We found the perfect spot for the re-formed bowl now a cast pod with a relief rose, next to the rose bush Peter had given her. It glinted and shone in the sunshine and cast an almost portrait shaped shadow on the fence. I’m so glad she gave me permission to transform it into something else. We also took a clay impression of one of the lime trees at the bottom of the garden and I will cast a new dish from it and she has given me some more of his cremated remains to go inside it. I think this time rather than have the silhouettes of magnolia pods I will create feather silhouettes as feathers have always appeared for them, and they read it as a sign from Peter. I have said I will cast the feather in resin, for Grace. It floated from the chapel ceiling in Saint Chapelle after they had lit a candle for him. It’s an opportunity to create another transformed object.
We talked a lot today about Peter and Chris, grief and loss. She said that reproducing in painting the few, poor photos she had of Peter was really useful in the early months of grief because she had to focus hard to recall the details sufficiently to make the paintings; a visual invocation.
I dreamt of two people a man and a woman wanting to hid from someone else and developing this system of layers of Perspex or glass that had some reflective layer that meant when they stood behind it they were encased in it and they disappeared, could taunt and haunt this boy, but she was revealed by a label showing on her clothing that caught and reflected the light. But I woke thinking about creating images of there/not there, remembered the mirrored Perspex that I used on a project in Devon. I wondered about a combination of that with photos of Chris that extended the idea of shadow, presence, absence. Maybe that is the heart of indigo (the quest for me set by Allyson to discover the heart of indigo) possibly it’s lavender grey?
Davina Kirkpatrick- presence of absence 