Showing Up for our Fellow Artists

A reflection on my favorite film of 2023 and a short story by Tolkien

In 1938, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote a short story entitled Leaf by Niggle, which was first published in 1945. It tells of a painter named Niggle who obsessively works on a large painting of a tree. The canvas is so large he needs a ladder to climb up and down, adding patches and details here and there. He puts particular attention to detail in one single leaf on his tree, and between the cracks of negative space within the branches, a far country and an even farther mountain range in the distance. 

But Niggle’s progress on his painting is constantly interrupted, either by house repairs or most usually by his neighbor Parish, a man with a knack for gardening who lives nearby with his wife and a lame leg. Because of his leg, Parish often asks for favors from Niggle, not giving his painting much of a glance. Because Niggle “cannot get rid of his kind heart” he be-grudgingly helps Parish, riding into town on his bicycle to fetch a doctor for his sick wife and builders to patch his roof, damaged from a wind storm. All the while, he thinks of his painting.

This introductory look at Niggle’s life ultimately culminates with him being unwillingly sent away from his home to go on a journey, metaphorically meant to represent death. After spending some time in a purgatorial waiting room of sorts, Niggle’s afterlife consists of him entering his own painting of the tree, complete and finished in the full splendor he was obsessively trying to capture. At this point in the story, Tolkien tells it, 

"It's a gift!" he said. He was referring to his art, and also to the result; but he was using the word quite literally. He went on looking at the Tree. All the leaves he had ever laboured at were there, as he had imagined them rather than as he had made them; and there were others that had only budded in his mind, and many that might have budded, if only he had had time. Nothing was written on them, they were just exquisite leaves, yet they were dated as clear as a calendar. Some of the most beautiful-and the most characteristic, the most perfect examples of the Niggle style-were seen to have been produced in collaboration with Mr. Parish: there was no other way of putting it. 

-J.R.R Tolkien, Leaf by Niggle

Niggle ponders the completeness and characteristics of not only his tree, but the far country and mountains behind it. Upon pondering further how Parish has influenced his painting, he encounters Parish himself, and the two of them go on a long walk together, into that far distant country. 

I thought of Leaf by Niggle often upon my first viewing of Kelly Reichardt’s latest feature film Showing Up, which ended up being my #1 favorite film of 2023. Michelle Williams plays the main character Lizzy, a sculptor trying to manage her studio time with the competing attention of her day job, relationships, and daily responsibilities. The film shows her various interactions with her estranged parents, her brother, her colleagues, and most notably her landlord, neighbor and fellow rival artist Jo (played by Hong Chau). 

Showing Up strikes a huge nerve for me through the various ways it reflects shadows of my own life and people I’ve known and observed. As a former art student and current employee of an art college, I relate to how it captures the art school vibe and captures the idiosyncrasies of its inhabitants. I deeply know and recognize the characters in this movie and the interplay between them. 

In a parallel fashion to Leaf by Niggle, Reichardt’s film explores the tension between the artist’s time needed to work on their art alongside the practical tasks of daily living. Both tasks are necessities, but when the latter invades the former, it can often result in frustration. Niggle and Lizzy alike are driven by the artist’s drive to create, to leave a mark on this world in the brief time they are here. The artist, like any person, has an inherent sense of the ticking clock for their brief time on earth. We all have an ache inside of us to create something as a response to our observations, our emotions, and our questions. Niggle’s tree and Lizzy’s sculptures represent a desire to capture something, to answer a call they cannot help but respond to.

It’s the mysterious power of this call and urge to create that fuels the fire of annoyance when roofs need mending, when water heaters need fixing, when friends and family are physically or mentally ill and need our care and attention. But the other mystery that both of these stories explore is the reality that creating art and tending to seemingly humdrum distractions of regular life are intertwined. It’s a paradox that the things which seem to pull us away from our artmaking can often be the same things that give it fuller resonance. 

At Lizzy’s final art show for example, her friends recognize the likeness of Jo in one of her sculptures. The sculptures are as real to Lizzy as the people in her life, exemplified by the fact that the only time Lizzy ever apologizes to anyone in the entire movie is when she breaks off one of her sculpture’s arms. It is this love and attention to her art that helps it resonate with those who will see it on display. 

Niggle and Lizzy both come to realize that art is never created in a vacuum, inspired by nothing but the artist’s inner life or thoughts. It is enhanced and given meaning by community and even by the very things that seemingly get in the way of its creation. As Niggle and Parish are connected in their earthly life by their squabbles and the mutual tasks of gardening and caretaking they do for each other, in Showing Up Lizzy and Jo share a connection through taking care of an injured pigeon. The pigeon (essentially a dove, one of many symbols in the Bible for the Holy Spirit) becomes another central character in the story, one which becomes a source of both annoyance and admiration for its caretakers. When the pigeon is finally healed and set free, Lizzy abandons her own art show to walk alongside Jo and look for it. Somehow the two are caught up into a grander vision beyond their own artistic expression, and they go looking for it together. It’s an echo of Niggle and Parish wandering through their own afterlife together, their conflicts and cares withering away as they see, so to speak, the “forest for the trees” until they part ways again. 

They set out next day, and they walked until they came right through the distances to the Edge. It was not visible, of course: there was no line, or fence, or wall; but they knew that they had come to the margin of that country. They saw a man, he looked like a shepherd; he was walking towards them, down the grass-slopes that led up into the Mountains. 

"Do you want a guide?" he asked. "Do you want to go on?" 

For a moment a shadow fell between Niggle and Parish, for Niggle knew that he did now want to go on, and (in a sense) ought to go on; but Parish did not want to go on, and was not yet ready to go. 

"I must wait for my wife," said Parish to Niggle. "She'd be lonely. I rather gathered that they would send her after me, some time or other, when she was ready, and when I had got things ready for her. The house is finished now, as well as we could make it; but I should like to show it to her. She'll be able to make it better, I expect: more homely. I hope she'll like this country, too." He turned to the shepherd. "Are you a guide?" he asked. "Could you tell me the name of this country?" 

"Don't you know?" said the man. "It is Niggle's Country. It is Niggle's Picture, or most of it: a little of it is now Parish's Garden." 

"Niggle's Picture!" said Parish in astonishment. "Did you think of all this, Niggle? I never knew you were so clever. Why didn't you tell me?" 

"He tried to tell you long ago," said the man; "but you would not look. He had only got canvas and paint in those days, and you wanted to mend your roof with them. This is what you and your wife used to call Niggle's Nonsense, or That Daubing." 

"But it did not look like this then, not real," said Parish. 

"No, it was only a glimpse then," said the man; "but you might have caught the glimpse, if you had ever thought it worth while to try." 

"I did not give you much chance," said Niggle. "I never tried to explain. I used to call you Old Earthgrubber. But what does it matter? We have lived and worked together now. Things might have been different, but they could not have been better. All the same, I am afraid I shall have to be going on. We shall meet again, I expect: there must be many more things we can do together. Good-bye!" He shook Parish's hand warmly: a good, firm, honest hand it seemed. He turned and looked back for a moment. The blossom on the Great Tree was shining like flame. All the birds were flying in the air and singing. Then he smiled, and nodded to Parish, and went off with the shepherd. 

-J.R.R Tolkien, Leaf by Niggle