Hazy Swamp at Night [Dunstige Sumpfnacht]

The swamp does not sleep—it breathes. A muted shimmer of moonlight on still and bubbly waters, where the haze clings like a second skin. An ode to the quiet ache of numbness, to the slow unfurling of a heart learning to feel again. Its contours cradle the tension between stagnation and emergence, where the swamp’s murk mirrors the fog within us—a place where growth is not loud, but whispered in soft screams.

The soul loves the slow emergence. It knows the grace of lingering in the threshold, where numbness becomes a womb for new light.
— John O’Donohue

The lonely monsters of longing, they yearn not for terror, but for a  a slow and tender process of awakening. They drift through the silt, guardians of the unseen, patiently waiting for their lotos and searoses to rise from the depths. Like these creatures, we too mistake the murk for emptiness, forgetting that clarity begins in the quiet dark—where roots stir, unseen.

A Metaphor for the Unanswerable

The swamp is not a place—it is a question. A breath of mist and shadow, it exists where light fractures and solid ground dissolves into ambiguity. Here, in the haze of the familiar frameworks we cling to—clarity, control, purpose—sink into the silt. The swamp does not offer answers; it murmurs riddles:

What takes root in the unseen? What thrives in surrender?

Its waters, thick with decay and rebirth, mirror the paradox of existence itself: a teeming darkness where life and death are not opposites but collaborators.

A hazy swamp is where certainty drowns. For sure.
The swamp’s fog obscures horizons, its tangled roots trip logic, and its stillness defies urgency. To stand here is to confront the vertigo of the unanswerable—the gnawing wonder of whether meaning is something we find or something we forge from the mud. Like the lotus that breaches the surface only after years submerged, our truths often emerge soaked in paradox. And one might realise: The monsters that lurk here—the gnarled cypress knees, the guttural croak of unseen creatures—are not threats but mirrors. They reflect our resistance to the unknown, our fear of sinking into the questions that have no bottom.

To surrender here is not to vanish but to dissolve—to let the ego’s armour rust away until all that remains is the raw, pulsing core of curiosity. What if the purpose we seek is not a destination but the act of wading? The swamp teaches that insight blooms not despite the dark, but because of it. Its waters, heavy with the weight of a thousand unspoken histories, remind us that even the most desolate depths hold the potential for metamorphosis.

This sculpture is myinvitation to linger in the liminal. To let the mist cling to your skin, to let the silence unspool your certainty. For it is here, in the embrace of the unanswered, that we confront the most vital truth: the unknown is not an abyss to fear, but a canvas. What we call “void” is simply space—raw, fertile, and aching for the courage to imagine what might rise from it.

The swamp does not promise light, but it demands a deeper vision: to see in the dark, to find rhythm in the chaos, and to trust that even the most tangled questions can, in time, become compasses.

In the swamp’s breath, we find our own—a rhythm older than fear, older than time. To wake here is not to escape the dark, but to let it soften you.

Details

• moulded with clay
• body glazed with green crystals
• antlers and head items refined with gold
• mounted on a soapstone stand
• purple poppy flowers and ribbons
• height is 35cm