefore, have regarded them primarily as personal and exploratory, perhaps even devotional, rather than public and commercial. How far their inspiration lay in the natural evolution of her spirituality, or how far they were primarily a response to events in her personal life is not known. (1)
The androgyne makes a convenient starting point.
Notes
1. A biographer wishing to pursue this might examine her relationship with Toni del Renzio. Del Renzio arrived in England sometime in 1938-9. Colquhoun provided some financial backing for the publication of his single-issue review Arson in 1942 – although he was scathing about her work within its pages - and settled with his creditors when it was a commercial failure. They married in 1943 and divorced in 1947. It is not without interest in the present context of sexual probing that she later described him as homosexual (see TGA 929/8/15/4). Legal papers relating to the bankruptcy action are at the National Archives Ref 89/1384.]
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