Absence

Loss is a strange companion, here at the clumsy start of learning to walk through life without my father. Art-making helps me visually express my grief when words fall short. The act of tearing this hole in the paper, especially. The sound, the paper never being the same again, the absence, the way the hole itself is A Thing...

The grief is also a way through to...somewhere new? I am not yet ready to go through. When the time is right, I'll know. Till then I will rest and sit shiva* with my sorrow.

Process notes: I liked the way the paper split when I tore the hole - the way it spoke what I felt. And the pastels. It had to be pastels - color that was soft. Color I could touch and push gently into the page.

*sit shiva: a Jewish custom of mourning - of resting and remembering one’s lost loved one for 7 days.