TellHyd
2023
TellHyd is a series of fourteen oil paintings on paper. The project began during a residency on Bald Head Island. Whilst reading Rachel Carson’s The Edge of the Sea, Clyde noted Caron’s observational renderings of shoreline ecosystems. The act of describing, carries a certain kind of poetic gesture. In asking how one translates observations, Clyde directed their paintings away from the mimetic tradition of landscape. Mimetic representation is quickly reduced to its reference, where visual recognition overtakes the communication of the experience, as one is able to identify and categorize familiar representation. Playing off their previous work in JustOpening, Clyde continued their trajectory of painting without the reference seeking instead the essence of the landscape. Being both influenced physically from being on a small island and mentally in reading about the ecosystem stimulated a more dynamic approach towards highlighting the significance of the shore as the threshold between water & land. As the paintings were created in tandem, the installation of the paintings demonstrate the idea of sympoiesis, a term Donna Haraway describes as “working-with,” to embody the collective entanglement of the landscape.
