John Ivesmail's Essay

Continuing what was initiated with the conclusions reached in Extraneous Drawings fifty-five to seven was an attempt Vanessa and I made to transport the family from the lair of doom. The Boxing Day trip across southern Kent sought to provide a necessary geographical dislocation (as occured in the trip to London taken in late October) for the offspring to be able to start anew. Rather than participate in the frivolous activities that the rest of her brood embarked upon (for this was Pontins), Naomi sought the more soulful venture of respite through the re-channelling of artistic inspiration. Detailing the Friesians that rambled in the fields beyond the Holiday Camp, Naomi's pencil bears testimony to the multitude of poses the cows adopt in their daily activities. That such an innocuous resource could procure such poetics is surely due to the young scholar's gift in contrasting the mother with suckling calf with the adjacent reach of Naomi's younger sibling, Matthew, reaching for the door. This contrariety, found on pages thirty-four and five of the fifth School Sketchbook (SSB.5-34/35), underlines the quandary at Naomi's core: the need to escape the confines of her grief and the lack of a parent to provide the necessary support to achieve this goal. It comes as little surprise that the remaining leaves of the document are left void. A full stop has been emphatically stamped.

The next sentence begins with a return to school and the instigation of a new project: "Personal Identity". Presenting Naomi with an opportunity to come to terms with and stabilise what she had previously been unable to manage, the project requested that the solitary pupil divulged something of herself. Hence the sixth School Sketchbook (SSB.6) forms a composite portrait of both Naomi and the various members of the Jelish clan. We are introduced to Naomi's mother, Vanessa (with whom I was already well acquainted!); her grandparents (the less said the better); her sister, Laura - obsessed with her own reflection and with the erasure of pain through delusion; her two younger brothers Cameron and Matthew - far too young to realise the enormity of event that had befallen them. The introduction to kith and kin is extended into the Extraneous Drawings (ED.62-69) with many of the pages of Sketchbook six acting as preliminary to the realisations in the larger works, some of which are mounted for exhibition; Naomi's heartache served up for public consumption - the ultimate form of grief counselling. Many depictions are sourced from earlier School Sketchbook sand Extraneous Drawings; what was once too painful to speak of now aired to public forum.