The spectre of David Jelish's hospitalisation haunts Naomi's early Extraneous Drawings like a vulture circling its eventual quarry. David's hospitalisation was due to a long-standing heart defect that often troubled him as the two of us congressed for ping-pong. Initially he shook it away with a waft of his bat - "indigestion", though he soon reconsidered his own humble diagnosis after his first official 'murmur'.
The young artist was not only compelled to trace the early days of her father's convalescence following the first of what became innumerable scans, surgeries, and operations but also to marshal these sundry hospice vistas against the confines of her religious schooling. In the second Extraneous Drawing (ED.02), Naomi casts the icon of her father being lifted from his sickbed against the verso incantation of the Ten Commandments - can one ignore the visual similarities between the elder Jelish and the lord's son? This proposition of father (not son) as the telamon of suffering is further educed from the third Extraneous Drawing (ED.03). A smaller proposition of the illustration previous, the image is thrown against a faded pink school worksheet containing "The facts about jesus". The school database provides ample space for a portrait of our Saviour (????), though the young biographer leaves this blank. Are we to see this as generous space for projection? Can a concerned spectator not connect the pained likeness of a bearded figure to the ringed void overleaf? Naomi's quizzical feelings on the vagaries of organised/orthodox faith seem unambiguously palpable.
Pdf Version of this document (3.66 MB)