Savage bloom 2022 | Trent Gallery

Artist’s annotation: SAVAGE BLOOM

The idea for this exhibition of paintings began with my interest in Wayne Vivier’s work, of which I am the happy owner of three from his previous series. I suggested the idea to Wayne who was agreeable. He came up with the splendid title “Savage bloom” from a poem by Edna St Vincent Millay:

“I do not know what savage blossom only under the pitting hail Of your inclement season could have prospered?”

We had a long and honest conversation many months ago, about the hardships of being practicing artists, stress-sensitive introverts and living in a world that seems to be increasingly hostile and disinterested in the unique, handmade and poetic. The ironical title SAVAGE BLOOM captures this sense of wan outrage at the hostility of our environment.

In this show my paintings of pools of water are somewhat melancholic explorations of loss and loneliness. I looked more closely at the ambiguity of the mood of a pool of water. Water seems to act as a receptacle of feeling, a place of changing moods and intensified connection between nature/the incorporeal realm and the solitary contemplator.

“A fear that in the deep night starts awake” is a large square painting that employs the ambiguous light of dusk and dark water in a suburban setting, as a metaphor for contemporary neurosis.

In another painting, “The nymphs are departed” (TS Eliot, Wasteland) touches on those feelings of decline, sadness and loss. The pool is a daily tomb, collecting leaf litter and other drowned debris on its floor (Bachelard, 1983).

“Cradled under water” is a painting that explores the longing for the Mother. The nourishing quality of pond water, thickened by microscopic organisms, into gelatinous, fecund mucus, very much like nourishing warm milk suggests the maternal. Water that feeds and provides refuge has the quality of the womb and the mother (Bachelard, 1983).

The smaller square painting “Calm surface, turmoil below” is a celebration of the poetics of water, particles of dust, light and leaves. Pools often have calm, mirror-like surfaces that hide the murk, gloom and decay that exist below, a fitting metaphor for the outward control that’s required to hide the turmoil of emotions within.

Danielle Malherbe