Cabinet of Small Worlds
Paintings that hold a whole year – colour, memory, feeling, and secrets, on dark shelves.
The Cabinet of Small Worlds are my annual visual diaries – dense, maximalist botanical paintings where every bottle, every leaf, every label and every smaller painting tucked inside is placed for a reason. The name comes from the old cabinets of curiosities, but where those gathered objects, mine gather meaning. An entire world in one frame.
There are four. Invictus is the still, composed one – colour at its most saturated against a deep black ground that makes every hue sing. Green Cabinet is the living one – nature climbing over the shelves, a heart breathing again. Green Lush and After Rain are the way in, made as a pair – pure overgrowth and a bright hideaway, two worlds to walk into and stand among the leaves.
Nothing in a cabinet is only itself. My other paintings appear inside them – sometimes a small framed picture, sometimes an object resting on a shelf – and the same motifs cross between them. A serene woman. The bees. A black cat that runs through everything. The dropped dot that begins in Prima Materia. Some are easy to find. Others, grown over under the leaves of Green Lush, are almost impossible. It is all connected, the way it is in my head.
A book of stories on one wall – and a reason to slow down and stay curious, the way you were as a child, when finding a small thing felt like finding treasure.