I often get lost…in forests and streets; my innate lack of direction often leaves me in a sick panic, angry at myself, marching forward, wrongly, into an abyss of lateness and fear. I don’t need to sleep to enact this in my dreams, it’s all too real.

Like the characters in fairy tales, my crumbs of information are always eaten by the birds.

As a city dweller I have a deep yearning for the countryside and forests, imagining myself being at one with nature – raw damp earth beneath my feet – awakening my inner lizard brain and making me invincible as I talk to the trees.

Instead I pound pavements of safe concrete covered in gum; the forest for me is a metaphor for a kind of freedom mixed a kind of fear.

From my London studio window I see only four trees; I‘ve watched them grow from saplings, buffeted by traffic pollution and careless vandals above ground, below ground I imagine their roots growing into the infrastructure and drains and internet cables…Steadily and quietly defying and destroying us as a payback for our human recklessness. Cathy de Monchaux 2024