about
Inkling by Cecille Weldon
In ancient mythology, Hestia was the goddess of the home and hearth. The ancient Greeks would drink a toast to her at the beginning and end of every meal, honouring the importance of coming together, of nourishing our body and soul before moving out into the world.
In my journey as a women and mother I have spent some time reflecting on how different the world of my mother’s era and mine are and how differently the ‘heart’ of the home is expressed now. In my generation, we meet in cafes over Italian coffee and the cappuccino machine has become the new hearth!
The kitchen is traditionally a women’s world, and certainly for me (despite my career!) It is where the unrelenting rhythm of the day is marked out in meal times - preparing, cooking and cleaning. The hearth of the home is steeped in lore and cultural value - the centre of many a conversation and much musing.
Much of my work centres around a belief in the importance of the ‘home’ as a creative space - but its more than the kitchen really - finding the hearth is really about connecting to the centre of things, coming back to what is important between people no matter what their differences may be. It is for this reason that many of my images are homebound perspectives on life. About seeing things as neither good nor bad but as moments which hold meaning, resolution, story and sometimes humour.
Sometimes it is the simplest things in our ordinary life: a chair, a teapot, a cup which can unexpectedly trigger a ripple of narrative within us. Layers of meaning which are personal, relative and yet strangely universal. It is these connections and blended associations held within objects which fascinate me.
And movement, a sense of movement is always there in every image whether it be a sunset making its way across a room in waves of colour or a gentle breeze wafting through windows or the blur of speed or the stillness of early evening. Even more elusive, and perhaps more interesting, are the movements in our inner world, the emotional responses that we project onto things, the way they make us feel - happiness, sadness, contentment, confusion, amusement. I have tried to capture this movement as well, in the patterning of strokes behind each image or the colours blended in the print or in the words woven into the pictures.