\n
My Granny loved a good statue of the Virgin Mary. One of my most vivid memories is of her bedroom adorned with tiny Mary\u2019s, prayer cards to various saints and rosary beads. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
My mother was raised as a Catholic in the East end of Glasgow. Her school teachers were strict nuns. I remember her telling me how much the iconography of the Catholic faith scared her as a child. I\u2019m not surprised. Images of a dying, young man on a cross and talk of statues of the Virgin Mary shedding miraculous tears are incredibly strong and enough to put the \u2018fear of god\u2019 into any young child with their vivid imagination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My gran had a daughter called Mary. My mother\u2019s sister. She passed away when they were young, but not so young that my mum could not remember her. She never spoke often about her but when she did you could sense the tremendous scale of that loss in her life. The impact on her, her siblings and my Gran and Grandpa must have been earth shattering. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This Lino print is a tribute to all of these women. It is part of a series of prints I am creating on representations of the female throughout different cultures, folklore and everyday life. My gran was a strong woman with her own demons which she conquered by remaining an active Alcoholics Anonymous member until she became too frail to attend anymore. She wasn\u2019t ashamed of it. My mother had a resilience and incredibly strong work ethic. She was a grafter. Of course I never knew \u2018Our Mary\u2019. My gran liked to call her that. Almost as if she was still around. I guess in many ways she was. In their hearts and minds. I wonder if that was also partly why she had so much love for those little delicate, fragile statues of a religious icon? <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My Granny loved a good statue of the Virgin Mary. One of my most vivid memories is of her bedroom adorned with tiny Mary\u2019s, prayer cards to various saints and rosary beads. My mother was raised as a Catholic in the East end of Glasgow. Her school teachers were strict nuns. I remember her telling<\/p>\n
Continue Reading “Blood, sweat and tears”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1699,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[508,507,503,504,506],"class_list":["post-1698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-glasgow","tag-linoprint","tag-mary","tag-mother","tag-virgin-mary"],"yoast_head":"\nBlood, sweat and tears - Collette Howie<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/collettehowie.com\/?p=1698\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Blood, sweat and tears - Collette Howie\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My Granny loved a good statue of the Virgin Mary. 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