Jess Blandford: 2015

We agreed to move to New York for my husband’s job just before discovering I was pregnant with my second child, so I find myself living in Brooklyn with a toddler and a new baby. A friend sends me a definition of ‘cultural fatigue’ in response to my complaint of weariness. I smile at the notion that one might be just so damned tired of all that bloody culture, but the actual definition chimes deeply with me:

“Cultural Fatigue is the physical and emotional exhaustion that almost invariably results from the infinite series of minute adjustments required for long-term survival in an alien culture.”

Yes I think, this is why I was overwhelmed by trying to post a parcel (mailing a package it turns out is not the same), confused by the ATM machines, unable to set up a direct debit payment, let alone figure out how to give birth in a medical system I don’t understand and rather despise.

I think how the journey into motherhood has also felt like a migration to a foreign land. The intense love, sleep deprivation, anxieties and joys, relentless repetition, surprises and delights, are all bumpy pavements (or should that be sidewalks) to be navigated without street signs or a tourist guide. My ever-changing body, leaking milk, blood and frequently tears.

I love what I have and would never buy a return ticket. But I am also homesick for the selfish, time-soaked, empty days and late nights in the studio to fill as only I choose. With two small children there is no time to make art. But there has to be time to make art. Without it I fear I am stuck in a no-mans land - an invisible refugee who has lost their identity papers.

This series of small paintings Cultural Fatigue (gouache, charcoal and pencil on board) feel like postcards home. They are born of snatched fragments of time, full of repetitive layers misaligned. They are an attempt to articulate my experience of living somewhere Other, of the infinite series of minute adjustments required for survival.