Margo Kren

"Mother"

1996

22 x 30

Charcoal and Pastel

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

Upon my mother's death, I set to make a commemorative work in her honor. She died three years ago. She was not an outgoing person but private and distant. Death enlarges the departed one's presence. I decided to capitalize on that. I started going over old photographs of her, objects and things dear to her and reread her letters to me. The earliest one, dated 1948, written when she, with my Methodist minister's father, made a trip to Palestine.

For this work, I chose charcoal and a select few subdued pastel colors. These are the colors one sees in a barely lit room in the early morning or late evening hours, the moment between night and day or life and death.