credit: zoe swainston
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artist statement
Largely inspired by Belgian painter René Magritte and the design group
Dopludo, “Family Rose” is a conceptual piece that uses the garden flower as a
symbol of femininity to explore the effects of age on the femininity of family
women. The piece features three portraits; the artist as a child, her middle-aged
mother and her grandmother. Whilst they showcase the faces of three different people,
they are of the same family and share the same blood; as such each portrait is
a reflection one single identity. Together they examine the life of a woman at
different stages of the aging process; when she is young her skin is smooth and
unblemished by experience. Her force of life is strong and overshadows her
character; thus the rose is solid. As she grows older, so do her experiences.
With age she has gained depth and a defined identity that begins to outweigh
her zest for life. The focus is no longer on her outer beauty, as represented
by the translucent rose, but on the memories that craft her character. Finally,
as the dying rose parallels her fading surface beauty, her face shines through
more than ever. Her lined face is a record of all the moments that build a life
and have made her who she is. Whilst, like the decaying rose, her frame is
fragile and worn, her smiling face reflects a long life of hard earned
happiness. The transparency in the last panel forces viewers to change focus
between the rose and her face, much like looking at ones reflection in a
kitchen window. At one moment you are looking through the window into “the backyard”
but in an instant you could be looking at your own reflection. In using a
common backyard item, the rose, as a symbol of one’s transitory outer self,
“Family Rose” looks past that to delve into the transitory inner self at the
most important stages of a woman’s life.
This work is for sale, please contact clementinetheblog@gmail.com for more details.
