Vision 038 - A4 Oil Pastel on Cartridge Paper (sealed)

Vision 038 - Oil Pastel on Cartridge Paper - Sealed with acrylic varnish spray - includes removeable plastic mount frame

Part of a series of portraits where I allow myself to simply feel a moment, allow a vision to decend upon me and see what comes from the chaos. In this instance I was walking through north London during the day and I had caught the eye of a person wearing a headscarf wrapped tightly around her face. I was in a predominantly Turkish area called Green Lanes and the headscarf looked like what I believe is called a başörtüsü but it brought to mind an image of my grandmother on my dad's side. I never met her, because she passed away before I was born..and to be honest I only. have one photo of her and she isn't wearing a headscarf odf any kind.

But something in the vision sparked by the woman catching my eye earlier in the day brought to mind the ambiguity of my dad's family history. It was always said that they were immigrants but due to persection they could never say where they had come from. We currently think they were Romani - as a lot of Romani people took the name Smith and my Dad's family had thick dark curly hair and bright blue eyes.

Anyway the vision of an ambiguous immgrant mother and family came to mind wrapped in a headscarf and I thought about the different headscarfs that are worn in the multicultural are that I live - hijabs, diklos, başörtüsü and burkas ... and the stories that lie beneath each one. The strength, the family histories, the pain, the life, culture, travel...the humanity.

And then I saw this face....