Hurvin Anderson opened my soul

I’m embarrassed to admit that I’d never heard of Turner-nominated Hurvin Anderson, before going to his first major solo show, on now at the Tate Britain. I saw one promo image, part of one of his paintings depicting semi abstracted palms, and given my uncontrollable obsession with palm trees, I knew I had to go.

I went for the palm trees, and beautiful palm trees I got, but what I didn’t expect was the deep feeling of familiarity his paintings gave me. The nostalgia started slowly and then cocooned me kindly: the haziness and heat, aside from the palms, motifs like his iron grates, the patterns made by concrete blocks, the way he always seemed to be looking in on something. 

I’ve never been to the Caribbean but isn’t that the beauty of art? He expressed what his surroundings said to him and then in a completely different country, I viewed the work and was transported to yet another place, the other side of the world, where I grew up.

I was born in hot, humid Singapore and then after a few years travelled around countries in the middle east. A couple years in Bahrain, a few more in Oman, a stint in Cyprus thrown in. I’ve been an outsider everywhere, clearly presenting as someone of mixed ethnicity, highly adaptable but clearly, well, different. But, having been sent to boarding school in England aged 9, whilst my parents were thousands of miles away (WTF), I’m culturally more British than anything else. So I wasn’t prepared for the emotions this exhibition brought up in me. A real yearning for my past environments.

In my own art practice, I’m drawn to the same motifs over and over again and I recognise they’re things I loved from childhood: shells that I spent weekends collecting on the beach in Oman, bougainvillia that framed our gate, green, palms everywhere, dragonflies flitting around. Nature and patterns, from my own life, that seems to be my thing. 

So, what am I saying? Firstly, go and see this exhibition, it’s incredible, even without the nostalgia. Anderson’s mixture of figurative and abstract, depth, tone and scale, it’s all stunning.

Secondly, revisiting the past in unexpected ways is nourishing for the soul and provides inspiration for the future. I realised whilst I love the work I do, it’s more aesthetic than emotional. One day I hope to paint something that transports people to a feeling of a place, even if that place is in their mind only.

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