HOMESICK WANDERER

Exhibition Statement

Informed by the gardens of my childhood in England, my work searches for a personal paradise – an oasis – a refuge from busy city life. The garden, a place where organic landscape meets man-made structure is an archetypal space where humanity has sought paradise since our beginnings.

My latest works evoke a homesickness for a place that never was. The past plays an important role in creating this place and is considered as an intertwined cultural heritage of family legacy, memories of travel, and mythological characters or spaces such as the hanging gardens of Babylon. These influences of the past merge with a strong desire for a new world. Reflecting on the current context of our relationship with nature, this new world is a place where nature acts as a refuge – a contemporary reflection on paradise as a walled garden – an ancient concept of home.

The painting process begins with washes of intuitive colours. Like a gardener shaping the land, I shape a rich palette of saturated jewel tones until scenes and landscapes emerge. I take on the creative impulses of childlike longing with my imagination as guide. As a result my paintings surprise the viewer with unusual textures, and colour combinations and compositions that are both familiar and exotic.

These paintings  are my prayer for the future, a hopeful call for reconciling with nature and finding peace within the spaces we create.