Rose-Mary Hagger

Rose-Mary Hagger traces her earliest personal connection to art to a painting she made when she was approximately eight or nine years old. Her grandmother, also named Rose, hung the work in the hallway of her bungalow. Hagger remembers being surprised by the significance her grandmother gave it.

She believes the painting may have reminded her grandmother of drawings made by her own father. Hagger’s great-grandfather owned a sweet shop in St Albans, England, where art became part of the rhythm of his working day.

According to family memory, he drew and painted in the back room between greeting customers, keeping a mug of tea warm on the stove as he worked. The story places creativity within an ordinary domestic and commercial setting, practiced in intervals rather than separated from daily life.

The painting displayed by Hagger’s grandmother connected these generations indirectly. What began as a childhood image became evidence of a creative continuity that Hagger had not yet understood. Her grandmother’s reaction gave the work meaning beyond the act of making it.

“That was my first exhibit and my first personal connection to art,” Hagger writes.

The memory frames exhibition not simply as public presentation, but as an act of recognition. Long before a formal audience, one person’s decision to place the painting on a wall allowed Hagger to see her work differently. That modest hallway display became the first setting in which art connected personal expression, family history, and the experience of being seen.