Nurturing 2002

Bronze Resin  66 x 55 x 33cm – £2950

Written by the art critic Patricia Preece:

“This work shows two faces locked together in the most intimate way, but their gaze is strangely distant. The strength of the work is the tension that exists between the two heads which are bound together. The mother figure angles her cheek to her child in a responsive manner but faces away with her eyes fixed to the horizon.

At the same time the child nuzzles the mother , but its kiss is a pout that tells us that it knows that the time for nurturing is over. The nurturer and the nurturer are also the rejecter and the rejected = to encapsulated this using such economy of means is an amazing feat. It is this that makes the figure truly modern. I love you, says the big heads, but it’s time you moved on – me and your dad have got things we want to do.”

There is movement of the right head pulling away from the left, lower head . I thought of a human bird chick (on the left), that greedily demands food of its mother – pecking kissing, feeding. The space between the two is cramped. Within their shared closeness it shows need, dependency on the one hand, and the longing to find freedom from the responsibility of care on the other. With the sizes of the heads being quite similar, there is ambivalence: are they mother and child, or lovers reproducing that first intense love affair at the beginning of life?

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