Postcards Home

Janet Mathewson.
Sydney / Blue Mountains Jan 2020. 2020.
Synthetic polymer on canvas. 450 x 450mm

Janet Mathewson.
While There is Still Time. 2020.
Synthetic polymer on canvas. 310 x 410mm

Janet Mathewson.
Love and Loss in a Time of Covid. 2020.
Synthetic polymer on canvas. 410 x 510mm

Janet Mathewson.
I am Living. I Remember You. 2020.
Synthetic polymer on canvas. 310 x 410mm

Janet Mathewson.
This is What the Living Do. 2020.
Synthetic polymer on canvas. 400 x 400mm
Postcards Home

As a young adult, I would keep in touch with my parents through postcards. Rarely photographic representations of the places I visited, but rather postcards of the artworks I'd seen that had impacted me, or that summed up my wonder, experienced in that place.
During the first half of 2020, when my mother, artist Daphne Mason, was dying, we became cut off from each other through the first extensive Covid lockdown in Auckland. I tried to navigate this unknown territory of walking out someone's final months beside them through poetry and paint. As I was finally allowed to visit her on compassionate grounds, I realized how touch, being able to hold her hand, was now an incredible privilege. With the passing days the realization grew that our parting was now imminent - a departure that would lead her to a better place, while I stayed behind, to mourn.
Postcards Home is the record of the last 6 months of her life.