Sean Beldon: Loveletters from nowhere | Solo Exhibition | Frame Workshop & Gallery

Fifteen years ago I came back to painting and this is my latest show in four chapters: Loveletters from nowhere.

The Loveletters from nowhere works are not unlike ‘wish you were here’ postcards. The
compositions have thoughts attached with each painting connected to a place or person. It is not important to know the details, but the details were important for the creation.

My metaphorical love letters to my past and future self remind me that I belonged to somewhere atsome time. Through the landscape, objects and people around me, I fabricate a world where I’m happy and at peace. Like promises to loved ones, always a little embellished, a little unreal.

Ironically, being away is where I feel connected the most, sending loveletters home with every new view, every new moment. For me being an outsider looking in is quite comfortable. It is how I navigate difficult and also good times. I now more than ever understand why I see and do things the way I do.

Inspired by collecting numbers

This is a year of significant numbers, all tens and fives.

I collect numbers, they help me make sense of time and place. Twenty twenty-six will see me have started high school forty years ago, meet Nelleke 35 years ago and have a married life together for the past thirty years. This year, I will have lived in one house for the longest time (10 years) and remember the last time I saw my father in 1991. I will also remember how I found out he had died, 35 years ago. This year marks twenty five years since I became a father myself (in the United Kingdom), daunting, but very rewarding - feeling like a lifetime and fleeting all the same. It is the most significant thing.

It has been 15 years since I first set foot in Otago, forty five since I flew to Namibia on my own. Forty five years ago I received a Christmas card from Boulder, Colorado from an aunt I had never met. In 2026 I got to thank her in person.

Numbers line up every now and then to produce a train of thought that will keep me anchored in my timeline, wherever it may go.

In 1996 I was listening to a ten year old song by one of my favourite artists and came up with the idea of ‘loveletters from nowhere’. It started off as a couple of sketches and acrylic paintings. Lying dormant since then, I am now rediscovering the idea through new perspectives.

Signal Hill

David Kramer (copyright, 1986)

Looking down from Signal Hill, the lights are like a sea of stars.
From flats and office blocks and neon signs and moving cars.
I can hear the ocean roar and the rumbling city snore.
Standing here like me, who could ask for more?
High above the city, it’s like looking from a plane.
It’s taking off at midnight and it’s never coming back again.
I can hear the engines roar and feel the trembling in the floor.
Standing here like me, who could ask for more?
Why am I standing here looking at the lights, while I am like any tourist who has paid to see the sights.
Gazing at a distant shore, emotionally I’m at war.
Standing here like me, who could ask for more?
Look at me in that midnight plane, sitting in the second class.
Face pressed to the porthole and I’m rattling the ice in my glass.
Well, I can hear the engines roar and feel the trembling in the floor.
Fastening my safety belt, who could ask for more?
Fastening my safety belt, who knows what lies in store?
So why am I standing here and thinking in the dark.
I’m all alone on Signal Hill where lovers come to park.
All these feelings, I have known, what is it I’m longing for?
Standing here like me, who could ask for more?