The recurrent theme then: Parents and children, the wider family, protection, guidance, strength in the group. Living a life affected by what has gone before: affecting what comes after.
Always present, my mother: loving, clever, funny, singing, creatively cooking and looking after us all, gathering us in at every available opportunity, sarcastic, not suffering fools… she had class my mum. I still see her, 18 years after her death, in my gestures, in the mirror, and, so I’m told, in the withering look I give a group of 30 eight year olds who aren’t doing what they should be.
But I am also myself. Affected by how I live, affecting those I live with.
Brought up a catholic, bringing up my own sons as catholics, and working in a catholic school, I see this as my culture. But I no longer have belief and faith in God. I have faith in those around me. I believe in people… their strength, goodness, empathy, altruism, creativity, humour, and ingenuity…
I am an eternal optimist!
This whole system of belief is why my practice is as it is. I blog, I spend an inordinate amount of time on social media. ALL of the opportunities I have had in the last 4 years have pretty much come through social media and my blog, and my collaborations.
I work best in collaboration I think, or even just in the spirit of camaraderie by emailing work backwards and forwards with my friends.
The work I make is all about people, even though they are figuratively absent from the pieces… it is all about the bits between people. The way I work is about the bits between people too.
So why am I so deliriously happy shut in my new studio working all on my own?
