Anne-Laure Carruth
Deluge
Woodcut print on Guarro cotton paper 2/3 series, 75 x 94 cm.
£550
Oaxaca city, Mexico, 2018.
The intensity of the heat is stifling working in a friends artist studio, its 40 degrees with no openable windows. And then the heavens open and the delicious smell of rain on the hot concrete outside wafts in as the riotous sound of the rain beats down on the tin roof creating the most almighty din, time to celebrate and dance in the street! All senses and emotions are heightened here, in climate as well as culture - nothing is half hearted. The darkness as well as the light is celebrated and accepted, maybe thats why I feel so comfortable here.
Golden Square
Chalk, oil, ink on canvas, 250 x 180 cm.
An excruciatingly terrible freelance design contract sends me into a downward spiral of despair. This job is soul destroying, completely against my values, zero creativity and in a grim characterless office full of unfriendly people. I walk the streets of soho crying every lunchtime until I happen across soho square and then everything changes. A row of banana plants in the central flowerbed seem to be waving cheerfully and beckoning me over. Their voluptuous curved forms are so utterly full of life and love and cheekiness and fill me with so much joy and gratitude. I am restored.