Artist Statement for Mother Series

These paintings and drawings reflect on my mother in her final months with Alzheimer’s. The work honors her imaginal journeying that lengthens my life backwards in favor of her long ago, and respects the reversal of trust, from me in her to her in me. Even with a lifetime of experience with the strength of my mother’s character, it’s her end years that impress me the most.
 
I am also meaning this work to encourage visibility of our elders and oppose a general cultural attitude of dismissal of the old, which, among many other injustices, was brought to light during the covid pandemic. The indifference to our vulnerable old ones prompts me to paint and draw my mom from memory, imagination, and photos taken of her through windows during the lockdown. To think that elders are insignificant in this world consumed with productivity and usefulness is unjust and offensive, as longevity is its own state of being, holding meaning and discovery in layers of lasting. As the old pull themselves in, they expand us out to connections with lost threads of a cultural past, presenting for us what and who we arrive out of and what is ahead for us as we age.
 
The beautiful and complex profundities of wizened old flesh seem to me to take on a likeness to leaf veins, so I make those pairings in some of the work, which returns my mother, in my mind, to the expansive mystery of nature and the all.

James Hillman wrote in The Force of Character and the Lasting Life:
Can we imagine that at the essence of human being is an insistence upon being witnessed – by others, by gods, by the cosmos itself – and that the inner force of character cannot be concealed from this display. The image will out, and the last years put the final finish to the image. (pg 201)

Holding, oil, 60x36”, 2023

Mother’s Insights, color pencil, 19x25” 2023

Not Here, oil, 36x60”, 2023

A New Path to Travel, oil, 30x48”, 2023