AT HOME
Returning to my family home, having been away for over five years sparked a strong emotional reaction and stirred up memories of what I found there. I was surprised to find my bedroom and other places from my childhood had long gone. The walls of my bedroom are now sterile and white. My clothes, my books and personal stuff had been wrapped up and packed away in the attic awaiting my return. The only surviving remnant of my childhood was my mother’s winter fur coat.
Our back garden had become a kind of scrapheap for the remnants of an unending series of redecoration proposals for the house. Tomato plants were growing inside old pans and the garden was quite wild and overgrown.
My childhood home had changed irrevocably (as had I) yet my nostalgic memories remain unchanged. This visit proved an epiphany - my childhood has gone. New feelings for my mother’s home have replaced my innocent recollections.
This work was inspired by William Adolphe Bouguereau’s The First Mourning (1888) and Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa Painting (1819).
