History in fragments
As I walked through the 2014 Turner Prize exhibition, I was struck by Tris Vonna-Michell's piece "Postscript (Berlin)." It reminded me of my grandmother's stories about her childhood in wartime London, and I was inspired to create my own work based on her history. Vonna-Michell's solo exhibition combined my passion for family history with my interest in all-inclusive art. The Guardian described his work as "creating poignantly fractured travelogues," which unsurprisingly earned him a Turner Prize nomination.
I was also influenced by Cara Thaver and Louie Van Patten, whose artistic style perfectly captured the emotion I wanted to convey in a portrait of my grandmother. Through their use of poignant colours and painting style, they were able to convey personality and a certain ghostly or haunting message in their compositions. I aimed to depict the troubling nature of war for a child in my portrait, especially in the haunted expression on my grandmother's face and in the hands that hovered over her.
