Size: 26x24cm, depth 2.5cm framed
Material: Watercolor Wax Pastel & Pencil on Handmade watercolor paper from Spain
© Kelly Ng Shah
This series is sketched in monochrome because memory itself often returns in black and white - stripped to its emotional essentials. The silhouettes of pears stand in for the people we become within our families: shaped, softened, bruised and carried in ways that aren't always visible. Pears with their quite imperfections and gentle curves echo a relationship built more on duty than affection. Each handwritten phrase is added in pencil, deliberately fragile, like thoughts that were never voiced. The contrast between the sold ink form and the delicate graphite words mirrors the imbalance between what was given and what was missing. This collection reflects on a mother-daughter dynamic where nourishment was abundant but emotional warmth arrived only in fragments. Through these monochrome pieces, the unspoken is finally allowed to surface. "Some part of me longed for your presence more than your recipes yet those meals were the bridge you kept building. Maybe connection would have looked different if time and life had been kinder to you. Still, your effort touched me, even when it didn't look like the closeness I wished for."
Size: 26x24cm, depth 2.5cm framed
Material: Watercolor Wax Pastel & Pencil on Handmade watercolor paper from Spain
© Kelly Ng Shah