40 WEEKS | OXIDATION

About This Project

40 WEEKS / OXIDATION is a painting about the evolution of identity within motherhood. Each painting is adhered with magnets to a giant steel wall in 8 different sections. The measurement of 40 weeks is the amount of time necessary for human gestation and every panel represents exactly one day of pregnancy. Oxidation as a metaphor for pregnancy as a woman moves expands from singular into a family unit much like the division of cells taking place.
The three distinguishable sections inform the imagery:

– My daughter’s hospital footprints in copper,
– Her father’s favorite Idaho fishing river maps in white and
– My own palm prints in turquoise.

Each image is an encaustic copy transfer process, embedded in multiple layers of wax. The piece then oxidizes as the viewer studies the expanse; the landsape changes from copper to turquoise as a mother forms a transformative bond.
“The ideal mother has no interests of her own…For all of us, it remains self-evident that the interests of mother and child are identical, and it is the generally acknowledged measure of the goodness or badness of the mother how far she really feels this identity of interests.” – Susan Rubin Sulieman, “The Mother Reader” p.116.