John Ivesmail's Essay

More than likely in response to this act of barbarism, all distinctions between channels of expression are collapsed from the eighth School Sketchbook (SSB.8) onwards. Facing the imminent arrival of her younger brother (the pregnancy was revealed upon a random inspection of Vanessa's health after she had collapsed on the awful news that her younger brother had been killed in action whilst serving his country in the Gulf) and the commencement of a new school project, 'Beginnings', the adolescent artisan's attention slips from her deceased father to her as yet unborn brother. In retrospect, one traces a visual connection; the wires and machines apparent in Vanessa's pregnancy scans evidently all too familiar for the emotionally weary youngster. This is no more visible than in the accounts Naomi offers on the pages of the Private Sketchbook of the duration spent in hospital by Vanessa as the baby is born and the water-based accident (history repeating?) of her elder sister. Each image or collections of images warranted to represent these events is immediately stalked by a re-rendering of an earlier paternal representation. Tracing this line of pages devoted to her father, one discerns a reverse or counter narrative running contrary to the unfolding chronicle in the Private Sketchbook proper. Thus the initial note of paternal absence is announced on page five, as we become witness second time around to the failed endeavour to will David Jelish from the Pond (PS.05) (this image initial appeared pasted onto an envelope offering condolence in Extraneous Drawing forty-four) whilst the final memorandum, located on page forty-eight (PS.48), is of the elder Jelish's futile attempt at reviving his young son Peter (again another image collected from an earlier Extraneous Drawing - ED.57). Naomi's desire to annul the shadowy passage of dreadful time patently lucid.