For Eileen Agar, the natural world was a playground of artistic possibilities
Harriet Baker, Apollo
July 2021
‘‘Life is not a question of points, but a question of flow. It’s the flow and the hide and seek of flow that matters,’ reads a page in a notebook that belonged to Eileen Agar. Flow – essential for an artist whose materials were thrown up by the sea. Agar moved with the tide, combing beaches in Dorset, looking for driftwood and shells, or for human-made objects rendered organic, surfaces smoothed or encrusted, by their submersion in the sea. On the coast of Brittany, she saw rocks shaped like limbs or buttocks. She looked for the surreal in nature, opened her eyes to its symbols. Seeing the forms of trees or pebbles, she was, she wrote, ‘astounded to discover that dumb nature makes an effort to speak to you, to give you a sign […] to symbolise your innermost thoughts’. Hide and seek.’ […]