Saskia Schubert

Away
When my father lost his memory
It was like a silent death
He was lost
Lost in his thoughts
Not knowing where he’d been
And we are still waiting for his return.

This is an echo of times gone by
A memory of a military man
Who was always away
We never knew where he was
And it was never spoken of
He was just always away

Now he can only remember the past
He can only remember when he was away
He is now always away
With his thoughts
And memories
And the silence has never left.

His mouth is covered
He can’t tell us where he has been
He lives behind a veil
A veil of silence.

Where have you gone?
And when will you ever come my way again?
Why don’t you remember me?
I remember you.

Clyde McGill

...do we travel through life on a planned journey to death or does it wait concealed to take us? After loved ones die grief takes us to some place where we want to die as well.

Patrycia Buckland Hankie Work

My piece ( the handkerchief) came to me via my sister. I don’t think it belonged to my dad, but to my Uncle Chick, my dad’s brother. The colours around the border reflect dad’s taste in clothing. His shirts, jackets and trousers were generally of these hues and suited his olive complexion.
Dad grew up on the Turramurra side of Ku-Ring-Gai chase national park. He loved the bush and spent a good part of his youth exploring the chase from Bobbin Head to West Head. After returning from the second world war dad married my mother and they purchased a block of land at Mount Colah close to the South western border of the Chase. As children we became very familiar with the area close to our home. On a grander scale I always thought the Chase was my father’s backyard. For a lifetime he roamed the ridges and gullies, knew it and loved it well. He taught us to appreciate its unique beauty. We will always roam the sandstone ridges with him.

Sasi Victoire Artwork

My mother did not carry a hankie.
She wiped herself at the end of her saree palav.
On boxing day 2003, I received a call that she had passed away.
She was seventy-five years old. She had rung the day before for xmas and was waiting for my eldest daughter to ring her. It sounded urgent!
When I arrived back home, she had already been cremated. I never saw her.
No one would say how she died.
I figured the rest out…………

Works Due

Hi all,

Works are due in the next few weeks so that we have time to hopefully produce an online catalogue to go with the exhibition when it shows in June at Barratt Galleries.
I will send an email out in a few weeks with exhibiting details and dates as well.

Julie

Kathryn Orton

Notes on the Hankie Paintings

I made these works in 2000 as a parting gesture before my first overseas trip. My mother had died in September the previous year, just before her 82nd birthday. My siblings and I thought she couldn’t bear to see in the new millennium, having been on her way out for a while.

She wasn’t often sick when I was growing up but there was one time when I was about nine years old. I remember sitting, crying, outside on the front path in the dark because I was scared she might die. I didn’t know what was wrong and I didn’t know what to do about it. My father was comforting me and telling me that we had to look after her. When my father died I was twenty and I felt the responsibility of looking after my mother from that time. My Brother and sisters had all married, there were grandchildren.

My care was mostly from a distance. I had taken a job 300 kilometres away, but I would visit often for the weekend or holidays.

My mother Alice was a strong, intelligent, independent woman, who could be difficult, and wasn’t to be messed with. She was proud to have filled in her lengthy widowhood reading books and encyclopaedias, with sewing and embroidery (often original designs much prized as gifts for the family), knitting garments and rugs (she was living in a cold climate), gardening (the family authority on plant species, who knew the botanical and common names for most plants), painting and drawing flowers from the garden, and walking long distances around town while she could.

It was only towards the very end of her life that our roles were reversed; my partner and I cared for her at our home until that became too hard.
These are collaged hankies, some hand made and well used by my mother, others given as gifts to a daughter who was more inclined to using tissues that could be thrown away. I intended to paint onto them but couldn’t bring myself to put any other marks on these. My travel included central Italy (on a tour developed by a friend), the south of France (to visit another friend living there) and Barcelona (because I wanted to see some of Spain), hence the titles.

Farewell is one of my mother’s hankies, waving the way my partner’s mother would always wave her hanky as we’d leave her to return home.

Arrivederci is a lace trimmed gift with floral patches from another well loved hanky of Mum’s.

Bon Voyage is layered with both our handkerchiefs. An initialled, unused one of mine with the K for Kathryn, left so long in its packaging that the sticky label left a permanent stain, one of Mum’s mended, hand made hankies and more of her flowers.

Hasta Luego, Alice is a hanky she made and embroidered with her own initial, looking scorched and reminding me of earning pocket money as a child, one cent for each hanky ironed. Its title reflects my own recent brush with mortality.

Deborah Gower Porcelain Hankie

Shirley Esther Reading
16 April 1939 – 4 November 1986

Forget-M- kNot Hankie in Porcelain Slip 2010
Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of Heaven,
Blossom the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Whenever it was vital that I remembered something when I was a child my mother would always tie a knot in my hanky as a gentle reminder. This is a tribute to my loving mother. A true angel - never to be forgotten.

Her gentle touch of kindness caresses me each time I press a hanky to my cheek or wipe a tear from my eye. Every spring I celebrate forget-me-not’s blooming and I see the blue of my mother’s eyes again.

“The Christ Child was sitting on Mary's lap one day and said that he wished that future generations could see her eyes. He touched her eyes and then waved his hand over the ground and blue forget-me-nots appeared, hence the name forget-me-not.”

Legend or myth Wikopedia