about the artist
I have always been interested in the stories that places keep; in the peculiar charge of certain landscapes, the things we leave behind in them, and the curious human habit of fastening memory to a house, a flower, a scrap of paper, a particular quality of light.
Iām Claire, a photographer, illustrator and designer based on the Atlantic edge of Cornwall. I studied Graphic Design before completing an MA in Illustration: Authorial Practice, where I disappeared rather happily into the folklore and faerylore of the West Country; old paths, local superstitions, half-remembered creatures and the ancient suspicion that woods, wells and moors might possess lives of their own. It taught me that a place is rarely only what can be seen of it; more importantly, it taught me to look.
That habit has proved difficult to shake. I notice weather gathering over a landscape, flowers escaping the boundaries of a garden, the odd tenderness of one hand finding another without thought, candle wax after supper, clothes abandoned on chairs, and tables at that lovely point in the evening when their careful arrangements have surrendered to living; the small, accidental evidence of being here, together, for a little while.
Through Claire Rose Creative I photograph weddings, lovers and places, and work with illustration, design and paper; my wedding stationery has appeared in Wed Magazine, although I am most interested in the places where these disciplines cease behaving themselves and begin to mingle, when a landscape becomes a drawing, the drawing finds its way onto an invitation, and months later I am standing within that same landscape photographing the people whose names were printed upon it.
I have little appetite for perfection; recognition interests me far more. I want the photograph in which you recognise an expression you have loved for years, the overlooked detail that returns an entire day to you, the ordinary thing rendered precious by attention. There is a kind of magic in this, though not, I think, a supernatural one; we make things sacred by noticing them.
Cornwall is the landscape I know most intimately, all granite, salt, tangled gardens, moorland and old stories murmuring beneath newer ones; it has taught me how deeply place can enter a person, but curiosity is a wonderfully disobedient thing, and mine carries me throughout the UK and further afield in search of people, places and stories I have not met yet.
Perhaps that is the thread running through everything I make; to pay exquisite attention to what is fleeting, and make something from it that might endure.
Something brought you here; tell me about it.
Whether it is a wedding, a person, a place or an idea still taking shape, I would love to know what has caught your imagination.