Vera

Vera
2016
Oil on Canvas
NOT FOR SALE
This is my grandmother. My father's mother. She died 10 years before I was born. Although I never met her I felt as though I got to know her through this work. She began to appear in my dreams and I began to stitch up her stories. She was am aries like me, born at the end of March. She had a lot of adventures, travelling around the world with her wild husband. She seemed very grounded and a bit shy to share a smile in her old videos. She had 5 boys, and my dad tells me she was such a great mom. He tells me I remind him of her. She had crippling anxiety and depression through her life. Dad says she used to sit at a window for hours and not move all day. When these sort of patterns started to surface in me, I had to get to know her and understand what her blood was trying to speak to me. I love her very much and think of her often. Because with her husband, an alcoholic and other things, she raised her 5 boys and pushed through and befriended her demons long enough to live a full life.
#art #artist #epigenetics #trauma #ancestors #indigenous #pain #1920s #roaring20s #contemporaryart #women #motherhood #lineage #histoey #canada #painting #artcollector #artstudio #toronto #torontoartist #ocad #thesis