Talitha Els Talitha Els Sanlam Portait Awards 2023 | Art.co.za | Art in South Africa
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SANLAM PORTRAIT AWARDS 2023


Blue (Shadow) - Oil on canvas (121 x 76cm)

Blue (Shadow) - detail

The artwork selected for the 2023 Sanlam Portrait Awards competition developed out of a series of works exploring the complex relationship between mother and daughter with particular focus on the dynamic between the maternal instinct to protect and the adolescent’s increasing push for autonomy. I took the photograph that this painting was developed from many years ago while my daughter was a young teenager. Immediately I knew I had to make an artwork from it. Every time I looked at it, it affected me deeply and on a visceral level. To me it was a complete expression of the Barthesian punctum, containing incidental and personally poignant details that “pierced” me, but also “bruised” me (Barthes in Camera Lucida, 1980: 27).

The photograph was so special to me that I was reluctant to create an artwork from it and share it with others. I felt protective over it, and I feared somehow ruining the effect it had on me. It was only several years later that I finally decided to paint it. Even while choosing to paint the image, I purposefully did not draw attention to the medium itself. I did not want the viewer to be distracted by brushstrokes or the “feel” of the paint, but to look “through” the surface as one would with a photograph. To me it was a moment captured in time, and I wanted to hold on to that feeling.

The painting portrays my daughter as a teenage girl when she was about thirteen years old. Her eyes are downcast and posture submissive, yet tense. Her arms clasped tightly against her sides. Her pale skin contrasts starkly with a dark shadow behind her. The title Blue not only refers to the palette of blues that the painting consists of but refers to a sense of melancholy pervading the work. At first glance there seems to be different dimensions to the image, but it is only upon closer inspection that the viewer will notice certain details that provide clues to what they are seeing; waterdrops anointing the face, dried water stains, streaks leftover from window washing that is partially covering the shadow in the background, and perhaps the most prominent clue, the reflection of tiles in the foreground. The observant viewer might recognise at this point that the image is in fact either a reflection in a mirror or a view through a window. This realisation, together with the illusion of depth created by the receding lines of the tiles reflected in the foreground, creates a distancing, a barrier, between the viewer and the protagonist. She becomes unreachable, isolated, and trapped behind glass.

This barrier separating the figure from the viewer “wounds” me in a Barthesian sense. It suggests a distancing by the adolescent from her parent(s) and the sobering realisation that the relationship will be forever changed, the maternal bond no longer the most important as she transitions from child to woman. Here, time is suspended. It suggests a mother’s “holding on” and an adolescent’s “pushing away”. Encased in glass she is safe, yet trapped. Her innocence is preserved, but she will never become a woman, a mother. The faceless shadow behind her becomes an embodiment of my fears – of endless warnings, admonishments and threats that accompanied my loss of control, escalating into a pervading sense of gloom looming over her.

Barthes (1980: 26 -27) says of the punctum that it is incidental, not planned by the photographer. It is that “accident which pricks me (but also bruises me…)”. When I took the photograph that this painting was created from, my focus was on capturing my daughter through the condensation gathered on the glass. What I did not expect, the “accident” that (still) “bruises” me, was the shadow behind her. It is not her shadow captured in the image, but it was my reflection suspended in the dark, outside, looking in. The shadow was me.


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