Idol Mother
2025
19” x 27”
Watercolor, ink, and water, photographic transfer on silk
In Idol Mother, I return to a fragment of my family’s past through a small 35mm slide capturing my mother— her teenage self— her eyes already wide with fear. I’ve tinted her face an unsettling green, suggesting both the corrosion of time and an unspoken trauma that had already taken hold, remembering the abuse she endured and how it imprinted itself on my own sense of self.
Against the silk surface, soft blooms of orange, white, and green invoke the Irish tricolor. Although I was born on American soil, my father insisted otherwise: “You’re not American—you’re Irish,” he would say, while posters painted by political prisoners calling for a united Ireland covered our walls. This fervent identity—both nationalistic and familial—wove itself into my childhood lens, shaping my understanding of loyalty, fear, and belonging.
As ink and watercolor bleed across the delicate fabric, they dissolve the boundaries between past and present, tangling my own reflections with my mother’s hidden anxieties. The once-still photograph now shifts and mutates, mirroring how inherited wounds seep through generations. With each translucent layer, I acknowledge not only my mother’s suffering but also the weight of the silence surrounding it.
Idol Mother becomes both a tribute and a confrontation—an intimate meditation on how personal histories refuse to remain buried. By letting water erode the original image, I expose the tender fault lines that tie mother to daughter, trauma to identity. In this raw act of unveiling, I offer a stark invitation: to recognize the depths of what we inherit and to hold space for the possibility of healing that can emerge once the veil of secrecy is finally lifted.
2025
19” x 27”
Watercolor, ink, and water, photographic transfer on silk
In Idol Mother, I return to a fragment of my family’s past through a small 35mm slide capturing my mother— her teenage self— her eyes already wide with fear. I’ve tinted her face an unsettling green, suggesting both the corrosion of time and an unspoken trauma that had already taken hold, remembering the abuse she endured and how it imprinted itself on my own sense of self.
Against the silk surface, soft blooms of orange, white, and green invoke the Irish tricolor. Although I was born on American soil, my father insisted otherwise: “You’re not American—you’re Irish,” he would say, while posters painted by political prisoners calling for a united Ireland covered our walls. This fervent identity—both nationalistic and familial—wove itself into my childhood lens, shaping my understanding of loyalty, fear, and belonging.
As ink and watercolor bleed across the delicate fabric, they dissolve the boundaries between past and present, tangling my own reflections with my mother’s hidden anxieties. The once-still photograph now shifts and mutates, mirroring how inherited wounds seep through generations. With each translucent layer, I acknowledge not only my mother’s suffering but also the weight of the silence surrounding it.
Idol Mother becomes both a tribute and a confrontation—an intimate meditation on how personal histories refuse to remain buried. By letting water erode the original image, I expose the tender fault lines that tie mother to daughter, trauma to identity. In this raw act of unveiling, I offer a stark invitation: to recognize the depths of what we inherit and to hold space for the possibility of healing that can emerge once the veil of secrecy is finally lifted.
2025
19” x 27”
Watercolor, ink, and water, photographic transfer on silk
In Idol Mother, I return to a fragment of my family’s past through a small 35mm slide capturing my mother— her teenage self— her eyes already wide with fear. I’ve tinted her face an unsettling green, suggesting both the corrosion of time and an unspoken trauma that had already taken hold, remembering the abuse she endured and how it imprinted itself on my own sense of self.
Against the silk surface, soft blooms of orange, white, and green invoke the Irish tricolor. Although I was born on American soil, my father insisted otherwise: “You’re not American—you’re Irish,” he would say, while posters painted by political prisoners calling for a united Ireland covered our walls. This fervent identity—both nationalistic and familial—wove itself into my childhood lens, shaping my understanding of loyalty, fear, and belonging.
As ink and watercolor bleed across the delicate fabric, they dissolve the boundaries between past and present, tangling my own reflections with my mother’s hidden anxieties. The once-still photograph now shifts and mutates, mirroring how inherited wounds seep through generations. With each translucent layer, I acknowledge not only my mother’s suffering but also the weight of the silence surrounding it.
Idol Mother becomes both a tribute and a confrontation—an intimate meditation on how personal histories refuse to remain buried. By letting water erode the original image, I expose the tender fault lines that tie mother to daughter, trauma to identity. In this raw act of unveiling, I offer a stark invitation: to recognize the depths of what we inherit and to hold space for the possibility of healing that can emerge once the veil of secrecy is finally lifted.