My family life has been rather complex.  I was brought up to believe in the importance and inherent value of the nuclear family.  My family was large (I am the oldest of six children) and much emphasis was placed on the sanctity of the family unit.  While I still see this as the ideal I have been through a divorce and now live with my children and a new partner.  These detours from the ideal (which I was brought up to hold dear) has caused me to question the definition of the concept of “family” and to reassess what is a” functional family”.  

The separation and divorce experiences, plus the experience of being part of a new relationship later in life, has meant that I have had to spend a lot of time thinking about what makes a relationship work and the roles and needs of the people in that relationship.  The concept of “family” is changing and evolving rapidly and I am fascinated by these new directions.  I see it as a challenge for my generation and the next to work through this transition period and embrace the many ways of living together while preserving the ideals of safety, love and security that the nuclear family “ideal” symbolized in the past.

 For me the following provide food for thought and inspiration for my work: the process of “growing up”, the importance of genetic inheritance and environmental influences, and the needs of the individual versus the group, and the issue of intimacy versus independence and individuality and the demands of establishing a balance between and work and family life.  I feel all are significant issues in this new order and worthy of deep thought and discussion.

Through my art work I hope to invite such thought and discussion of these concepts.  Often I refer to these serious subjects through irony or symbolic images which, hopefully, communicate without the need for all these words!