This work was made whilst watching my children play in the sea in Crete. I watched the foam of the waves wash up on the shoreline and tried to capture the ebbing and flowing movement in a drawing. In the corner of my eye I was watching my three children play in the sea and the image morphed into a fleshy vulva shaped form made up of tentacle or probe-like tendrils stretching out from the inside. At the time I was in the early stages of a romantic relationship and memories of our intimacy was also occupying my thoughts. What is interesting is the way in which these ideas - of my inner sexual life combined with my response to the sea and my watchful eye over my children coagulated into a drawing. The word phantom relates to my identification of time with the wave as it moves continuously back and forth. In trying to draw the wave I am never quite able to capture a form as it is constantly moving and changing. It seemed to resonate with my own identity as it forever seemed to be behind me every time I felt I had grasped it, it had changed. Maternal identity as a phantom of the self.
This is the first drawing I made which started to explore the ideas I had around biomorphic abstraction as it related to maternal experience.