Let’s celebrate Leonora Carrington’s extraordinary life, as well as her paintings

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/06/leonora-carrington-life-paintings

Version 0 of 1.

Six years ago, on a sunny April day much like this one, I celebrated my cousin Leonora Carrington’s 92nd birthday with her in Mexico City. If I had been able to tell her then that a few years later her birthday would be heralded by one of the biggest global tributes possible, a Google doodle, she would have told me I should probably lay off the tequila. But today, on what would have been her 98th, one of her paintings – suitable Googlified – is being seen by millions of people across the planet, and many of them will ask themselves who this person was, and what kind of life she led.

Leonora turned her back on her advantaged future because she realised it would stop her being what she wanted to be

Leonora was an artist, but I’ve deliberately called her a person because she hated being labelled as anything other than a human being – that was really the only way she would agree to classify herself. She was the freest spirit, and the most original thinker, I have ever known. Towards the end of her long, colourful life she used to say to me that all she was really sure about was this: she was an ape, a female of the species, and one day she would die. Everything else was debatable, or unclear, or uncertain: there are very few real rocks in life, and it’s better to know that than to think otherwise. Another of her favourite sayings, and the one of which I am most fond, was this: safety, under any circumstances, is an illusion. From Leonora I learned that you need to take risks to properly grab the opportunities of life and to be true to the spirit in your heart.

Leonora was true to the spirit in her heart and the ideas she believed in. By the time she was 18, England was in the grip of the great depression, but amidst the poverty all around her she looked like one of the luckiest creatures in the country. Almost exactly 80 years ago, in March 1935, she came out as a debutante and was presented at the court of George V and Queen Mary. In a time wracked with economic uncertainty, her future was not just secure, but extremely rosy. She was rich and beautiful and well-connected and clever: a good “catch”, in terms of a wealthy husband, was almost certainly around the corner.

But even at the age of 18, Leonora knew something many people who live to be many times that never work out, and it was this: wealth is meaningless if it forces you to live a life you do not count as valuable. An upper-class future, a title, a house in the centre of London and a country estate: all very pleasant, but if they prevent you from doing what you want to do with your life, you will have failed by embracing them.

Related: Leonora Carrington: artist's birthday commemorated with Google Doodle

Leonora didn’t fail. She succeeded, and today’s Google doodle is a symbol of her continuing success and her growing status as an artist. She turned her back on her advantaged future because she realised it would stop her being what she wanted to be: in 1937 she eloped with Max Ernst and settled in Paris at the centre of the surrealist movement, becoming a friend of Picasso, of Dali, of Duchamp and Breton. The war brought her many crises and much heartache: and although it would have been the easiest thing in the world to go back to the conventional safety of home, she never even considered it. Instead she fled even further, ending up in Mexico, where she distilled all she had known and cared about and believed in into a lifetime of creating art.

Leonora never came home, but in 2006 I went to find her. Although she had cut herself off from our family, she welcomed me into her life, and I visited her many more times before her death in 2011. I feel lucky to have known someone as clear-sighted, honest, risk-taking and wonderful as she was, and today I will raise my glass of tequila to her and thank her, wherever she is. If you’re interested in finding out more about her, Tate Liverpool is currently showing an exhibition of her work: go visit, and mull on her message about how we all should live our lives.