Never lost...

When I arrived at my son's place yesterday he showed me three artworks owned by his grandmother, who has recently been placed in a nursing home. The first I painted in 1979 when Erin was just two years old and I gave it to Erin's grandmother because she liked it's stained-glass window affect. The second painting, more refined was made whilst I was a student at RMIT in 1990. The third, a large framed digital print with color pencil was purchased by Erin's grandmother from my 1992 exhibition entitled La Jouissance, at the Hawthorn Exhibition and Performance Space. I haven't been part of Erin's father's family for nearly twenty years so didn't expect to see these artworks again. So much of what I produced as a visual artist has been given away or destroyed, so, it was good to see these early works and equally pleasing to know that Erin liked them and wanted to keep them, even though one was slightly water damaged on the edge and the 1979 painting on canvas board was warped and I'd signed my name 'Julie 1979' on it in an extremely crude manner. It was strange to see these three works together, which formed a kind of time capsule of the period of my son's childhood. These paintings, combined with the 1983 letters I sent to Kris Hemensley (mentioned in a previous post) in which I'd also mentioned Erin as a child, serve as a reminder of the past and all things precious, which are never really lost.