Waiting … After the Storm published by the Pre-Raphaelite Society
I am delighted that my painting Waiting … After the Storm, together with my accompanying poem, has been published in the latest issue of the Pre-Raphaelite Society’s journal.
The painting emerged from my current interest in Pre-Raphaelite art as a living visual language through which contemporary experiences can be explored.
In this painting the landscape becomes both a real and an emotional place. The passing storm suggest periods of upheaval, grief or uncertainty that alter the way we see the world. Yet the returning light offers the possibility of renewal: a quiet moment in which beauty can reappear, even though the landscape and perhaps the person looking at it has been changed.
Painting and poetry are both important parts of my practice, so it is especially meaningful to see the image and words published together. I am very grateful to the Pre-Raphaelite Society for including the work and for providing a space in which new creative responses to Pre-Raphaelitism can sit alongside historical research and scholarship.
Artist's Statement
Waiting ... after the Storm is a Gouache painting inspired by the Pre-Raphaelite tradition of narrative realism: richly coloured medieval dress, symbolic detail, and emotional storytelling set within a vivid landscape shaped by the limestone rock and turquoise seas of Gibraltar, where I grew up.
Three women stand at a limestone sea-wall, watching the restless sea after a storm. The scene is intentionally ambiguous - suggesting waiting, hope, and the uncertainty of return. Their quiet closeness and supportive gestures form the emotional centre of the image, while seabirds and storm-tossed waves hint at danger passed - and danger remembered.
Painted on a small scale (10×8 inches), the composition is a re-imagining of 'The Defence of Guinevere' (1914) by Florence Susan Harrison (1877-1955), and explores the Pre-Raphaelite balance between heightened beauty and psychological intensity, and the way gesture and symbolism can imply a deeper story without resolving it.
Waiting ... After the Storm also forms part of the wider creative journey leading towards my developing interest in the Pre-Raphaelites.
Following the Pre-Raphaelite tradition ... I have written the following short poem to accompany the painting:
Waiting … After the Storm by Susan Carr
The storm paints its oath in Payne’s Grey skies,
a frown to its encumbered heaviness;
yet lovers’ knots entwine in muted light,
and suffering walks barefoot, her pain to quell.
The wind’s last breath writes prayers in stone
that bear the sea’s unbroken swell.
Searching beyond the dark-blue seam of depth,
a patient vigil quietly kept.
Behind rise ancient cliffs, all-knowing,
lichened gold, scored by the hands of time …
A witness to kingdoms rise and fall,
yet still they guard the sea’s unbroken rhyme.
A sea that holds a vast remembering breath
and whispers truth to those who venture on its tides:
for lovers born to earth must learn to weep,
and hope is love’s last prayer upon the deep.