Louise

(200 portraits of my mom)

2019 Dimensions variable
199 3”x4.5” family photographs, gesso, one empty bracket


In this installation of intimate immensity, family photographs covered in white paint cascade down a white wall. Peeking through the paint, portraits of my mother are revealed and obscured as if fading into memory. The grief of my mother’s loss surrounds the viewer: empty and blank but quietly filled with reminders of her. Each photograph holds a faint memory; painting over the original family photos, I engage the emotional process of grief as I feel her loss repeatedly, redundantly, and overwhelmingly. In memory and through paint, I search for my mother, only to expose a faded glimpse of the past.



©SheilaNovak2023
Thank you for being here.