Artist Statement

My practice explores the themes and ideologies that come with the idea of motherhood in particular the dysfunctional responsibilities that we anticipate of the mother. Through the use of personal enquiry and autofiction I turn to painting and drawing within my practice. Throughout my work there are dialogue's with reoccurring protagonists and motifs. Using found imagery along with personal archives I construct and form my own narratives to build an understanding of what I believe consists of motherhood, revisiting the grief that happened from the perspective of the present through the manipulation of paint. I challenge the notion of memory and truth, recreating a sort of universal form of childhood, whilst this perception that I present through paint is true to me it’s not true to the memory. My real childhood is beginning to disappear and be replaced by what I want to see.  From the perspective of the present I begin to remould the ideas I had of the mother, now developing an understanding of consequence, social barriers and the possibility of inherited behaviours.

The idea of being contained to a space is something that remains important to me. The perspective we have as a child is put onto us by the environment that we grow up in, it subsequently controls our behaviour, similar to how a domesticated animal may have different characteristics depending on its owner and surroundings. The overwhelming use of pattern is something I utilise to access a feeling of domesticity. Pattern resonates with the idea of comfort, seclusion and confinement, something I believe we all feel when we are assigned to our mothers.