continued from #49
But it hasn’t just been about mementoes from my late Nana – it’s also about the things that I’ve held onto from my own past. Sorting through this vast lifelong collection has involved having to think about the human condition at large – both my own inner personal issues and the more universal issues of life and death – and love and loss – and other people and my relationship to them, theirs to me. Like so many people before me, I have been let down and hurt by others at various points in my life; I have lost loved ones, too – both through death and circumstances. Certain items of clothing, individual pieces of jewellery, the sound of specific music, the scent of particular perfumes – all these reminders have the ability to stir up vivid memories and bear testament to those hurts and scars from the past. Remember that dress I mentioned a few posts ago …
Someone made a comment about my work recently that struck a deep chord; he suggested that my inability to let go of things might perhaps, relate to an attempt to hold things together – ‘in order to stop things falling apart.’ It’s a fascinating point and one that’s certainly crossed my mind – a sense of exerting control over the present, in response to an inability to control circumstances of the past – it’s a common trait amongst collectors.
But what we are aware of intellectually doesn’t necessarily always equate with how we feel emotionally – nothing prepared me for how challenging this sorting process would be. Revisiting so much of my past through encountering the physical objects from it, has been about needing to process, accept and put to bed a lot of the associative painful memories. An emotionally tiring time – but necessary and cathartic nevertheless. I am feeling lighter as a result of unloading a lot of physical and emotional baggage.
And the added bonus, of course is to to have found a new body of work emerging in such a positive and unexpected way. It feels great to have Nana’s Colours to bear in mind while I’m in the process of sorting, ever more aware of how certain items connect and relate to each other – whether it’s through materials or colour, it’s the grouping together of related items that steers and creates the work for me.
With a less heavy and weighed down heart, then – an empty attic for my sister and a slightly less cluttered studio for me, the sorting continues …
