Talk: Naomi Hart: Beneath the Surface – the Edge of the Sea

An illustrated talk by artist Naomi Hart

Through paintings and images of the intertidal zone, sea edges, translucent waters and incredible sea life, Naomi will share her love of the ocean, her collaborations with scientists and her hopes for a positive future. Happiest as an expedition artist, and from a family with a long history of migration, Naomi is often on the move, searching for understanding through changing environments and collaborating with different people.

She is currently artist-in-residence for the Convex Seascape Survey with Blue Marine Foundation and The University of Exeter, looking at marine invertebrates in the benthic zone – the mud beneath the sea – and their capacity for nutrient exchange and carbon storage. She will share some of the images from their collaboration and the significance of the research. Drawn to colour and the interplay between complementary colours, Naomi is interested in physical, tangible media, frequently using found objects or natural pigments in her work, which can give a visceral connection to time and place.

Her related work, ‘La mer’, is about the intertidal zone – the shifting world between the dry and the submerged land. Twice a day, we can walk on the bottom of the sea and then float above the solid ground we once stood on. The relentless push and pull of the tides means that this space is fugitive, and the paintings obliquely reference loss and mourning: whenever you try to grasp a moment it vanishes; washed away like a memory, always beyond reach. There is a balance in the tides: the sanctuary of rock pools, sheltering life from heat and evaporation as the waters recede.