In my artistic practice, I have been very interested in the use of objects to represent key things about myself and others. I have made a number of “portraits of the artist” through still-lives I have assembled, with the intention to use the absence of the body to make the viewer look deeper at what makes up the figure. For this one, I used only things that were given to me, by people such as my parents, brother, lifelong best friend, my partner, and old friends with whom I have long since fallen out of contact. All of these people have contributed to making me who I am, and I carry both the emotional effects and the physical gifts with me.