the image as a felt thing: ambivalent gestures in motherhood and painting

In painting, the brush stroke is a record of the artist's hand, a convention that carries many associations. Accounts of art history often mythologize the solitary genius, while capitalist notions of innovation prioritize the fast, the next, and the new. As a counterpoint, this thesis project seeks to foreground the gestural repetitions and labours of craft and care work by combining and juxtaposing them with traditional painting practices. Two main concepts flow through the paper in support of this idea: the first is ambivalent care, and the second is the concept of the container. Ambivalence holds together conflicting ideas and mixed feelings. While this often results in temporary suspension or uncertainty, ambivalence fosters care by acknowledging complexity and holding dissonance together longer. It acts as a container. The artwork in this project integrates traditional painting practices, such as oil painting on canvas, with other methods, including needle felting and repurposing domestic detritus, widening the visual vocabulary of painting by creating gestural alternatives to the brushstroke. In addition to the visual and tactile marks they leave behind, these materials hold a history of gestures that inform and disrupt the reading of the work. Throughout the project, I investigate how a mixed material painting practice might express ambivalent acts of making, unmaking, and remaking that integrate the gestures of care labour into painting.