Wood

Motherhood

This series investigates the maternal identity, a process defined by profound connection and inevitable interruption.

The work draws on the psychological complexity of the female experience, using wood as its primary material. Each piece begins with sanding: stripping back weathered surfaces to reveal the hidden grain and knots beneath. This excavation is not incidental. It mirrors the way motherhood exposes what was always present such as strength, resilience and beauty, unacknowledged the layered self beneath the role.

The tension between dark, worked surfaces and the luminosity of gold leaf is central to the work. Gold here is not decorative. It marks the bond between mother and child as something simultaneously fragile and resilient, worn and precious. A surface sanded back, interrupted, distressed and still luminous.

Flowing paint traces paths of change and becoming. Its bold and powerful. Its is dramatic, sometimes with clearly defined paths and in others its simply flows with the grain. The faded, weathered timber holds the undoing; the painted lines hold the doing. Together they map the cyclical nature of transformation that motherhood demands.

Each sculpture exists in two or more parts, echoing the mother and child/children. Some are equal in scale; others are not, a larger form with one or more smaller pieces attached, reflecting the asymmetry of dependence. The pieces are oriented by compass direction, a quiet reference to the competing forces pulling at the maternal figure: the bleaching heat of the south, the bending pressure of the north. A mother can feel all directions at once, overwhelming, energising, and profound in the same moment.
Connected, similar, yet individual.

Across the series, the same tensions recur: presence and absence, wearing down and making precious, the self that persists beneath the role. These are not resolved. They are held.


Wood, acrylic & gold/silver leaf