The Stories We Have Forgotten

We live in a world shaped by symbols.

A wedding ring. A cross. A peace sign. A flag. A logo.

Long before we read words, we learn to recognise images. They tell us what to value, where we belong and who we are. The most enduring symbols become so familiar that we stop noticing them, yet they continue to shape the way we understand ourselves and the culture around us.

As a brand designer, I have spent more than twenty years thinking about visual identity. A successful logo does more than identify a business. It carries a story. It becomes a shorthand for values, memory and belonging.

Over time I realised this fascination extended far beyond branding.

I became interested in the symbols that have shaped human culture for thousands of years. Religious iconography, ancient artefacts, mythology and ritual all reveal the images a society chooses to preserve. They also reveal the stories that quietly disappear.

When a symbol vanishes from culture, something often disappears with it.

Not only an image, but a way of seeing the world.

My creative practice grew from a simple question.

What stories have we forgotten?

Again and again, I found myself returning to the sacred feminine.

Not simply as a spiritual idea, but as a cultural one.

Across many ancient cultures, images of women appeared as creators, protectors, wisdom keepers and embodiments of life itself. Over time many of these stories faded from view, replaced by new symbols and new narratives that shaped how femininity, power and the body came to be understood.

I am interested in what happens when we create new symbols for our own time.

Not replicas of ancient artefacts, nor symbols that belong exclusively to one religion or tradition, but contemporary iconography that invites curiosity, conversation and reflection.

Images that feel familiar enough to draw us closer, yet unfamiliar enough to make us pause.

My work is not about recreating the past.

It is about asking what visual language we need now.

How might a contemporary icon remind us of our relationship with the body, with nature, with creativity or with one another?

How can beauty become a form of remembrance?

These are not questions with fixed answers.

They are questions I continue to explore through artworks, objects and gathering.

Because I believe the images we surround ourselves with matter.

They shape what we remember.

And perhaps, just as importantly, they reveal what we have forgotten.