Often I wish that my mum could be here to protect me from all the bad things in life, but the more life experiences I have, I realise that she could not have done anything to prevent them from happening, but it is her embrace and support afterwords which I wish existed. I wish we could things over which somehow we have both experienced, it would help me process things. Often my art is in fact just a conversation I would have had with her and I find myself communicating with her as a way of processing things. But this communication can feel like I am speaking to the void, it is in very subtle, unexpected ways that I feel a response, a recognition of my words coming back to me.
My memories of her are tangled and dreamy, like warmth and certain colours, an embrace of scents and soft gold/red light.
We share trauma, reading her diaries and seeing the blame and self loathing in some of her writing was a shock, because I had only ever heard kind words and beautiful things about her, but in her own depictions (earlier on in life) she is not kind to herself.
This makes me feel abused:
Touched woman: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AtFI7yL-u4jzgW6FEW6YR-uXAvMB
An entry in her dairy with an illustration, but the art feels too private to share.
This other snippet makes me feel sick because I felt it too, during an abusive relationship, my problems where repressed and I felt that my priority was in saving and helping the man I was with through his stuff.
Molly (my mum) talks about this too:
Body language 