Story of my landscape

Driving around the ancient lanes of rural mid Wales in the dying sunlight, is my most enduring of childhood memories. Staring out of the windows looking for signs of anything medieval or older, listening to Bonnie Tyler or Mike Oldfield while my dad chain smoked his way to his grave. I’d ask to open the window in the desperate attempt to catch a smoke free breath and, as the car filled with clouds, I’d catch sight of the glorious sun flickering tantalisingly through the trees.

Freedom, it promised.

Maybe this is where my aesthetic comes from? Why I like the ambiguity of blurry organic forms, horizons and light? Why I feel happiest in a constant dreamlike state with my head turned towards the sun like a sunflower. Why I want to shatter the screen and illusions of ‘reality’ and run back to the natural world from where we all came - and are still part of, despite humanity’s best efforts to deny it.

In these memories of Welsh hinterlands, I find peace. The open space. The connection between land, sea and sky. It feels honest: a homecoming. Dare I say a little bit of hiraeth? Maybe. And I know the disconnection from it affected my mental health. Finding my way back to the natural world through art has been a healing balm. Connecting to the place I am right now is the belonging I sought as I scoured piles of magazines, bought clothes I’d only wear once and scrolled and scrolled hoping to find ‘the answer’.

The stories of the people that came before are embedded in the land wherever we stand. And the people that will come after us will emerge out of this land.

The land offers us wisdom. And I am now choosing to listen.