This work was made in response to the 2025 theme for the annual Rendez-vous aux Jardins, an National Open Gardens event in France.
‘Stone Gardens/Garden stones’
Stone is not just a material but a story, a connection between people and the landscape.
Whilst taking garden waste to the local tip, I came across a pile of discarded stones from a newly demolished building. The stones had not been lying there for long because their surfaces weren’t covered in moss or lichen. Intuitivly I imagined reassembling them into a sculptural form.
As a painter, I wanted to see what would happen if the colour of the stones’ was transformed, making them stand out in their new surroundings. Just as the bright colours of some flowers seem to glow, I wanted the stones to have a vibrancy and presence of their own.
For many people, gardening becomes a task of imposing order and control on nature, such as restricting growth, clearing unwanted plants and introducing straight borders. My work takes this a stage further; simply by changing the colour of the stones, what would once have blended into nature becomes incongruous.
The process of spraying the stones acted as inspiration for creating a further series of work on canvas and paper. The stones became both a template and subject matter.
The artworks also resonate with the exhibiting garden’s name ‘Cairnhill’.
The inspiration for the Crescendo paintings came about from my observations whilst spraying colour onto the stones for the installation. Each stone acted as a template and consequently left a presence of itself, the outer edge delineating a positive and negative play of space and form. The process provided an impetus for further work, using the natural stones as material as well as subject. Individual stones were singled out for their size relative to the canvas support. The diptych format became important as a subtle signifier for infinity, the surface bridging the join of the diptych. The result is an abstraction of form, colour and shape, a painting that encompasses the rhythm of form seen in the garden but also sequences a painterly process.
In the ‘Delineation’ series individual stones were singled out for their size relative to the squared paper.
In response to the central templated shape, I created a surrounding gestural & fluid mark to accentuate the central form. When the series of works are displayed together, the rhythmic variation of shape and directional mark becomes reminiscent of visual dance.
