Symbols & Narrative
How symbolism and narrative function in my work
My work often begins by stepping into my own space, even when I am surrounded by people or travelling with others. I need that sense of withdrawal to work intuitively, but I am never disconnected from the world around me.
Experiences, encounters, conversations, stories and research travel with me into the studio. They do not necessarily appear literally in the work. During the making process, forms and figures emerge, disappear and sometimes return, carrying meanings that often become clear only later.
RECURRING FORMS
Certain forms keep returning in my work: animals, female figures, houses and fragments of landscape. I do not choose them as symbols beforehand. They appear while I am working, sometimes disappear for years, and return in another form or context.
A house can stand almost alone in a vast landscape. A hare can appear beside a female figure. Later, a deer enters the work. Their meaning is not fixed. It shifts as the work, and my own experience, changes.
A LITERARY RESPONSE
The following text is a literary reflection by author Karin Melis, written in response to my artistic process and the symbolism of the hare.
“You looked at me with wide eyes, as if seeing me for the first time. I was seen; something inside me rejoiced.”
— Karin Melis, Moving in the Liminal
