- Medium
- Ballpoint pen on paper
- Dimensions
- 29 × 30 cm
- Availability
- Reserved
A mother folded around her nursing child, built entirely from crossed blue ballpoint lines — tenderness made from the most ordinary pen.
The story behind the work
There is an arrogance in expensive materials, so I keep returning to the ballpoint pen — the pen of receipts and shopping lists — to make the things I hold most sacred. Here a mother gives the oldest gift there is. Her body curves into a complete circle around the child; the whole drawing is one closed loop of giving. I built her from thousands of tiny strokes because tenderness, in my experience, is never one grand gesture. It is the same small act repeated until it becomes a life.
Artist's note
Roughly nine hours of cross-hatching. The hardest part was leaving the highlights as bare paper.
