Resilience

22" x 20" (56cm x 37cm)

oil on canvas

I was a kindergarten teacher and some decades ago a child I will call T spent a few weeks in my class. She was in foster care. I didn’t really know her story, but could conclude that things in her life were problematic, given the need to remove her from her family’s care. Despite this, she appeared happy, effervescent even. She did a painting during that time which I held on to, partly because I tried to retain one painting per month from each child, all of which were taken home at the end of the year, but in her case, she was gone before I could return it. 

The painting was a sunflower with a big dark centre, surrounded by red petals; there is a sun in the top corner. I thought at the time that the big dark centre was telling us something about her experience. That there was something deeply unsettling she kept inside, while she wrapped it with colour and a receptiveness to the good she could find. 

In this painting, I have quoted T’s painting, adding some figural elements. Resilience counters the big dark parts with life asserting petals. Time, presented in the obscuring white lines, either eases the dark parts, or obscures the bright ones.