Last Portrait of Mother !

This article I read in "THE NEWS" of 4th July 2010 by Umber Khairi. And I just cant get the spell of it out of me even now...it says like that...



"A portrait of a corpse has won this year's British National Portrait Award.

Dephne Todd's "Last portrait of Mother ", depicts her recently deceased mother, painted in the refrigerated room of a funeral parlour. It is a strange portrait; the subject is dead and frail and her skin is pale and yellow, yet the painting manages to evoke a sense of life and morality.

Painted on two canvases put together as a sort of step formation, the portrait is neither very large nor very overpowering but it does have the quality of staying with you long after you have actually viewed it, and it does resonate in one's memory.

The portrait is almost like one of those 17th centuary still life works, which incorporate a sense of decay into an artistic composition - with fruits rotting or worms crawling into the picture's space. But there is no rotting in this portrait; here the emphasis is on the fragility and frailty of the old person's body. As you look at it, you think of people - especially PARENTS - who you are unable to really help as age sinks them into the physical deterioration and plonks them on to a sickbed where you can but stroke their hand or prop up their pillows.

There has been some adverse reaction to the pertrait. While some people have found it macabre, others have criticised Todd for "exploiting" her 100-year old mother in death.

But Todd says her mother gave her permission to do the portrait last year, and some people talk of the pisture as a "devotional portrait."

The actual picture is not very good in visiblity as I took it from my mobile from the newspaper. I search the websites but couldn't get the picture.

Anyhow, I dowloaded another picture by Dephne Todd :

Dame Janet Abbott Baker
by Daphne Toddoil on board,
198736 in. x 24 in. (914 mm x 610 mm)

Given by Daphne Todd, 1988NPG 5987

I know I am afraid....to loose my mother. It is a universal truth that we all have to die one day but seeing someone aging and dying especially when the one is your parent is so....so....sad.

I am not ready to let her go. I am not ready to even think about letting her go. I am not ready to live without her. I am not ready to see or feel or meet without her. I am not ready to progress in life without her. I am not at all ready to age without her.

I am not ready....at all....hmmmm......