Hiraeth is a Welsh word that is somewhat difficult to describe
in English, for the reason that there is no single English word that expresses all that it does. Some words often used to try to explain it are homesickness, yearning, and longing.
However, there is more depth to hiraeth than in any of those words on their own. It is a multi-layered word, which includes a different variety of homesickness than what is generally referred to.

This kind of homesickness is like a combination of the homesickness, longing, nostalgia, and yearning, for a home that you cannot return to, no longer exists, or maybe never was. It can also include grief or sadness for who or what you have lost, losses which make your “home” not the same as the one you remember.

One attempt to describe hiraeth in English says that it is “a longing to be where your spirit lives.” This description makes some sense out of the combination of words that describe this feeling.  The place where my spirit feels most at home is both a physical location that I can return to at any time, and a nostalgic of a home, not attached to a specific place, but a time from the past that I can only return to by revisiting old memories. My spirits home is not only separated by space or time, but instead a place of memory, where I can only go in my emotions triggered by the scenes this exhibition putsbefore you.

The feelings of belonging, comfort, solitude and simpler times
attached to my childhood in Crystal Brook drove me to this visual
exploration of hiraeth.