I’m a visual artist who works primarily in painting, drawing, and installation. I explore my personal relationships and experiences in my work, which usually results in large scale drawings that use a lot of personal symbolism.
This year my work is exploring my relationship with my mother. My research in this class has primarily been researching classical western fairytales, and what effect these narratives may have had on my own relationship with my mother, why these stories had the narratives they did, and how accurately they reflect the modern maternal relationship. I then aim to look into my own personal relationship with my mother, and notice any similarities, and try to understand how intimately my work is connected to my mother, if at all.
Stories that we hear as children influence us and create lasting impressions that shape our relationships. The stories that I mostly grew up hearing the most were the classic Western fairytales, told to me by my mother, and reinforced as important narratives throughout my childhood by the numerous Disney and other retellings of them. I grew up with my most prevalent narrative being that of the damsel in distress, her struggle to overcome the evil stepmother, and finally, her reward: true love.
Researching into the historical side of these narratives, I primarily consulted two texts: “Good and Bad Beyond Belief”, written by Jerilyn Fischer and Ellen S. Silber, and “The Absent Mother: Women Against Women in Old Wives’ Tales” By Marina Warne.
Both of these texts discuss the classical setup of fairytales - the damsel, her ostracisation, her eventual victory over the evil stepmother, and her happily ever after. These stories all use female isolation as a main plot point - the heroine is alone in the world, with no one who understands her, especially not her maternal figure.
Warner says that in the classical fairytale structure, “the child needs, and in fact thrives, on destroying the maternal figure”. There is only space for one moral heroine, the other female being either the stepmother, the witch, or the dead mother.
The cultural context that these stories were told in give us some insight into why this narrative was so common. The social climate that women lived in at the time was precarious, either finding their place in the home as the daughter, the wife, or the mother. Any threat to this order was also a threat to where the woman would live, their livelihood, and their future, so we can see why the harsh rivalries emerge in these classic stories.
Although the cultural context has changed now, many of the results stay the same in modern mother / daughter relationships and the narratives we tell ourselves around them. Roberta Kabat discusses in her 1996 article how the modern relationship between mother and daughter struggles between identifying with one another, while also straining to separate. There is often resentment present, while also an inherent need to comfort and placate the mother on the daughters side. The mother is still seen as a symbol of restriction to the daughter, while also being essential to the daughter’s emotional growth.
For the mother, she also says, giving birth can “give rise to the fantasy of creating a new and better self”.
I want to explore how my relationship with my mother fits into these narrative structures. Do I resent her, see her as a symbol of halted progress? How does she view me? And how similar are we?
Recent work that I have been doing has been directly created about my relationship with my mother:
This painting is based on a note written to her as a child. I’m bratty and angry, but still conscious of her feelings: “i hate mum - at the moment”.
Around the same age, she made art of me. These are of me at my 4th birthday party, and I’m a creature who loudly wants everything and is therefore, taking from my mother.
At four years old based on these works, I’m an angry child who hates her mother, and is draining her - to me, she is the stepmother, and I am locked in a tower. To her, she is the damsel, and I am the challenge she must conquer.
However, in comparing our art, similarities begin to emerge. While looking at my recent paintings compared to the ones she did while I was a child, recurring symbols crop up in both of our works: mainly the skull, and winged creatures. These were the symbols I saw growing up in her art - the symbols I associate with her and with my childhood. Far from trying to distance myself from her, I’m starting to become her. In exploring my relationship with my mother currently, am I attempting to distance myself from her by analysing it, or am I creating new intimacies between us in an attempt to find some kind of narrative fate?
I’m influenced by her in the way that I create paintings too - deciding on a colour palette before starting the work, using the same paints that she buys (usually her off casts), using masking tape to create shapes, making a collage of inspiration before starting the work.
Am I the fulfilment of her fantasy - has she created me in the image she wanted, or am I creating art for my own reasons? And does it even matter?
コメント