I've chosen a limited collection of drawings created by my mum during her mother's health decline. There must be at least 2,000 of these unfiltered internal dialogues, channeling telephone conversations with carers, social workers, and family members through a cast of recurring characters from an alternate multiverse. As she faced the generational shift, instability, and responsibility, they map troubling power dynamics; the voices of these creatures tangled together enmeshed in responses and feeling out of control.
They also support. The discarded envelope, excess baking paper, domestic surfaces become a place for the voices to emerge as spirits of the moment, freed, averted from internal tension, imagined, re-organised, and relegated externally as records of existence. These drawings are a lifeline of her art practice, a "playground always available", even when studio space is not. Not quite memories, or romanticisations, they offer a view from the unconscious working mind; a link into the power of the human psyche to invite symbols, images, and emotions to co-exist with situations.
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