Mitochondrial Descent

Mitochondrial DNA is passed down from mother to daughter. Behind each of us male or female, integral in forming the ground of perception on which we stand, is a lineage of women. Our mothers, their mothers and theirs before them, breathed, kissed, nurtured, chastised their truths, struggles, attitudes, and beliefs, their habits and traditions into our deepest unconscious.

These are so entwined in our deepest experiences of infancy that as we grow to individuation and reject the obvious and the uncomfortable, unknowingly we hold the most insidious “truths” of our mothers to be as self evident as the DNA they gave us and the ground we walk on.

In this series of paintings I am searching for the deeper and more stepped back awareness that portraiture requires. In which I seek to see more clearly who these women were and what their legacy is within me, and onward in my children. Painting them against a black ground the environment of their period is removed in an effort to show each only in the context of what is held within them and in their relationship to each other.

I knew them all and am growing to know them more as I descend more deeply into awareness of their presence within my psyche.