Hearth of the Home

An exercise in Ekphrasis

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If you’ve been following my Instagram feed you’ll know that I’ve spent quite a bit of time looking at art recently, both in Valencia, Spain, and in London. As a result, I’ve been thinking about ekphrasis and I’ve written this short piece of creative non-fiction about a work of art that caught my attention at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition in 2023. Please enjoy!

My eyes darted to and fro, hither and thither, this way and that. The gallery rooms were awash with art—oil paintings, collages, water colours, prints, photographs—and waves of line, colour, and form flowed along the walls.

Once my brain had adjusted to the concentration of artistic talent, I rooted myself and began to take in the architecture. Skywards, a richly embellished and generously deep coving arched towards a white-painted ceiling. And then, as I let my gaze fall, the art appeared to cascade down the walls in swathes of connection and disconnection, with pieces finally anchoring themselves at eye level.

Focussing on the negative space around the art I noticed the frames; some were fine and elegant, others modern with squared off edges, yet others were familiar in the classical style, moulded and gilded; each frame owned its place on the wall in an act of boundary-making.

For two hours that morning, I paced the rooms of the Royal Academy Summer Show in Burlington House, London. One piece, identified in the catalogue as Hearth 2, grabbed my attention. At first glance I understood this domestic interior to be a painting because the deeply textured walls of the room looked as if they’d been worked with oils. It was only when I read the description that I realised it was a photograph, a revelation that boosted my appreciation—this was not a figment of the artist’s imagination but a real place, an actual kitchen, in someone’s home.

Again and again, I went back to stare at the photograph behind its low glare glass. The scene was inviting and, at 1348mm wide by 899mm high, it was so generous in scale I could almost step inside the space. Empty of people at this exact moment in time, the kitchen—this heart of the home, or hearth—was clearly a place of work, where people gathered to scrub vegetables and prepare family meals, where they washed and wiped plates, cups, glasses, jugs and ladles. The accoutrements were all there, on shelves, on the wooden counter top, and wedged into the metal draining rack. I fancied I could hear a brief metallic whine as the tap was turned, and water splashed to the steady flow of chatter and laughter.

Like the crockery and cutlery, the plumbing was also on view, not hidden behind boards or embedded in walls. Easy to access, I thought, as some of the pipes below the rudimentary work surface were bound with tape, and metal brackets held everything fast. The inflow emerged through peeling acid-yellow paint and took a horizontal path before terminating in taps above twin sinks of rectangular steel, and the waste pipes beneath joined together for the outflow of water, horizontally exiting through the same wall.

Unapologetically rustic, this humble scene was full of detail, from the fluorescent tube on the wall to the half-full bottle of cooking oil on the counter, from the sieve hanging from a hook and some chilli pods in a jar to a turquoise coloured clock that set the time at 12.45. If I could have added a soundtrack to my encounter with this artwork, it would have been the gentle breezy notes of pan pipes. Drawing these sounds from the mists of my memory, I dwelled a little longer. Then, with a knot of regret forming in my tummy, I quietly extracted a water bottle from my bag and moved on.

I thought about posting the photograph I took in the gallery of Leslie Osterling’s Hearth 2 here but decided instead to post it in Notes—this is the link if you wish to pop over to see it. My reason for showing it in a separate place is that I think the writing should stand alone. I’d love to know if you agree, or whether you really would have preferred to see the subject of this piece at the same time as reading about my response to it.

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So what are you reading or writing at the moment?

Are you visiting any galleries over the summer?

I look forward to chatting with you in the comments!

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Credits & Links

Photo above is my own.

Ekphrasis is the term used for writing in response to art. Here are some thoughts from a previous post about this literary device. 

For more about the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy.

If you want to join me on Instagram, please say ‘hi’!

And take a look at the website of the talented Leslie Osterling.