This is one of the greatest gifts ever to be bestowed on an art collector. We bought this statue called “Mother” at the Southern Guild Gallery in Cape Town, South Africa February, 2024 on a Fountainhead Arts trip. It will be delivered to us at the end of May when the show for Artist Justine Mahoney will be over. 

Eliot and I were just on Instagram and discovered this video where Justine is reciting a poem she wrote for sculpture. 

Eliot and I are totally amazed because we randomly selected this statue out of a dozen being displayed. It was the first gallery that we went to on our trip and we just bought. The gallery was one of the most stunning we have ever seen the statue just called out to us. I know that sounds crazy but that’s what happens. 

This is the poem:

“Mother”

“The mother constellated in me when I became a mother.

Though mothering can be embodied by all genders I believe.

She is seen as a creator and destroyer in mythology.

Perpetually pregnant and lactating, feeding, nurturing children, the world, ideas, into being.

She gave birth to the gods. She is the source of everything.

The anima mundi

She bends over backwards, twisted out of shape, propping herself up.

The life force. Omnipotent.

She takes up space and expands over time.

Earthbound, cow like, whale like, weighted and heavy.

She is the earth and the sea.

Constantly regenerating her body.

A pollinator.

She creates and creates and creates.

She’s not only human she is animal and plant.

She birthed the fertility cults of Gaia and Demeter.

The goddess Juno alludes to the domestic role of motherhood.

She is not civilised, she is anti civilisation.

Fecundity personified

The juice of life

She is self love and self mothering

She is never too much

She denies no one

She is huge

The great creatrix

The matriarch

Rhythms Cycles Phases

Conception

Birth

In her shadow aspects she is the bad mother porous with no boundaries unendingly dark and cavernous overwhelmingly possessive secret hidden abyss destroyer devourer dominant

She gives gives gives poisons exhausted stuck blocked

She becomes thunder hurricanes tsunamis

Shiela Na Gig, the vulva revealing goddess carved on standing stones throughout

Ireland and Europe, the pre religion mother goddess.

The Empress in the Tarot

Demeter going to the ends of the earth to find her daughter Persephone in the underworld

Gaia the personification of the earth who formed the universe”

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