Aytoun Hall Exhibition, Sep 2023

I was invited to include my work in an exhibit of 15 local artists at Aytoun Hall, Auchterarder in September 2023. I exhibited 6 main bodies of work and also had a small collection of mounted monoprints for sale.

For this exhibition, I decided to create a new body of work focussing on the feeling of grief, following my overall confessional theme that runs through all my creative body. I approached this in multiple ways, one being looking at the grief for your inner child. When something has happened to you when you're young and you work through it, you can be overcome with grief for the child that you were. I wanted to show this but also show a healing relationship, you as you are now, looking after your inner child. What do they need? We are holding hands, in this together.
Inspired by Lucille Clifton's poem, Let There Be New Flowering, and a story told by my partner's grandad I also created a mixed media painting. The overall story was his evacuation from Glasgow as a child due to World War 2. He was wandering in the countryside surrounded by deep snow, and found a deep well of snow, forming a perfect circle where a singular yellow crocus was growing. Being from the old Glasgow tenements, this was the first time he'd seen such a flower. It made me think of the horror of fleeing your home for safety, but also the beautiful childlike wonder that is sprinkled into his story. The contrast of emotions, the sadness enhanced by Lucille Clifton's poem, and the childlike wonder and hope illustrated by the bright yellow flower.

I will admit that I struggled to make the remainder of the work for this exhibit. Having recently experienced a sudden family death it was all I could think about, so the remainder of the paintings created for this were around that personal loss. I used imagery from our lives, such as a stuffed rabbit to represent the person I lost, and the stuffed bear to represent myself. Our childhood toys, which I turned into ghosts. Showing her state, but also how I have felt since losing her. Text shows up in a lot of my work, and I used it here almost as a diary. In most paintings, you can find scrawlings of my thoughts, wishes, promises, and begging. All the things I want to say but no longer can. These scrawlings are summarized with painted-on text, such as "Wait 4 Me" or "You Are Meant To Be Here". During the process of painting these, I wanted to stop, drop out of the exhibition, and focus on the pain I felt. However, I know she will have been so proud of me for expressing this pain, and for persevering and taking part in the exhibition.