Thank you to all who joined me during this exciting week of my collection “Hedghlore: Thirteen versus” first showing! A big thanks to ArtNewWest, it was an honour to have my first solo show at “The Gallery at Queen’s Park”. I had so much fun meeting all of you and hosting a week full of events, from “mad woman” Tarot and track listening to the “Devil is in the detail” match the lyric to the painting Game night.
The reason why I named this collection hedglore is that back in the day, in old European and British villages, a hedge marked the boundary between the safe, cultivated town and the wild, untamed forest.
And then later In folklore, this physical boundary became a powerful metaphor for a spiritual boundary. The healers, and village wise-women who lived on the literal outskirts of town , they were believed to be able to “ride the hedge,” meaning they could spiritually cross the boundary between the physical world and the spirit world to gather knowledge, communicate with spirits.
This collection is a bridge as well, a bridge between music and visual arts. Taylor Swift’s album Folklore is my favourite album of all time and I know it is for many others too. Its an album I keep coming back to year after year. Whenever I listened to folklore, the storytelling felt so vivid and grounded that I couldn’t help but see it visually. Each one of the 13 paintings of this collection, is inspired by a single lyrics in. One of the songs in folklore.
Instead of leaning into abstract or surreal interpretations of the music, I wanted to anchor these thirteen lyrics in reality. My goal was to build the actual scenes—to take the characters, the love triangles, and the quiet, melancholic moments from the album and give them a physical space to inhabit in oil paint I wanted to pull those narratives out of the headphones and onto the canvas, something tangible you could stand in front of.
The lyrics I chose to paint weren’t random. They were the ones I related to the most, who made me feel understood. I think what makes Taylor’s writing so special is that you can relate to the songwriting, and it makes you feel understood in what you are feeling. It’s nice to know that we are not alone in this human experience and the emotions we feel. These songs have the power to make you feel understood. I hope these paintings can also have the same effect.