Can you tell us about your practice and way of working?
In my paintings, I explore different kinds of interiors and how the spaces and the objects within them can act as signifiers to alternate meanings. I do not work from found images or pure imagination, I physically investigate spaces that are conceptually interesting and use photography to explore different views and compositions to affect their reading. My painterly license allows me to adjust and manipulate the photographs to create paintings that are inspired by the real but are left open to interpretation.
What inspired you to paint directly from the Kettle’s Yard house for the Handpicked exhibition?
Kettle’s Yard Director Andrew Nairne has known my work for a long time and he invited me to respond to the Kettle’s Yard house for the exhibition. I felt able to accept the invitation because of how flower painting in general and Kettle’s Yard in particular seemed to connect to my work through the themes of staging, temporality and displacement. The fact that Kettle’s Yard had once been a home and was now a museum creates the kind of layers of meaning that I am drawn to. The temporary nature of the flowers points to ideas of transience, a theme that has held a strong resonance in my painting practice and the idea of flowers being cut off and rehoused in a new environment is another concept that I have often explored in my work.
Did you change anything when painting the composition, and what inspired these changes?
For the painting for Handpicked I really wanted to highlight the sense of space in the Kettle’s Yard house and hint at the stillness of the environment. However I also wanted to make the flowers take centre stage, so to emphasise both of these things, I tampered with the composition and enlarged the vase of flowers. My hope is that this change is subtle enough to go unnoticed and strange enough to create a tension in the atmosphere of the work.
Do you have a favourite artwork or object in the Kettle’s Yard house?
I love Christopher Wood’s Flowers. I thought about incorporating that into my painting but I was worried about doing it justice. The spiral of stones is also so iconic. It’s the image that comes to mind every time I think of Kettle’s Yard.
Book your visit to Handpicked: Painting Flowers to explore Freeman-Bentley’s painting
Handpicked: Painting Flowers
5 Things to Know About the Exhibition
