Last year, just before we travelled to New York, I painted nine paintings inspired by my pregnancy. My idea was to try and find a gallery, so I had all of them mounted and schlepped over. They took over half my suitcase, so my wardrobe choices were limited. In the end, like so much else I’ve done, it came to nothing. My emails went unanswered, and the paintings stayed exactly where they were. An expensive, pointless exercise, but at least I can say they’re well-travelled.
Each painting is inspired by a month of gestation and my hopes and fears around it. I only started painting after the first trimester and the scans that confirmed that my foetus was unlikely to be carrying chromosomal disorders. I never wanted to share them at the time because they were too private, and so I never photographed them properly. These images are mostly out of focus, but they give you an idea.
One contains a black dog, another a butterfly. One alludes to chaos theory. The bull was inspired by the shape of the uterus and Fallopian tubes, but is also a reference to the baby’s expected due date in late April, which would make her a Taurus.
