As my relationship with the sky as symbol of comfort and connection developed further, in early 2021 I started to research this connection in other cultures. In The Book of Symbols, one of my favourite reference books, I discovered the Egyptian Goddess Nut. She represents the overarching sky and hovers protectively over the dead to help them make safe passage to the afterlife. In her body, it was believed that "stars rise and set and rise again in everlasting continuity". I found this reference extremely relieving and since have come across others who felt drawn to Egyptian culture during the pandemic.
Our mortality was front and centre. Turning on the television there would be images of death everywhere. Dead bodies in hospitals in Italy. Burning bodies in India. My own mortality and that of my loved ones became a strong focus and I felt drawn to express this in some of my artworks. This partcular dyptych painting on MDF includes the hieroglyphs of Goddess Nut's name along with coffins without lids to represent the ongoing cycle of death and rebirth.
It is inevitable that we have all changed through the pandemic experience. How could we not? Creating such a distinct body of work, different to my previous work, shows the enormity of the experience. How could I not create something profoundly different when the world around me and my inner world had changed? I became a bit obsessed with the idea that coffins remind us of finality, burial, loss and absence and also as another container of life and its incredible energy force.
