Project 1
Acrylic, 610mm x 610mm
A nod to the late NZ artist Bill Hammond who always loved a shag (cormorant). A little bird has flown free from the last painting and a young girl dances forever in a wall mural.
This work was inspired by the "what if" of life. Do we enter the next room where the unknown lies, or stay where we are with our collected memories? Do we regret the unopened door or risk disappointment when the sweet promise of green grass is brown and parched.
#3 "down the passage which we did not take”
Giclee Print
All prints are giclée quality – the best digital print technology available. Archival inks, cold press watercolour paper and colour correction by industry experts from Copyart, Richmond,. Your artwork will be checked and packed into a tube ready to be framed by you.
Limited edition full size print $300 inc p&p in NZ
One of a signed limited edition of 50
Printed area 610mm x 610mm with 20mm border
If you want a different size, please use contact page for a custom size and price.
Original Available $1,800
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" down the passage which we did not take"
.
Auckland 2018 Mary
“towards the door we never opened” TS Eliot
Endless busy days and the box of books from her late mum’s apartment was still waiting to be sorted. It had loitered in the garage first of all, then taken to the spare room where it sat making her feel guilty for a good while longer.
Now open on the kitchen table, Mary looked at the collection of browned photos and favourite books: Jane Austens and The Bronte sisters. She smiled at the recollection of her mum’s enduring love for those old favourites and how often she might reread them. If the family teased her, she would say they were like old friends and comfy slippers. Mary leafed through the leather bound editions with their thin pages and tiny writing. She felt a sense of calm and smiled to herself, recognising a definite “like mother, like daughter” moment.
Then whilst she thumbed through Wuthering Heights, she found an envelope, addressed in very faded handwriting making it almost impossible to read. She could just see it was to A Walker, or Waller or Walter perhaps? The address had been obscured by a stamped RETURN TO SENDER. Only South Africa was still legible.
Should she open it? Should she read it? What harm could it do? She lifted the small piece of paper out.
“ My dearest love, I shall say in a letter, what I couldn’t say to you before you left.”
It was a love letter and sounded so intensely personal , but what was it doing amongst her mother’s things? Brushing away qualms, perhaps a little quickly, she read on.
“It has been three weeks since you have gone away and will probably never return. I know I have hurt you deeply and in so doing have hurt myself all the more.
I want you to know that I loved you with all my heart, all my soul and all my will. I feel bereft, empty, and yet I must soldier on being a good daughter. I made my choice long ago, when my two oldest brothers died on the Somme, that I should look after our parents. They need me and in some ways I need them after our family was broken from war.
But if I had dared to dream. If I had been braver, ours could have been a once in a lifetime love: Romeo and Juliet (you’ll tell me off now for being fanciful) and anyway, it wouldn’t have been Romeo but rather Juliet and Juliet.
We met too late and I had chosen a life path already. To love you fully would have been to build our life on the wreckage of others. I am not so courageous and in doing the honourable thing I am also taking the coward’s way out.
And how can true happiness be built on such sadness that you have knowingly caused? I couldn’t bear the guilt. When I look into the eyes of my dear mother …and see the love she has for me, I know I’ll get past this and be my normal self again.
Please live well and free and find love elsewhere
Know that deep in my heart of hearts your initials are carved.
Your Enid ”
Mary sat holding the letter for a long time. She was forcibly struck by how little she knew about the past. Her heart felt so sad for Enid giving up her true love and dedicating herself to caring for parents bereft from the loss of two sons. She vowed then and there she would find time to do some research into her family tree.