Process Emma Walker

As a girl, I was fascinated by my mother’s hands. I would trace their veins and tendons with my fingertips, following them like roads on a map. I was captivated by their grace and how she used them while speaking, to provide emphasis and give visual form to her words. A few hours before her death in 1985, she summoned the energy to bring them together in a wordless gesture of gratitude. It was both a farewell and a gift to those of us with her, in those last moments.

This memory has always remained, but it was only recently, 1470–75. This was the last of thirty drawings created over a period of thirty days in 2020. These drawings were my response to an exercise offered by Marita Smith (of Gallerysmith, Melbourne) in an attempt to lure me from the pit of depression I fell into during the national lockdown. Returning to the timeless activity of working with pencil on paper and observing an artist’s work from another time entirely, allowed me to step outside of my own experience. Marita’s initiatory gesture of care produced a beautiful unfolding that included new investigations, a series of collaborations and the capacity to work again with a renewed sense of possibility. ‘Distillations’ is the result of that starting point and subsequent explorations which include paintings, drawings, video, a suite of shaped wall pieces and a free-standing sculpture.