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Project Afterbirth
My life - who I am; what I represent - has all changed since March 2010. My identity has been immersed and surpassed by my new moniker, ‘mummy’. All I was before (and still am) has been distilled into this one word.
When I fell pregnant with my first daughter, I recorded it in words. These words capture how I felt and how my partner (now husband) felt at the time we found out by ‘weeing on a wee stick’; these words record pivotal moments throughout the pregnancy, the birth and after birth. These words also record our perfect little baby’s development until she reached approximately two years old, by which point I was frantically trying to record, in words, the experiences of falling pregnant once more and having another perfect, small person to love and record everything about! I made my pregnancy into an art project.
My words from 2010 form the back bone of this work; recording our emotional journey from the initial discovery that we were having a baby and capturing our experiences and feelings during the first scan.
This work is unusual for me in its discussion of something ‘real’, the materials I have used and my approach. I am a fine art print maker and designer-maker. I normally draw and design. I don’t use paint or mixed media of any sort, usually relying on a 5mm pen nib and drawing from life. This work expresses a time and emotional stance.
This project was an opportunity to work experimentally, reverting to a style I explored as a student. My youngest daughter – now three – has just started nursery and I felt that reverting to a previous style and freeing myself from my usual constraints, reflected my fresh beginning as a person and artist, the other side of child birth.
See below for images of previous work and research, which has formed the basis for this project.
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