Artist Statement
The photograph "Mary is Here" is an image of my mother taken in 1944. She is standing in the middle of a group of men – the "final checking crew" at Central Aircraft in London, Ontario. The occasion, as noted on the back of the photograph in my mother’s hand, is the production of the 1000th Bolingbroke bomber. I was six years old at time and would have just learned to print with a pencil.
There seems a certain poignancy to me in the obviousness of my printed observation. Perhaps the awkwardness of the hand is a reminder of the feat of abstraction this simple phrase represents. Perhaps, too, I am remembering the pride she felt at the time to have achieved this level of responsibility – she who was always embarrassed not to have finished more than 10 years of formal school training.
Some 30 years later, while learning to paint, I came back to this photograph. You may have noticed the lettered grid around the edges revealing the primitive system I used to enlarge the image. I no longer have that painting or even the figure of Mary, which I cut out because it was the only part of the painting I wanted to preserve. I remember keeping that canvas figure rolled up in my studio for years. But I have moved on twice since then and it seems nowhere to be found.
Before 30 years passed again I returned to this photograph once more. This time after her death. It has become something else now, it is evidence. Along with all the other photographs, the voice tapes, the personal artifacts, even the handwriting, it is evidence of a life lived by a particular person who happened to be my mother. It is as difficult now to affirm my own personal reality as it was when I had only a thick pencil with which to work.
My mother always considered herself to be an atypical woman of her generation. Having assembled all the evidence, I’m not so sure any more. This Mary seems to melt into so many other Mary’s, so many other mothers, so many other women. Perhaps that observation is linked to this stage of my own life, when it has become the clearest that I am also my mother.
-http://ccca.finearts.yorku.ca/statements/stamp_statement.html
I am drawn to Arlene Stamp's work, though she seems to primarily focus on exploring her mother as an individual after her death I still feel that she entertains many of the same ideas as my work. I am most interested in her series "Mary Is Here" where she creates installations that mimic 1940's rooms her mother lived in. She states in the latter of her artistic statement that she came to realize that her mother may have been a typical woman and not as modern as she once imagined. I cannot help but feel that all this exploring and searching is an attempt to maintain her mother's presence. Though I'm sure she accepted her mother's passing and is grieving in a healthy way, I feel that such focus must be to, in one way or another, keep her mother with her. On the one hand, I feel that she is looking at her mother's life as adults often regard their childhood fascinations- with nostalgia but also a realization of their then glamorous perceptions of potentially average situations. However, I also find a definite sense of longing in her work. It seems there is a hint of regret (though that may be too strong a word) that she didn't get to know her mother. Or, perhaps she is very comfortable with her childhood fantasy of her mother, but just wishes to spend more time with her. Or, perhaps my perception of her work has little to do with her mourning and more to do with mine. But I do feel the work speaks of the finality of death. Now that her mother has passed, she can piece together a very accurate story of her mother, but she still cannot hear her mother's perspective. And all of this time and energy spent, whatever the motivation, still reads (to me at least) as a way to spend time with her mother everyday.
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