Lest We Forget
My current working practice explores my feelings as a mother, wife and mature individual. I am also interested in the links between the female generations (the distaff line). These feelings are not just unique to women (love, pride, uncertainty, a sense of belonging or exclusion, fierce protection and many complex and conflicting desires) but as women we perhaps experience things in shades of grey, rather than black and white.
Photographic images
Acrylic on board
My girls are growing fast - my heart begins to ache
I see them every day but fail to see the changes that are made.
Yet while pondering my snapshots and I stop to take a breath
As there before my eyes my girls have changed, never to change back.
Most of me is thrilled, my insides warm and close
that my little girls grow strong, healthy, happy and unique.
Yet a knot writhes in my belly, starting to whirl and dart
They grow so fast - they grow so fast - childhood passes in a blink.
I look back on days gone by and lament the pass of time
Rue the days are never long enough, always busy running round.
Too frantic doing things that never really matter
while all the time my girls are growing - faster, faster, faster.
So then I have to shake myself, let go of my melancholy
I have much to be thankful for - my precious girls are with me.
I hope they grow and see me as their Mum and as their friend
To tell me all their secrets (well, those they will give me)
So laughter returns as I decide to revel in the moment,
to enjoy my girls and notice changes happening every minute.
I will celebrate their independence, support their hearts desires
and remember fondly, with a little ache, how my babes came to arrive.
Eggs
Did you know that when you give birth to your daughter you also give birth to your future grandchildren, as we (women) are born with all the eggs we will have at birth? This got me thinking about the distaff line (matriarchal rather than patriarchal which is most commonly used when compiling family trees) and how close we are to our grandmothers in reality. When my mother was born, I was also there....
In this piece, the egg cup represents the grandmother, the egg the mother, and the transparent tag the child. The next egg moves one place down - the child becoming the mother, the mother becoming the grandmother and so forth - generating a closer link between the generations than perhaps first realised.
Longing
The confusing feelings of a mother watching her children grow and become independent.
Pride, joy and a feeling of satisfaction war with worry, guilt and loneliness. However, I like to think that happiness and warmth win out in the end.
The Train Journey
As a parent you sometimes find yourself in situations that are not ideal either for the safety of happiness of your children. How you deal with that defines you.
We experienced a difficult train journey of which I took a photograph and wrote a few lines to express my anger, of which my children knew nothing of at the time. My job was to keep them feeling happy and secure. My manner did not reflect my inner feelings - something that happens often in everyday life.
Click Clack on the tracks
My daughters sitting under racks of cases and legs of men
We are never doing this again
We experienced a difficult train journey of which I took a photograph and wrote a few lines to express my anger, of which my children knew nothing of at the time. My job was to keep them feeling happy and secure. My manner did not reflect my inner feelings - something that happens often in everyday life.
Click Clack on the tracks
My daughters sitting under racks of cases and legs of men
We are never doing this again