Nancy Issenman is primarily a writer creating on the unceded territory of the Lekwungen people. Making art is another love of hers, especially collaging with images and text. She has gratefully participated in another show with Metchosin Art Pod.
StatementThis piece is my own personal history, combining photocopied pictures and mark making. I am exploring themes of absence and loss during my years from toddler hood to university student. My father died when I was 14 years old, but even before that, I had no words for the depression that permeated my childhood. The ghost words-smile-refer to the almost relentless demand by others to make me look happier, for them. My father becomes a ghost as he walks to the edge of the frame. My mother, a nurse in the 1940s in NYC, sits solidly on a concrete bench, a counterpoint to my father’s absence. My history surfaces from what I know. But everywhere in the piece is ambiguity, shifting shapes and smudges that express what still remains hidden, unspoken or glossed over from my childhood.
