Not many people would describe their mother as ‘a lady who’s kind of crazy’. Iris de Groot, 30, an animator and illustrator from Groningen, does. She grew up with a mother with a general learning disability and is currently working on a comic book summarising her childhood memories.
In December 2014, Iris won the Hendrik de Vries stipend. This is a €6,000 prize awarded annually by the municipality of Groningen to either visual or literary artists. The project she submitted for this, a comic book about her childhood, will allow her to bring it to fruition. With the book, she wants to give a voice to children who grew up with parents with a general learning disabilities: ‘The stories of these children are heard far too little. I want to create sympathy for their underexposed and unusual situation.’
OPEN BOOK
Iris herself is like an open book: she is not ashamed of her story and uses her own experiences as a common thread in the comic. Through flashbacks, she gives the reader a glimpse into her childhood, ‘When I was young, I thought my life was pretty normal. Only when you get older do you realise that certain things were different,’ she says. ‘Around age 10, I realised that my mother could not take good care of herself and me. You could see that, for example, because the house was always dirty and messy.’ There were imbalances in the relationship between mother and daughter. These emerge through anecdotes in the book. A touching example in the book is a situation in which Iris' mother reads her a story. She stumbles over the words and falters, which annoys young Iris. She takes the book out of her hands and decides to read it to her mother herself, a situation that makes her even more unhappy.
LOCAL TRAIN
The young artist is still busy with the project. At the moment, she is halfway through the line work, ‘'I myself am very curious to see how it will turn out in the end,'’ she laughs, ‘I’d compare myself to a local train. It moves along slowly, but the momentum is there.’ Iris draws on paper with fineliner pens. She made this conscious decision for hand-drawing. It yields the most suitable results for the personal subject matter. The next steps will be colouring the drawings and adding text, which will be done by computer.
MOTHER’S REACTION
What does her mother really think of the project? ‘At first she seemed to be fine with it,’ she says, ‘but when an interview with me appeared in the newspaper, she actually turned out to be angry and offended. Her emotions are like those of a child. After several people spoke with her, she does seem to understand better.’ For Iris, this lack of understanding from her mother is perhaps the most difficult thing about the project. ‘My mother knows that we had a hard time together in the past, but she doesn't really understand what my childhood was like for me.’
STARTUP PROBLEMS
She explains that it used to be quite difficult for her. In her adolescence, she was depressed and stayed home from school while her mother did not realise this at all. Help was not available at home, something she says that in retrospect would have been absolutely necessary: ‘We had home care for about a month, nothing else.’ During her university days, Iris noticed that she had ‘start-up problems’ due to her youth. It took several years for her to find herself and finally get well.
THE RIGHT GOAL
Above all, the artist doesn't just want to put her personal story at the centre with the comic, she wants to create understanding in general for children who are in a similar situation. ‘There may be interest from child welfare services for my project,’ she reveals. ‘That's very nice, because then it can be used for the right purpose.’
The book will be presented on 12 December during Wildvang, a talent event at the Centrum Beeldende Kunst (CBK - Centre for Visual Arts).
Text: Christine Huisman