In 1962, when the artist Mary Husted was 17, she fell pregnant with her son, Luke. She wasn’t married to the father and, because it wasn’t considered socially acceptable for her to raise the child on her own, she was forced to give him up for adoption just 10 days after his birth. To hold on to his memory, she sketched him every day: capturing every eyelash and wisp of his hair; how he slept and imprinted his head on to his pillow. “They were all I would have of him,” she told me.
Nearly 30 years later, Husted – by now twice married and with a grown-up family of her own – returned to the drawings to inspire her 1991 painting, Dreams, Oracles, Icons, a golden collage of a newborn in the foetal position in a nest beside a mother clutching a bird. Husted entered the painting into the Women’s Art Collection at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge – home to the largest collection of art by women in Europe. It would be for the public, for mothers who might relate to her situation, and, who knows, “out there if he [Luke] was ever looking for me”.
