Devon Open Studios, Thelma Hulbert Gallery, New Paintings & What's Next
It feels as though a great deal has happened since I last wrote here in July.
At the time, I had recently joined Lantic Gallery in Tiverton and had just been selected for the Devon Open Studios Emerging Artist Exhibition at Thelma Hulbert Gallery. I was still deciding which work I would submit and, perhaps more importantly, beginning to understand where this new body of painting was leading me.
A few months later, the exhibition is open, one of my paintings has already found a new home, and the ideas I was beginning to explore earlier in the year have developed into something that feels much more clearly my own.
Devon Open Studios and Thelma Hulbert Gallery
This September I took part in Devon Open Studios, alongside having work selected for the Emerging Artist Exhibition at Thelma Hulbert Gallery in Honiton.
Seeing my paintings hanging in the gallery has been a very special milestone. There is something quite different about making work alone in the studio and then seeing it properly framed, hung and given space alongside the work of other artists.
I was also thrilled to learn that one of my paintings had sold during the exhibition. Knowing that a painting has connected strongly enough with someone that they want to live with it is still an extraordinary feeling.
The Emerging Artist Exhibition continues at Thelma Hulbert Gallery until 24 October, so there is still time to visit if you are in or around Honiton.
Where the paintings have been heading
Earlier this year I was working predominantly on small botanical paintings on handmade paper. Those pieces were incredibly important because they gave me room to experiment - with colour, decorative borders, repeated flowers, pattern and, increasingly, vessels.
Over the summer I began taking those ideas onto larger linen canvases.
The flowers are still central, but the paintings have gradually become more narrative. Decorated vessels now sit at the heart of the compostitions, each carrying its own symbolic story and overflowing with an abundance of colourful flowers,.
As I paint I am finding that the work is beginning to speak back to me. The compositions seem to be developing in a very natural way, gradually unfolding into something that feels more and more aligned with my deepest interests and passions.
New paintings
The newest paintings are much larger than my earlier work and are painted primarily in acrylic on linen.
Working on this scale has given the compositions more room to breathe and has allowed me to spend much more time developing the vessels themselves - treating their surfaces almost as a place to tell another part of the story.
I am still starting with drawing and smaller studies. My sketchbooks are full of vessel shapes, animals, flowers, colour combinations and patterns, some of which eventually find their way into the finished canvases.
I don't think I have reached an end point - I hope I never do - but I do feel that I have arrived at a much clearer understanding of what I want to explore through the work.
A clearer direction
It’s fascinating for me to look back at the work I was making at the beginning of this year, I can see the path from those small daily botanical studies to where I am now, although back then I couldn’t possibly have imagined that this is where I would have landed.
The 100 Days of Play project gave me permission to experiment. The smaller paintings helped me find a language of flowers, vessels, colour and pattern. And the larger paintings are now giving those ideas space to develop into something deeper.
There is still a great deal I want to explore, but for the first time in a long while, the different parts of my creative life feel connected.
Thank you, as always, for following the work as it develops — whether you have visited an exhibition, bought a painting, stopped to talk to me at an event, or simply followed along online. It means a great deal.
A little publication news
I was also delighted to see work from my 100 Day Project featured in the beautifully curated UPPERCASE magazine.
That project became an important part of my practice earlier this year. Painting every day gave me the freedom to explore flowers, colour, pattern and decorative detail without putting too much pressure on the outcome, and many of the ideas I discovered during that time have continued to find their way into the larger paintings I’m making now.
It feels particularly lovely to see some of that work in print, especially as a number of the original paintings from the project have since gone on to be shown through Lantic Gallery and Thelma Hulbert Gallery.