The process of making this work brought me on a journey, like walking through a forest of different memories. As my youngest sister and brother were both on the autistic spectrum, I remembered how their diagnosis had impacted our family. We can have some happy memories and some broken and fragmented ones. I like the idea of 'Kintsugi', the Japanese art of putting broken pieces back together with gold, which is a metaphor for embracing your imperfections. An image of my brother and mother resonated this and started me on the journey into the forest.
Trees are haunting and beautiful and have symbolic qualities of growth, death and revival, which is why they are portrayed in folklore. Looking at my own children inspired the memories of my brother. I had never come to term with his diagnosis and felt a level of guilt that I didn’t have the same relationship my other siblings had with him. This inspired me to portray us as two young children, finding our way through life and finally accepting us for all our flaws
Research
'Memories of two sisters in the big city'
'Memories are golden'
'Memory of visiting grandma'
'Memories of my brother'
'Fragmented memory of my baby brother'
'The beauty that was my brother'
Fragmented memory digital image combined with drawing
'The woods of fragmented memory'
'The fog of fragmented memory'