By Charlotte de Blois
Art, for me, is a way of making sense of the contradictions of modern life - our brilliance and our blindness, our connection to nature and our compulsion to control it. Much of my recent work explores this fragile balance, drawing inspiration from myth, environment, and the small, often overlooked details of the world around us.
Icarus Reimagined
The ancient Greek hero Icarus has long fascinated me - inventive, clever, but ultimately undone by arrogance. In many ways, he mirrors humanity itself. As we poison our atmosphere, heat our planet, and push ourselves toward the edge, his story feels painfully relevant.
In this series, I’ve reimagined Icarus not as a boy with wings, but as a racing driver in a winged car - full of youthful confidence and herd instinct, intoxicated by speed and status. I can almost hear the grinding gears, the screech of brakes, and smell the singed rubber. This is a club for those who live only for the moment, heedless of consequence.
I’ve also explored Icarus through charcoal, gold leaf, and acrylic ink, each attempt capturing a different facet of his pride and fall. Two pieces depict his descent to earth — an art historian once remarked that he couldn’t recall another depiction of Icarus before the fall, and that stayed with me. The final piece in the series is a memento of the crash itself: rusted metal, wax, and feathers - a quiet reflection on hubris and loss.
Trees in the City
A decade ago, while working as an editor for an academic journal, a line in an article from Iran struck me deeply:
“The city is the skeleton of our economy, but its trees and gardens feed our souls.”
That sentence has echoed in my mind ever since. As Cambridge expands, I find myself wondering how easily we forget that truth. Trees are too often seen as the enemy of urban life - blamed for cracking pavements, dropping leaves, or blocking light - rather than as allies that absorb pollution, prevent flooding, and cool our streets.
Earlier this year, I curated ‘Trees in the City’, an exhibition at Unit 13 where I share a studio with other artists. The response from fellow residents was inspiring, each offering a personal take on what trees mean in an increasingly artificial world. My own pieces reflect both gratitude and grief - for the resilience of nature, and the carelessness with which we treat it.
Plastic Pollution and Our Oceans
In another piece, I turned my attention to the sea - specifically, the devastation caused by plastic pollution.
This 3D work, moulded in Fimo and displayed under a bell jar, references Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa - a nod to both the power of nature and the fragility of the life within it. Long before Banksy used the same motif, I was drawn to its energy and form, reimagining it to depict the carnage that plastic inflicts on marine life.
The bell jar both protects and imprisons the scene - much like how we admire the ocean from afar, yet fail to safeguard it in reality.
Closing Thoughts
Across these works, a common thread runs: our relationship with the world we inhabit and the damage we so casually inflict upon it. Myth, nature, and material all intertwine to ask a simple question - can we change course before we fall too far, too fast?