This tapestry, set in a bird garden,  is about estrangement and anticipatory grief. As in all my work the figures represent emotional states rather than specific portraits. In the centre is my mother, her face obscured by a veil, suggesting the impossibility of truly knowing another person’s inner life. The tapestry was woven in a period of pre-grieving, shaped by the knowledge that she would pass away during its completion, making the act of weaving it a gradual farewell.

 

Symbolic motifs shape the unsaid tensions of our relationship. From the left figure branches extend bearing birds that represent the creativity she never saw in me, and the small fleeing figure in the skirt embodies the resulting anxiety and self doubt. The birdbath scene was initially conceived around sibling loss, but its meaning shifted as it was here the death occurred. I become the reflection, while my mother and brother exist together elsewhere.

 

In the dress of the central figure a candlelit scene recalls a shared moment of closeness alongside a moment of division, marked by the broken chain of flowers. The peacock symbolises a wilful blindness to issues and occurs frequently in my work. With the album underfoot it also represents denied access to memory while the blood that flows from the figure reworks the traditional Christian Pelican motif of maternal sacrifice, here as something misdirected.

 

The final figure represents the idealised daughter she wanted, here surrounded by sterility and fire implying a life both empty and self-destructive.