These paintings are a reflection on the power of connection and finding light in dark spaces. 

What if we could see the channels of life that connect and unite everything, the seen and the unseen? What if we could trust that no matter how overwhelmed we feel by darkness, by fear, there is always a gentle light, beckoning us on? This is an idea I have intuitively been channelling into my paintings in recent years, whilst navigating my own grief. I am sharing these works now in the hope of helping others to feel less alone in theirs.

It is good to be reminded that there are many parts of nature which our senses simply can not detect, and parts of someone’s story (even our own) we will never be able to fathom.

Scientists have recently estimated that we can only observe a mere 5 % of the universe’s energy and matter. The remaining 95% we currently call “dark” energy and matter, because so far we know absolutely nothing about it, other than – it exists (because it interacts with gravity). When you look up at the stars on a clear night we tend to think of the darkness in-between those points of light as emptiness, “the vacuum of space”. It turns out that the space in between things is not at all empty, but filled with all that is just beyond our reach. A humbling thought.

I use the symbol of trees in these paintings. Like us, they are unique individuals whose existence is supported by, and supports, countless other individual organisms and systems. Trees are able to send messages and nutrients across large distances to other trees, thanks to a reciprocal relationship with a totally separate organism: mycelium fungi. Trees and fungi have always known they can not do life on their own; we might take a leaf out of their book.

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