On the 29th of March 2001, aged 70, my mother, Joyce Livsey, neé Favill, died. A hard-working pianist, and a person of immense selflessness and love for everyone, she also loved to create a great number of beautiful and decorative objects - felt-tip and ink pen drawings and collages mostly. She seemed to have no overall plan in mind in making or displaying them - although her vision is all too clear. Her only philosophy seemed to be colour, nature, music and dance. It was a spontaneous expression of her love of beauty, her internal life. Similarly, she didn't go in for permanent materials. Anything which came to hand that looked bright or pretty she would seize upon like a magpie, whether felt tip pens or glitter, or pictures of butterflies or cakes from magazines or empty food cartons.

When my brother Peter and I sorted through her things, we gathered up her pictures from the walls, from around the mantelpiece which was a sort of shrine, and packed them away into boxes for safekeeping. It seemed a shame to disturb them as Mum had put so much of herself into her gallery that we felt the essential 'Mumness' of the room had been removed.

I'm considering a way to display them at home, perhaps building a box frame to preserve them in - but the problem in the future is going to be the flimsiness of much of the material, and the felt tip, which is not exactly colourfast - not to mention the sellotape she used to stick pictures together with or onto the wall. It's going to take a lot of attention keeping them from fading away and falling apart. Meanwhile, I'm turning to the digital realm of the internet (a medium I don't think she could have understood very well) to show off some of these items on a virtual mantelpiece. These are a small selection of the artworks she created, and I hope to add more in the near future.

Collage with feathers & butterflies
Butterfly & flowers on stave
Rainbow, sunflower & butterflies
Butterfly & pansy
Aug 13th - The Purple Emperor
Garden postcard collage
Teaset picture on crépe paper collage
Abstract collage on silver card
Cherry tree and valley
"In Memory of Kittens 1992"
Check pattern and fish
Glitter picture
Triangles
Fruitbowl
Fans and pansies
Putting all your eggs in one basket
Fish and butterflies (from notebook)
Red Picture
Glittery butterfly
Gold glittery butterfly
Fish at sea
Dancers reaching for flowers
Landscape with trees