TELL STORIES ABOUT ME AND I WILL LIVE FOREVER
ARTIST STATEMENT
In this work, I dig deep into nostalgia as I reminisce about my memories of my belated Mom, as well as my grandmother and great grandmother. I reflect on her stories as it is part of my story and my son’s. My current art focuses on the maternal traces and remnants left behind that I hold on to as I embrace motherhood. In this series, I embellished my original photographic art work so that each print became its own one-of-a-kind piece.
This series of work consists of gathering and collecting objects – remnants left behind - which are familiar to me and evoke a sense of nostalgia and sentimentality. The repetition that occurs in my act of acquiring particular objects is as though I re-visit a specific moment in time, accumulate and preserve memory upon memory; they represent a sense of home, domesticity, and femininity as I remember how roles of motherhood appeared to me in my own family. By collecting, breaking and re-assembling, I recreate notions of motherhood as I recall them and hold space for memory, nostalgia and questions of identity after loss.
In one of my material foraging adventures, I came across a portrait painting at the corner of a thrift store. The woman in the portrait felt familiar to me as though I knew her or somehow we had met. She reminded me of my mom, my grandmother and my great grandmother - I could even see her as me, as an aging woman in a moment of a time. This intriguing oil painting captures the qualities and characteristics of that particular woman … it not only shows what she looks like but is an idea of her as a woman … her being … her essence.
This portrait came home with me. After spending more time with her I realized that she was painted by a Vancouver artist, Gwen Lamont, in 1958. Sadly, I never met Gwen. Unfortunately, she passed in 1978 and yet I am happy to share her art and some of what I’ve learned about her. Gwen was an advocate for the arts, community minded and instrumental in starting the Kelowna Art Gallery. Through the obscure portrait of this unknown woman, I met another artist. A face behind a face. Immediately the idea of remnants left behind regenerated a new meaning to my practice. To me, the painting represents something left behind of the artist … of the two women and the memory of all women I recollect from my own life.
Each edition in this series is a creative visual conversation between me and two women I never met. Representing the interconnection of our memories and experiences, and history through the space and time passed.
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