Elysia Byrd

I walk each day in my local parks, everything starts with noticing.

To slow down and to notice, is to remain open to awe.

There is an intimacy of looking, bending down to get close to the earth, rocks and soil. Connection with plants, soil, animals and weather provides cosmic connection for me.  These rituals form the foundation of my practice where I find a deep rooted oneness with the universe. 

Re-claiming the human as part of nature, not separate, I use the word outside rather than nature. 

I bring the outside physically inside the studio, collecting oak galls, feathers, dock seeds, willow, special stones, foraging plants and food waste to make inks, botanical dyeing hemp muslin and bamboo silk. These sit alongside more traditional materials such as calico, canvas, watercolours and pigment. With a basis in painting these find their way into predominantly wall based works. Goldenrod, logwood, marigold, Brazilwood, hemp muslin, bamboo silk, cockle shell, ochre pigment: my materials lists read like the beginnings of a spell. I think about how an artwork holds a particular energy through the materials held within it. 

I’m interested in the tension between the foraged, found and waste materials and those which are bought. A relationship forms between the works and myself, we are in conversation together. Listening, as I listen to the outside, the works begin to speak to me, “tuck me here, stitch me there, fold me, stuff me, paint me, I’d like to hold that object”. We call the works into existence together. 

Dyeing thread, sisal, wool, cotton, the stitched mark has become as important as the painted one. The threads are vital to my works, they bind thinking together: moments, places, spaces, feelings. Threads begin to hold an energetic resonance, they are not simply practical but an intrinsic, aesthetic part of the work. 

I welcome the small breakages within ceramics, the stitch that didn’t pull as I expected, the brushstroke which bled more than I wanted. Within all of these moments there is an interplay between artistic intervention and cosmic connection. I respond to these with care, pulling them towards a point at which they can rest for a time.

My works are often small, you must get up close to look. There is an intimacy in the looking, a closeness which I am searching for. 

The ceramics are transporters, vessels which hold energy. The alchemical processes which they undertake in their making only further hold this sense of otherworldliness, they feel at one familiar and from another dimension.  

Scent has also become a vital element, stuffing dried herbs -oakmoss, cedar, yarrow, rosemary into folds of fabrics. The viewer must get up really close in order to smell, returning to an intimacy of looking. Working with wax to cast branches, oyster and scallop shells which also contain scented materials have been my latest explorations. These make their way into the wall based works, tied with dyed thread, protruding from the surface. 

Each work acts as a gift in gratitude to the rich tapestry of personal connections, which build outward into entangled, cosmic systems. 

My practice is an invitation to let the outside inside of you.