Family : Drawings on Polythene
During the decline of my sister, artist Sue Dunkley, into Alzheimer's disease which causes both long and short-term memory loss, I began to examine our shared past and my own earliest memories of our childhood together. I am aware that during those early years I absorbed emotional attitudes and personal and political beliefs that remain part of who I am today.
In recent drawings and paintings I retrieve the past and associate it with the present, seeking to discover the emotional reality behind the personal myths with which we embroider our lives. Working with polythene and marker pen I enjoy the informality of the drawing process and the polythene's transparency allows the separate drawings to be hung and layered to create installations which offer varied viewpoints of my family history and evoke different narratives, often having an ambiguity that reflects the elusive nature of my memories. The drawings that I make are improvisations on their subject matter, not illustrations. I aim at visual poetry based on reality rather than documentation.
During the decline of my sister, artist Sue Dunkley, into Alzheimer's disease which causes both long and short-term memory loss, I began to examine our shared past and my own earliest memories of our childhood together. I am aware that during those early years I absorbed emotional attitudes and personal and political beliefs that remain part of who I am today.
In recent drawings and paintings I retrieve the past and associate it with the present, seeking to discover the emotional reality behind the personal myths with which we embroider our lives. Working with polythene and marker pen I enjoy the informality of the drawing process and the polythene's transparency allows the separate drawings to be hung and layered to create installations which offer varied viewpoints of my family history and evoke different narratives, often having an ambiguity that reflects the elusive nature of my memories. The drawings that I make are improvisations on their subject matter, not illustrations. I aim at visual poetry based on reality rather than documentation.