TRACIE PEISLEY

These pieces were made following the death of my mother. The illness I refer to is Complex PTSD which was exacerbated by her sudden death in September 2021. I worked unconsciously but I was aware of the white bone nature of the clay and the combined crackle glazes. Memory and experience were fragmented by pain and dissociation so there isn’t a clear narrative , the feeling is in the work . It exists in the magnesium strip like glare in the mind as I grappled with a complete weightless ness. My feeling was I should also be cremated to follow her as a diligent daughter. She would want me to be with her and said before she died, ‘don’t’ leave me’.
I think in a fragmented state of mind from the trauma of her death I looked to art forms to anchor my experience. We seem to have such paltry rituals available to us in our culture that do not address the complexity of a lifelong relationship ending. Trusting in process, in Greece, I made a performance or ritual where I was buried in a shroud on a remote beach on the Northern Aegean, a coastline where displaced people try to find sanctuary I attempted to be present to my grief. I felt calm beneath the Earth, heavy and still. Aware I was breathing out but not in through a straw sand fell through and tickled my lips. I felt embraced by the earth, warm and spiritually close to her. I was dug out before any harm came to me. Perhaps this ritual marked the separation and I metaphorically I facilitated a re-birth, and saved my own life which has been impacted by trauma. I gathered bleached bones from the shore line to fashion a totemic memorial and collected discarded dried flowers from the shrine of the festival of the Panagia (Virgin Mary) to arrange at the base. I spoke words out loud that don’t make sense but acknowledged the passing of a relationship that has dominated my life. I took her ashes to make a perfect circle around the olive tree in my garden and made a further performance, swaddling my head in twine and dousing with water and wood ash. This process I cannot analyse, except to say I was bound in a complex and often destructive merged relationship. A tangle that needed acknowledging, it was paradoxically both suffocating and safe. I longed for intimacy with a woman who could not touch me, seemed to hate me. I have felt haunted by the terror of paternal abandonment. Upon her death the abandonment was physically complete with no further opportunity to resolve a difficult relationship. Yet through the making and the rituals I still reach for her and still find tenuous connection. In a culture that encourages us to shut down feeling and ‘get over’ grief I chose to find ways to move towards the lost person using creative processes as my guide. The art objects give tangible evidence to my attachment, As I touch the surface I see evidence that my touch is felt. My experience has been that talking therapies cannot unravel the mysteries which are manifest in the spirit or the body. However, I am a qualified art therapist and have experience of undertaking somatic work I felt confident that I could manage the processes I undertook and was well supported. I was not advised or instructed to enter into any of these rituals, its been my way of ‘healing’ complimenting my studies on trauma and I was safe at all times.‘