Acrylic on wood, ready to hang.

Signed on the front.

This is part of the Deaf culture works, and tells the story of Growing Up Deaf. This one was the child, Chelle (myself), was holding a moving interactive toy and laughing in a big armchair in the lounge room of our home in Narre Warren. This was in 1988 when I was 9. The toy was a crawling spider and it would crawl around in my hand when I talked to it. The painting on the wood is a metaphor for the underlying solid and immutable fact of my deafness, over which I paint a happy and normal childhood. This artwork is currently in a solo exhibition at the Incinerator Gallery until 1st March, in Moonee Ponds in Melbourne.