Play Dolls

My experience of illness shook my sense of invulnerability. I searched for a symbol that could lead me to a body of work to express this.  I found this baby-like doll. It was both vulnerable seeming AND invulnerable. Anticipating with joy my first grandchild spurred me to reflect on my own experience of motherhood, the profound anxiety and the fulfillment that it engendered. By painting this doll in imagined situations of peril I could navigate the shores of my anxieties: no actual harm could come to this baby. It was safely in my hands. Acrylic on canvas.