HIRAETH

What is Hiraeth? And why name the gallery after it?

The word “hiraeth” has no precise English translation so it has some additional nuances.

Homesickness for a home you can’t return to, or that never was.

Nostalgia, an earnest longing or desire, or a fleeting sense of regret... what if...?

“I, too, know what hiraeth means. To me, it is a longing for a feeling that may not truly exist, a misty blend of nostalgia and dream, and for a place that invokes this elusive feeling. “ Steve from Ohio in US

"...a wordless song flowing like an underground river...calling and calling me always to return to Wales...a luminal place between forest, sea and sky...an ancestral longing imprinted in my cells...like a bird that knows the way...an internal map...” Anna Hawthorne, BC Canada

Hiraeth is in the mountains where the wind speaks in many tongues and the buzzards fly on silent wings. It’s the call of my spiritual home, it’s where ancient people made their home.

"Hiraeth - the link with the long forgotten past, the language of the soul, the call from the inner self. Half forgotten-fraction remembered. It speaks from the rocks, from the the trees and in the waves. It’s always there. Yes, I hear it. Yes, I understand  what Hiraeth means. “ Val Bethell 2003

“A longing to be where your spirit lives.” Samantha Kielar