Mother

Mother
2024
mixed media on canvas
80 x 80cm
This painting is a love poem to my children, to my mother and to each of my maternal ancestors. When I painted this, I had recently given birth to my second son and was overwhelmed by love for my children and in awe of women’s bodies and their ability to create life.
The love and bond between a mother and her child is boundless and incomparable. For nine months we carry that baby inside our own body, it listens to our breath and our heartbeat, and we feel it move, kick, roll and hiccup inside us. Then, when it is born, it continues to be fed, nourished and protected by our body and breasts- as dependent on us after birth as it is from within the womb. Birth is the first sacred ritual, and death- its antithesis, the last. They are the only universal experiences and yet no one can recall either.