In my work over this year I chose to investigate how the death of my mother has shaped my development. My Mother died the day I was born, and because of that my secular Father promised my Grandfather I would attend catholic school. In my investigation I reinterpret catholic paintings and utilize themes of life and death to translate my discovery of my Mother and myself. I reinterpreted paintings from various eras of antiquity because the familial trauma I discovered within was as innate as practicing catholicism on my Moms side was.

Mary’s relation to Christ had been one of my earliest examples of what direct maternal influence was outside of the care from my Grandmothers and Aunts, due to this thinking of Mary reminds me immediately my Mother taught me death. I feel as though I'll never be whole without her and as a very young child I spent lots of time praying for her. I also lamented the constant anxiety I had because there was a stark difference in the nurture I had relative to many of my peers.  I felt as though to differentiate myself was both painful and inescapable so within my work I use sheep, goats, and rams as followers of a shepherd to represent myself as looking for a leader my whole life who could care for me as their own. 

Many in my family have attempted to take up a leading role for me, and though all flawed, I do have a surrogate mother in all those influences. I created a surrogate through a faceless lady with a head bonded in spikes. These spike encased heads represent the repression of my sensitivities brought by insecurity. Insecurities complimented by a spotlight on masculine repression. This toxic repression was the first step to learning to open up about this maternal death. Dark thick ooze fills the frames of these works representative of the cracks newly created structural integrity. Cardboard canvases will decay as my memory fades but the frames will remain as long as their history is preserved. As I come to terms with death I must let my memory and art die with me. Mirrors and picture frames are the perfect canvas as they have held a longstanding hereditary importance as they will be the most fragile yet most sentimental. Much like the feelings I reserve for my mother, my closest moments to her have to be through a picture frame, a mirror, or the cemetery. At the cemetery of my mother I would constantly see little porcelain cherubim (angels) they would be praying or contemplating like I was taught to and became another visual omen of the child within myself daunted by discovery of another thorn.