Every Morning

The experience of being a mother has a way of both dissolving and expanding your sense of self. In the beginning it's just you. Then they are in you. Then on you - arms, hip, breast. Then with you - all the time. Then slowly they become more themselves only. When my son was about to start school I realized he was starting his own life. There would be hours I was not a part of. Conversations with friends I didn't witness. The three of us had been a single unit and now it was beginning to separate. I desired it as much as I mourned it.

I decided it was time for a self portrait of us. I wanted to show our intimacy in an every day moment as a loving unit preparing for the day to come. So with this, I tried to bear witness to the last moments of us as a single self.

Note: The first idea for the composition was born from a painting by Zinaida Serebriakova. She set up a voyeuristic peek into her morning routine with a mirror device. I wanted that feeling of looking through into a personal moment but with my own narrative.