I ‘m currently exploring ideas about the sense of loss and longing for childhood through the study of personal objects from my own childhood.
Is it a universally held feeling to long for childhood in some way? Or is it felt more intensely for some of us and why? As a mother I am also aware that whilst I sit very closely to the childhood experiences of my own children – their childhood belongs to them – I am, by virtue of being an adult, further denied access to the magic of childhood
The problem I’m finding is that I’m unable to express a sense of this longing in a clear way visually. I really think its because its all too personal – I get tied up in knots about it. I’ve been reflecting on work I made a couple of years ago about the childhood experiences of WWII Evacuees. I used fragile paper, fabric patterns and toys of the day as a vehicle to express a sense of disruption and loss. I was more objective I guess – I empathised yet could stand back – and I felt that the work communicated their experiences.
So how do I step back from my own personal story – how do I transform the mediums I’m using into tangible expressions of my own experiences?
Thanks Richard Taylor the a-n Art Student online editor for pointing me in the direction of Thea Djordjadze whose paired down sculptures eerily ring with the feel of a place and time now gone. Her work has personal connections but its so direct. How can I move forward with my work to crystalise the essence of what I am trying to communicate?
And looking through the a-n News page I discovered an artist selected for the Jerwood Drawing prize who also seems to cut straight to the heart of loss and longing. Recent graduate Zoe Maslen works with presence and absence – see her beautifully haunting work with hair and incredible drawings on her blog http://zoemaslen.wordpress.com/blog.
I need to go back and simplify things, to stand back from personal entanglements that are confusing my vision.
The Welsh have a word hiraeth, with no direct translation into English, but which is best interpreted as a deep longing for a connection with the land of Wales. There is something in the essence of this word that is very important to me with regard work – I need to express my own deep longing for the emotional ‘land’ of my childhood. I’ll keep working on it.
