Odyssey (2023)

This work is a culmination of my emotional and physical journey of 2023. Initially undertaken to process my emotions and seek meaning from within, it rests on physical movement as a way to navigate transition and change. I no longer have the words to describe my world, but speak with visual metaphor and storytelling to create magic.

 

The process is labourious and time-consuming, an echo of my emotional processing. I draw, photograph and experience life. I cut work up and start again. I mix it up and collage until it ‘feels’ right. I use the results as raw materials for cyanotypes and screenprints and delight in the random results the sun and chemicals can produce. I then overwork the prints with paint, pen and ink to refine the story that peeks out.

 

This is the story of 'me', remaking myself as I journey through floods along the Murray River across NSW, VIC and SA. Water is a powerful symbol of emotion and the works descibe the feelings - an expression of my personal emotional landscape navigating the death of a loved one, the ongoing illness and surgery of my son and a personal transition. An attempt to find space for me to exist in my own right, as my own person, not just a mother or a daughter or an adjunct to another’s needs.