Take Me Home, Take Me Home

Take Me Home, Take Me Home

Oil on canvas

110x70cm

Ancestral knowing. A longing for a familiar place, person, or time. Both a plea and a surrender.The title of this piece is an echo of yearning. It speaks to that inescapable pull towards somewhere you may not have known in this life, yet feel profoundly connected to. A place that, despite its unfamiliarity, feels unmistakably like home. Ancient. Remembered. Felt across impossible distances.

This painting was inspired by two poems that have stayed with me long after I first encountered them. Together, they explore the idea of home not simply as a destination, but as something carried within us; an instinct, a memory, a feeling that quietly calls us back to ourselves.

The first is an intensely personal poem that speaks of ancient promises, of turning through time only to find one face still waiting there, and of the quiet refrain: Take me home. Take me home. Those words became, for me, less about returning to a physical place and more about the enduring pull of memory. The people we carry with us. The versions of ourselves we leave behind. The invisible threads that continue to exist across time and distance.

The historic migratory nature of wild geese felt like the perfect embodiment of this idea. Guided by an internal compass older than memory itself, they travel thousands of miles to places they have never consciously known. Generation after generation, they return to ancestral lands, following something intangible, yet so deeply embedded within them that it becomes unquestionable. They leave everything familiar behind in pursuit of home. Their flight carries longing, devotion and inevitability.

Mary Oliver’s poem Wild Geese was also a profound source of inspiration for this work. Her words remind us that the natural world continues with quiet certainty, untouched by our very human anxieties and struggles. In nature there is no judgement, only belonging.

At the heart of Wild Geese is the comforting idea that each of us already has a place in the world. It is easy to lose sight of that amidst the fast pace of modern life and the expectations we place upon ourselves. Yet if we take a moment to pause, listen, and observe the world around us, we begin to remember that we belong to something far greater than ourselves.

The poem encourages us to trust our own nature; to follow the quiet instincts that feel undeniably true, to embrace both our tenderness and our humanity, “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”, And to recognise that pain and loneliness are universal experiences rather than personal failings. There is comfort in knowing that we are part of something vast, ancient and alive.

For me, these geese are far more than a representation of birds in flight. They are symbols of remembrance, instinct, hope and return. They remind me that there are places, people and moments that continue to call to us across impossible distances. Whether that journey leads us back to a landscape, a memory, a person, or simply ourselves, perhaps home has never been a place at all. Perhaps it has always been the quiet certainty that we will recognise it when we arrive.