Reborns are among us...

There are so many layers and meanings to this body of work, it is hard to find the words adequate enough to explain what was happening in my mind throughout the making of it.

It began with a fascination of dolls as tokens of sentiment and comfort in childhood and grew into an awareness of how the doll has in recent years developed beyond a mere toy to be something that seeks to blur the boundaries between the human and the inhuman, particularly with the advent of the ‘reborn doll’.

‘Reborns’ are produced in vinyl and silicone and painted and finished with hyper realistic attributes such as hair, eyelashes, nails, veins and skin textures in order to faithfully mimic the aesthetic human qualities of a real child. The most expensive and realistic in terms of natural articulation, are produced in silicone and hand painted and finished by reborn artists and cost many thousands of pounds. The cheaper versions tend to come un-assembled, in the harder, less malleable vinyl. I have chosen to base my paintings on the latter, as depicting these subjects in their un-assembled form speaks to the idea that we are essentially all born ‘incomplete’ of character and identity and in that respect, not yet fully formed or ‘put together’. From birth, we begin the painful process of ‘becoming’ as our bones and limbs harden and our neural pathways are formed and strengthened through the simple act of living, shaped by our respective environments and the humans around us.

These dolls already play a vital role in hospitals and care homes in the treatment of patients suffering with dementia as a way to stimulate memories of parenthood and perhaps the babies they cared for in their earlier lives. During my research I also discovered collectors who obtain reborns as a coping mechanism for the loss of a pregnancy or the trauma from experiencing a stillbirth, amongst many other reasons.

However disturbing, I have created them with the aim of stimulating discussion around our collective current attitudes toward sentimentality and to question ourselves if our first instinct is to look away from anything that doesn’t seek to pander to our fragile sensibilities or explain itself immediately.

I have employed various familiar metaphors within each piece, and I invite the viewer to create a subjective narrative around them, according to their own experiences.

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All the best things - oil on canvas - 80cm x 54.5cm

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Sweet Dreams, Little One - sculpted stoneware with kapok and led lights

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The Special Delivery - oil on canvas - 110cm x 110cm

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The many metaphorical layers to this painting are not immediately apparent, and the intention is for the viewer to hopefully spend some time with it and to find their own meaning. It appears to be some kind of doll, wrapped in various layers of transparent plastic, within a box that has been enthusiastically torn open by the implied recipient to get to its contents, which hopefully begs the question of 'why'?.

The subject is an unassembled reborn doll; a hyper-realistic creation made to mimic a real human baby and marketed toward people like me - the middle-aged and childless or those who have maybe lost children before they even formed or experienced stillbirth. They are also used in care homes and hospitals in the treatment of patients with dementia. In all cases, they are principally aimed at the lost, lonely, and/or bereaved.

There is a definite sense of pathos and longing in this work where one might be tempted to make connections between the object and the materials depicted. The most obvious is, of course, the doll as the longed-for child, arriving unassembled, providing the recipient with the challenging task of making it whole. Then there is the box - the vessel or the darkened cavity or 'the womb' in which the 'being' dwells, waiting to be brought into the light. The various plastic wrappings are perhaps the amniotic sac that is vital for fetal development and also protection during transit for the inanimate structure inside.

As this work developed, I was also reminded of the forlorn character of Eleanor Rigby in the Beatles song of the same name, as the embodiment of loneliness and longing, and so I couldn't resist employing the metaphor of the postage label alluding to the Stanley Street address in Liverpool where the Eleanor Rigby statue is situated. The Stanley knife adds another nod to the above, whilst also providing a sense of curiosity for its inclusion in the scene.

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