Conception

Conception is a body of work that was created between 2021 - 2025. Some pieces completed recently, others reawakened after long periods of being stuffed under my bed. It began, and ultimately returned, to the same place: my dining room table.

This work did not come easily. It’s been a struggle to establish a studio practice, and harder still to silence the critical voice that often meets me there. That voice, persistent and overwhelming, held me back for years. But with time and care, I’ve begun to hear another voice: one that is brave, strong, and true. It’s the voice of my younger self, the child who once sat on these same yellowwood benches, fearless with her paintbrush, certain in her joy. Conception is a collaboration, a quiet reclaiming.

I combine layered ink washes, meticulous pen work, and reimagined photographic images from my personal archive. Beginning each piece with loose, fluid gestures, letting ink find its way, I return with pen to make detailed, repetitive marks. The process is meditative and slow, offering moments of presence and clarity. Over time, I’ve come to understand this method as both aesthetic and therapeutic, a space where I meet myself honestly.

The work explores rites of passage: birth, youth, adolescence, motherhood, and death as cycles shaping identity. The photographs I revisit are old but unfinished stories, recoloured, reworked, and transformed. In that transformation lies the heart of Conception: turning memory, and sometimes pain or grief, into something vivid, tactile, and new.

This body of work witnesses the tension between fear and creativity, memory and renewal, doubt and expression. Through recolouring the past, I've found ways to move forward.