Maggie Taylor, Wreckage, 2026, oil on canvas, 81 cm x 61 cm
“Lost centuries of local lives that rose
And flowered to fall short where they began”
(Larkin, P, Bridge for the Living, 1975, extract)
The wrecks emerged out of the mist, marooned on the muddy shoreline at low tide. There was a greyness, a haze, like a veil floating before me and carrying me through time. The decaying hull tilted at a dangerous angle and pieces of wooden debris and ropes lay around the site. The rough pounding of the Humber and the ebb and flow of the water, had eaten away at its structure, leaving a carcass behind.
An elusive mood and presence lingered in the place. The spot was bleak and lonely and spoke of the lives of the people involved. What happened, and what stories could they tell?
The scene appeared to me as a metaphor for life when things go wrong, dreams are shattered and lives lost. Nothing lasts forever, but memories linger on, ebbing and flowing like tides, but always returning, bringing solace in the calmness of our minds.
“What might it mean to reorientate this imagination, to question that habit of thinking of space as a surface? If instead, we conceive of a meeting-up of histories, what happens to our implicit imaginations of time and space? “(Massey, 2005, p. 4)
Wreckage (detail)
