Inspiration | Alex Beeching
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The current edition of Pure Green has a small focus on constellations (well perhaps not so small as it inspired our cover!) - it's a subject that has always facinated me. It's endlessly interesting, at least to me, to imagine what could possibly be truly up there and to struggle to understand what limited knowledge we have of it. It was so great to create a unique, limited edition tear-out star map for the new issue, illustrated by Bess Callard, based on that fascination (see a sneak peek here). Stargazing has been a loved activity of mine since childhood and admittedly, I've never been very good at picking out all the constellations, which must be why the star map was such a fun project. That said, stargazing can be more than identifying age-old groups of stars with fabled stories from centuries ago. Sometimes, it's nice just to let one's imagination run amok—get lost in the celestial heavens and make up your own fabled stories. This is what artist Alex Beeching set out to do in this series of drawings where he interpreted his own 'constellations' based on the idea that with a little imagination one can see what one wants to see, just as a cloud can look like a camel, a hat and a trombone respectively to different people. It's an idea that intrigues me yet feels very natural, reminding me of countless childhood moments, lost in the stars. And come to think of it, it's a shame I think of childhood, really, because as adults it's still really nice to lie on a blanket and do the same. Perhaps on the next clear night I'll make a point of it—it's too easy sometimes to let life's busy-ness get in the way and forget about such simple pleasures as stargazing.
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