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Lesley Patterson-Marx Artist’s Statement {back} (2006) My path as an artist has converged with the path of motherhood. I cannot separate the two. They are nested together. I have made etchings from the spontaneous and frequent drawings in my journal. These etchings are a diary, depicting the changes in my body, and the connectedness of mother and child throughout gestation, birth, and lactation. I am a breastfeeding mother. I create images of lactation that are mythical, otherworldly, and that depict the breast as a symbol of nurturing, sustenance, and power. My baby is growing everyday.(I long for these days to pass more slowly.) I traced the outline of my son at six months old. As he was moving into a new stage of awareness, the sights and sounds of Spring surrounded him. Rabbits began to appear in my work. The rabbit is a well known symbol of fertility, but think of her as symbolizing a feeling of time escaping. She symbolizes the vulnerability and fears that new parents and children feel together. ( I long for these days to pass more slowly.) I have made an homage to the passing of the seasons. It is a calendar of sorts. The seeds represent the weeks of the year. The four seasons are depicted as antique images of children. They have long since grown into adults, had children of their own, and have passed on…plants gone to seed. In their bodies, I have drawn images of plants to symbolize growth, regeneration, and the cycle of life. (I long for these days to pass more slowly). Since my path as an artist has converged with the path of motherhood, I have been called to study the art of patience.(I still long for these days to pass more slowly). (2008) I found a photograph of a woman that was taken long ago. Her gaze was to the side of the tiny rectangle that she was captured in, as if she was looking beyond the instant that the camera had stolen. Maybe she imagined me in the future, holding this fragment of her life in my hands. Why else would one be photographed, if not to be remembered? But I do not remember her. She is no relative of mine. She is lost, her image having slipped into the vast pool of unknowns whose faces rustle through boxes in estate sales, who are found between the pages of a child’s reader among other ancient volumes in the used book store, whose faces are stuck between the pages of albums that were left in a trunk, forgotten in the corner of an attic. {cont.} |
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