Into the garden, 2022
Into the garden, 2022
Artwork: Limited edition of 25
Medium: Pencil on photo rag archival paper
Sizes: A3, A2, A1, A0
Text: Somewhere there is rain. But not here. Not right now. Into the garden we go.
Notes
The last line in the Philip Larkin poem, The Whitsun Weddings is “somewhere becoming rain”.
The ‘somewhere there’s rain’ beginning of the poem in this artwork refers to that. My partner first showed me the poem when we were first in love. I forever associate the poem with that beautiful time. That’s why I made an artwork riffing off it.
So here we are, my partner and I, sitting on a garden bench, holding hands and feeling like rain is very far away, but knowing it’ll come again. Because that’s life. Sunshine and rain in equal measure.
When I was a child, I loved Land of the giants. It was a TV series where the main characters were tiny in a land of huge people. I’m referencing that show here, with us being childlike and smaller than a dandelion. I’m signalling the tenderness and delight I feel when I’m with him. I feel so safe with him. Safe enough to show him all that I am, including the child that I was, that I carry with me always. We all carry the child we were deep inside, eh.
The artwork began horizontal. If you look closely, you’ll see sideways letters. It was a painting in it’s first iteration, then I made this print and the print is way better than the painting, and so the painting is gone and the print remains. Each print in this limited edition of 25 is hand-painted with the gold in the rectangle and triangle of their bodies, and the stalk of the dandelion. The paint flickers as you move past it, kind of like memory does.
“Into the garden we go” is part of the Wide in bloom collection, 2022.
