Stay

“Stay is a scream, a dream, a plea but most of all, she is hope. This girl is my reminder of the moments a decision was made to stay. Those moments I wanted other people to stay with me, those moments I needed to remind myself to stay, those moments other people reminded me why I needed to stay and those moments I needed to remind other people to stay.”

This was an artwork two years in the making. I first conceived and sketched her out on a Artscapade in Melbourne in 2024. I remember coming back to the apartment at night and continuing to draw her and considering the idea of how the word “Stay” had such nuance and depth of meaning to it. For such a small and simple word, it has hidden depths, complexity and emotional attachment.

When I did her sketch, I knew she was going to be a very large drawing. That’s probably why I put off doing it for so long. But under threat of a looming deadline for the Recovered Futures Art Exhibition, and a promise that this was the year she was going to meet the world, I finally pulled up my big girl pants and got to work. That’s a very tidy and poetic way of putting it but the reality was, I sketched her into the full sheet of Arches Watercolour paper at the beginning of the year and then left her for a few months while I dealt with the fear of doing a drawing that was emotionally HUGE in my brain, then had a panic when the deadline came up much sooner than I thought it was going to be. Which in hindsight was great for getting over that fear because I was committed and HAD to do the thing now. But, I digress.

You look down on her. She is little and helpless, but She is strong enough to ask the one thing that will cost her everything. She is surrounded by a sea of her own thoughts. Flowers that encroach on her little island throwing patterns out into the ocean of emotion. Flowers that spill out past the borders as if they cannot be contained by something as mundane as a rule that states they must STAY IN THIS SPACE!

Those tiny little flowers cost a lot in time, emotion and aching hands. But they were so symbolic and representational of the obsessive nature of the things I do and how I think. Unless you really LOOK at them you may not see them for being the flowers they are, but that is also an intentional part of their design. You can look at this piece from far away and see the girl reaching up at you, the long patterns the flowers made as I drew them, the ebb and flow of my emotional and physical comfort or discomfort changing the way I drew, or the way I leaned into them or the way I held my pen even. But the tiny flowers also force you to step into the piece and get up close and personal with what is happening, because when you see them, you want to know what they are, your brain will attempt to see something in the shapes and when you do see them, you won’t be able to unsee them.

Every flower is a thought. Every thought is a scream, a plea, a dream…and also each flower is hope. Because you can’t say the word, “Stay” without the hope of a better moment. You can’t ask it of someone or of yourself without the thought that perhaps, there is something coming next that will be worth everything that came before. It makes you strive to make it to the next moment. And the one after that.

In this piece she asks it of you. She holds it all bright, shining and trembling in her hopeful heart. Regardless of whether you do or not, for that one moment, there is absolutely nothing and there is absolutely everything, like the emotional equivalent of Schrödinger’s cat.

And if you lean in close, she will whisper it to you…

Stay.

“Stay”. Alison James. Ink on 300gsm Arches Watercolour Paper. 76cm x 56cm

“Stay” will be on show as a part of the Recovered Futures exhibition

in King George Square, Brisbane City

9-14th October 2026.