A couple of months ago, the team at Arts at Fremantle Church hosted my second solo exhibtion, Dear Rosa. It was such a wonderful opening evening and the exhibtion continued to be opened by appointment for a month. I'm really thankful to have been able to exhibit this before measures to prevent the spread of covid19 were in place. I feel sorry for all the artists out there who were working towards exhibiting during this time who have now had to indefinitely delay the release of their work. Can't wait to celebrate again with you all once we have endured this pandemic.
In case you were unable to make it to the opening, but are still intrigued to hear more about the thought behind Dear Rosa, I have included an excerpt of my artist talk below.
I need to start by acknowledging our context here first – we are hurtling through space in a universe, in one of many galaxies, in a solar system with a dwarf star as our sun, we are on a tiny planet called earth with its own perfect little moon that spins around us so that on most nights its not too dark. We live in a world that has unprecedented global population movement, war, environmental disaster, slavery, abuse, and are increasingly disconnected from eachother, even those closest to us. And this is our context! And yet, we have consciousness, we experience things, we feel things and yet spend most of our lives doing the same things day in and day out without really thinking about our context – the absurdity of existence, the strangeness of breathing and time.
Dear Rosa is a collection of artworks that I created while pregnant with my daughter and in these months after her birth. A lot of the pregnancy, and during a lot of my life, i live inside my own head – and who doesn’t? When aren’t we alone with our own thoughts, ideas, uncertainties and questions? Being pregnant with her set off a series of questions that I have not been able to answer. Previously when having been faced with these doubts/musings/queries, I would forget about them and move on – I would zoom right back into the reality of what was before me and make sense of life in the present. This time, I was stuck in the zoomed out function of my psyche. Questions like: Why exist? Would she add to the mess of the world? Would she be better off not living? What if she dies? What difference does her existence make? If loving other children as much as your own is to assist with eradicating privilege and inequality – why have another child? Am I being selfish? If she wasn’t born, would she still exist? What can I do with the fact that there is no guarantee that she would not suffer or contribute to the suffering of other lives? What could I do with all these questions that I could not put to rest? I started looking and seeing. It began with little sketches, lifescenes/experiences that jolted me awake to the beauty of living. The sketches acknowledged and documented the impression, allowing me to observe the situation and consider why it felt significant, or why it seemed beautiful. Whenever I experienced a scene before me, whether that be in real life or in my minds eye, that hinted at something, I drew it – slowly whittled it down to 8 images. I needed to document these moments that witnessed to me something of hope to pass on to my dear Rosa. There is something significant about living, it is all a gift, and it just so happens that it is hard to remember that on the regular days. I’ve painted them for Rosa, because although I’m unable to answer the questions about the absurdity of existence, I am witness to these moments in time which point to a wonder in the seemingly senseless beauty. Perhaps the beauty isn’t so senseless! Perhaps the beauty is placed with consideration before us. I hope that you would read this exhibition like a letter, a few glimpses of a visual diary. In preparing for this opening I hesitated – who am I to paint about these things? I’m not an expert, or a thought leader, or a role model, or a person who has endured deep suffering. I’m just an everyday person, just a mum who paints in the evenings. I hesitated again – you can see the brushstrokes, these aren’t realism paintings but are just impressions of a scene, impressions of an experience. I hope you find the ambiguity contributes to the mystery, I hope it contributes to the interplay between the artworks and your own musings. When all is said and done (or painted and birthed ) the birth of baby Rosa was not the answer to all of these questions. These questions still remain – but I now see them like shadow is to light, the doubt to my faith – my personal faith in a good God who Loves all life and wants us to love all life too. You might notice that throughout these 8 pieces there is an inclusion of the colour pink – a symbol of warm intimate divine love. It weaves through – sometimes blindingly bold, othertimes discrete. The name Rosa means flower, but Rosa is also the Spanish word for pink. My daughter is the colour pink, this gentle bold tangible love, living and breathing and growing in my arms.
Do you ever have times where you scare yourself thinking about existence? What does any of it mean? How crazy is it that we have minds that can think?
Oh, the strangeness of breathing and time.
With hope,
Nicole
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