Laura McCafferty

Last year I was approached by a lovely family who wished to commission a portrait of their daughter to celebrate her sixteenth birthday. I visited the family home, where we discussed how best to portray Lauren. On entering her bedroom it struck me how special the teenage bedroom is; a place where you can be yourself and express your identity. I remembered my own bedroom, full of stuff- posters, cards, clothes, ornaments and trinkets filling the space. All that is gone now, packed away in boxes, given away to charity shops. It occurred to me that your teenage bedroom is a special place, a space that will never be recreated, once gone, gone forever, to make way for sleeping, as your stuff spills over an entire house. For Lauren, I wanted to make a piece of work that celebrated her fantastic room and her own expression of self. Documenting it for her and her family, to always have a reminder of this time.