MARCH HARES

MARCH: THE MONTH OF THE HARE AND MYTHOPOETIC ART

Originating from Greek, mythopoetic means “myth-making” or creating narratives. It is an approach to art where the artist invents their own symbols, creatures, and stories to explore identity, memory, and existential themes, rather than retelling established ancient myths. The artist is not just the producer of an image, but a participant within it, acting as a shaman or storyteller, often using their personal mythology to heal or find stability.

Catherine Hyde’s work frequently explores thresholds, the liminal spaces between waking and dreaming, dusk and dawn, life and death. Her paintings of flora and fauna utilize archetypal imagery, such as the Hare, Stag, Fish, the Green Man, and the Trickster, to create narratives and suggest stories. Working in acrylic on canvas, she uses the repeated layering of paint to represent the ‘adding and subtracting’ of memory and meaning. The surface is further built up and embedded with metal leaf, mica flakes, coins, and seeds, connecting the work to themes of earth, decay, and renewal.

‘It is the otherness of the hare that interests me, their elusiveness, their mythology. For many years, I have employed the earthy magic of the hare as a symbol in my paintings. I see the hare as a conduit, representing freedom and wildness, marking the seasons and pulling the year along. In many of my earlier pieces, it has been a contemplative symbol of fertility. In more recent work, it is a shapeshifter, a witch, the watcher in the landscape.

It has always been an expression of the restlessness of my creative energy.

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‘Shakespeare said that art is a mirror held up to nature. And that’s what it is. The nature is your nature, and all of these wonderful poetic images of mythology are referring to something in you. When your mind is trapped by the image out there so that you never make the reference to yourself, you have misread the image.’
Campbell, J. (1988). 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘔𝘺𝘵𝘩.