THE LONG GARDEN: NICOLA REAVLEY

“These paintings explore the interplay between architectural forms, memory, and atmosphere. They draw on real locations while reworking their representation through geometric shapes that reference the sun, moon and the built environment.

I use saturated, often improbable palettes to pull the paintings away from naturalism toward atmospheres that are felt before they are recognised. Drips, pours, and dissolving edges introduce a counter-logic to the architecture: solid forms bleed and lose their certainty, while geometric containment holds the surface together. The tension between structure and dissolution is part of the painting's argument and also references the act of painting itself.

In many of the works, I use light in ways that render the familiar strange. Doorways, windows, suns and moons appear as thresholds rather than backdrops, drawing the viewer through the image in multiple ways and simultaneously creating a sense of the familiar and the unknown. Nature is rarely passive in these paintings: trees grow through buildings, foliage outlasts windows, light leaks across edges that were meant to hold.

The locations are partly remembered, partly invented, partly dreamed, and the paintings make no attempt to resolve which.”

Nicola Reavley