The urge to push suddenly became overwhelming as the words of mothers before me reverberated in my head: ‘labour was worse than the Spanish Inquisition, fantastic, mystical, hell, it would all come to an end sooner with every contraction, it was like being turned inside out, comparable to Chinese burns, only one day in your life.’ As the contractions started to slow down, I thought no, no, no we’re not going in reverse. So each time I pushed a little harder and wailed a little louder. The midwives told me to reach down and feel your head which was incredibly soft…and finally you and all the fluids in my body came splashing and gushing out, and the relief I felt can only be described as pure ecstasy. 6 January 2005, Anina, 2 weeks old

Nothing prepared me for the range & depth of emotions that pregnancy, childbirth and parenthood have brought. Never have I felt so exhausted, so fulfilled, so frustrated, such raw vulnerability and such unadulterated love. Nor have I ever felt so connected to the human race, but also incredibly wary of it.

For the past few years, I have been recording these feelings and observations as letters to my young children. How we communicate via correspondence has been a recurring theme in my work, particularly the role that letter writing has played in sustaining and nurturing personal relationships. Electronic mail and messaging have certainly had a huge impact on communication but cannot compare to what transpires in the intimate act of putting pen to paper.

After reading Sara Symmons’ Goya: A Life in Letters, where she discusses the 18th century belief that ‘familiar letters should be informal, artless, and natural…talking upon paper where the purity of emotions (is) expressed and unrestrained,’ I felt compelled to create a body of work based on excerpts from these journals. I approached the works with the same informality and honest emotion as with my journal entries, hoping to communicate something very personal, but also universal, about the complexity of human relationships.