First Morning | Drawing | by Alice Fennessy

Alice Fennesy’s intimate portraits reflect the quiet complexities of motherhood and domestic life. Working across paper, silk, and aluminium, her pared-back compositions capture the tension between tenderness and unease, presence and introspection. In FACE FORWARD, Fennesy offers a contemplative view of identity shaped by caregiving, memory, and the private rituals of the everyday.

First Morning captures an intimate moment in the liminal space between night and day; a mother lying in bed with her newborn and older child, wrapped in the gentle stillness of morning light. This is a portrait of artist/mother Yasmina Gillies and her children Huia and Ururangi, the morning after Ururangi was born at home. The composition reflects the interconnectedness of the figures, their limbs entangled in a natural choreography of comfort and care. The book in the mother’s hands anchors the moment in domestic ritual, highlighting the continuity of nurturing even in the face of profound transformation. This portrait aims to honour the strength and stillness of this first shared morning.

Medium: Coloured pencil on Paper
Dimensions: 530mm x 625mm