These Corroded Poems Joseph Loughborough's latest series is a visceral journey through salt, myth, and allegory. Inspired by Samual Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, these works reimagine the sea as a psychological space where each composition evolves as a weathered poem exploring his unapologetic creative style. Bold yet fractured linework and and impulsive gesture invites introspection. Figures appear caught in moments of silent ritual: steering, waiting, watching. Their faces are marked by wear and resolve; their garments are ingrained with symbolic geometry, evoking both wreckage and armor.

Birds loom large—gulls and albatrosses rendered with both menace and sanctity. In Loughborough’s creations, they become more than fauna: they are omens, companions, judges. Elsewhere, fish drift like offerings, and skies glow with gold leaf—iconographic and indifferent.

While the visual language feels mythic, even timeless, these are not fables. These are portraits of endurance. Of reckoning. Of life lived at the edge of the world and self. Loughborough invites us not to interpret, but to witness.

As with all great allegories, the sea here is never just the sea. It is psyche. It is theatre. It is a stage to watch existence unfold.