Tarka Kings’s Radiant Drawings Seize the Magic of Wild Swimming

Five years in the past, Tarka Kings found a blissful sanctuary in the midst of London’’s bustling retailers and skyscrapers. Situated in Hyde Park, the Serpentine Lido is a pure oasis in one of many world’s busiest cities, visited by wild swimmers and dazzling white swans alike. For her new London exhibition, “Mornings at the Lido,” on view at Offer Waterman, by way of October twenty fourth, the British artist’s coloured pencil and graphite drawings present an intimate view into moments of transition by the water.

“I have always loved that kind of swimming,” Kings instructed me forward of the exhibition opening. For years, she would swim in rivers round Scotland and England, a pastime for every so often slightly than an everyday pastime. But when she started to go to the Serpentine “more seriously” with a good friend through the pandemic, she turned hooked. “After a while, it becomes an addictive thing which you can’t stop,” she stated. Kings doesn’t see herself as a swimmer with objectives. She is just not occupied with races or private information. What she is drawn to is the depth of the chilly water and the bodily and emotional buzz that follows. This expertise is what evokes her latest physique of labor, which was a change in path for the brand new present. Previously, her dramatic graphite renderings of sunshine by way of home windows and summary paper cutouts have been proven at galleries together with the Royal Academy of Arts and London gallery Pippy Houldsworth.

There has been a surge of curiosity in wild swimming within the U.Okay. during the last decade, which for a lot of, can carry better understanding of nature and its wants. Yet in lots of areas, this observe is below risk resulting from sewage dumping in rivers and seas. For Kings, this solely “makes it more precious to people.” She enjoys the group facet of semi-wild swimming, which she describes as an important third house for human interplay. Kings finds herself comforted by being in a bunch of individuals silently swimming whereas having fun with the contemplative, solitary house of the water. “It’s an incredibly ancient, natural environment for human beings,” she stated. “Hence why baptism happens in water. I imagine that started because we feel so comfortable in it.” Her studio displays this perception. It is located on a pontoon on the Thames with a view of the glistening water and boats passing exterior her window.

Given this inspiration, it could come as a shock that none of her drawings for “Mornings at the Lido” characteristic individuals really swimming. She wished to keep away from the standard clichés, she stated: wild seascapes or the glamor of loungers by the pool. She enjoys David Hockney’s work of swimming swimming pools, however these really feel very completely different from the expertise she wished to evoke. Instead, she photographed a detailed good friend altering garments by the water, celebrating an on a regular basis act that at instances feels clumsy and intimate. These images have been the idea for her comfortable, aware drawings, that are cropped intently to her mannequin and infrequently characteristic the encircling wildlife.

During wild swimming, particularly within the winter, the strongest bodily sensations are exterior the water, Kings defined, as the frenzy of endorphins surges and the pores and skin begins to really feel the chilly. This was the second that was most vital for her to seize in her paintings. She sees this as a metaphorical change that occurs after swimming. “You really feel your body. In normal life, I don’t feel my body in such a clear way,” she stated. Through specializing in this second of dressing, Kings explores the strain between modesty and publicity that surrounds nudity in artwork. In Blue Towel (2025), her topic each reveals and conceals her physique as she dries herself with a towel.

Kings’s drawings are constructed up from tons of of tiny coloured marks, making a hazy aesthetic. These drawings, although specializing in the stable human physique, are fluid, their marks dancing earlier than the eyes. This is a time-consuming, meditative course of which mirrors the peaceable expertise of swimming in wild water.

Kings’s comfortable type captures the situations round pure our bodies of water as the sunshine shifts or mist hangs over the floor. For this exhibition particularly, Kings was drawn to Post-Impressionist Georges Seurat’s pointillist type, an affect that’s apparent from the layered however in the end particular person superb marks of every drawing. Perhaps extra surprisingly, she additionally cited the Op artwork of Bridget Riley. Kings was fascinated to find that Riley’s works have been knowledgeable by watching the ocean in Cornwall. “They glitter,” she stated. “You look at Riley’s paintings and they are like light on water. They also have a great stillness and clarity.”

Another motif all through the works on view is swans, that are a key fixture in Hyde Park. A solo black swan seems in By the Lake (2025), as an illustration, its elegant type mirrored within the water, watched over by Kings’s topic as she flicks by way of a clean guide. For Kings, these animals sum up the significance of untamed swimming, and the choice view of nature that it supplies. Instead of watching the birds from the banks as a passive and in the end separate observer, the act of swimming brings individuals to their stage, seeing each the swans and surrounding habitat from their perspective. Crucially, this grants a uncommon alternative to be one with nature, tapping into the ample non-human life that flows even by way of our busiest cities.