There are always connections. It all comes from me, so there must be.
Sometimes they are obvious to me. Sometimes not for ages, sometimes never… or at least, not yet.
I have conversations with people… friends and family… and this weekend during the LOAF event with complete strangers. It was while replaying one of these stranger-encounters in my head that a blinding flash of childhood came to me, and I had to sit down to deal with it. Such a vivid memory it took my breath away.
I have 3 bits of work attached to my studio wall. I felt I was feeling around for something, the connection. This flashback has linked them. They don’t quite say it, but they hold the clues.
I am shocked and stunned by the way my brain does this to me, tries to make sense of my life, episodes I thought long forgotten. It can be a bit like a dream… the sort that goes:
“we were in our house, but although it was our house it was really my childhood home, you were there, but it wasn’t you, it was someone different, but I thought of them like I do you, so it was you…”
This memory involves my Mum. My work and my dreams often involve my Mum, who I seem to have become. She died 18 years ago… I know this because my youngest son has just turned 18 yrs old. She died when he was 3 months old. I see our relationship over the years, and how it becomes more understandable as I get older, and see the reasons. I suddenly understand something I saw 40 years ago, because suddenly it has happened to me.
There have been conversations here about work being TOO personal and autobiographical. I don’t understand. I have no choice. The work that comes out of me just happens. Whether it is autobiographical or not is often invisible to me until it is too late, a done deal.
