Mother

Artists drawing or painting their mother has become iconic in art history?from Whistler through Freud, Cezanne, Hockney, Ingres, Gauguin or Durer, whose brutally honest portraits of his mother insisted that ?Even the smallest wrinkles and veins must not be ignored?. Paul Graham?s first major body of work since 2014?s 'Does Yellow Run Forever' contains portraits of his elderly mother sitting in her chair in a retirement community in England.00Graham?s camera hardly moves, with his mother asleep, eyes closed, in every image. Our palette is the gentle tones of old age?a flowered blouse, a pink or lavender cardigan?the light is soft, natural and constant, from a single daylight window. With little attempt to photographically ?entertain? us, we begin to notice subtle shifts of carefully chosen focus, from one eye to another, to a loose thread on a button, to a stray wisp of hair escaping outwards. Frozen in time, the ebbing of life is expressed through modest details, powerful emotional resonance arrives through tender observation.