‘Feels like home’ is an exhibition of paintings drawn from the personal photo archives of immigrants, refugees and other itinerants about leaving home and creating a new home. It is an ongoing series that explores themes of home, displacement, immigration and the effect of political policies that restrict movement.
Thomas Cartwright was born in Toronto and lives in Cape Town, South Africa, and shuttled between the two in his youth; he is, perhaps consequently, drawn to themes of displacement and resettlement. Both his ‘homes’ (Toronto Islands and Cape Town) are rich in natural beauty, and his work consistently explores the coming together of the natural world and the human-made, constructed one. He is drawn to beauty and he is drawn to meaning, and his work is an exploration of both.
Summed up by the Welsh word hiraeth, which is a longing for one's homeland and an expression of the bond you feel when far from your home country.
To me, it also suggests places that once existed that have changed or disappeared – such as our home, which is no longer home because all the people that made it home are gone.
This picture represents the weird, in-between feelings of pain and hope I experienced on leaving my homeland to find a new one.