Forest Loneliness
Carved paper board, shellac, gold leaf and oil based ink. Exhibited at Land Street Gallery, 2021.
Size: Forest Loneliness 1, 2 & 3: 102 cm x 76 cm; Forest Window: outer dimension approximately 80 cm x 60 cm.
Available as limited edition print in Shop.
The title of this series, Forest Loneliness, is taken from the German word Waldeinsamkeit. The word is a combination of “wald” meaning forest, and “einsamkeit” meaning loneliness or solitude.
Inspired by the sublime artists and gothic fiction writers, these works are like unprinted book illustrations for a cautionary faery tale. In a literal sense they represent the desire to seek time alone in wilderness, and of the sublime – to be so overwhelmed by expansiveness of nature that one feels small and vulnerable. The forest also representing an internal, cerebral space; an anxious tension between contentment and fear.
“The woods enclose. You step between the first trees and then you are no longer in the open air; the wood swallows you up. There is no way through the wood anymore, this wood has reverted to its original privacy. Once you are inside it, you must stay there until it lets you out again […] The trees stir with a noise like taffeta skirts of women who have lost themselves in the woods and hunt round hopelessly for the way out”.
From The Erl King by Angela Carter
