---

I am a wife, a mother, a woman, but like all of us, I am so much more than that.

It was whilst reading through old letters that I stumbled across when looking for inspiration for this piece that I realised how many stages I have come through, to become who I am today.  

It was also reading through these letters that brought it home to me that I miss certain elements of who I used to be.  I used some of the words in the letters as the base layer of my painting.

Like all of us, I am made up of many different layers, and it was important to me that this played a big part in creating this piece of work.

I wanted my painting to grow organically, layer upon layer because what became clear throughout the process was that there are aspects of myself that are hidden from view, sometimes even hidden from myself.  So it was important to me to have some hidden elements within this piece. 

I made a frame within a frame from old paintbrushes and painted myself within this, then curled some paper over to represent that I am still evolving.  I then scratched words into a structure paste around this image.  

Lastly, I made an ink from red onion skin, to again represent the layers of identity, and used this to add colour to the inner image.