Daydream

Description

I’ve been sketching versions of this artwork for the past four years. It began as a simple doodle and gradually grew into a way of expressing the power of imagination and hope.

The drawing is rooted in childhood memories from when I was six or seven, at St Joseph’s Junior School in Kendray. Our playground had a red brick retaining wall, with higher fields beyond it. On windy days, the air used to swirl in one corner, and I vividly remember spreading my coat wide, hands tucked into my pockets like makeshift wings, convinced that if I timed my jump just right, I could lift off and fly. I even persuaded a few others that if we jumped from the wall at the right moment, we would glide around the playground. Of course, we never did — but the feeling of possibility and daydreaming stayed with me.

Around the same time, one midweek afternoon, the large television on its wheeled trolley was brought into the classroom and we watched The Red Balloon (Le Ballon Rouge), directed by Albert Lamorisse. I loved it then and have returned to it many times since. Made in 1956, it’s an almost silent French short film about a young boy named Pascal and his magical friendship with a sentient red balloon in Paris. The balloon follows him through the city, protects him from bullies, and quietly defies adult authority. When the balloon is destroyed, balloons from across the city break free, gather around Pascal, and lift him into the sky.

It’s a gentle, poetic film about imagination, freedom, and loss. As we grow older, I think we often lose the imaginations we once had as children — perhaps because we stop actively developing them after school. This print is about reconnecting with those childhood daydreams, and about how imagination, even briefly, can lift us above the everyday.