Mel Pozniakow

Mum’s Jumper 1985 – 1997

Jackson's Painting Prize 2022
Ink, Watercolour
Paper
10.5 x 14.8 cm

“Since becoming a mother, I have become obsessed with my own childhood. I wonder if I’m using my work to grasp at my own identity in response to it feeling lost in this new phase of my life. Using paint to cement these moments and memories, it feels a safe space.
Colour and pattern are the routes in to these memories, mark making is my response to them.
The overwhelming part of my family story is the conflict between my mother and grandmother. Two different ideas of how woman and mothers should be. What should I be?

Trawling through old family photographs and collecting various bits of family memorabilia, I’ve made a series of paintings from these. I paint in sets repeating the image over and over until I find one that works. They are mainly in oil, sometimes ink and watercolour. I am not concerned with copying the photograph in a literal sense but use my sources as a trigger to take me back to that time. With these paintings, a sense of the dynamics in my family growing up has been presenting
itself. This painting is one of the series.”