Splintering (Working Title)

This current project centres around the relationship between parents and our children as they grow up.  It is an almost invisible grief (although it is joyful also), the process you go through, from carrying a child, having them as a part of you and then the birth process, making them a separate person, but still very much reliant on you (particularly if you, like me, are/were a breastfeeding parent), to every year, them moving that little bit further away from you and becoming their own unique person.  Despite the joyful moments and the wonderful privilege of watching someone become themselves, it is also a traumatic and painful process, especially if they have difficulties, whether that be physical, learning, or mental health. Starting with this first piece, simply titled Moomin 14, I aim to create a series of works that weave in photos from the life of my children, from their first days to their current ages.  As well as images I will also interweave texts which have a connectivity to who they are now.

Moomin, 14, utilises strips of photos of my eldest son from his first, third, fourth, sixth, eighth, twelfth and fourteenth years of life and weaves them together to show the many faces of him that I have loved and lost, and who he is now.  This is symbolised, not only by the loom image being a current (2023) photo of him, but also strips of past exam papers, when he is soon to attempt a GCSE in Sociology at 14, despite us being told he would never be able to do anything, and examples of his handwriting, which are important to me as I was told, before I made the decision to home educate, that he would never be able to write without the aid of a computer, and he can, and I am so proud of how far he has come.