Postcards
Memories to keep, share and collect.
Postcards tucked away in books, in drawers, at the bottom of a handbag, tucked into picture frames, stuck to the fridge. A portable piece of art.
These days my postcards are selected from the museum or gallery shop that I go to, carefully searching for the paintings that stood out to me. Pictures that I hoard in wadges, this may seem unnecessary but there is such joy to be found in going through your old postcard collection and remembering the time you saw that painting. It can be a portal back to the exact day you stood in a gallery transfixed. There are a few places around my home that I display postcards my favourite is to tuck them into a frame that is on the wall. I am a collage artist through and through, I am a sucker for layered imagery. My own curated exhibition above a chest of drawers.
Other classic postcard destinations for me are to be tucked inside a book I am reading, on a pinboard or on the fridge. I haven’t accessorized the fridge in a long time and I am getting inspired the more I think about postcards and layered notes.
To me postcards remind me of childhood, receiving them in the post from family and friends whether they have gone to Wales or Las Vegas a postcard would come through the letterbox. A colourful square from a different land with your loved ones scrawl all over the back of it. When it was your turn to send a postcard you would spin the card carousels round and round trying to find the perfect card for your best friend. We also went through a phase as a family of sending postcards home and seeing if they got back before we did, in retrospect maybe this was just another way to keep a card for myself.
My letter writing days are not as strong as they used to be, it feels like a dying art form. What used to be a foppish piece of fun now costs you way more than 50p to post then. you have the elusive search for a postbox.
Rifling through boxes of old postcards in shops. After meeting one of my old school friends for lunch we were walking our way back to the station and came across a second hand shop packed full of stuff. Full of tat to rummage through: perfect. After spending some time in the morning thinking about postcards I came across a whole box of them. There were some beautiful impressionist cards that I couldn’t resist, impressionism always finds me somehow. I am drawn to the dreamy ethereal landscapes. I feel like impressionist paintings bring landscapes to life, that hazy feeling you get when you are standing in awe of beauty. I also liken this feeling to when Mr Darcy walks through a hazy meadow on the way to Elizabeth Bennet in the Keira Knightly 2005 Pride and Prejudice.
One of the postcards that caught my eye was a painting called The Flood by Alfred Sisley, a painter I am not too familiar with. The beauty of the internet is that most galleries have their collections online so I searched the Danish gallery that was on the back of the postcard and found the painting on their website. This then lead me to search for more of his paintings and I found The Bridge at Sèvres painting on the Tate website which isn’t currently on display but it would be nice to see it one day in person!
So wherever you are in the world if you are missing that feeling of going to a gallery or simply wanting to play detective from the back of a postcard, have a look at some of the gallery websites that are out there with their collections on them. Browsing galleries online with a cup of tea sounds like a wise way to spend time to me.
Fancy sending a postcard again?
Send one to a friend.
Route through your drawer of kept things and see if you can find a postcard and remember how you got it.
Go to an exhibition and buy just one card that speaks to you in the gift shop.
If you are feeling crafty why not make a postcard to send to a friend, for me the highest gift you can give is the gift of time and something made.
Postcards are a snapshot, an idea and sometimes part of a bigger collection. One of my favourite shops is Choosing Keeping in Covent Garden. They have lots of postcard collections. Every now and then I treat myself to one by a Japanese design company called Dimanche. They use such vivid colours and the print quality is great, slightly raised and textured.
The collection below are a few of my current favourites that are littered around the flat. In the centre Norham Castle, Sunrise by JMW Turner then going clockwise from The Flood by Alfred Sisley, The Kien Valley with the Bluemlisap massif by Ferdinand Hodler, a postcard that came with a jumper from Simswear, Into the wild by Alex Monroe, a painting by Paul Gauguin that I can’t translate the danish on the postcard and a postcard by Dimanche.
