The many needs for sanctuary
Long Mynd, Shropshire, one of my favourite places
The need for space and time out has become a critical point of my day-to-day life, it creates something that helps me process, ponder, peregrinate (this is a new word to me, and I’ll admit that I love it), pass time; and prepare to tackle things. As my practice has developed, I’ve begun to incorporate this time into the work I create, whether directly or indirectly.
The most obvious manifestation is the Seeking Sanctuary Series, these works are a result of time I spend in different places that are meaningful to me. I want to be able to communicate the emotional and sensory experience of being in a place and hopefully creating something meaningful for others.
The less direct interpretations are those where I have made an abstract image, for example the Petri Latex or Abstracted 35 series, the image becomes a point, a moment when the viewer is able to take in the detail, and in conjunction with their own histories and experience, to give it meaning, be that momentary or something longer, more distinct.
I’m currently sat in a camping pod in rural Nottinghamshire, listening to the sound of the wind and rain battering on the roof, and cars passing in the distance. This has got me thinking about the different types of sanctuary that I experience and what they help me to do. There are times when I need to be inspired, to feel the ‘great outdoors’, to step off the day to day; and then times where I need the simplicity of a nice place to be that isn’t about being inspired, it’s about pausing the world and just being.
The difference between these two extremes, one being actively engaged in the surroundings looking for the magical, and the other being passive, much more inward looking and with no agenda, is vast, and in reality, it’s a series of factors that build in response to the current state pushing me towards places on a continuum of places.
I talked above about those experiences that feed into my work, this post isn’t about those, well partly at least. This is a way of me understanding myself and the types of sanctuaries I look for. I’m going to share some of these below, they are merely examples on a never-ending list of potential places.
Passing time: simple, mundane locations, often near water
Pod at Janson’s Fisheries, Nottinghamshire
This is where I am now, in a camping pod on a fishery, a place hewn out of agricultural land, the fields still evident albeit adjusted to accommodate travellers and fishermen. It’s quite lovely, relatively remote, and the pod provides all I need for a few days out.
It has been enough to be sat in comfort, safe from the December chills, watching a tv series, eating and resting. I don’t look out the glass door to be wowed, I look at it to feel cosseted, and (relatively) peaceful.
This is the closest place I’ve ‘glamped’ to home and it has shown that the physical distance is unimportant, it’s the mental distance.
Passing time: somewhere obscured from the everyday world.
Polser Brook Sanctuary
The Seeking Sanctuary series are places that range from the remote and beautiful to the ordinary, one such place is on Polser Brook which travels under the Grantham Canal to the east of Nottingham.
To reach the brook you must climb down from the canal path to the water metres beneath. The place is one of contradictions, a babbling brook working its way under the concrete structure of the canal bridge, the sound of birds against the sound of people running along the canal path.
You can remain hidden unless someone stops for a moment and looks down, I’ve spent several times there totally alone, close to the world but separated.
Pondering and processing: A journey into landscape
The need to ponder and process are vital to me, and I seek out beautiful, remote places that offer the potential of progress. There is something about being somewhere earthly, be that on hills or in woodlands, and I’ve found myself using these places to think, to write and to plan.
Last summer, I spent four days in a woodland in Shropshire, reached by a mile long journey on a simple farm track, in one of five huts nestled around a wild pond in the cover of ages old trees. It was there that I planned and wrote a large portion of my submission for my MFA during last academic year.
There was something about the place that cleared the cobwebs and focussed my mind.
Peregrination: a journey characterised by movement and seeking the next surprise.
I’ve always enjoyed travelling, although I’m first to admit that I wish I had travelled more, particularly when viewed to the lens of the covid pandemic. I’ve been fortunate to spend time with a very close friend from India, both in India and in European cities that have been places for us to explore, to follow a loose plan, taking things in as we please. Our last trip to Madrid in 2019 feels like an age away now.
More recently, I was lucky to plan a wild camping trip around the Highlands in Scotland in September 2020, just after the schools went back, and just before social distancing measures were being reintroduced. I took the back seats out of my car – which is a ‘van derived car’ apparently, this means that it’s roomy and doesn’t have too many fussy details. Filled it with everything I’d need – and more – for a ten-day trip. My only rule before I left was that I only knew where I was going to sleep on the first night. It felt quite intrepid, although in truth I had an app that showed potential places to stay for free. Over the time I slept in sight of bridges, ruins, lighthouses, on a beach, and one night in a pod on a campsite as I was soaked to the bone.
This sense of having a vague route with some places I wanted to visit, and then seeing what I’d discover was really freeing, the itinerant life meant that I’d stay in some places scant minutes, and in others, hours depending on how I felt and what the weather was doing. This experience was quite profound, taken when it was, offering sanctuary from the realities of masks, two metre limits and government sanctioned exercise. I plan on repeating the activity, both on the British Isles and abroad when time allows.
Here are a selection of the places I stopped on my trip, you can see more on my photography page
I feel quite privileged to be able to discover these places and I’m very lucky to have a partner who gives me the space I need, in reality we both have this need, it just manifests differently.
I hope that this has given you a small insight into my mind and travels, and that perhaps you find something the resonates and helps you find sanctuary.