My current work reflects a need to articulate visually what I feel so pressing internally: that is, a need for balance, and the fact that it is so often out of my reach.

Digging, scraping away to find a metaphor to reveal the heart of emotion, drives the work. And lately those emotions have been has been grief, sadness, anger and fear as I found myself "thrown into the sea". Choosing to swim is what this work is all about.

Related to ongoing work that touches on the drive to tattoo and to pierce, the Neckline and Torso series explore the notion of vulnerability and our feeble attempts to "cover up" the emotion. There is a tension between restriction, exposure, clothed and unclothed reflecting  the same of our fragile emotional selves.

The Kitchen Sink Diaries (or Life is Messy) speak to a commonality among humans. Dirty dishes are part of our lives. For me, these are markers for of daily,weekly life… here alone…there a party. They are a balance for the more tense work, a relief, but revealing an underlying truth of my personal day that is often complicated, as all of ours are.

The images in "Packed, a diary of being moved", take a stab at answering the question what is home and place during a time of major upheaval and relinquishment. Keep it? Throw it away? Wrap it, store it, move it......don't. This is an ongoing series and what is represented here are just the first of my life, boxed.

Susan MacDougall
Portsmouth, NH

All content © 2012 Susan MacDougall