Portrait after loss (unpicked handkerchiefs 2020-2025)

“Portrait after loss” explores loss, resilience and growth. This piece forms part of a wider practice in which I use the unpicking of cloth as a metaphor to consider processes of collapse and regeneration.

It consists of a floor-based drawing using threads from unwoven handkerchiefs to form a web around a central hole. A series of cyanotypes accompany the threads, showing the unpicking process. Stemming from personal experience of grief, the work recognises our capacity to accept change and grow around absence.

As the handkerchiefs are unpicked they lose their form and function and are transformed into a delicate web, supporting one another loosely. Suggestive of a more organic state, the web speaks of fragility and strength, presence and absence, loss and transformation.