Robin Mason

A small painting shaped by the archive, where objects become attributes, and memory finds its way back into image: drawn from a single archival photograph, my great-grandmother standing at a ceremonial tree planting, shovel, branch and pick arranged with quiet purpose around her.

 

In the studio, these tools shifted. They became attributes rather than objects, symbols touched by her gesture, and by the generations who held that moment in memory.

 

I placed them in the forest that keeps returning in this residency,
the imagined woodland along the path to Bryn Myrddin. Set against the trees, the tools cast long shadows as if they belonged not only to the photograph, but to Letitia's (the grandmother I never met) painted murals that once lined the walls of their home in Alltwen.

 

This small work feels like a joining of times: the forest of imagination,
the evidence of the archive, and the trace of a woman whose presence
continues to root and branch through everything.

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