This is a bronze sculpture of a father and child. As it happens, it is in our garden, though it does not belong to us. The artist, Caroline Mackenzie, asked us to look after it while she was living in India and it has been here ever since.
Caroline also produced the nativity scene pictured below, now residing in a small church in South Wales. Joseph’s masculinity is represented in the image by the bull standing behind. This is one of the first images for hundreds of years showing a completely normal and universal domestic scene – the mother asleep while the father communes with the baby (in what we now know to be a natural process vital to the baby’s brain development). The image has hardly once appeared in western art since the Middle Ages. Despite being absolutely normal, “it does not look right” – just as the photographer said to my family when we set ourselves in front of the camera with me holding the baby and were asked to hand the baby to Clare. When was the last time anyone in the world received a Christmas card showing Joseph holding the baby?
Caroline has produced other major sculptures on this theme – see her website.
The female possession of the caring role – the role of creating new humans – is mirrored by the extraordinary male possession of other creative roles. I was amazed to learn recently that no woman had ever won an Oscar for directing a film until this year. Female conductors of orchestras? Female architects of major public buildings? Female composers of music?
In conversation, Caroline Mackenzie rails against the constraints that are placed on women artists. That she should choose to express this frustration by creating images of men nurturing children is an act of quite extraordinary insight and compassion.
