Mother and Child 1 2002
Bronze Resin 66 x 55 x 33cm – £2950
This sculpture represent a mother with young child or baby, that is still very much part of her own identity, and connected closely to her body. Her head is inclined in a caring fashion, and the baby’s head on the right is partly omitted, and fused with the mother’s. This describes the early symbiotic stage of the mother-and-child relationship.
This sculpture is abstract most of the way round, and figurative only from a small part of the frontal view.
Seen from the back, one discovers a protective bent-over form, that I associated with a nuns’ habit; from the right profile, the baby’s head is reminiscent of a shoot growing out of a plant.
So while circumventing the sculpture, and seeing it transform from abstraction to figuration and back again, one discovers a three dimensional image for the ubiquitous fact of life of growing up. A child grows out of a mother, be it with plants, animals or humans: starting off as a part of the parental body, growing larger and more and more separate and independent over time.