GRIEF - 1 of 14 in the serie “Tracing my way back”

About this work

Stephanie Jeanne Marie’s serie of 14 works ‘Tracing my way back’ was started around 2014, as a singular and very large canvas, at a time during which life was outwardly vibrant, colourful, and yet the confusion within was relentless. It was a hard to hear self in it, to hold safe in it… or feel held. It was as if the ground was constantly shaking, the noise deafening, and living was mainly reactive to external influence. Strangely enough the piece accompanied that experiencing. It was overwhelmed by a child drawing on it, damaged by birds and bats flying in through open spaces, and at last unstretched and cut through, to salvage what had escaped the assaults. Now over ten years later, over much sorrow, grief, tears and fears… through holding and loss, and feeling lost. Through wondering what it all means and finally leaping over the abyss, life looking and feeling less ‘colourful’, less ‘vibrant’ perhaps for a moment, yet joy is returning. And the piece, healed, and transformed in its own right into many, is ready to be in the light once more. Grounding, it reflects back to memory, to belonging, that being held is first and foremost within. Smiles are present, moments are savoured over ticked. Laughter resonates deeply and so does wonder, whichever way it leads. I seat grateful for the giving and the receiving, holding a deep reverence for the art that choses to express through it all.

About the artist

Nomadic painter working with raw pigment, charcoal, ink, thread and slow techniques, on loose canvas or paper, resulting in abstract paintings of organic bounded forms which boundaries are tested, connected, disturbed by lines, stitching, marks and adjacent open fields. Born and raised in France, the recipient of some classical artistic training through her student years, Stephanie Jeanne Marie attributes her principal education in art however, to the doing of two wonderful and eccentric elderly aunts, great collectors of textiles and antiquities, who very early on took upon themselves to educate and guide her into the wowing and “fantastic” world of history, and the art that gathered along its path. Further along, extended travels and stays, in the Himalayan region and the Indonesian archipelago, continued to inform.

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