I have found myself being sighted as I move though my day, I am seen from above, from corners, under sofas, I am elusive and ephemeral. The camera captures fragments of me, an arm, a foot, a leg, where is the rest of me? In this place I am the mother but that is not all of me.
These images have been captured on a wildlife camera, there was no shutter to press; a motion sensor triggered the camera.
But at night on tip-toe while my children sleep, my motherly duties fulfilled, my artist self awakens and she prowls and she labours and she makes. My real self is whole, ardent, unfettered. I am sighted at night in my true form, pulsing with purpose under the moonlight but come morning I am mother again.
Incandescent my creativity burns through my days of mothering leaving sunspots on my artist’s mind.
I wanted to make work that described what it feels like to be both a mother and an artist. I wanted to give visual form to the feelings that arise in me as I dance between mother and artist, feelings of duality and tension. With these images I hope to give expression to the sensation of turbulence that arises with an awareness of our own potential. My creativity at times feels like molten gold at once dazzling and beautiful yet shifting and mercurial, equally a source of unsettled frustration.
These images are an attempt to translate that complex and rich tapestry of daily life as a mother and an artist, to tell the whole story of myself and in doing so perhaps be seen in all my own complexity.