A Sense of Order
Solo exhibition, Malvern Library - 3rd to 29th August 2026

The work
This exhibition unites two series of paintings made three years apart. They explore the same underlying question:

Why do humans create frameworks for understanding the world and our place within it?

Hermetic Principles series
Painted in 2022-23, this series began with small compositional sketches - as I divided each with a horizontal line, the phrase 'As above, so below' kept occurring to me. I looked it up and found it comes from Hermetic philosophy. Fascinated, I painted responses to its seven key Principles. These paintings mark my transition from making deeply personal art to making work that asks questions which belong to us all.

Why Black & White?
The Hermetic Principles series is painted in monochrome because it mirrored the opposites expressed in its philosophy: above & below, movement & stasis, masculine & feminine. But I also included many shades of grey, reflecting that Hermetic ideas are no longer perceived as being ‘black and white’, but more nuanced. Researching Hermeticism raised questions for me about the ways in which humans try to understand the world - those questions have persisted long after the paintings were finished. Likewise in my Dualities series, painting in black and white seems a fitting way to communicate the ideas in the work.

Philosophies
After the Hermetic Principles series, I found the I Ching. Although the paintings it prompted aren't here, the similarities and differences I saw between the I Ching and Hermeticism broadened my thinking. Only later have I realised how important studying both has been on the journey to the work I'm making now.

Dualities series
Started in February 2026, this work is still evolving. This may be the beginning of a new direction in my practice - while considering why and how humans have created frameworks for understanding, I’ve realised that my studio is now the place where I test and expand my own ideas about frameworks for understanding. In fact, I seem to have unintentionally started doing the very thing I'm investigating – in developing my own framework for understanding; the Dualities paintings are a way of exploring the many possible degrees of interaction between two entities, and a way of examining that idea.

The Exhibition
The paintings you see here don't attempt to offer answers so much as show two stages in an ongoing enquiry. I hope they invite you to pause, reflect and perhaps consider your own search for understanding - and the shared human desire to find a sense of order.