Tina’s artist statement from her 2010 solo exhibition

This work is a personal journey recalling stories my mother told when I was a child of her memories about life in Greece as a child and teenager. I remember being fascinated with these stories and always imagined these scenes as exciting brightly coloured pictures. Her narratives became more like fairy tales and I would ask her to repeat them over and over again. She would tell me of walking 20km to the neighbouring village with her mother through fields filled with poppies, or the time she decide to leave the safety of the bomb shelter during the second world war to save her pet pig.

My mother now suffers with Alzheimer’s and is slowly loosing her memory. Through this work I wanted to make a permanent record of these stories and translate them into the pictures that I imagined as a child. This work is homage to the pleasure she has given me through all of her wonderful stories.

Flowers have always been a great pleasure to my mother. Her garden has always included brightly coloured or fragrant flowers. I portray some of these flowers in my work using the transition of bud to full bloom as a metaphor for life and the beauty that can be found through the journey.

When suffering with Alzheimer’s memories become fragmented and time disjointed and confusing. Some of the etchings are created in various states incorporating different time frames or scenes. Once the etching is completed and editioned the plates are reworked, areas are scraped, burnished and etched in acid removing parts of the former image leaving only remnants. The second state is then created with fragments of the previous still visible. What interests me is the way zinc holds the memory of the previous image even though parts become unrecognisable they are still there.