My recent paintings and prints are informed by daily and nightly wanderings in the suburban neighbourhood in which I live. Glowing rectangles of night-lit windows, the grids of garden gates, horizontal blinds that frame and obscure what is glimpsed within. These apertures are employed as pictorial devices to organise and disrupt the picture plane and are themselves the subject matter of many of the images. The domestic as a verb: containing, hiding, taming, protecting, concealing …Human beings are largely absent, but the images are redolent with the sense of human presence. Ornamental plants and well-kept hedges tell of a longing for the exotic and hard work in the garden on the weekend. Alongside the unseen human – neighbourhood cats, dogs, birds, the sky and the moon – conjure up a sense of something entirely more savage, kept just at bay. There are forces at play. The domestic has its dark side. As an artist and a mother this landscape is fertile and familiar ground for me – ripe with mystery and poetry, pulsing quietly and insistently.
Samantha Cary
