This November, Camilla Perkins returned to RHODES with her show The Stillness of the Garden. Here, Perkins brought to life eight works which transport the viewer back to the warmer summer months. Bustling with vibrant floral details, each piece reflects of the stillness of time spent in nature, and how each moment is held and reshaped through memory.
True to her style, Perkins’ works are each constructed in part from memory and the inspiration she finds from her garden in Lewes, in East Sussex, and otherwise in imagination. The result are her dreamscapes, where pieces such as Twilight Falls upon Yellow Roses, explore ethereal nature scenes with pink soil paths, flowers of all colours, and the windows of a countryside cottage poking through the gaps between branches in the distance.
Perkins unites the image of home with her wonderful garden scenes, where the motif of the window brings the viewer to a position from within the house, looking out towards the garden. In her work Cicadas Sing at Sunset, the sash window opens up to the image of a girl sat within the flowerbeds, plants growing around her as she tends to them. In the background, the turquoise wooden garden gate is ajar, leading the viewer out to a hazy distance viewed through the rippling glass of the windowpanes. Each piece is rooted in a sense of belonging, where the image of an enclosed garden provides an essence of comfort in the vibrant and abundant sanctuary.
The relationship between mother and daughter is a prominent theme in this exhibition, where images such as Collecting Summer Flowers capture a mother and daughter in a garden once more. Perkins’ mark-making allows the pieces to adopt a stylised and fantastical atmosphere. The curving blue brushstrokes insinuate the abstracted rolling fields and sky, contrasted with the defined forms of the two figures, pockets of flowers, and trees which frame the piece as something out of a dream. The unruly yet detailed image alludes to a longing for the quiet moments of familial comfort to be enjoyed in the heights of summer.
The Stillness of the Garden transforms the Project Room into a quiet sanctuary detailing the warm, and vibrant summer months now passed. Transformed by memory and lived experience, Perkins turns these moments into celebrations of nature and joy found in these cherished places.
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