Hiraeth - a longing for home
A porcelain Rockpool vessel form, coloured with cobalt oxide - Ann Bruford
A design in ceramics created during my MA course at Arts University Plymouth, 2022-2024
Hiraeth, an untranslatable Welsh word loaded with meaning that encompasses the emotions that tie us to Home. It may be thousands of miles away or or a memory from our childhood but there are places now lost to us that keep us in their thrall. Sometimes all it takes to bring the emotion to the fore is a scent, a old photograph, a treasured keepsake or even just the turning of the seasons bringing a change in the wind.
Childhood saw me living in the tropics where weekends on a boat provided relief from the heat but also an aquatic playground full of marine life. Sea creatures have returned to populate my latest work in porcelain and earthenware clays, coloured with natural oxides of blue and green hues. My fascination with textures has run riot with the imagery of urchins, limpets and sea snails, and the shattered and eroded shells on the foreshore.
My childhood home is now only a distant memory but a fond one rather than an aching hole. Time softens the edges of frayed emotion and all that is left is hiraeth - a sensation of loss that you hold close as it validates times past and the happiness of an earlier life.
I am exhibiting some of my MA ceramic pieces in Lyme Regis this April (2024) - please see the Shows and Events page here for details.