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    Helen Wilks

    Childhood Fragment: Swimming Not Drowning

    Childhood Fragment: Swimming Not Drowning

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    Childhood Fragment: Swimming not Drowning [1995]
    Oil on canvas in painted wooden frame
    Donated by the artist, 2011

    This work is one of a series of paintings entitled Childhood Fragments.  The subject and title refers to a poem by Stevie Smith.  

    'If you have ever been a child learning to swim, fear mixed with determination is concentrated in the very first effort to succeed.  I sometimes think that all our lives are lived with this continuing sensation when attempting to achieve something new, but I hope my image is one of survival and counter to the image Smith conjured in her poem Drowning not Waving’

    Helen Wilks