Statement

STATEMENT

I did not expect myself to bury my face into the ashes of my dead son but I did because I needed to know he was not there, I needed to see if I could feel him in those grains, if they had energy, meaning....but they were silent, as grief is so silent, relentlessly so.

In so doing, I unexpectedly created a body of images that depict the grief of a mother who has lost her son. I did not have boundaries to my expression and found myself head high in mustard flowers trying to rediscover the boy who loved to wander those fields in spring. I let myself float down the rivers he swam in and I pressed myself into his belongings. Somehow I knew that if I headed face on into what I feared most, that he was really gone, that I might be able to create a new relationship with him based on the fine art of grieving.

I have always been fascinated with death. In fact most of my artwork before my son died dealt with the subject of loss. It seemed uncanny that I would have to delve experientially into the realm of death. To lose a child and still make art worth looking at. It happened quite by accident. I was sitting alone at home when the wave of grief grabbed me hard and pulled me into a crying bout. Hours passed and I could not stop moaning, wailing, deep throated from the gut, my whole body pulled down, collapsing. The only thing I could do to stop was to become the photographer, to set up the camera and start the process of self observation. In the front yard where the fava beans had dried and hardened to yellow stalks I sat before the camera. I was as hollow as those stalks. Brittle and spent. There I caught the grief in all its agony. Alive bent against the dead.

This book is about the art and mindful process of excavating meaning from the darkness of deep loss while searching for a purposeful passage that brings in light as a well spring of understanding, spiritual awareness and ultimately, acceptance.