Painting Spotlight: What nature gives, grab.
Hello and welcome to issue #62 (and the first newsletter of 2025)!
Happy new year! (Belated, I know, but we haven’t done this yet).
January is always an interesting month: it marks the start of the year and tends to feel a bit like a blank slate, full of motivation for new beginnings and resolutions. Yet, in the northern hemisphere we’re still in winter, which, let’s be honest doesn’t always offer a most exciting backdrop for motivation.
For this reason, my approach to new year resolutions has drastically changed over the years in that I don’t really set any. Instead, I’ve started working with setting intentions, doing so frequently (each week, month, season), and taking inspiration from the seasonal cycles of nature. This process makes me reflect on my intentions almost on a daily basis, which I find helps keep me more focused than resolutions ever did.
The more I think about intentions, the more I realise how important of a starting point this process of reflection is when it comes to making art. Especially when trying to balance the need to create with the need to make a living. A big task with each piece that I make is ensuring I am staying true to what I want to be creating, whilst also considering how the idea in my head can be conveyed in a (hopefully) intriguing and relatable way for a potential viewer and collector.
Let’s take the piece ‘What nature gives, grab.’ as an example.
This little 30x30cm oil on canvas-board is up there as one of my favourites. Why? Because my intention with it was to experiment.
When I started this piece, I wasn’t sure where it was going. I just knew I wanted to play with storytelling by creating bolder compositions that included areas of great detail contrasted by block colouring. So, I taped off the surface and started to fill each section without too much expectation.
First, I did the flowers, painting them from life on a really beautiful sunny day. I enjoy painting flowers and roses have some really lovely delicate symbolism attached to them. It felt like a good starting point. I then considered my next steps for a few months, until I painted the hand. A storyline was unfolding: nature vs human; delicate floral imagery contrasted by a looming hand. Finally, the background colour: sap green, symbolic of growth, renewal and harmony, tied it altogether. This little piece of experimentation became one of many stories exploring our multifaceted relationship with the natural environment (a theme that already runs through my work).
This painting was completed in 2021. In 2025, it still has a life of its own. It exists as a little time capsule of thought, intent and the environments in which it was created, and the thought of that fills me with awe. In 2024, the opportunity to have this and some other of my pieces represented by Ad Lib Gallery, finally pushed me to get round to framing it, and like magic I fell in love with it all over again; its new wooden framing adding another layer to the narrative. Art is a fascinating thing: equally static and alive, it has the power to stand its ground and adapt with the times depending on the lens that it’s looked at through - its power comes from as much its creator as it does the viewer and I could go on and on about how mind-boggling this actually is, but I fear this is already becoming a very long newsletter.
So, for now, I’ll leave you with the intention of staying (mostly) consistent in my writings to you this year.
As always, you know the drill - if this or any other piece piques your interest and you’d like to know more about pricing, availability, or anything else, just let me know by replying directly to this email.
Thank you for reading, and I look forward to writing to you again soon.
Wishing you a wonderful weekend ahead,
Arietta xx