searchingtoseeBeach days (III)
Posted on May 28, 2014
Beach days #4
Beach days #5
I’ve been working on this beach series for the past couple of months. I started work on it because a gallery owner local to West Kirby (where I grew up) liked some of my layered work, but wanted something coastal. I’ve struggled with naming them, though (it’s always a problem!), because even though they are all from very specific locations, they are deliberately quite abstract.
For me, working with layers give me greater freedom to explore the local environment: the texture, colour, form and atmosphere of the landscape, and (hopefully) create something fresh and new, which is at the same time recognisable to its particular location.
These two images are from Sidmouth, which is a place we visit often as a family because my dad and step mum live there. The children love the beach, and searching for crabs in the rock pools.
You can find the whole series so far on my website, or in my artfinder shop.
© images and content Emily Hughes, 2014
In defense of daydreaming
Posted on May 21, 2014
We are never real historians, but always near poets, and our emotion is nothing but an expression of poetry that was lost.
Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
shelter me from the storm
lose me in the mists of time
Who gives a truer account of history? The poet, or the historian?
Thank you to Chris Bronsk and his excellent post repercussions for reminding me about and bringing me back to Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, which I have always read and savoured as an unreserved celebration of the pure joy of intimate poetic expression. The power of the poetic image is something which transcends history, time and even language. It is able to speak directly to our consciousness without the need for translation or interpretation. Through poetry, we can connect with our past, and with our imagination. Bachelard believed that “for a simple poetic image there is no project; a flicker of the soul is all that is needed.”
I have always been a fierce defender of daydreaming, and make time for it every day. I believe it is more than ‘escapism’; daydreaming makes us more open to the possibility of poetry – both receiving it and expressing it. It gives us the opportunity to indulge our dreams, create and practice the possibility of alternative realities; to reflect, be brave and honest with ourselves, and speak directly to our weary souls which are generally neglected, bruised and battered by the necessary drudgery of the day-to-day. Indeed, Bachelard has also been linked with the surrealist project which advocated the practice of (day)dreaming, or dislocation from reality, as a deliberate political act. Ultimately though, daydreaming (the ‘irrational’ primitive realm of dreams, poetry and imagination) provides us with a counterpoint to rational thought, and can actually help us to live happier, more fulfilled lives.
Let us then safeguard reverie, as our rich inner lives provide a vital antidote to reality, and I hope that today you are able to carve out a little chink in your busy schedule for daydreaming.
© images and content Emily Hughes, 2014
searchingtosee 
