Mothering Sea – Don’t Drown Me Down…

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A conversation with Julia Svetlichnaja PHD and Lorraine Fossi.

JS: Lorraine, could you elaborate a bit on your choice of the sea subject?
LF: I miss the sea in Normandy where I grew up. Last time I took all my clothes off and just dipped under the blue water. I like to stay under as long as I can. When I think of sea, I think of huge, salty waves, masses of water, of dangers but also I feel free. Sea for me is not about paradise. It is about going there… deeper…It is about transformation. I get disorientated but not scared. I open my eyes and see…

JS: And what do you see?
LF: The deepness, immensity… Sea is the best space where some unseen entities can be revealed to you. There could be a rock, a fish, and mist, something else… There is a lot happening there…

JS: And what is happening?
LF: On one hand, water as mothering, caring, cleansing, it might wash away your memories and feelings; on the other hand, it always calls to go further. And one can go but one might die, so one has to come back. It is difficult: you are called and re-called at the same time. It is about danger and risk and simultaneous freedom. In the swimming pool, for instance, there is nothing happening…

JS: Uncomfortable but liberating like your paintings?
LF: Yes, there is no real refuge. We must go in to live but we must go out to stay alive. There is this impossibility of a mother, impossibility of a ‘mothering sea’…the concept of ‘mothering sea’ is a challenge. Like with my mother – I thought I will get closer to her and understand and I know it won’t happen but I try anyway even though my mother was not mothering at all. My sea is like this. This sea, the breaking water, the entities below the surface – it is for me the way of not being there and being there at the same time. This is how I encounter and accept my inner emotional dimension. And when a big wave hits you hard one wakes up. When you overcome fear, you might find something else. I have to say, the mood I am today, this is also about death, symbolic and physical – there could be something terrifying behind this white curtain (referring to ‘Beyond’ 2010) – but somehow it is not overbearing. My sea is about both: life and death at the same time…

JS: Thank you Lorraine, this is poetic…
LF: Waters break…

23 Nov, 2010. Artist’s studio, East London.