Wild Belongings by Claire Stewart

Wild Belongings is the new exhibition from Claire Stewart coming to Hawick Museum in mid-2023.

Here Claire speaks of some of the inspiration for the upcoming exhibition.

“I have been a wanderer since my earliest days, driven by a sense of searching for something I barely understand. So deeply rooted is this longing, that there is a word for it in many languages and it connects us to a deep sense of belonging to place,” she said.

“I think of painting as an extension of this wandering, and what I experience when I am out on the edges of this land. It is here as I stand facing an unknown horizon that I feel most rooted; a sense of belonging to a place never before visited but longed for: a homecoming.

“My reimagined, semi-abstracted seascapes connect me to being out there, alone in the elements, the wild, the wet, the windy, and to a sense of my own belonging and the transient nature of being.

“Memory and an impulse for making meaning drive my work and offer it out for contemplation.

“A life change has altered what I can do in a day so now the physical act of painting is my wandering, is my searching, my wild belonging and supports and represents a deep connection to where I have been and who I am now.”

Find out more on Claire’s Instagram page here.