Learning to Ride the Wave, Ines

Learn to Ride the Wave of Grief.
8"x8"
Ines.
Watercolor.


:::

about this piece.

Learning to live life after loss is hard work. At the beginning after Fionn died I felt like I was drowning, going under, sinking, suffocating. Eventually I came back to the surface but struggled to keep my head above water. I was still alive but found that I had to learned to swim in a storm out at sea. I gradually advanced to floating along on a raft, or nutshell boat, then I started sailing, met friends on a similar journey and then made land, too. Now I feel I can learn to master these powerful waves (which I painted first). At times there even is a sense of thrill to be standing up and being able to deal with these forces. But it's not easy and it all depends on where on these waves I try to stand whether or not I get washed under and crushed, yet again. So I put the surfer on a string... movable. I'm learning to surf the wave called grief to a point where you become good at it  and can actually enjoy life again. - Ines

about the artist.
Ines, aka forward tumble, is a 42 year old mother of Fionn who died before he was born in June 2008. After a year of serious illness, she is learning to live her life without her child.

In Ines’ words, “While art and creativity has always somewhat been part of my life, I used to take a lot of pictures (still do) to capture the beauty of life. I have recently discovered art as a new way of expressing and releasing parts of me from within. I now pursue art in a more deliberate way because it seems to cleanse/liberate me which helps both in my grieving and life in general.”

Ines lives in rural Ireland in a house in a big field two miles from the sea. She maintains a number of blogs: forward tumble; daily forward tumble, chronicling her Creative Everyday Challenge; Fionn, a blog about her son; and tunnel time, a blog about growing vegetables in a poly tunnel in Ireland.