A Poem of the Sea is Sally Simpson’s exploration, through the metaphor of water, of humanity’s relationship with the natural world. It is also a celebration and a demonstration of the expressive power innate in the act of drawing. The artist articulates the metaphor of humanity’s ongoing relationship with suspension or suspense, as evoked by bodies in water.

The shoreline, where land and sea continuously act on one another, exemplifies the relationship with timelessness and change. A human can only survive for moments underwater, yet immersed we are suspended between life and death, and we lose connection with the gravity that hinges us to the rest of the world. The expression of the feeling of being within water evokes the loss of the defined boundaries of the self and all the paradoxes it contains.

A Poem of the Sea is curated by Peter Haynes.