Inexorable, 105x75cm by Lily Mae Martin, ink on cotton paper- 2018
Drawing photographed by Gene Hammond-Lewis .

I did various studies for this drawing, and then I took my time rendering and rendering and trying out a slightly different technique to the usual. Then my kid got sick, I got sick, kid got sick again and it seems like I had been working on this drawing for so long I couldn’t see it anymore. In fact Gene and my kid both told me that it was finished and I didn’t believe them for about a week.

Titling this work was hard too, I had read various poems and birth prayers to try and convey what this work is about in one or few words, what a job.

I loved these lines from Plath’s Three Women in regard to birth

I do not have to think, or even rehearse.
What happens in me will happen without attention.

And the line from the birth prayer by Louis Macneice

I am not yet born

Judith Wright’s Women to Child

You who were darkness warmed my flesh

But as with the work and the title I have to accept them for what they are – a piece of a larger conversation, all of my works. And to not put so much on one work, one title that I can’t move forward.

When I accepted this I was happy again, though I must say the difficulty also comes from a year of very little recognition, little positive feedback – or any feedback. It gets very easy to get lost. I don’t expect to be in everything but nothing is a little tricky to navigate. So this too – makes it very hard to see my work and to keep on going.

Anyway, here we are – I did it and I am digging extra deep to keep on keeping on.