PRINT - The resilience is in me

Something in me broke. Following the premature birth of my youngest daughter I developed severe postnatal depression. Inhabiting the imperfection of motherhood, intimately aware of the raw vulnerability of the body and self, I surrendered to a humbling lack of control. Drawing with my daughter held close to my body, her presence began to direct the marks I made - both literally as I used my hands interchangeably to smudge pastels and dip feathers into ink to strike the page, and figuratively, as her weight and warmth against my chest led me to draw from a place of love. I’ve experienced a willingness to carry and be carried during the making of this work - I don’t feel wholly responsible for the figures that emerge, but I do wish to honour their fragile flesh and serpentine emotions.

Katherine Sheers

The works in this series trace emotions and ideas of the self through layers of drawn lines. Impressions left by the bodies and by the body of work as a whole are somehow both direct as well as hidden. No one word befits the interpretation of any image, and through the repetition that is integral to Sheers’ practice, her subjects live freely beneath their fluid rhythm and surface: undefined and complex.

Sarah Boulton, Curator