Well I have been very active in the ways to create images from the never ending chaos of my imagination which is switched on, seemingly, 24 hours a day to do justice to ‘Veltas Journey’.
To remind me of the sequence of her journey so that I do not deviate or forget certain elements and ideas I constructed a storyline much like an author would construct a storyline and it is pinned on the wall. When my ideas seem to stall I take a good look at my original storyline it has been a massive help and I have found from that I can even add to it!
I have also completed lots of drawings during this process so far and will probably exhibit a selection of these preliminery sketches as part of the exhibition.
I feel the process is as important as the exhibition and it will show where my inspirational ideas came from. I am on a journey myself.
I have to date finished one and started two other paintings. At the moment all deal with the very beginning of my mothers long journey.
I also decided the best way I could portray the futility of war and how fragile the film of peace is even today, was to present a collage of the age old question ‘why’
Other images deal with displaced people picking raw food from the fields to eat. The constant search for food and the methods the segregated girls used to offset the hunger.
Reaching the port and seeing the cargo ship which would take them to Poland.
She remembers the hunger and on boarding the ship being given a slice of dried bread and a scrap of fat. People shared the space with pigs and cows. It was not a cruise liner by any stretch of the imagination and the conditions were cramped.
I am looking for a sponsor in order to visit Riga and Jelgava in Latvia and do some more research for this exhibition and to incorporate a short video of Latvia today.
