2023.

Oil on Canvas.

50 x 70cm

This painting presents my Mum asleep in bed whilst struggling with chemotherapy treatment in the last few months of her terminal cancer.

I was acutely aware of her significant weight loss and general decline, and unlike traditional deathbed images, I didn’t want to paint her too obviously ailed. Feeling consistently tired and nauseous, she was sleeping a lot in the daytime. The painting is therefore of her late afternoon sleep in her yellow-walled room under her duvet and a bright crimson blanket, a coral towel protecting the pillow from any excess sweating. Unseen in the painting, there were also a set of bright pink curtains in that room, adding a slight reflection and warmth over the scene, although I did manipulate the colour on her blanket to elevate its impact where it takes over more than half of the canvas composition. As I painted, I chose to make it a bolder red with the intention of being warmer and more loving. As this progressed, along with my Mum's illness, I felt it expressed a dimension of pain and anger for me, and a more organic "blood-like" sort of veil between myself and my Mum which is where the brush strokes became more expressive. Her blanket is my love, anger, hopelessness, and grief, as well as her cancer all at once. There is (I hope) warmth and love in this piece, with distance created by her head turned away and the intensity of the blanket. She’s there, but unreachable.

Whilst painful, and at times even painted through tears, the process of making this piece was incredibly cathartic. I sought to face my grief head-on, and challenge the taboo of dying and death - which I was exploring specifically at this time during my Masters year. My Mum died a week after I finished this piece, and her final months as I lived with, and cared for her, whilst making this painting have become a very precious and bittersweet memory for me.