My Mother’s Last Hand

from Untitled (Watercolour Notebook)

1980–1985

notebook with 13 watercolours

Audio description of the work

This is a description of a watercolour painting in a notebook which is slightly larger than letter paper size. The notebook is displayed under a plexiglass case at standing height eye level and is open to this watercolour of the palm of a left hand, made as a part of a daily practice of drawing.

Taking up a full page of the right side of the notebook, this line drawing is of a left hand, palm up angling from the bottom left to the top right of the page. The thumb is parallel to the other fingers and is held in a resting position between the pointer and middle fingers. It is in profile and has a short nail quite close to it’s knuckle. The hand, drawn in black ink, has cross hatched shading on the right side of the fingers and on it’s heel and springlike coils of hair along its thick wrist. It is shaded in with a watery magenta. The space on the page above it, on the left, is purple and below it, is yellow. Written diagonally along its upper flank are the words -Quote “My mother’s last hand” end quote.

Looming large beside the work on the right is a giant reproduction of a watercolour painting of a woman reclining, A work Cohen created after the style of a painting featuring what he would have called an Odalisque, an eroticized artistic genre in which a concubine is represented mostly or completely nude in a reclining position.

End of Audio Description.

Exhibition label text:

This watercolour notebook contains 13 drawings made by Cohen over several years and executed in a consistent style. The full selection can be seen on the monitor to the left. Many are annotated with a single line or couplet that responds to the content and mood suggested by the drawing. The notebook is open at the page that shows the hand of his mother, Masha, who died in 1978. He later explained: quote “Drawn in the last few months of her life, it is her hand and my hand drawn as one.” end quote

End of Exhibition label text.