Portrait 6
Description
This watery-eyed self-portrait is the first following the birth of my daughter. It is also the precursor to of a series of three.
Maia was less than a year, and the house was still under construction. I hardly painted. I was unprepared for the loneliness and exhaustion of motherhood, and, as a former Londoner, what it meant to really live in the countryside and in a foreign land.
This quick watercolour was 40 minutes spent looking directly at the person in the mirror. Observing and searching. Not for a likeness, but just to see who I was, even if I were still there.
I know now, that aside from the profound love I felt for my child, I was also tired, resentful, and deeply angry. Paradoxically, more deeply moored and yet further adrift than ever before.