Inside My Skin     2021

Inside My Skin is the eighth in a series of photographs engaged in the narrative of a woman, a place and a dress. Inside My Skin represents a personal world of objects, colour, textiles, flowers and sunlight. It is a feast for the eyes and spirit with an atmosphere both lush and intense.

Inside My Skin is autobiographical. These photographs represent ‘me’ inside the culture of myself, shaped by the ancestral and geographical culture that formed my life. This was an east coast rural existence of home and family, of economy, saving scraps, handmade objects, the fiddle, tea day and night, and old flower gardens. This was later intermingled with the culture of the art world, represented in these photographs by the Louise Bourgeois Book of Cells, Klunder and McCarthy paintings on the wall and my maquettes on the table.

The mannequin stands in for me and I created for her a lavishly embroidered dress in the style of a crazy quilt. The dress was pieced from scraps and embroidered with traditional embroidery motifs, personal symbols, and the name, date and place of birth of eighteen women in my life from great grandmothers to granddaughters. The place is my living room, aptly named for I truly live in this room. My old studio chair, patched together, was added to the room upon which I lovingly placed the fiddle that was cast in bronze.

Title, Medium and Dimensions

After Madame X_15677, Pigment Print on Silk Baryta. 152.4 cm x 101.6 cm

Illumine_15912, Pigment Print on Silk Baryta. 101.6 cm x 134.6 cm

Inside My Skin_15855, Pigment Print on Silk Baryta. 101.6 cm x 134.6 cm

Dress_Chair_Fiddle_15652, Pigment Print on Silk Baryta.  61 cm x 81.3 cm

Ere_15691,  Pigment Print on Silk Baryta. 61 cm x 81.3 cm

Muse_15812, Pigment Print on Silk Baryta. 61 cm x 81.3 cm

Mannequin_Dress, Mannequin, Fabric,Thread, Bronze. Life Size