Tom de Freston

Tom de Freston (born 1983) is a British artist and writer, living and working in Oxford. He graduated from Cambridge University in 2007\. De Freston’s multimedia art tackles themes of trauma, humanity and intimacy across paintings, films and performance. He builds rich visual narratives, drawing on literature, art history and social issues. A prolific author, Granta published de Freston’s debut non-fiction book, _Wreck_, in 2022 and his second will be released in 2024\. _Julia and the Shark_ (Hachette, 2021), created with his wife Kiran Millwood Hargrave, won the Waterstones Children’s Gift of the Year and was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Children’s Writing on Nature and Conservation. De Freston was chosen to illustrate the twenty-fifth-anniversary edition of David Almond’s _Skellig_, published in 2023. _I Saw This_ was born out of a collaboration between de Freston, filmmaker Mark Jones and Dr Ali Souleman after de Freston was introduced to the academic in 2017\. The paintings and mixed-media works that resulted from the project are an exploration into Souleman’s experiences of terrorism, displacement and war in Syria and ruminate on how art can attempt to represent suffering and terror. In 1996, a bomb explosion in Damascus on New Year’s Eve nearly killed Souleman and left him blind. A sensitive and highly-charged topic, Souleman explained to de Freston the importance of engaging with what is happening in Syria. Disembodied mouths, hands and feet appear frequently in the works. Circles recur as a motif, which bear an uncomfortable resemblance to eyes and eye sockets. In the Mirror paintings which stand upright in black boxes, de Freston embeds ash, screws, thick glue, dirt and bits of wood into the canvas. They are corporeal and volcanic, visceral and abstract. The sense of molten heat in the paintings was compounded by a fire in de Freston’s studio in 2020, which was simultaneously destructive while giving the artist and the collaboration new momentum. The collaborative process involves de Freston describing the paintings to Souleman through words and touch. Souleman brings fresh meaning to the works, grounding them in his psychological landscape. Mark Jones captures these interactions in striking photographs and film footage. Habda Rashid, Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Kettle’s Yard and the Fitzwilliam Museum, introduces _I Saw This_ and considers the challenges of incorporating elements from real life. Journalist Yasmina Floyer’s contribution describes her reaction to de Freston’s work at his 2022 exhibition _From Darkness_ at No 20 Arts, London, where she found that the sooty-black feet stencils and inky circles depicted resonated with her own experience of child loss. The moving text shows how de Freston’s art carries both specific and universal meanings. Editor Matt Price focuses on de Freston’s paintings, structuring his essay with fascinating quotes from Abu al-Ala al-Ma’arri, the eleventh-century blinded Arab philosopher. Crucially, de Freston, Jones and Souleman’s voices are presentin the book, with each shedding light on their part in the project. De Freston’s art is rooted in empathy and _I Saw This_ is a culmination of this, translating Souleman’s world of memory and metaphor.

The story of Orpheus’s tragic quest into the underworld to rescue his true love Eurydice back from the dead is one that has haunted the western imagination for over 2,000 years through many tellings, re-tellings, appropriations and adaptations. A unique coming together of poetry, art and criticism, Orpheus and Eurydice explores the myth’s impact through a graphic-poetic reconstruction of the story. Including critical reflections from leading thinkers, writers and critics, this is a compelling exploration of the enduring power of this tale.

In 2020, artist Tom de Freston and his wife, Kiran Millwood Hargrave, discovered they were expecting twins. But Kiran miscarried, and thus began a long road to parenthood that saw the loss of six more pregnancies. Pulsing with wonder and insight, Strange Bodies is both a deeply moving chronicle of this journey - of the role of art in making sense of grief and of the struggle to create new life - and a love letter to Kiran, exploring how powerful bonds transform as lovers become family.

"a book full of love that makes you see what really matters, both in art and life. Clever, tender, completely compelling" - Ella Risbridger In 2020, artist Tom de Freston and his novelist wife Kiran Millwood Hargrave discovered they were expecting twins. But Kiran miscarried, and thus began a long journey to parenthood that saw the loss of six more pregnancies. De Freston began exploring his experience of the losses in his artwork, searching for a way to make sense of his grief and of his wife's. He finds representations of his feelings towards Kiran in Ovid's myth of Orpheus, who, in turning back to gaze upon Eurydice, loses her to the Underworld; a story which captures the longing for closeness within a couple, and the intense pain in the distance between them. His search for understanding leads him to artists and artworks from Titian and Francis Bacon to Braca Ettinger and Gerhard Richter. And as the miscarriages mounted and de Freston became ever more aware of the precarious bodily experience that is pregnancy, he excavates the erotic charge of the male gaze, its yearning for connection, and the desires and boundaries that exist between lovers, and between painter and painting. Addressed directly to De Freston's wife Kiran, Strange Bodies is an intimate, authentic, and powerfully moving account of a loving relationship that pulses with wonder and insight.

An artist's intensely personal reckoning that delves deep inside the making of art, and explores the value of facing, and depicting, the darkest of horrors.

An artist's obsession with Gericault's monumental painting The Raft of the Medusa, and an intensely personal reckoning that delves deep inside the making of an artwork.

The story of Orpheus’s tragic quest into the underworld to rescue his true love Eurydice back from the dead is one that has haunted the western imagination for over 2,000 years through many tellings, re-tellings, appropriations and adaptations. A unique coming together of poetry, art and criticism, Orpheus and Eurydice explores the myth’s impact through a graphic-poetic reconstruction of the story. Including critical reflections from leading thinkers, writers and critics, this is a compelling exploration of the enduring power of this tale.