As beautiful as words are, explaining our emotions, what we are feeling, how to feel, how to react, pale in comparison when it comes to visual imagery. While an entire sentence is needed to show the full spectrum of an emotion, an image truly speaks a thousand words.
“Hiraeth,” a Welsh word with no direct English translation. The feeling of missing your home. A feeling of nostalgia, severe longing, or desire for something that cannot be obtained or attained at a high cost with a deep sense of regret. A feeling that most everyone can come to experience at one point or another in their life. It is a feeling that rocks you to your core and shreds as you grapple with its consequences. Regardless of it being brought about by your actions or not, it is a feeling that touches your soul.
If just a single word can have that deep meaning tied behind it, one that was impossible to translate directly, imagine how an illustration that mirrored that word would affect you. That was the birth of “Ascension of Hiraeth,” It was the most accurate way to portray the meaning of Hiraeth and her anguish, the anguish that we all know in an illustration. At the same time, she reads of elegance, vulnerability, and potential loss—a turbulent cloud of inherent emotions and the consequences of your choices and actions. Like the word “Hiraeth,” the illustration can pull forth more feelings than words can express.
Ascension of Hiraeth leaves the viewer to find the meaning of their “Hiraeth” having an ambiguous and yet direct emotion coming across. Great works of art draw people in and let them experience art in whatever way they choose.
