Baby Self-Portrait

Oil Paint | 11” x 14” | © 2019

If you already looked at the painting process below, you will have noticed there is another sketched figure in this piece. When I was very young, my mother went through a miscarriage, but I did not understand what that meant. I was the youngest and only girl of my siblings and always wanted a little sister. I would often think of what life would have been like with a little sister. I would think about what it would have been like to grow up with them and how our relationship would have been. This painting was meant to memorialize them and show that I still remember and love them, even if we never met. My hope from this image was to bring comfort to mothers and siblings who have mourned the loss of a child, brother, or sister. Their existence lives in your memories.

I did paint the child in as a ghost in the background, but I could not do them justice. I opted to leave them out, but the memory of their sketch lays beneath the paint, like their memory lives in my family’s mind.