Yellow chair.

This is the chair I’ve been drawing recently for my follow up to Could Try Harder.

This book is about my mid twenties and motherhood.

I bought this chair for £8 from a house clearance shop in my neighbourhood. It was covered in an old flowery curtain fabric, faded, and the seat was sagging.

After many years I had it upholstered nicely, and today I dropped it off at Nonna’s new flat.

I did think about selling it.

But it’s where it should be.

When my daughter was born, it became the chair in her room. I sat in that chair for hours, reading her books and singing.

I sat in that chair with her on my lap, looking out the window.

But really, it was my mother’s chair the most.

It was the chair she sat in with my daughter. My mother, her Nonna, was her person, the one she felt most comfortable with.

The three of us spent so much time together. We holidayed, we went charity shopping, we sat about and talked rubbish.

Maybe other people think about the first shoes, or the first hand-knitted cardigan.

But I think about that chair, in my basement flat, surrounded by books and looking out the window.

Those times were so intense, so overwhelming.

I remember sitting there, looking up at the world outside as it carried on the same as ever, while mine had seemingly changed forever.

Now the chair is with the person who was there through all of it. My mum. Nonna.

It feels right somehow.

Like the chair has found its way home.

So drawing it, I’m not really drawing the chair as such, I’m drawing those hours, those conversations, that version of of who I was then and a time that has gone, but somehow still lives inside me, well at least when I look at that chair.