Memories of disturbing events in my life took permanent residence in my mind. These haunting recollections churned away in their occupied spaces, eventually distilling into images, nagging at times for decades to manifest as paintings. Eventually I succumbed.

 

In 2010 I moved away from preoccupation with the face and painted these memories, “one-off” reflections on life. I did these, as usual, in the time available between commissions. With these works I explore new ways of formulating and formatting imagery, at times working without any visual reference, drawing from memory, at times combining different styles of painting and imaging on one canvas. All this was new to me. My new direction reminds me of one of the quirky comments made by the famous American baseball player, Yogi Berra; “When you get to a fork in the road, take it”.

 

I found myself vacillating between light and dark images. Three dark works address sexual and gender issues. In the process of working on some of these paintings I did at times feel frightened of myself, wondering why I was driven to poke around in the murky, musty crevices of personal psychic fears and then insisting on expressing my findings. Why create disturbing paintings which could expose me to snide remarks and gossip, perhaps alienate friends and family, paintings I would not want my young grandchildren to see for many years to come. I reminded myself that I had been here before, as a young mother and student, painting the birth of my daughter for the final show of my Bachelor’s degree at the University of Natal in 1975. In this sense, I was completing the circle, going back to the beginning.

 

These painting share a common physical property. They are all the same size and proportion and in this sense connected, forming a kind of postmodern series.