The Lake District large-scale watercolours depict surreal dreamscapes that appear vivid and idyllic at first glance, yet reveal something more unsettling on closer inspection.
Titled after tourist postcards of the Lake District, with their saturated skies and idealised views, become both source material and critique—transformed into purple skies, cerulean lakes, fluorescent fells, and crimson foliage. Bright, immersive ,trippy environments give way to darker undertones, loosely echoing the strange, layered worlds of The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch. Hybrid, human-like forms crawl, drool and merge with dense, tangled vegetation in landscapes that feel both fertile and toxic. Oversized fruits, poisonous mushrooms, and ambiguous creatures blur the boundaries between growth and decay. Barbed wire cuts through these organic spaces, introducing tension, control, and the suggestion of imposed boundaries.
The works are built through layered watercolour processes—fluid washes, drawn lines, and printed Ginkgo leaves. Flicks of opaque paint hover across the composition, while small, luminous details—dots of fruit, fireflies, bubbles and blossoms—drift through the space like fragments of a fragile ecosystem. Through this interplay of technique and imagery, the paintings explore the tension between attraction and unease, seduction and contamination. They invite the viewer to linger, to look beyond the surface, and to confront a world that is at once intoxicatingly beautiful and quietly, persistently disturbed.
