IN L AND B's UNFINISHED BEDROOM

Lay me down with a gentle hand, 2017, in L and B's unfinished bedroom, July 2018

L bought this artwork for her husband, B, for his 50th birthday.  When I was at her home in Wellington the other day, she talked about how she'd wanted to show me the artwork in the finished room [they're in the middle of renovations] but kindly let me in to their bedroom anyway, and let me take photographs, too. 

Instead of being put off by the lack of "done-ness" in the room, my heart skipped a beat.  It just seems so right that this artwork, talking about being laid down with a gentle hand, is situated above the bed in a room which is a work-in-progress in a marriage which is a work in progress, too.  Because all marriages and relationships and lives are, aren't they?  Works in progress. 

The light falling across the bed, light made more beautiful by the contrasting shadow.  The flowers on the nightshade of what I imagine is "her" side of the bed, because she often wears those flowers in her hair.  The pendant made by hand by their lovely 18 year old art-student daughter. 

This room tells their story.  

Silently, it's walls and objects and, yes the artwork,  speak of the life lived here, and the relationship played out.  And not just the "good and perfect and public" parts either.  

This is what the private rooms in our domestic spaces always do: They tell our story. 

Which is exactly why I love having exhibitions in domestic spaces.  Because that is what I want to do with my work.  Stand up and say, 
I am here, 
this is who I am.  
And I want to say it as fully and deeply as I can.  

[ Thanks, L and B for letting me share this. ] 

BTW, there are other prints left in the edition of 5 this artwork, so yeah you could have this artwork too, for your own private space. FYI.

This too will pass

What I wrote on the beam in my kitchen in 2002, rephotographed from the magazine 2017

I came across an old magazine while shifting Dad yesterday, an old New Zealand House and Garden with an eight page story about me in it.  Mum had kept for 15 years.  She always was proud of me.

Re-reading the article after all this time  was like diving into another life, maybe someone elses. 

The words the journalist wrote talk of my husband, what I wore on my wedding day, my work as an "award-winning" portrait and wedding photographer, the family of four step-children I had then, the home "perched on a hillside in Wellington's Melrose, a wild and romantic spot with views over the Cook Strait to the Orongorongos." 

Of all the things I can see in these pages from the home that was mine - that I created - there are only two things I have kept: the plastic chandelier I got for two dollars at the Red Cross Shop in Newtown that reminds me of the scene in Pollyanna where Mr Pendergast is showing her how beautiful the light cast from crystal can be, and the cruet set on the dining table that I still sometimes use for flowers.

When I got up on the ladder and wrote this too will pass on that beam in our kitchen, I didn't imagine it would be our family and life together that would be one of the things to pass.  I didn't expect to spend a decade bringing up our son on my own.  Hell, David wasn't wasn't even born.  Time teaches brutal lessons, eh.

Since those windy Wellington days, I've had lovers and a boyfriend.  My family and friends and son with me always.  I've experienced so much, grown deeper, grown up.  Come home to my self as a woman, and an artist. But the path I've been on has been mostly solitary.  I understand it's been necessary.  For my life, and my work. 

But I wonder if, in the powerful and necessary letting go I did of the material things that symbolized a love and life passed,  I also by mistake shut the door hard on the possibility of again experincing the very things from those years in that house that really mattered:  a loving partnership, a home to call my own, and a large part of my wide-open heart.

You know what? I want those precious things back. 

Good news.  I closed it that door.  I can damn well open it again.  I'm tired of protecting my heart so fiercely.

This too shall pass.

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