The Hepworth Wakefield

Visit to The Hepworth Wakefield

We took the children to The Hepworth Wakefield, and they thoroughly enjoyed the visit, as did I. As we were approaching the gallery, we came across a really playful outdoor sculpture made up of scrap materials. I am not completely sure if it belonged to The Hepworth or if it was part of some street art, but it immediately caught the children’s attention. It had faces and teeth, and its playful, slightly strange quality really engaged them.

What I found particularly interesting was that my children recognised the bronze square and rectangular cast sculptures made by Barabara Hepworth outside the entrance to the Hepworth gallery from a previous visits to Yorkshire Sculpture Park. This felt like a really positive moment, as it showed they were making connections and retaining information from past exhibitions we have visited together.

Once inside, my children were instantly drawn to the bubbling pool of chocolate. They could have sat around it for hours and kept talking about wanting to jump in. It reminded them of the chocolate river in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and I loved watching how naturally their imagination connected to the work.

I personally connected strongly with several of the works on display, but I was particularly drawn to Caroline Walker’s paintings. Her work made me feel as though I was experiencing a kind of time shift. The paintings are classically executed, yet they depict everyday, modern scenes and objects. It made me imagine someone a hundred years in the future looking back at paintings made in our present time, just as we now look at historical paintings and try to understand the lives and emotions of people from the past.

I think this feeling is heightened by the scale of her work. Many historical paintings were also large in scale and painted in a similar style, yet Walker’s subjects are deeply familiar to me. I recognise the tables, domestic spaces, and moments of care because they reflect my own lived experience. As a parent, I particularly relate to images such as a washboard filled with sterilised bottles, as they mirror moments from my own life when my children were very young.

As I am currently creating work that reflects on early motherhood and my children’s infancy, Walker’s paintings really resonated with me on an emotional level. They pull at the same heartstrings I feel in my own practice, and they have encouraged me to maybe explore figurative painting myself. I hope to create work that captures everyday moments in a way that feels just as honest, intimate and timeless.