KEEPING SECRETS

Yesterday Time magazine announced it's "Person of the Year 2017 - The Silence Breakers." For me, the recognition of women who refused to be shamed and silenced is a liberating and encouraging moment. I truly believe that the world cannot be saved without women rising up and speaking truth to power.

In 2007, I completed this 'domestic' self-portrait in pastel. It is actually based on a dream of my mother who suffered much abuse in her life and kept her silence. Her greatest secret was that her own mother, suffering from post-partum depression, had been committed to an asylum. That was back in the day when a husband could get rid of a difficult wife and never have her set free.

The painting became part of the Ovenden Contemporary 'SELF' exhibition in Cambridgeshire, England.