Using Mary Wollstonecroft’s ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Women’ as a springboard, I am investigating decisions faced by modern women. Using the context of my own upbringing and my relationship with my mother I am creating work that illustrates the fine balancing act she faced.
As a child I looked to a mother that was an Illustrator, professor, teacher, and ‘bread winner’. I also saw a homemaker, (equal) partner to my father and a mother. I never felt I was in the way of her work, or her work in the way of me. I never sensed there was a compromise, struggle or stress attached to this balancing act and I understood my parents set up to be the ‘norm’.
As an adult I have learned of the difficulties and intricacies of this time for her: Kicking against old fashioned attitudes from family and clients in the art world a like, the logistics of balancing commissions, teaching, family and relationships. It is only as an adult I appreciate that making it look easy is not an easy feat.
My aim is to create work that reuses imagery familiar to me from the past and re present it in a way that intends to be reflective of the awkwardness and difficulty of this time rather than being in anyway sentimental.
The title comes from a conversation I had with my Grandmother, It struck me that she had little understanding of my mothers work and focused solely on the negatives, a feature of their relationship since childhood.
Jasmin Rose Woolley Butler
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