I probably finished this sculpture this 2003 . Set in the forehead is the tower of Highcroft Hospital . The great tower that can still be seen for miles around . I know my kin from 1896 onwards will have seen this tower as a constant . I know they will have suffered as I did in that place . As a Workhouse it had housed broken family life - as a mental hospital it did the same ..Our story connects the two and sees real connection of pain and associtated emotional imprints of it in children and adults not being dealt with but covered up so it repeated itself in undiscussed patterns across family life and four gernerations ..
Oh yes ...its more than possible ...Its tragically real for us the tribe of 18 ..
So tribal marks of the "18" were put on the face and a jagged tear for anguish . The moon for our aloneness is set by the tower and the star is for what integrity we had left ..And life will certainly injure that possibility. The eyes show the broken up quality of us and the cut circles within arew important as symbols into a circularised "Vision" into inter-generational suffering . When you do a work like this you know you are touching the sacred and making it a place of received grace and grief ...
The sculpture is made from a Copper Beech branch from the grounds of the hospital . Two others were made from the same branch .. I heaved it up from the nearby demolished area of Ward Faith 3 where I had been as a teenager .. "Cor Veritatis" : "The Heart Of Truth" ...
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