Finding Solitude

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Pencil and ink on bristol paper
A3
2023

This collection of pencil drawings, created by Claire in 2023 and 2024, began by thinking about how time alone either physically or mentally is difficult to achieve as a parent. Chairs are perched precariously on branches or balanced on top of a tottering tower of bins that need emptying. The chairs are inviting, you’d quite enjoy that seat for yourself, but ultimately, all of these chairs and their offer of rest are unusable. 

A drawing of a dining chair, in the middle of a grassy field, with a telegraph pole pictured in the distance.
Finding solitude: Never disconnected
A wooden dining chair balanced between the branches of a tree.
Finding solitude: Precarious balance
A wooden chair balanced on top of three dustbins.
Finding solitude: Pilgrimage to the bins
A stool with one slipper on the seat and two dustpans and brushes on the checked floor.
Finding Solitude: Put your feet up
A plastic chair in a scruffy yard, locked behind a mesh gate.
Finding Solitude: Locked away
A wooden chair resting on top of a patch of nettles.
Finding Solitude: Nettle patch
A chair outside a building with brick steps and handrails. A can of coke is on the wall next to the chair.
Finding Solitude: Stairway to haven
A chair is lodged over a pile of logs in front of a sigh that says "STOP! Danger of death."
Finding Solitude: STOP! Danger of death.
A padded dining chair lays on its side on the ground outside, in front of a fridge designed to sell ice creams.
Finding Solitude: Tantrum

Each chair is based on a real chair. Three of them were seen abandoned outside while walking to school with her children. Other drawings feature real chairs that have been moved to a more surreal setting to elaborate on the feeling of never being able to find time alone. 

Claire started making this series of drawings during an artist residency in 2023 with Wild Rumpus and (M)other Collective, where she and a group of artist-mothers stayed in the woods for 4 days. While sitting on an old wooden dining chair in the middle of a field she read Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida. In that book he compares familiar landscapes with the maternal body. “There is no other place of which one can say with such certainty that one has already been there.” Within these drawings, Claire has aimed to capture the familiarity of a chair and to set it in a location that we feel we might have visited. But within each drawing there is some barrier, either physical or emotional, that prevents us from sitting down in peace. 

The original drawings, framed are available to purchase for £150 each and unframed A4 inkjet prints are available to buy for £15 each. Please visit the Shop page to purchase.