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Ingrid Andersen |
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Meegan Pearce – Very Nice Thank You
My initial idea for this portrait was to paint my grandmother as a little girl. Unfortunately there are no photographs of her as a child because they all got lost during the war. The photo I have used as source material for this painting was taken when she was about 19. It’s the youngest one there is left. She has had an amazing life; her father was a cartographer so they moved a lot when she was young. When they left for a new place she and her sister had to give their toys away because there was only so much stuff they could take with them. She and my grandfather were in Hong Kong when the Japanese invaded and were put in internment camp in Stanley for about five years. She is now in her eighties and living in a nursing home. Her short-term memory has gone, though she is still physically reasonably healthy. She can tell you all about the war but can’t remember what she had for lunch. The use of lace in this painting symbolises the fragility in life, both in terms of the fragility of the body and the fragility of the mind. It’s about loss of memory, fragmentation of memory and loss of control. I wanted her to merge with the lace and start to disappear into the painting, mimicking the vagueness of her mind and how easily she is confused.
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