Six months after my mother died of breast cancer, I found a journal she had begun to write for me. She wrote about “dying to ourselves,” and how stripped, winter trees are “glorious in their strength and security.” The process used to create this painting involved creating tumor-like patches buried under layers of paint, which were then sanded and scraped away to reveal a scarred surface. The violent process embodies the devastation cancer did to my mother’s body and the abrading grief I now bear. My mother is shown standing at peace, one with the shattered tree.
Meredith Tenney-Free works across a variety of media to create semi-abstract works that focus on the reconciliation of trauma, human longing, and memory. She specializes in Bereavement Portraiture made in partnership with grieving families in order to capture the life, love, and loss of their deceased loved ones. Throughout all of her work, Meredith questions the nature of the sacred found in the ephemeral, flawed, and broken. Art accesses a form of recognition that exists in the liminal space between the cognitively unknown and the corporally known.
Meredith is an artist and educator whose art has been featured in exhibitions in Columbus, Washington D.C., Boston, New York City, and Orvieto, Italy. She completed her BA at Gordon College in Studio Art, and the History of Ideas in Fine Art. She now lives with her husband in Princeton, New Jersey.
