a walk in Suffolk, 2025 - ongoing


In August 1992, when the dog days were coming to an end, I set off to walk the county of Suffolk, in the hope of dispelling the emptiness that takes hold of me whenever I have completed a long stint of work.

Such are the opening lines of W.G Sebald’s book The Rings of Saturn. In November 2025, four months ago (how time flies) I set off to retrace the walk he made in Suffolk, East of England, 34 years after him. I was curious about a few things: how the landscape had changed, or, in turn, how it had remained the same; how it would feel to read the book while walking the same landscape it describes; what kinds of thoughts, memories, and feelings would the landscape evoke in me -whether they would be very similar, or rather different, to those of Sebald. How would our thoughts connect?

I was also interested, had been interested for a while, in thinking about walking’s relation to painting. I’m not completely sure why. I like to walk, I guess, and if there was a way to somehow conceptualise the everyday act of walking, make it a part of my practice, that would be great, I thought. (Thinking about this in retrospect; maybe not everything has to be conceptualised).

For some reason, a couple days before leaving, I was sure I would die on the trip. As I told my partner goodbye upon leaving, my eyes became slightly moisturised with tears, as I thought I would never see her again. On the plane to England, the sun shone through the windows to my left in a way that cast orange window-shaped forms on the opposite wall, to my right. This is it, I thought. (Thinking about this in retrospect; I might have been a bit dramatic).

Walking along the coast on the first day, with the sound of the sea crashing into the shore  -a sound that would accompany me for most of the walk- I doubted my thinking behind the project. Does this make any sense, I thought, am I trying too hard? 

Because of coastal erosion, parts of Sebald’s route had by now become untraceable. These stretches were blocked by fences and warning signs, illustrated with falling rocks, exclamation marks, crosses. On one such occasion, on the second day of my walk, the sudden closing of the coastal path I was meant to follow -I was using a hiking app to trace the route, but the app was unaware of this closure- forced me to turn back for several kilometres before heading inland. It began to hail. I took my rain pants out of the bag. The hail, hard as little pebbles, was blowing against my face, as I trampled back along the coast, until I could turn inland and search for the highway. On the second day of my five day walk, while walking for over an hour next to the highway with the hail and wind blowing against my face, I thought: how I wish to be home.

Next to these moments of uncertainty - of which there were a handful- the walk was accompanied by moments of pleasant calm. After hours of walking, late in the morning of the third day, the doubts of the previous two days had softened slightly -though never entirely. Walking along a path, surrounded by trees, slightly exhausted, recording the birds’ singing in the trees -the act of listening through the recorder calmed me, allowed me to turn my attention outwards, to let go of my thoughts for a while- I began feeling more at ease again. The omnipresent sound of the sea was faint in the distance, and a light wind blew on my face while the sun shone through the trees. It felt good, like it did really mean something, the walk, that there was a valid reason for it.

In many ways, the initial reason for taking the walk mirrored that of Sebald; to fill the emptiness that had followed a long stint of work -in my case graduation- with something. It was a way of spending time with that emptiness, with the thoughts and the doubts that accompanied it. At times, the thoughts would grow loud, at times they would subside, much like the rising and falling of the sea that accompanied me for the whole walk.

Now, months later (still alive) I sit writing about the walk for my website. I have made two paintings relating to the trip, but have decided to leave it for a bit longer before making more work. There is something there, in how the experience slowly changes over time in my memory, how certain things rise to the surface, while others sink. In a couple more months I hope to start making new work relating to the walk in a systematic way, and I am curious to see how I recollect it. I will update this page, once more paintings are made.