"Ascenputtel 4" Painting

Natalie Sirett I create series of images that are connected by narrative, in whatever medium best suits the story I am telling. Sometimes these narratives are several years in the making. My current project, REVISIONS, is inspired by stories of family members that I heard as a child. My antecedents were wanderers: Scots searching for any kind of living, Jews fleeing the Tsar, Revolutionaries in search of a new world order. Many details of their tales turned out to be untrue, lost in the Diaspora, yet I was vividly connected to these people I had never met and places I have never been. Indeed, they are still an integral part of my sense of who I am. This begs the question: does the truth of one's history (or lack of it) matter? Much contemporary brain research suggests that memory is an active capacity, rather than a fixed record. If any of us are being remembered, then we are inevitably also being revised. REVISIONS is a series of etching, dry point and photo etching on steel. Steel, because it is the metal that takes the most punishment without dissolving and because a huge range of marks, tones and textures can be achieved. There is something in the gritty, yet soft-focus nostalgia of its character that makes etching the medium that best tells this collection of tall tales and half truths.