Acrylic on canvas, stretched and ready to hang.

Signed certificate of authenticity.

Water music is a self-portrait in which I embody the experience of women in modern society, labouring under the promise that they can have it all.

They can sit at the corporate table, play football and participate in the Arts– but they must still mother well, maintain domestic harmony and provide emotional support.

They should be grateful. And sexy.

Instead, they feel overwhelmed and defeated.

The washing is on the line, the baby crying, the meeting unprepared, the fishnets not so sexy.

I do not seek to blame anyone for the impossibility of this task; merely to recognise it and to invite us to question entrenched roles and expectations that make true equality and inclusion so hard to achieve.

The title Water music derives from the background colour, a Dulux house paint I buy from Bunnings. It is calm, perfectly opaque, and always reliable. It seemed fitting.