Deep in the jungle with Freya Clarke
Discussion with artist Freya Clarke
Photos by Nina Ducleux & Freya Clarke
British-born Freya Clarke is one of the leading artists in our “Travel Diaries” collection. After starting her career in fashion design in Paris, she changed tack for Rennes and returned to her first love: drawing. A period of disconnection that took her and her companion, also an artist, Alex Colson, to Costa Rica, in the heart of Latin America, all by van. Although she didn't keep any travel diaries on the spot, she came back with a wealth of inspiration, and a desire to write about the experience.
Taking advantage of her geographical proximity, Nina, our photographer, went to meet her in her studio in Saint-Lunaire, Côtes d'Armor. It was an opportunity to take a few shots, and for her to tell us all about the trip over a cup of coffee.
How did you come to be an artist? Can you tell us a bit about your background?
That's the fatal question I'm often asked. Well, as far as I can remember, I've always drawn, ever since I was a little girl. My father was a teacher of object design in London and he had a thing about creating things, making things... That influenced me a lot, so drawing was really part of my life.
French isn't my mother tongue, and I think that as a child, drawing helped me to express myself and verbalize what I was feeling. It may sound cliché, but it's a good escape. In the end, I realized that the older I got, the better I got at it, although I'd never really thought of it as a profession, because my parents were very conventional, like “you've got to be a doctor or a lawyer”. But I carried on, and went to art school in Paris for 3 years.
It was a period that had a big impact on my creativity. I'd started out as an illustrator, but my teacher didn't really like my style. So I got it into my head that illustration wasn't for me after all, and that stopped me in my tracks for a while.
I went on to train in fashion design, as I was passionate about textiles, and ended up graduating in this sector and becoming an accessories stylist. This was my job for several years in Paris. What really interested me was the craftsmanship side of things, which you find in leather goods, for example. It really excited me, to see people making something with their hands, resulting in something you can wear.
How did you spend your years as a Parisian? And what prompted you to move to Saint-Lunaire?
I was quite young, having finished my studies early, but I stopped early too. I realized that I wasn't really finding my way in this 3,000-hour Parisian life, consuming, spending... Hence the fork in the road to Rennes, and then Saint-Lunaire. In fact, I was going through a period of soul-searching at the time, especially from an ethical and moral point of view. I was working a lot in the luxury mid-range, and depending on the brand, it wasn't always right. Even creatively, my partner Alex and I were saturated. So we made our first move to Rennes, which isn't that far from Paris after all, and stayed there for 5 years.
We traveled a lot back then, and the rent was cheaper - well, life was cheaper overall. So we were able to really take a breather. You live in a creative business, so it's very much day-to-day, and that in itself is very cool, but you have to know how to take breaks, escape, recharge your batteries and come back. Then family life made us question the idea of living in a conurbation. For my part, I've always been more of a homebody, and I love nature. So the more time passed, the more we escaped from Rennes to go to the forest, the coast or other countries. In the end, we said to ourselves, why, instead of making little leaps, don't we just go and settle down by the sea, and make these escapes our daily routine?
How did you get back into illustration?
When I left Paris, I had this moment where I thought “ok, I'm leaving the fashion world, but what am I going to do?”. And it came back a bit gradually, during the big stress peaks I had. In fact, that was a big factor in my decision to leave fashion, the stressful relationship with work gratification. Often, you go for the classic things: shopping, cooking... For me, it was drawing. It brought me back to that thing from my childhood, about being able to verbalize. And as we moved in October, November 2019, there was the covid. That's when, when we were locked in the apartment for 2 months, I thought it was a good opportunity to post what I was doing and see how it turned out.
There was a bit of a snowball effect, people were quite keen on what I was doing, and it gave me a good boost. I gave myself a year, saying to myself, if it takes, great, if it doesn't, I'll stay in styling, while reorienting myself towards something that suits me better.
My escape was drawing. It brought me back to that thing from my childhood about being able to verbalize.
As part of the “Travel Diaries” collection, you told us about your trip to Costa Rica through your work. Did you have any creative ideas behind this trip?
It was one of the first trips we made, post-Paris, with the aim of saying to ourselves “let's switch off and absorb everything”. We have our little one-off trips, where we go away by the week, or fortnight, but we also have those where we go away for a month or two, completely isolated, with no telephone. Places where you can get back to nature. Costa Rica was one such trip. We wanted to tour the island in a van, with our tent on the roof. It was really a trip to recharge our batteries, not for creative purposes. But in retrospect, I like the idea of a travel diary made after the fact. While working on this collection, I was able to look back at my photos and rethink moments.
It's a bit strange to say it like that, but despite the fact that I may not have taken photos all the time, I remember moments very well. For example, in this country there are great red vultures, and I remember how I felt watching them. I thought it was nice to be in that moment, to absorb it and “box up” those memories and associated feelings stored somewhere in my head. I had a lot of moments like that on this trip.
It's a bit in my temperament, I have a lot of visual things that are associated with feelings. I'm going to see things that I won't forget, that will stay with me like subliminal images, with emotions linked to them, that aren't in anything physical either.
That's why there are so many things about this trip where it was all about feeling, just being in the moment, in nature. There's a part of me that, when I look at the photos again, thinks how cool it is to have been in a country where nature is more important than anything else.
In this idea of being in the moment, there's this thing where we were obliged to sleep on beaches, in a camper van, and it's true that there aren't a thousand things to do either, even in relation to our resources. In general, we'd make a meal, sit on the beach and watch the sunset, until the mosquitoes attacked us. It was a bit of a ritual.
We'd find ourselves next to the locals who'd come to enjoy the moment after their day's work. And we'd say to ourselves, “This is what it's all about”. It's not a closed hotel, with its chlorine-filled beaches and pools, but being by the sea, with stray dogs who come to see you morning and night, with locals who respect you because you're coming to their place, but you're not in the same consumer mode as all the tourists. You get to see the real thing. These are memories that I don't think I'll ever forget, because I tell myself that we've experienced cool things, without even thinking about it at the time, and that's important too.
Were there any things that particularly inspired you or fueled your creativity while you were there?
A lot of the inspiration for the collection in particular came from the museums in San Jose. I'd never seen a museum that was so overflowing with artifacts and objects, and that had a big impact on me. Generally speaking, museums are often very structured and uncluttered, but this time it was almost overflowing, there were so many handicrafts on display. Creatively, there was so much on display - after all, it's an entire slice of Latin American history and culture.
In this area, there's a very strong connection with animals, nature and mythology, a kind of shamanic or spiritual connection. In fact, in my early inspirations, what really animated me was mythology, so I found myself very much at home there. Because, as an aside, my father used to tell us a lot of stories from Greek mythology, and that really inspired me.
Apart from that, for me, Costa Rica is all about colors too. They know how to combine them. It may not be something you see a lot of on the European side, but there's color everywhere and incredible typographic work on signs and logos.
And then there's that thing over there, concentrating 5% of the world's biodiversity, which is pretty huge for such an area. You've got all kinds of climates, from mountains and volcanoes to the ocean and sometimes the desert too. This inevitably gives diversity to what I've produced for the collection. All this to say that, in terms of inspiration, there was a lot going on, in terms of architecture, colors, vegetation and animals.
I imagine that on a trip of this order, you must have a multitude of anecdotes, would you have any to share with us?
So, yes, there have been quite a few, some a bit funnier than others, but that's the concept too, sleeping in a pick-up truck with a tent on the roof. It's a country that's often sold to you as relatively dangerous, because it's Latin America and a transit point for drug trafficking... But in the end, your perception of the place depends above all on what you put into your trip, what you give off. I think there was a kind of respect for us, probably because we were on the bangs of the usual tourist circuit. In the end, we often found ourselves spectators of many things.
One aspect that surprised me was that this is a country where the difference between rich and poor is very pronounced. Basically, the very rich side is the American, because it's the country where the USA retires, and the very poor side is the Costa Rican.
As for anecdotes, on the whole, it's a lot about animals. At the same time, when you camp for a while in the same place, you inevitably create affinities with your environment and therefore with the animals. Ultimately, you're the one squatting in their spot.
I remember this one time, when we went up to the northern part, to the Cloud Mountains. Heading west from there, you come to the Osa Peninsula, which is home to almost all the country's animal species. It's a place that's not easily accessible, a bit like Jurassic Park: either you go by private plane, because there's a strip of landings for resorts, or by car, but a car that can really hold its own. For us, getting there was hell. Anyway, I'll tell you what.
The place was completely overrun with Parrots. At first, we thought it was great: when you see one, it's magnificent, the second, too beautiful, but when you get to 100, it's not quite the same. They eat almonds, but they spit them out, so every 5 minutes you get an almond shell in your face. Between that and their screaming... I've come to think “I hate you, I love you, but I hate you”.
You have to realize that there's a lot of noise out there, so much so that when we got home, we found Paris to be a silent city. At night, for example, we could hear coatis and/or raccoons scratching around our tent, looking for food. On the way out, we'd see a multitude of pairs of eyes looking at us, waiting for us to put down our rubbish. They would steal them from us, even if we hung them up high.
In fact, with all the animals there's something pretty cute going on. Even with cockroaches, they're so big over there that you don't really have that notion of an insect. There are so many of them that Costa Ricans cohabit very well with them, and you have to get used to it. For example, in convenience stores, they're everywhere, but in a way, it's a good sign, it's part of the thing, it's a bit of the local cachet. We had one that followed us in the van the whole way. We called him Miguel, and we finally managed to get him out.
There's something quite majestic about the animals there. We didn't manage to see everything, but we did see a lot, including some species we never thought we'd get close to.
When did you leave?
In January, we cut into the rather ugly season in Brittany. And as for Costa Rica, it's a season where you're not in the rainy season, but not in the middle of summer either, so it's quite ideal.
After that, as I was saying, there are quite a few micro-climates out there. I had planned for some bad weather, but not the cold either, figuring that this was a region where things should go pretty well. But at one point, we crossed the Costa Rican mountain range, with the aim of seeing some quetzals. The first night, we slept at the very top of the mountains, so first of all, it was hard to breathe because of the height, and then super cold. We went from 35 degrees the night before, sweating just by moving a finger, to minus 1 in the middle of the mountains.
So, did you finally get to see the quetzals?
Yes, after that, we took an Airbnb for the first time during our stay. And in fact, we'd asked a lady, completely at random, who told us she had avocado fields, so she had quetzals in her garden. We were really pleased, because otherwise you have special guides for that, with whistles, who call them, you see them, you take your photo, you pay and they leave. And as soon as she told us about the birds, one of them came and landed on an avocado, so it was great, it's a really beautiful animal, very colourful.
What would you say you've taken away from this trip?
All the animals come back in the work I do, and so does the noise. It's always been in my DNA. Like the pattern of the shirt, which really represents the journey, with all the things that happen in nature, the architecture, the colours, life in the place, the city, the noise, the music. It's always buzzing.
There's music everywhere, the people are friendly, they're outside, they're moving, they're dancing, the animals are there morning, noon and night. There's a real buzz going on all the time, which is both soothing and stimulating. It's very much in tune with my world, in fact. In any case, it's where I find myself, and I try to reflect that in my drawings and paintings.
I like to dabble in everything, try out new things, multiply my mediums. I think that's something that gets overlooked. People put up barriers, telling themselves they have no legitimacy, but at the end of the day, nobody can stop you if you like doing something. And seeing what was being done over there, in terms of graphic design for example, helps you to realise that the limits you set yourself can be overcome in a very positive way.
